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6. Shirdi Sai Baba and Sathya Sai Baba
Let's look at some details of the first two incarnations of Sai: Shirdi Sai Baba (1835-1918) and Sathya Sai Baba (1926-2011).
We know very little about the first half of Shirdi Sai Baba's life; in fact, only the second part of his life is well known to researchers. By the end of Shirdi Sai Baba's life, quite a lot of followers gathered around him and became direct witnesses of the events of his life, numerous manifestations of miraculous power, as well as his spiritual instructions.
We will not retell the biography of Shirdi Sai Baba in detail, as a large number of books have been written about his amazing life, deep teachings, and amazing miracles. Let's just delve into a few details.
Most followers believe that he was born into the highest caste of Brahmins – Hindu clerics. Shirdi Sai Baba was born on the banks of the Godavari River in western India on September 28, 1835. Almost immediately after birth, he was orphaned, so the boy was raised by foster parents. They were Muslims who practiced Sufism.
Some biographers claim that his Muslim adoptive parents did not initiate him into Islam, which does not sound very convincing. There are suggestions that from childhood he studied with a Hindu guru, whose name was Venkusa. Being brought up in both the Islamic and Hindu environment, Shirdi Sai Baba was well aware of the religious traditions of both Islam and Hinduism.
Shirdi Sai Baba was well versed in the esoteric aspects of Islam and Hinduism, he also knew the philosophical teachings of Zoroastrianism. The most important foundation of his philosophical teaching was the idea of the unity of all religions. Shirdi Sai Baba preached that all religions lead to the same truth.
This idea may seem very obvious to modern people of the 21st century, but in the 19th century this approach was quite revolutionary. Among his followers, first of all, were Muslims and Hindus, as well as representatives of Zoroastrianism and other religions.
At a young age, he came to the small town of Shirdi in western India, where he lived almost all his life. That is why they began to call him Shirdi Sai Baba. Shirdi Sai Baba left his body on October 15, 1918.
At the end of his life, he predicted that in eight years he would be reincarnated in southern India as Sathya Sai Baba, which happened in 1926. We know that Shirdi Sai Baba only predicted his next incarnation and did not mention anything about who he would incarnate in through life.
Thus, Shirdi Sai Baba predicted his incarnation in the 20th century as Sathya Sai Baba and did not say anything about his incarnation in the 21st century as Prema Sai Baba.
There is no need to give all the details of the amazing life of Sathya Sai Baba, as many books and articles have been written about this, with a detailed description of his biography, philosophical teachings, and miracles. We will only analyze those events that are relevant to his predictions about the next incarnation as Prema Sai Baba.
Sathya Sai Baba was born on November 23, 1926, in southern India on the banks of the Chitravati River, in the small village of Puttaparthi. His parents belonged to the Hindu religion.
The Sai Boy proclaimed himself the next incarnation of Sai Baba at the age of thirteen on May 23, 1940. A little bit later, he left his parents' house and moved to an abandoned temple of Krishna and began his activity as a spiritual mentor.
In the Sai tradition, in each of his incarnations at a certain age, he "proclaims" himself, which is an important symbolic act – the meaning of which is difficult to understand and appreciate by the human mind.
The rite of "proclamation" is extremely important and very mysterious. It is unlikely that anyone will be able to accurately and fully understand its deep meaning. We can only say with certainty that the beginning of the open and official mission of Sathya Sai Baba began precisely from that historic day when he "proclaimed" himself the Avatar.
Shirdi Sai Baba also repeatedly "proclaimed" himself as an Avatar throughout his life. The exact date when Sathya Sai Baba "proclaimed" himself has remained in history and is celebrated by devotees as a holiday. The exact dates when Shirdi Sai Baba "proclaimed" himself several times are unknown.
This ritual has its own paradox. If you feel that Sai is a divine incarnation, then even without the "declaration" you will feel it. Those who did not feel the divinity of Shirdi Sai Baba and Sathya Sai Baba refused to recognize him even after the "proclamation".
The ritual of "proclamation" has a great energetic significance, as a result of which the fullness of the cosmic power of the Avatar in its entirety begins to manifest itself in the universe. Before and after the "proclamation", the power of the Avatar is the same, however, after the "proclamation", this power begins to manifest in full.
7. Reality of reincarnation
Nowadays, there are still people who doubt that reincarnation is real. The materialistic worldview imposes on people a false self-identification of themselves as a physical body. According to this primitive concept, the body is born, the body lives, and the body dies, and with the death of the body, the existence of human consciousness ceases.
The basis of the materialistic worldview is that the function of consciousness is tied to the brain. This means that if the brain physically exists, then thinking exists, and if the brain is dead, then thinking supposedly cannot exist.
