SBOI- Selections - 4: Man of Miracles

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SBOI- Selections -4: Man of Miracles Home<<preceding Next>> to be

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Wallpapers "The Spirit shall look out through matter's gaze, and matter shall

reveal the Spirit's face. - Sri Aurobindo."

Echoes from the Early YearsWhen Satya Sai Baba finally returned from high school

to the village of Puttaparti just before his fourteenth birthday, he went first

to live at his father's house, but before very long moved around the corner to

the home of a Brahmin family named Karnum. This was the place to which he had

often run as a child to have vegetarian meals when there was a meat meal at his

own home. Now he took up his residence there and the housewife, whose name was

Subbamma, not only tended him with love and care but also welcomed the growing

number of his followers to her home, which was much more spacious and suitable

to the purpose than the cottage of Satya Sai's parents. So it was at the Karnum

house, still standing today in the main street of Puttaparti that Sai Baba's

mission had its firm beginnings in 1941. The gatherings were at first held in a

room, but the crowd soon overflowed into the road outside. So a shed was built;

as the months passed this was enlarged and then a tent was added. Still the

numbers continued to burst all accommodation. Furthermore, Baba insisted on

feeding visitors who came from a distance. Often the amount of food cooked

threatened to be totally inadequate, and it was here that he first showed the

Christ-like power of increasing the food supply to meet the need of the moment.

A lady who used to help the devoted Subbamma in those early days describes the

ritual Baba used for this. When quietly informed that the food was not

sufficient, he would ask for two coconuts - always important items for

religious ceremonials in India. He would strike one against the other so that

they both broke exactly in half, and then "he sprinkled the coconut water on

the little heaps of rice and the vessels containing the other items, and gave

the signal to proceed with the task of serving all who had come, or who might

yet come before dusk". There was always plenty for everyone. It was in those

days of cramped sitting space that he began taking his followers to sit on the

sands of the Chitravati. This today is a river of sand, three or four hundred

yards broad near the village, and dry except in the rainy seasons. In the early

1940s it was much the same, except that most of the time there was a narrow

stream of water running through the sands. Here the Young Sai would sit with

his crowd of followers. Here on the sands he would lead them in bhajan singing,

advise them on their personal problems, teach them the way to live, and build up

their faith by various miraculous phenomena. On the crest of a rocky knoll on

the left bank of the river, about half a mile from the village grows a solitary

tamarind tree. In those early years it acquired the name of Kalpataru, or

wish-fulfilling tree. This was because Sai Baba used to take his devotees - or

at least those who could climb - up to this tree and, ask them what fruit they

would like to pick from it. When they named the fruit it would be seen

immediately hanging from a branch of the tree. Apples, pears, mangoes, oranges,

figs and other varieties of fruit out of season, and some not ever grown in the

district, were plucked from the wild tamarind tree. There were other strange

deeply-moving events around that tree. Some times Baba would challenge the

youth of his own age to a race up the hill from the sands to where the tree

showed its foliage against the sky, some hundred and fifty feet above. It was a

steep, rocky climb, almost vertical in places; yet before the others had taken

more than a few steps, young Satya Sai would be up there, calling from the

summit. The young men would then stop, and with the other devotees below watch

the youth on the hill-top, knowing that something amazing would certainly take

place. One of the competitors in the hill-climbing contest, then a college

student, tells what he saw there: "the time was a little past seven," he says,

"with evening closing in. Suddenly a great ball of fire like a sun pierced the

dusk around the youth on the crest. The light wag so bright it was impossible

to keep your eyes open and watch it. About three or four of the devotees

fainted and fell." Different visions are said to have been seen on different

occasions. Sometimes it was a great fiery wheel or a full-moon with Baba's head

in the centre, sometimes a blinding jet of light from his forehead - from the

third eye centre - sometimes a pillar of fire. I have spoken to number of

people who personally witnessed those miracles of light. Small wonder that

echoes of these village happenings were heard in Madras and other faraway

places, and that the curious, the distressed and the true seekers began to

arrive from a wide circumference. No doubt there would have been an even

greater influx, had the journey been less difficult. But only the

valiant-hearted travellers would tackle the exhausting trip with its final

stage by bullock-cart or on foot. Even so in 1944, because of increasing

crowds, what is now called the "old Mandir" was built on the edge of the

village. This is a kind of double barn with a galvanised iron roof and enough

space for fair-sized bhajan crowds. At the back are rooms for sleeping and

eating, and some of the visiting devotees used to stay here, or camp nearby.

