Sathya Sai Baba - A clear view: Part 2

Mohammed’s Prophecy

As mentioned in Part 1, there is a prophecy written by Mohammed which clearly predicts the coming of Sathya Sai Baba. In God Descends to Earth, Sanjay Kant states:

According to an article published in “Two World’s” Magazine of London, an Iranian writer was irresistibly drawn to a huge volume in Tehran. This book, called The Ocean of Light, is in 25 volumes. It is claimed to be the collection of the discourses of Prophet Mohammed. Volume 13 of these discourses is called “Mehedi Moud” in Arabic, meaning “The Great Teacher that was promised.”17

The detailed description Mohammed gives of this “Great Teacher” and “Master of the World” fits Sathya Sai Baba perfectly: “His hair will be profuse. There will be a gap between His front teeth. He will have a mole on his left cheek. He will not have a beard but will be clean shaven. His clothing will be like a flame.” (Sai Baba wears orange.) “His body will be small.” (Sai Baba is barely five feet tall.) “His legs and feet will be like those of a young girl.” (Baba’s feet are unusually small.) “He will give gifts that are light in weight.” (Baba most frequently gives rings, pendants and watches.) “He will go around among his devotees and touch their heads with his hand. Many of His devotees will have a dot on their forehead. They will gather under a large tree.” (For many years in His Whitefield ashram, Baba gave darshan under a large tree.) “So as not to be deceived, you should know that the Master of the World will bring things out of His body, through His mouth.” (For many years - including the last three - on the holy day of Maha Shivaratri, Sai Baba has brought forth out of His mouth a ‘Shiva Linam’, an egg-sized sacred stone which had formed within His body.) “All the teachings of all religions of the world will be in his heart from birth. All the science and knowledge of the world from the beginning of time will be in his heart.” (In interviews with scientists and professors over the years, Baba has amply demonstrated full mastery of all fields of knowledge.) “All things which you will ask of God, He (the Master of the World) will give you. All the treasures are under his feet. Every eye that sees him will be happy, not only humans but disembodied souls. He will live 95 years.” (Sai Baba has said that His current incarnation will last for 95 years; this means he will leave his present body around 2020 A.D.) “In the last 20 years of his life he will be the ‘King of the whole world’, but at that time only two-thirds of the people of the world will believe in him.”18 (Sai Baba has literally millions of devotees worldwide. At His 70th birthday party, over three million people came to celebrate.)

I recently met an Iranian man who told me that he has studied The Ocean of Light in detail, in the original, and assured me that the preceding quotes are indeed in the prophecy (along with others which point directly to Sai Baba). After years of study, he is personally certain that the prophecy refers only to Sathya Sai Baba.

Baba Takes Venkateshwara’s Place

I was recently a partial witness to an incident which provides another powerful clue to Baba’s identity. One of the most famous shrines in India is the hilltop temple to Lord Venkateshwara (a form of Vishnu), in Tirupathi, Tamil Nadu. Venkateshwara is considered by many Hindus to be the Supreme Lord, and the idol in this temple is known all over India for the powerful blessings it bestows. As with many of the sub-sects in Hinduism, there is an understandable quality of exclusivity in the devotees of that shrine, especially among the priests who perform the worship; for generations their families have been single-mindedly devoted to Venkateshwara alone. One day in late November, 1998, the priests were performing a special pada puja (foot worship) ceremony to the Venkateshwara idol, when suddenly the idol’s feet were transformed before their eyes into the feet of a living man. Looking up, they beheld, in place of the Venkateshwara idol, the living form of Sathya Sai Baba. “If you want full darshan,” He told them, “come to Whitefield next week!” Baba then disappeared, leaving Venkateshwara in His place.

I was in Sai Baba’s Whitefield Ashram on December 6th, 1998, the day the priests from Tirupathi, dozens of them, arrived to receive the full darshan of the living God who had appeared before them in their shrine. (To help the Western reader understand the dynamics of the event, it might be a bit like a group of Catholic Bishops coming to bow before a Protestant, and acknowledging that Christ was incarnate in that form...)

Hundreds of Thousands of Angels

And then there’s the experience I had at Baba’s ashram in 1996. In the middle of His Christmas discourse, Baba waved His hand and materialized a small gold-covered book - bringing a gasp of amazement from the crowd of 50,000, me among them! (I was seated very close to Baba - and was certain it was a genuine miracle.) That night at around 9 o’clock I heard that Baba had announced earlier that angels would be flying above the ashram that evening. I looked into the sky, but didn’t see anything unusual, so guessed I’d missed the show. However, a couple of nights later, two friends came running up to me on the street and said, “Ram Das, the angels are back! Come on, you’ve got to see them!” So I followed them up to a rooftop, away from the lights of the ashram, lay down and looked up...

And in the sky above us was one of the most astonishing sights I’ve ever seen: hundreds of thousands of self-luminous beings flying through the air, zipping around at great speed in what seemed to be an ecstatic dance of joy! They looked a little like shooting stars - yet they were closer to the Earth, and moving not in straight lines (as asteroids, or any similar phenomena would be) but in curves and curlicues. Considering Baba's earlier announcement, I didn’t see any reason to doubt that these glowing beings were indeed angels, celestial helpers in His world mission: no other phenomena I knew of could explain the sight. Sometimes two would pair up for a while as they zipped about, and they seemed to be pouring forth from some invisible gate above the ashram, where I guessed they had maybe just received Baba’s darshan and instructions for their work... The event had an unquestionably supernatural exuberance about it that left all three of us gasping in amazement. It was probably the most inspiring sight I’ve ever witnessed, ringing out more clearly than a thousand manifested rings the divine identity of Sathya Sai Baba.

Why would so many angels congregate in such an extraordinary way, other than to have the darshan of God?

The Amrit-Oozing Amulets

In an orphanage in South India, there is an ongoing miracle pertaining to two thumb-nail sized slivers of porcelain, one bearing the likeness of Sathya Sai Baba, the second depicting Shirdi Sai Baba. Given to the manager of the orphanage by Sai Baba over twenty years ago, they have been miraculously oozing amrit (a honey-like jasmine nectar) ever since. I decided to visit the place, and see the famous miracle for myself. The manager of the orphanage scooped one of the amulets out of a dish with a spoon, and put it in the palm of my right hand. It was nothing but a thin piece of porcelain with Baba’s face painted on it - there was no place for any mechanism to hide. I watched like a hawk as a few drops of amrit trickled from the amulet into my palm - but this meant nothing, it had just been sitting in a dish of amrit. Yet amrit continued trickling from it until my palm was full, and with the spoon, the manager scooped the amrit from that hand and poured it into my left palm. As amrit continued to trickle from the amulet over a period of several minutes, he repeated this procedure four times, until finally my left hand was overflowing with amrit - and the amrit was still trickling into my right palm! Even the most adamant skeptic, witnessing what I saw that day, would have to admit it was a miracle. (I tasted the nectar: it’s definitely not of this world!)