In fact, consciousness; and hence, thinking, can exist outside the biological functioning of the brain. In other words, thinking (consciousness) was before the birth of the physical body, and continues after the death of the physical body. This is the basis of the esoteric idea of the process of reincarnation.
In Buddhist terminology, this is called the process of continuity of consciousness, which occurs regardless of the existence or non-existence of the physical body. This is truly a vast topic, which is considered in great detail in various areas of yoga, including the tradition of Kriya yoga.
Man has three bodies: the physical body, the astral body and the causal body. Beyond these three bodies is consciousness. Thus, when the physical body dies, the astral and causal bodies continue their journey into the next life.
The process of reincarnation of the soul (consciousness) is perfectly proven by the fact of the reincarnation of Sai Baba, who incarnated in this world at least three times. Thus, he proved the reality of the process of reincarnation. The meaning of reincarnation shows we are not a mortal body, but an eternal consciousness.
The false idea that matter determines consciousness has been completely refuted. Once again, the world was shown the truth that consciousness and spirit are eternal.
8. Meeting with Sathya Sai
My spiritual connection with Sathya Sai Baba spans many lifetimes. When I first heard about him, and then came to his ashram in Puttaparthi, I immediately felt like I was at home.
My first trip to India took place in 1993 when I was 22 years old. This trip was completely spontaneous. Circumstances suddenly swirled around me. Several of my acquaintances unexpectedly decided to go to India. Two weeks before their departure, they invited me to join them.
At that time, I had been studying yoga, meditation, Vedic and Buddhist philosophy for more than ten years. I could not even imagine that one could easily go to India and meet Sathya Sai Baba. It all seemed too fantastic.
I first came to this fabulous country for six months. At the beginning of the journey, I visited the ashram of Yogi Ramaiah (1923-2006), a unique teacher of Kriya yoga, who lived in the very south of India.
After living there for some time, I moved in with Sathya Sai Baba, who became my greatest source of blessing. A person goes through the path of spiritual practices, thereby preparing himself for a great revelation, which can only be obtained as a gift from God.
Who is Sathya Sai Baba? This is a very difficult question to answer when there are so many followers, each with their individual encounters, stories, ideas and opinions. People sometimes project the qualities and properties they want to see.
Sathya Sai Baba often said: "I am a mirror that reflects your inner world, thoughts and feelings." These are excellent and perfect words.
Some saw him as God, and some as a cunning magician. Everyone sees what they are ready to understand and accept. I don't think I would like to fantasize about this complex topic … rather let everyone follow their own intuitive feeling, let everyone find their own answer to the question, who is Sathya Sai Baba?
It is hardly possible to understand this with the mind, for this you need to go into the depths of your spiritual heart and gain understanding there. Sometimes it seems to me that I know who he is, and sometimes I come into contact with a deep feeling of the impossibility to fully understanding his greatness and infinity. Why even fantasize about something that is beyond human understanding.
There is a famous saying of Sathya Sai Baba’s, which I was fortunate to hear several times from his lips: “Yes, I am God, but you are also Gods, the difference is that I remember that I am God, and you have forgotten.”
Everyone is God. The difference is only in the degree to which we realize our true divine nature. These wise words of Sathya Sai Baba most exhaustively explain how he perceived himself and all people.
God is the totality of all individual souls – we are all one in God. Each person carries a great potential for divine creativity. This truth Sathya Sai Baba perfectly embodied in his life.
How can one understand that Sathya Sai Baba is a divine incarnation? Can we be sure that he is God born on Earth? What are the criteria by which it is possible to recognize an Avatar?
First of all, one can only come to personal and independent realization that this is even possible. Experiences gained within one’s life can then only prompt reflection to stimulate and help you understand your own spiritual practice. Realization of the truth can only happen within your spiritual heart. In order for awareness to occur, it is necessary to independently go through the path of reflection and contemplation, possible doubts and, ultimately, deep awareness.
By the time I first met Sathya Sai Baba, I was already aware of various yoga traditions and spiritual teachers. I was seriously practicing meditation and studying Vedic philosophy. Back in Moscow, when I saw the video recording of Sathya Sai Baba and learned the stories of his amazing life, I instantly felt his colossal energy power.
Several of my friends told me he was the Avatar of our age. It was difficult for me to understand what this meant, but it was clear Sathya Sai Baba was a supreme being, incomprehensible to my mind.
At that time, to me, the god, Shiva, was the personification of all spiritual realizations and transcendental wisdom. When I first saw videos of Sathya Sai Baba and heard stories about his life, I intuitively felt he was the incarnation of Lord Shiva.
Sathya Sai Baba, during our personal communication, told me: “Now you are sitting in my room, but the time will come when this room will be inside your spiritual heart, and you will tell other people about our communication.”
