Sai Baba: Man of Miracles - Softcover

Murphet, Howard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0877283354 ISBN 13: 9780877283355

Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1990

Synopsis

India has always nurtured true yoginsthose who have transcended the lower self, those in whom wonderworking powers of siddhis have flourished. These powers, or some of them, have been brought into the research laboratories of the parapsychologists who call them extrasensory perception and psychokinesis. Others call them miracles. Whatever the terminology, such powers and their practitioners demand sensible attention. This account relates some of the achievements of one of the most impressive men of miracles to appear in centuries. Satya Sai Babahis followers believe him to be a reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi who died in 1918, appears to have been born with phenomenal powers, which he used in childhood and has employed constantly and openly ever since. They include all the varieties of E.S.P. and P.K. known to psychic science and more besides. The author, a Westerner devoted to science and logic, spent many months with Satya Said Baba--he claims to have found that his "unscientific," "illogical" miracles were, in fact, genuine yogic siddhis. He found, too, that along with Christlike miraculous powers went a Christlike love, compassion and the Godknowledge that opens the door to a new vision of life.

About this title

About the Author

Phyllis Krystal, born in England, was a practicing psychotherapist who developed a unique approach to therapy using symbols and visualization techniques to help clients detach from external authority figures and patterns. She taught people to rely on their own Higher Consciousness as guide and teacher. Phyllis lectured in the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Tazmania, and was also a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba, the worldrenowned avatar living in India, whose teachings and personal influence offer her inspiration in her own work. Phyllis was the author of several bestselling books. She passed away in 2016.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

SAI BABA

Man of Miracles

By Howard Murphet

Samuel Weiser, Inc.

Copyright © 1971 Howard Murphet
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-87728-335-5

Contents

Author's Note
Introduction
1 The Search
2 Satya Sai Baba
3 Abode of Peace and Many Wonders
4 O World Invisible
5 Birth and Childhood
6 The Two Sais
7 Echoes from the Early Years
8 With Baba in the Hills
9 Return to Brindavanam
10 A Place Apart
11 Drift of Pinions
12 More Wonder Cures
13 The Question of Saving from Death
14 Eternal Here and Now
15 The Same, but Different
16 A Word from the West
17 Two Pre-eminent Devotees
18 Reality and Significance of the Miraculous
19 Some Sai Teachings
20 Avatar
Index

CHAPTER 1

The Search

If therefore ye are intent upon wisdom, a lamp will not be wanting ......

ANON.

After spending some time in Europe, my wife and I decided to stop for a while in India onour way home to Australia. We had two purposes in view. One was to go more deeply intoTheosophy by attending the six-months' "School of the Wisdom" at the InternationalHeadquarters of (he Theosophical Society in Adyar, Madras. Let it be said, incidentally,and in case of misunderstanding, that this School does not pretend to offer a brief courseon how to be wise; its object is simply a study of the ageless wisdom, the perennialphilosophy found mainly in the ancient writings of the East.

Our second purpose was to travel through the country to discover if there was any deeperspiritual dimension in the life of modern India. Was there, we wondered, anything left ofthe mysterious India described in the pages of Paul Brunton, Yogananda, Kipling,Madame Blavatsky, Colonel H.S. Olcott and other writers? Were there still hiddenfountains of esoteric knowledge or had the ancient springs dried up? Would it be possibleto find somewhere, in ashram or jungle hermitage, a great Yogi of supernormal powerswho knew the secrets of life and death? We thought that about a year should suffice forthis programme.

The Theosophy School was enjoyable and enlightening. As a sortie into the wisdomteachings ranging from the ancient Vedas to The Secret Doctrine, published in 1888, itprepared our minds for our coming exploration "on the ground". We understood betterwhat we were looking for and felt better equipped to appreciate it should we find it.

Our search took us to several of the well-known ashrams throughout the length of India,and to a few little-known ones. We sat and talked with hermits and ascetics in their cavesin the Himalayas. We met a goodly variety of sadhus, sadhaks, and teachers of differenttypes of yoga.

From the hermitages of the Himalayas and ashrams along the sacred Ganges we cameback to New Delhi. There, at a leading social club, we met a top business executive whosaid, over his beer: "So you're looking for the spiritual life of India. There is none. That's allpast. We are looking for what you have in the West – material progress."