Nowadays it has only historic interest. Visitors to Prasanti Nilayam walk down

the two furlongs of dusty road to be shown over the old Mandir. Its walls are

lined with quaint old photographs of the young Sai and groups of his devotees,

which illustrate, as much as anything, the poor level of provincial photography

here in the 1940s. In the world outside it was an eventful decade, seeing World

War Two and the start of India's independence. But to a growing number of

people the most exciting and most important events were taking place at

Puttaparti, and the old Mandir could not always seat the numbers arriving. So

gatherings on the sands of the Chitravati river remained popular. Some of the

visitors who came simply out of curiosity remained to pay deep homage, and

returned there again and again. Some from distant centres persuaded the young

Sai to visit their cities and stay in their houses, where their friends could

meet him too. Many of the earliest devotees are still, more than twenty years

later, going to the ashram to see him as often as possible and begging him to

bless their homes with his presence whenever he is in their vicinity. The

long-standing devotees whom I met proved to be an inspiring aspect of my

research on this great miracle-man. They are not, as some readers might

suspect, uneducated, fanatical, vague or visionary. On the contrary they are

well-educated, rational, practical citizens of the kind whose integrity and

reliability would be accepted in any court of law. I needed to assure myself of

such things - as I assure the reader now - because at the time I gathered some

of the stories in this book I had not yet personally experienced much of the

type of phenomena they describe. Now I have seen so much that my attitude has

completely changed. The miraculous has become familiar. Most of the old

devotees have given me permission to use their names, placing the cause of

truth and their belief in the transcendental powers of Sai Baba above all other

considerations. In this chapter are some sample stories told by men and women

who have known Satya Sai since the 1940s. Mr. P. Partasaraty is a well-known

businessman of Madras, being part-owner of a company connected with shipping.

He told me that he first met Sai Baba in 1942 when the latter came to Madras to

stay at the home of a neighbour of his. Soon after that he and other members of

his family went to Puttaparti. He stayed there a whole month and witnessed

Baba's levitation up the hill to the wish-fulfilling tree, seeing both a bright

halo of flame around the young Sai's head and a shaft of light from his forehead

between the eyes. He says: "All the time in those days Baba was full of laughter

and fun. He would sing songs, and many times a day he would perform some miracle

- often as a prank, such as making a clock run backwards, or holding people to

their seats by some invisible force. At picnics he would tap empty dishes, and

when the lids were removed, the dishes would be full of food, sometimes hot as

if straight from the kitchen. I have also seen him multiply small amounts of

food to feed big crowds. "These outings were very happy events always. Often

Baba would turn some wild tree at hand into our Kalpataru tree: any fruit we

liked to name could be picked from its branches." Mr. Partasaraty had been

suffering from asthma for many years and, soon after his arrival at Puttaparti,

Baba materialised an apple with a wave of the hand and told him to eat it as a

cure. He has never had another attack of asthma in the quarter-century since

that day. But he says that the most important miracle of those early

experiences was connected with his mother. She was completely blind with

cataracts when the family first met Sai Baba. His treatment of her was simple -

as simple as the paste of clay and spittle that Christ used on a blind person.

Baba put jasmine petals on the woman's eyes and held them in place with a

bandage. Each day he changed them for fresh ones and at the same time insisted

that she should go daily to the bhajan. This went on for ten days, and when he

took the bandage off for the last time she was able to see again quite clearly.

