Sathya Sai Baba. Supernatural Experiences and Divine Transformation. Book Two
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Gratitude
I express my deepest gratitude to all my friends and relatives who took an active part in the work on this book. Thank you all for your kind and helpful advice, valuable information, technical, and financial support.
Special thanks to my wife Svetlana Dubyanskaya, as well as to my parents Igor Grigoryevich and Tamara Alekseevna.
Special thanks to Anupriya Wijayaweera for arranging the publication of this book. Thanks go to Alexander Bukreev for the cover design.
1. Who things and acts?
There are many types of knowledge, but there is only one greatest knowledge – this is self-knowledge, the knowledge of one's eternal True Self, this is the knowledge of the unchanging ultimate reality. Your True Self was never born and will never die.
(Sathya Sai Baba – Sathya Sai Gita Chapter 1)
The main thing for which we are born into this world is to realize the greatest secret of the True "I". This secret is what most of Sathya Sai Baba's instructions were devoted to. "I" exist – is a statement that sounds perfectly clear to every person. The obvious thing is that "I Am", even if it is not always clear what "I" is. Self-existence is so obvious that it does not need proof and discussion, as it is an experience inherent in absolutely everyone. However, the simplicity and evidence that "I" exist does not make the question of what "I" is simple.
There are many types of knowledge, all of which are very important for the development of human culture. Sathya Sai Baba never denied physics, mathematics, jurisprudence, economics, or the many other sciences important for development of human society. However, there is a knowledge that is most important, and that is knowledge about the essence of one’s soul.
Who constantly strives to be free from problems and suffering, as well as to find eternal happiness? Who wants to be successful? Who wants to receive genuine answers to the most important questions of the universe and dispel their doubts? Who seeks to know the absolute truth, thinks, and meditates? To all these complex questions, the answer is simple: “I am”.
Even if you say you do not have all these desires and questions, then we can ask: who does not have questions and desires? The answer will be exactly the same: “I” do not have desires and questions.
If someone says he does not believe in the existence of "I" at all, then it is appropriate to ask: who does not believe in the existence of "I"? and again the answer is "I". You have thoughts, feelings, desires, preferences, opinions – you do things, but at the same time, most often you forget to realize or understand who this “I” is, which thinks, feels, and acts.
The true "Self" existed before the birth of the physical body and will continue to exist after one’s death. Sathya Sai Baba never denied the numerous branches of human culture, he even founded several major universities and colleges in India, which successfully taught various disciplines, allowing graduates to get good jobs and build successful careers.
Sathya Sai Baba was extremely active in public and social life, and he taught his followers the same. Of all kinds of knowledge, Sathya Sai Baba considered the knowledge of oneself to be the highest. A person who has known his soul discovers for himself the greatest cosmic secret of the essence of being. Only then all other types of knowledge and all activity, in general, acquires a sacred meaning, otherwise everything is pure vanity.
The omnipresent "I" is invisibly present in wakefulness and in sleep, in happiness and suffering, in birth and death; it existed long before the birth of your physical body and will continue its existence after the death of the body. The body is born and dies, but the "I" is eternally present in the infinite cosmos. Everything in this world is impermanent; everything changes every second, but the True Self is an eternal observer present invisibly and invariably in the center of the constant cycle of impermanence and variability.
2. Sathya Sai Baba ana Wolf Messing
It is extremely difficult to talk about Wolf Messing, the famous mystic of the twentieth century. This man is a mystery as quite a lot is known about him, but at the same time almost nothing is known of him. He was the first to recognize and proclaim the truth that Sathya Sai Baba is a divine incarnation. Messing's spiritual path was very complex and ambiguous. Some perceived him as a prophet and a great soothsayer, and some called him a charlatan. Nevertheless, he had unique supernatural abilities and perfect clairvoyance.
All his life he asked spiritual questions about the meaning of human existence, trying to understand why God gave him such a unique talent. Messing accurately saw the future, both of individual people and of entire nations, and when something wonderful was about to happen, he was sincerely happy. With the help of his amazing clairvoyance, he accurately saw the future of people and entire countries but could do nothing to change unfolding situations that would cause great suffering.
Messing was a unique conductor of accurate information. In the twenties and thirties, he traveled extensively around the world, including India, which was then a colony of England. In 1936, he traveled to India and visited Bombay, Calcutta, and Bangalore. While on the train traveling from Bangalore to Delhi, the train stopped at Anantapur railway station. According to some accounts of the story, Messing began to feel strong, intuitive vibrations and walked off the train, telling his escort they must stop in this city. This surprised his assistants, who, at first, tried to persuade him to get back on the train and continue the journey in their comfortable carriage, but Messing was not inclined and remained on the platform while his assistants unloaded things and, although perplexed, remained with him. The reason for such strange behavior was that Messing felt the presence of a great divine teacher nearby and decided to look for him.
I tried to discover more information from some senior Sathya Sai Baba devotees, such as Subba Rao, Padananda, and Maheshwarananda, about how exactly this meeting took place between Messing and little Sathya Sai Baba, who was then around ten years old. There are different versions of exactly how this historic meeting eventuated. Different books describe different details, and the exact details are simply not known. It is only known that such a meeting took place.
The surprise of this event lies in the fact that at that time Sathya Sai Baba was about ten years old, and this meeting was several years before he proclaimed himself an Avatar, revealing to everyone around him the special spiritual mission of his incarnation. In those days, no one treated the Sai boy as special, he was just a simple village boy. Of course, the locals were very surprised when the famous soothsayer from distant Europe, upon seeing the Sai boy, proclaimed the famous words of prophecy: "He is a divine person!"
According to one version of the story, when the train pulled into Anantapur, Messing suddenly felt a powerful motivating energy which caused him to rush out of the carriage, demand a car, and drive in the direction of where his intuition was calling. He came to the village of Puttaparthi and drove to the very house where, the boy, Sathya Sai Baba lived.
According to another version, little Sathya Sai Baba was not far from the railway station that day and Messing, who got off the train, easily discovered the divine child. The details of the story are not so significant for me. The important thing is that Wolf Messing's precise intuitive feeling and his clairvoyance led him to the young Sathya Sai Baba. Messing is acknowledged as being the first person to understand the divine nature of Sathya Sai Baba, and to prophesy who he is.