In another place a professor of history also tried to dampen our enthusiasm. "Believe me,"he said, "there is no spirituality left in this country. In the India of old there was, of course,but it died a thousand years ago."

However, we knew that the men who spoke this way, the men of the modern India with itsthirst for Western technology, were wrong about their own country. We had seen enoughand sensed enough to feel quite sure that the yogic treasures of old were still to be foundin her deep recesses.

We had sensed it; we had caught some drifts of its perfume on the breezes; we had metwith brotherly love in the ashrams; we had found men who were happy to teach, for thesake of teaching, the eternal truths of Hindu religio-philosophy. There was no dearth ofinspiring words and noble theories. But we had not yet met a man of real power; one whohad himself lived the yogic life long enough and truly enough to have broken through thelimitations that bind Man in his present unhappy state. But with all the promising materialthere was surely hope that one such might exist. Yet we also knew that spiritual treasuresare not handed out on a platter. There are always tapas, labours, austerities to beperformed.

Train and bus journeys on the plains of India in burning June were, we thought, austeritiesenough for anyone. From the oven that was Delhi we went to the fiery furnace ofDayalbagh on the outskirts of Agra. We wanted to see what had happened to the RadhaSoami religious colony there which Paul Brunton had admired so much thirty years before.

We found that its educational institutions had progressed and its factories and farmsseemed to be thriving, but that it had a weary air. There was none of the dynamism thatBrunton had found there. It was like an old tired man who had had rosy, optimistic dreamsin his youth which had never come true. Perhaps this was because the energetic, inspiringleader of the Brunton days, His Holiness Sahabji Maharaj, was dead. Just before dying hehad passed on the leadership to a retired engineer among his followers, one HazurMehtaji Maharaj. Now he was God incarnate on earth to the Dayalbaghites.

He proved to be a very elusive God. We tried to meet him but were not encouraged. Onone occasion we went out early in the morning with a large party that does a few hourswork in the fields before starting duty in office, school, or factory. The guru was with thegroup and we had great hopes of finally making the contact (in fact that was our reason forgoing), but he all the time managed to put a few acres between himself and us.

At last, however, on the day before we left, the secretary of the colony managed to pin himdown in his office long enough for us to have an interview. On the way to the interview wewere shown the house in which the leader lived. It was just one in a row, indistinguishablefrom its modest neighbours.

In the office we found a shy little man who seemed quite ashamed of the fact that therewas an air-conditioning unit in his simple room. This was not common in the colony, andhe made it clear to us that his followers had forced the exceptional luxury upon himbecause of the indifferent state of his health. He was friendly in a self-effacing way, but hesaid nothing of importance that I can recall. And we felt nothing, except that, if God is utterhumility, then this man might be God incarnate; but he was certainly a reluctantincarnation, and kept any other signs of his divinity well hidden – from us, at least.

The secretary, Babu Ram Jadoun, made up in open-hearted hospitality and helpfulnessany lack on the part of the modest leader. He spent the evenings sitting with us on easychairs in front of the small guest house talking about the Radha Soami faith and itsSabdha Yoga, in which one concentrates in meditation on listening for the inner anahatsounds. He also liked to recall the old days and tell us anecdotes about the two Englishwriters, Yeats-Brown and Paul Brunton, who had once stayed together at this same guesthousein the early 1930s.

I knew that there were now about twenty of these Radha Soami colonies in India, eachwith its own guru. We had visited a number of them, including the big one at Beas, nearAmritsar, where some 600,000 people believe that their benign leader, Charan SinghMaharaj, is the true incarnation. We had found that each group we visited had exactly thesame idea about its leader.

On the evening before we left Dayalbagh I decided to ask the secretary, an intelligentman, what he thought about this division of belief that had developed in the cult during thecentury of its existence since 1861.

"Do all the leaders have the divine current?" I asked; "Do you think they are allincarnations of the boundless Brahman?" My wife and I were the only ones sitting with himunder the trees before the guesthouse.

He shifted his seat in the warm air that wrapped us around like a blanket, and after aminute's silence, replied: "No, there can be only one incarnation at the same time."

"And that is your leader?"

"Yes."