"She lived for ten years after that," Mr. Partasaraty told me, and had no more

trouble with her sight. Mr. G. Venkatamuni was a leading figure in the

fertiliser business in Madras when I used to talk to him about his early

experiences with Sai Baba. Unfortunately he has since died, but his son Iswara,

also a devout devotee, carries on the same family business. Baba, when in

Madras, always stays at least part of his time at the. Venkatamuni home. An

honest, matter-of-fact person, Mr. Venkatamuni, far from exaggerating was

inclined towards understatement in all his descriptions. This I found out when

I checked some of his stories with other witnesses present at the time. I give

here just one or two of the many incredible experiences he had with Baba, as he

told them to me. In the year 1944 he began hearing strange stories about a

wonder boy in a village of Andhra Pradesh, the state from which his own

ancestors had come. He decided to go and see for himself what truth there was

in the stories. On the day of Venkatamuni's arrival at Puttaparti, Satya Sai,

then seventeen years old, took him with a small party to the sands of the

river. As they sat there talking Baba put his hand in the sand and took out a

handful of sweets, distributing them among the party. "They were hot," said Mr.

Venkatamuni, "as if just out of an oven. I had to let them cool before I could

eat them." From this he knew that what he had seen was no mere sleight-of-hand

trick. He stayed on at the village, hoping to see further wonders. His hopes

were more than fulfilled, he said, and he described the same copious stream of

marvels witnessed by the early devotees. "I was young then," Mr. Venkatamuni

said, "and it was all great fun. I used to go swimming with Sai Baba and the

other young men, and it was then that I saw the Samku Chakram on the soles of

his feet.What is that?" I enquired. "It's a circular mark - you might call

it a birth-mark. Hindus believe it's one of the signs of an avatar." Mr.

Venkatamuni and his wife became close devotees of Sai Baba, going to his ashram

regularly, and having him stay for days or weeks at their home in Madras. But it

was in 1953, nine years after the first meeting, that they experienced some Sai

magic that was in its way unique. They had set off on a global journey that was

to begin in Europe and include the Far East. Travelling by air, their first stop

was Paris where they planned to spend several weeks. While out walking in the

streets on the first day, they decided to change some traveller's cheques and

go shopping. Mrs. Venkatamuni was carrying the folder of cheques in her

handbag; or at least she thought so until she opened the bag and found they

were not there. Both decided that she must have put them in her suitcase after

all, so they went straight back to the hotel. But the traveller's cheques were

neither in hers nor her husband's suitcase. After a more than thorough search,

a repeated combing through all their belongings, it became painfully obvious

that the precious folder was lost. Where it was lost, they had no idea. Mrs.

