Sathya Sai Baba. Supernatural Experiences and Divine Transformation. Book One
Шрифт:
Sathya Sai Baba, only due to his great divine power, became a strong magnet and attracted a huge number of people, many spiritual seekers, and gigantic financial resources. All this made it possible to build in his village the largest ashram in India, the best Indian university, a huge stadium, a modern hospital, an international airport, as well as supply drinking water to all neighboring villages. Truly, where Sathya Sai Baba is born and lives, everything begins to flourish and to flourish and prosper.
7. Little Krishna who settled in a small Krishna temple
From childhood, Sathya Sai Baba began to work miracles. He materialized sweets for neighborhood children, cured diseases, and sometimes even levitated. At first, his parents could not understand what was happening to their little son. All relatives and neighbors thought some strange spirit had moved into him, and they even tried to treat the boy for this so-called illness. Gradually, however, it became clear to everyone around him that Sathya Sai Baba was not an ordinary boy, and they began to treat him like a child with unique abilities.
One of the first significant miracles he performed was saving his village. At that time, the entire area was in the grip of a serious epidemic. The people of Puttaparthi were very worried that one day trouble might come to their house. The boy Sathya Sai Baba blessed all the inhabitants so that the epidemic passed by, and indeed no one fell ill in Puttaparthi, although many people were ill in the surrounding villages. This miracle made a great impression on all the villagers.
As a teenager, Sathya Sai Baba announced to his parents that he was a divine teacher. He said he should leave his home and start preaching. Sathya Sai Baba founded the first ashram in the late forties in a small Krishna temple located in the very center of Puttaparthi. This is a very ancient temple, which has survived to this day. The antiquity of this temple can be determined because it is located far below the level of all other buildings on this street. In order to get to the territory of the temple you need to go down the stairs. The design of the columns and stone carvings also indicate the antiquity of the structure. The temple is very small. Even a person of average height cannot stand up fully and they would need to bend down a little.
This Krishna Temple during Sathya Sai Baba's childhood was abandoned. With his friends, Sathya Sai Baba completely restored the temple and settled in it. It was in the ancient temple of Krishna that he began to receive his first visitors, who soon flocked to him for spiritual advice and healing.
In the fifties, not far from the village, at a distance of about two to three kilometers, Sathya Sai Baba founded his main ashram, which is called Prasanthi Nilayam, which means in Sanskrit – the place of the highest peace. In those years, impassable bushes grew on this territory and villagers tried to bypass this jungle side. It was a dangerous place where cobras and scorpions lived.
The first devotees, who came to this deserted place, were very surprised when the very young Sathya Sai Baba told them this place will have a large temple (mandir), a canteen, a post office, a shop, and large houses where hundreds of thousands of people from different countries of the world will stay.
People shyly listened to Sathya Sai Baba as he spoke about the coming greatness of this wild place. They did not consider it possible to doubt the words of their teacher, but they did believe with some difficulty. However, over time, all the predictions of Sathya Sai Baba came true and became a reality. I was lucky to hear stories about the founding of the ashram from the lips of those people who were direct participants in these events.
8. Sathya Sai Baba forbade the cobras to crawl into the territory of the ashram, and they went to the neighboring mountain
One of the big problems that the first residents and visitors of the ashram came across was the large number of cobras that lived in the area. Once a large cobra crawled into the ashram, frightening everyone present with its large size and hissing. Immediately, Sathya Sai Baba left his room and went to the place where the cobra was. He addressed her as if he were talking to a man and asked that all cobras immediately leave this territory and not dare cross the line as he indicated it to them. After that, all the cobras left the territory of the ashram and still do not cross the indicated line, although they could still be found outside this line.
In subsequent years, a small path was laid along this line, which ran along the border of the ashram. Many times, I passed through it and saw how the cobras crawled only in the permitted area, but never crawled into the territory of the ashram.
Believe me, these are not very pleasant meetings. On hot Indian evenings, I often walked along this dimly lit path to get to my room. Sometimes a characteristic rustling in the bushes was heard. There were cases when cobras showed themselves, but, nevertheless, they never violated and still do not violate the boundaries assigned to them. Cobras live on the mountain and do not enter the territory of the ashram.
I first came to Puttaparthi in 1993. At that time, it was already a fairly large ashram, around which a university was built, one of the best in India, two modern hospitals, a huge stadium, a museum of all religions, and even an airport capable of receiving international class aircraft. In those days, a small town grew up around the ashram, and this place could no longer be called a small poor village.
I was lucky that I traveled to Puttaparthi for twenty years, and so I was able to watch this small one-story town around the ashram grow into a beautiful oasis with a huge number of multi-story buildings. Every year more and more people came to see and communicate with Sathya Sai Baba, so the population of Puttaparthi grew rapidly.
Puttaparthi became a beautiful oriental city, before our eyes, with many good hotels, restaurants of Indian and European cuisine, and with this more and more new Kashmiri and Tibetan jewelry shops opened, as well as shops with the best Indian silk.
9. What is Darshan?
The lifestyle in the ashram was surprisingly mild and very comfortable. People were settled in simple but comfortable rooms, with those who wished to settle in more comfortable conditions in hotels outside the ashram. I was always pleasantly surprised by the fact that everyone was settled, and no one concerned themselves with asking what tradition a person belonged to, or what religion he professed.
When a person came to Sathya Sai Baba, he was always welcome, and doors were always hospitably opened before him. In other Indian ashrams, there are quite strict rules for living. In almost all ashrams in India, only those who belong to the tradition are settled.
Usually, Sathya Sai Baba recommended for people to live in his ashram for no more than two months a year, and then they could return to their homeland. He recommended people to come to him every year, but for a rather limited time. This was due to the fact that his energy was so powerful, and so it was more beneficial for most people to be in close proximity to him for no more than a month or two. Of course, there were people he allowed to stay for a few months or even a few years.