"So all the rest are wrong?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Well, you no doubt have your good reason for feeling so sure," I remarked; "but how canwe – how can any outsider – know who is right? How can we decide in which of the manyleaders, if any, divinity is enshrined?"

The wrinkled kindly little man seemed to ruminate for a time before he said: "Thirty yearsago I was a lecturer in the Engineering College here. One evening I was sitting with a fewpeople where we are sitting now, listening to our leader, Sahabji Maharaj. Paul Brunton,who was with us, asked him the same question that you have just asked me. I remembervery well the answer His Holiness gave ..."

"What was it?" Iris asked.

"It was: 'Pray every day to God that he will lead you to the man in whom he is at presentincarnated.' I suggest the same to you now. Such a prayer will undoubtedly be answered."He paused, then added with a gentle smile: "And when it is, when you find him, pleasewrite and let me know."

I wondered if he meant, "write and say you are on your way back here." Then Iremembered that Brunton did not go back and become initiated into the Radha SoamiFaith at Dayalbagh, but found his great guru in Ramana Maharshi, of Tiruvannamalai.

It was all very strange. I was not sure that I believed in modern incarnations. Maybe inancient times, as the scriptures taught, there had been such – men like Rama, Krishna,Christ and others. I knew that many in India regarded some comparatively modernspiritual teachers, such as Paramahamsa Ramakrishna as incarnations or avatars, but Ihad never hoped or expected to meet one in the 1960s. The idea had not occurred to me.I was prepared to settle for a great yogi who had climbed to the rare heights of Godrealization.But what was the difference, if any? It was all beyond my understanding orhopes.

Still my wife and I decided that, if among the teeming millions of India there was anincarnation today, we would love to find him. So the prayer could do no harm. It might, atleast, help to lead us to the great master we sought.

I don't think we repeated his Holiness Sahabji Maharaj's prayer in actual words veryregularly, or for very long, but the strong yearning was deep in our hearts, the yearning tofind the highest manifestation of God in man – and that in itself is a prayer.

CHAPTER 2

Satya Sai Baba

Truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.

LORD BYRON

I first heard the name Satya Sai Baba from a wandering yogi. He had not himself met thisholy man, he said, nor been to his ashram at a village called Puttaparti. This, he hadheard, was a difficult place to reach, being in the wilds of the interior: one had to do thelast part of the journey by bullock cart or on foot over rough tracks. Still, the Swami was nodoubt worth the effort, the yogi thought, if I had time and was interested in phenomena. Hewas known to have siddhis, to be a great miracle-worker.

"What kind of miracles?" I asked.

"Well, it's said that he can, for instance, produce objects from nowhere. Of course, thereare other men to be found who have some of the siddhis: they can do a few supernormalfeats, but from reports Sai Baba's powers are much greater. And he performs miraclesfrequently. Anyone can see them."

Such talk certainly aroused my interest and curiosity. I had heard (who has not?) that Indiawas the crucible of wonder-workers. I had read of the great adepts, occultists, saints, ofthe past who knew Nature's inner laws. But I half doubted their actual reality. And even ifthey did once exist, could they still be around?

This, I thought, might be my great chance to find out if the fantastic tales that have comeout of India belong to the realm of fact or fiction. I decided that I must see Satya Sai Babaas soon as convenient. Later, when I heard that his followers regarded him as areincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi, my desire to meet him became even stronger.

But the bullock-cart safari into the interior of south India would have to wait a little while. Itsounded more than arduous, and we had recently discovered on our northern journey thatordinary travel in India saps one's vitality. On our return, we were glad to recuperate for atime in the tranquil tree-filled Theosophical Estate.

One day several months after our return a young pale-faced woman wearing the ochrerobeof a monk came on a visit to the Theosophical Headquarters. She was introduced tous by a mutual friend as Nirmalananda, and we took her to our sitting-toom for morningcoffee. She told us that she was an American from Hollywood, an odd place of origin foran ascetic, we thought. "Nirmalananda", she said, was the Hindu name given her bySwami Sivananda when he initiated her into the monastic life. After he had died she lefthis ashram at Rishikesh and became a follower of Satya Sai Baba. At Puttaparti she hadwitnessed many wonderful miracles. Now Sai Baba was on a visit to Madras and she wasone of a small party of disciples he had brought with him.