Venkatamuni had last noticed it, as far as she could recall, in her handbag

some time before they left Bombay. It was an awkward and very unhappy

situation. Here they were in a foreign city at the beginning of a world tour

with hardly enough cash to pay their first hotel bill. They sat depressed and

forlorn in their bedroom, wondering what they could do. What they did would

seem utterly crazy to anyone except a close Sai Baba devotee. To him it would

seem the only sensible thing to do. With the few francs they had brought to

France in cash they sent a cable to Baba asking for his help. After that they

felt better, knowing that assistance would come in some form. But they hardly

expected what, in fact, happened. A day or two later they went window shopping

again. Mrs. Venkatamuni decided to make a list of the things she would buy when

she had some money. She opened her handbag to take out her pencil and notebook,

and her heart gave a great bound. There, right on top of everything, lay a

folder of traveller's cheques. They proved to be their own. It was the folder

dropped or left behind in India. Mr. Venkatamuni told me that his wife's

handbag was a medium-sized one, and that they had both searched through it many

times, emptying everything out on the bed to do so. There was, under the

circumstances, no possibility whatever that they could have overlooked the

folder if it had been in the bag earlier. Mr. Venkatamuni had no doubt that

Baba had teleported the folder from wherever it had been lost. A most useful

miracle! They sent another cable from Paris - one of thanks. When they returned

from the enjoyable world tour, they were able to tell Baba personally how deeply

grateful they had been for his timely and super-human help. He just smiled,

saying nothing - and they asked him for no details. A well-known and

highly-honoured citizen of Madras who confirms what others have said about

Baba's early miracle-phase is Mr. V. Hanumantha Rao. This man, now retired, was

Transport Commissioner of Madras Presidency (which then included part of the

present state of Andhra Pradesh) when he first met Sai Baba in 1946. The

relationship between Baba and this grand old philanthropist and his wife is a

moving story, involving aspects other than the early miracles and pranks of the

fun-loving Sai. I will tell it in another chapter where it belongs. But here I

want to mention an interesting little story that may throw light on the modus

operandi behind at least some of Baba's phenomena production. Both Mr. and Mrs.

Hanumantha Rao have often told me about the wonderful celestial quality of those

early Sai Baba years when he used to drive with them in their car, how he would

sing beautiful songs and ask them to name whatever food they wanted, or

whatever out-of-season fruit they fancied. Then with some gesture he would

produce instantaneously the things they had requested. And how when he stayed

in their home he was as natural, spontaneous and care-free as a child, and yet

seemed to have the power to command with his will all the forces of the three

worlds. Once, they said, on the birthday of Lord Krishna Baba was walking

aimlessly, it seemed, about the sitting room of their Madras home. Suddenly he

turned to Mrs. Hanumantha Rao and remarked: "There are some devas (angels) here

waiting to give me a bowl of sweets." As she looked, seeing nothing, he held out

both hands and took from the air, as if from some invisible person, a large,

carved-glass bowl. The bowl seemed suddenly to materialise. Baba handed it to

Mrs. Hanumantha Rao. It was filled, as they described it, with "divine-tasting

sweets of many varieties from different parts of India." After this incident

Satya Sai asked for an apron. When it was brought he put it on and began

singing lullaby songs. He acted the part of a nursemaid carrying the baby

Krishna, and soothing it to sleep. Then from the folds of the apron he took a

carved sandalwood idol of Krishna which had certainly not been there, or

anywhere else in the house, before. Mr. and Mrs. Hanumantha Rao showed me, when

I visited them, the glass bowl and the Krishna statuette, two treasured items

brought long ago into the home of the transport commissioner by some mysterious

method known only to the young Satya Sai. But it seems from his remark that he

has beings of another plane of existence under his command for such

transportations. Mrs. Nagamani Pourniya, who lives in Bangalore, is the widow

of a Government District Transport Officer and the mother of the popular

novelist Kamala Taylor, who is married to an Englishman and lives in England.

Nagamani first met Sai Baba in 1945 and spent many long periods at his ashram.