This seemed to be our golden opportunity. Iris was not feeling well enough to come, butNirmalananda conducted me to the place where Sai Baba was staying. It was a pleasanthouse, standing behind lawns and flower-gardens. Later I learned that it was the home ofMr. G. Venkateshwara Rao, the mica magnate who was also a devotee of Sai Baba. Thelawns and pathways in front of the house were covered with people sitting quietly cross-leggedon the ground – white-clad men to one side and women in saris like brightcolouredflowers to the other. There were hundreds of them, obviously waiting for a sightof the great man.

Nirmalananda led me through the crowd to the front verandah and there introduced me toa pleasant, red-haired American named Bob Raymer.

"I think Sai Baba has finished interviews for the morning, but I'll go and find out," he said.

He took me into a small sitting-room and left me there. Nirmalananda had already gone offsomewhere. In the room were only two Indian men, both standing and apparently waitingfor someone. I also stood waiting.

After a few minutes the door from the interior of the house opened and there entered aman the like of whom I have never seen before – nor since. He was slight and short. Hewore a red silk robe that fell in a straight line from shoulders to feet. His hair stood up fromhis head in a big circular mop, jet black, crinkly to the roots like wool, and seeminglyvibrant with life. His skin was light brown but seemed darker because of the thick beardwhich, though closely shaven, still showed black through the skin. His eyes were dark, softand luminous, and his face beamed with some inner joy.

I had never seen a photograph of Sai Baba. Could this be he? I had expected someonetall and stately with a long black beard, and dressed in white robes. I had a preconceivedimage of what a great yogi or master should be like – perhaps derived from earlytheosophical descriptions of the Masters.

He came swiftly and gracefully across the carpet towards me, showing white, even teethin a friendly smile.

"Are you the man from Australia?" he asked.

"Yes." I replied.

Then he went to the Indians and began talking to them in Telugu. Presently I saw himwave his hand in the air, palm downwards in small circles, just as in childhood we used towave our hands when pretending to perform some abracadabra magic.

When he turned the palm up it was full of fluffy ash, and he divided this among the twomen. One of them could not contain his feelings; he began to sob. Sai Baba patted him onthe shoulders and back, and spoke to him soothingly like a mother. I did not understand atthe time that these were what are called bhakti tears – tears of overwhelming joy, gratitudeand love. Later I heard that Baba had cured this man's son of some terrible disease, butas I did not check the story, I cannot vouch for it.

After a while the small figure turned to me again. Standing close in front of me, he begancircling his hand again. This time I noticed he pulled his loose-fitting sleeve almost up tothe elbow. Much later I learned the reason for this. In my mind was the suspicion that hemight be doing conjuring tricks like a stage magician, perhaps bringing the ash out of hissleeve. Baba has no difficulty in reading minds and knew my suspicions. So he pulled hissleeve high to allay them.

When the mound of powdery ash appeared suddenly in his palm, he tipped it into mine.For a moment I stood there wondering what to do with it. Then a voice to my left said, "Eatit, it's good for your health." This was Bob Raymer who had just returned to the room.

I had never expected to eat ash and enjoy it, but this brand was fragrant and quitepleasant to the taste. Baba stood there watching me. Half-way through the strange snack Isaid to him:

"May I take some of this to my wife? She is not very well."

"Bring her here tomorrow at five o'clock," he replied, and then he was gone.

The next afternoon found Iris and myself at the same house. In the entrance we metGabriela Steyer of Switzerland, one of the small western contingent in Baba's travellingparty. She, very friendly and sympathetic, led us to an upstairs room where about a scoreof women, most of them Indian and all in saris, sat cross-legged on the carpet.

We sat down near them and Gabriela began to tell us about some of the miracles she hadseen at Puttaparti. Taking out my note-book I asked her for the full address of the ashramand directions on how to get there. But at that moment Bob Raymer's wife, Markell, cameup and said that Baba was on his way, and that I should go and sit on the other side of theroom, the men's proper territory. The males now filled their area of the floor but I foundmyself a place by the wall. I noticed that Bob Raymer and I were the only two white facesin the group of men.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from SAI BABA by Howard Murphet. Copyright © 1971 Howard Murphet. Excerpted by permission of Samuel Weiser, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0877283354
• ISBN 13: 9780877283355
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 216