I found her always happy to talk about Baba and she helped fill out my mental

picture of the early period, confirming the main features and adding some new

ones to the bright tapestry of those years. Nagamani has herself written a book

on Sai Baba, but there are one or two of her experiences that bear repeating

here. Many have described to me Sai Baba's miraculous production of figures -

usually statuettes of Hindu or other gods - from the sands, and I have seen it

myself. But Nagamani told me that on one occasion when a party went with Baba

to the sands of the Chitravati river she saw idols rising up out of the sand

themselves. Baba simply scraped away a little sand to reveal the top of the

head, then the figure itself began to rise, as if driven up by some power

beneath. First, she said, came a figure of Siva, then his consort Parvati, and

then a lingam. As each rose a few inches above the sand Baba pulled it out and

threw it quickly to one side. This was because the objects were made of metal

and were quite hot - too hot to hold for more than a second. After they had

cooled, he took them back to the old Mandir for puja (ritualistic worship). But

one of the most striking of her many fantastic experiences has to do with a

surgical operation, by Baba. I have had from devotees several descriptions of

such operations, but Nagamani reports the earliest one of which I have heard. A

man and his wife came to stay at Puttaparti. Nagamani observed the man had a

bulbous, tremendously swollen stomach. He spent all his time lying down, either

in his room near the old Mandir or outside in the open. She heard that he was

not able to eat anything, nor even to take coffee. This latter seemed the "last

straw" to Nagamani, who loved her coffee. She went to Baba and asked him to cure

the man. But the days passed and nothing happened, so she said again: "Please do

something for that poor man, Baba! " He smiled and answered: "Do you think this

place is a hospital?" Then one evening all the devotees were going with Baba to

the sands of the river bed. It was not a very large party, and each of the women

decided to take some item of food for a picnic. Nagamani took the coffee. She

also left a pot of water on an outside wood fire, not far from the Mandir. With

this warm water, she said, she was hoping to bathe Baba's feet on their return

from the sands. At the river bed they all had a wonderful time singing songs.

Baba told them beautiful stories about the gods, occasionally producing some

appropriate object from the sand. All this kept their spirits at a high level,

so that when three wild cheetahs came near them to drink at the stream they

felt no fear whatever. The cheetahs seemed to regard them as friends and went

about their business unperturbed. When they returned to the Mandir, Nagamani

went to stir up the fire under the pot and Baba disappeared into the room of

the sick man. After a while he came running towards the fire, asking her for

some warm water to wash his hand. She looked and saw that his right hand was

all red. "Have you been painting, or something?" she asked in fun. "It's

blood," he replied. Then peering closer in the fading light she saw that he

carried in the blood-smeared hand something that looked like "a dirty-coloured

ball of old banana leaf." This he tossed away, and then washed the blood from

his hand in the water she gave him. "Well," he said teasingly, "you've been

insisting that I turn this place into a hospital so I've just done the

necessary operation on the man. Was he joking? She had seen blood and something

horrible that he had thrown away. Had he removed a growth from the man? Sai

Baba, apparently reading the queries in her mind handed her a roll of

cottonwool and said: "Take this and help the man's wife put a fresh bandage on

him." She went to the door but remained outside. She wanted very much to see

what had happened but somehow felt afraid to go in. Presently Sai Baba came and

took her into the room. The man was still lying down, his wife sitting beside

him. Baba went and pulled up the man's shirt to show her the operation.'

(delete) There was no bandage, but across the stomach was a thin mark, like a

cut that had already healed, and the stomach was no longer large and swollen.

Both the man and woman were looking silently at Sai Baba as if he were God. No

word was spoken. Baba led Nagamani out again, and finally permitted her to

bathe his feet. Next morning, dying to know just what had taken place, she

returned to enquire about the health of the patient. He was sitting up eating a

hearty breakfast. He told her that Sai Baba had come into the room on the

previous evening; and waving his hand, produced from the air a knife and some

other instrument. Next he produced some ash and rubbed it on the sufferer's

forehead. This seemed to act as an anaesthetic because the man lost

consciousness and knew no more until the operation was over, and Baba was

telling him that all was well. The cut had felt just a little sore, but now it

was quite normal. Nagamani wanted to know how it had healed so quickly. The

wife told her that Baba had simply held the opening together with his fingers

and it had healed up immediately. Then he had smeared some vibhuti on the

wound, held his hand there for a while, assured the patient that he would be

all right, and left. Nagamani realised that Baba's instructions to her the

evening before about a bandage were simply to give her an excuse for going to

see the patient. She was surprised that he had been pleased to satisfy her

curiosity, but perhaps it was because she had shown concern for the sick man.

She felt no amazement, only awe at the discovery of this new wonder. Nothing

Baba ever did surprised her any more; everything simply added to her profound

love of him. There are other types and varieties of phenomena in the chronicles

of the early years, but as I actually saw examples of these with my own eyes

during the 1960s it is better that I describe my personal

experiences<<preceding Next>> to be continued...Source:Howard Murphet's Man

of Miracles

 

Photos: Collage Index Daily Sai news & web update 100's of Sai Baba

Wallpapers

 

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