Sathya Sai Baba is a world teacher who is outside of any tradition, school or trend. In his teaching, he unites all world religions and philosophical systems. He founded an ashram in southern India, which was and remains a unique spiritual space of unity and love. This is a place where people of different worldviews can come. All visitors feel completely comfortable, just like they would at home.
It is difficult even to imagine any other ashram in which openness and universality would be manifested to such a clear degree. In the ashram of Sathya Sai Baba, the unity of all mankind, the brotherhood and sisterhood of all people is especially felt.
9. Ring of John Hislop and other evidence
John Hislop, the famous American Sathya Sai Baba devotee, described in his book My Baba and I the story of the materialization of a unique ring. Sathya Sai Baba materialized for Hislop a golden ring with a stone relief within which was the profile of Prema Sai Baba. This happened in the 1970s, more than 30 years before Sathya Sai Baba passed away.
Over time, the image of Prema Sai on this ring began to change. In the first few months, the small relief on the ring was not very developed and the image conveyed only the approximate facial features of a handsome young man.
Sathya Sai Baba explained that Prema Sai Baba's form was just being formed, so he could not show his face more accurately. This was the first time that Prema Sai Baba's appearance was revealed. Before the materialization of this unique ring, Sathya Sai Baba only mentioned that in the next life he would incarnate as Prema Sai Baba but did not show his future form to the world.
Hislop began to learn about the strange changes in the ring from friends who noticed that the image of Prema Sai Baba within the relief began to appear more clearly as time passed. Wherever he went, whoever he met, people asked him to show him the ring. People who had seen the ring before began to notice the image gradually changing.
A year after the manifestation of the ring, the nose became more clearly visible on the relief. This is a small detail, but it showed the process of formation of the appearance of Prema Sai Baba and the miraculousness of the living artefact.
In one of the video materials, Hislop admitted that he noticed significant changes only in 1980. Before that, he honestly said that at first, he did not notice any changes. His friends told him: "You don't notice these changes because you see this ring every day."
One day, when Hislop was in a meeting with the devotees and was showing the ring to everyone present, he decided to take a closer look at the ring himself. He was amazed because he realized it was completely different to the original one Sathya Sai Baba materialized for him, years earlier.
Now the nose was completely visible, although in the early years of the existence of the ring it was almost invisible. In addition, part of the eye and cheek became more defined.
Prema Sai Baba was destined to appear on Earth one year after the physical departure of Sathya Sai Baba. Decades earlier, John Hislop received the golden ring set with a brown stone, which miraculously revealed the extraordinary profile of Prema Sai Baba.
The nose was barely visible on the relief, and you could also make out the outline of the eye. A noble head with shoulder-length hair, mustache and beard began emerging from a lotus flower with a peaceful and majestic appearance.
We have some more testimonies from several close Sai devotees. Peggy Mason and Ron Lang, in their book Sri Sathya Sai, Embodiment of Love, recount their conversation with Sathya Sai Baba about Prema Sai Baba. The authors asked Sathya Sai Baba about whether his next birth will be as Prema Sai in the body of a woman? Sathya Sai Baba explained that he would be born in the body of a man and that this would happen in the state of Karnataka in southern India.
This question arose from the authors of the book because, according to legend, Prema Sai Baba would be the incarnation of the goddess, Shakti. In that conversation, Sathya Sai Baba explained that despite the fact that Prema Sai Baba will be the incarnation of the goddess, physically he will still be a man. Once again, this fact shows the esoteric concepts of masculine and feminine in the universe are associated with spiritual qualities and not biology.
Sathya Sai Baba has repeatedly said the appearance of Prema Sai Baba is in the process of formation, which means that during the life of Sathya Sai Baba, the appearance of Prema Sai Baba was still in the process of divine creation.
At the end of the 20th century, many paintings appeared showing the handsome face of Prema Sai Baba. These paintings appeared during the lifetime of Sathya Sai Baba, and many people spread rumors that some of these images were materialized by Sathya Sai Baba himself, but that is just speculation.
Rather, all these beautiful paintings are the fantasies of talented artists and have no credibility for us as researchers. The history of Hislop's changing ring shows that Prema Sai Baba's appearance developed gradually. Sathya Sai Baba, in the middle of the 20th century, was not sure what his incarnation would look like in the 21st century. Sounds strange, but it's a fact.
It seems that the features of Prema Sai Baba's mission also developed gradually. That is why Sathya Sai Baba gave various details about the place and time of his next birth.
10. History of the great book: Journey with Sai
Let's look at a unique book called Sri Sathya Sai Anandadai (Journey with Sai). The author of this book was a wonderful woman and devotee of Sathya Sai Baba, whose name was Kannamma. She described the information that she and her mother heard personally from Sathya Sai Baba back in 1944, when he was only eighteen years old.
The author's mother was named Namagiri Amma. She was one of the earliest devotees of Sathya Sai Baba. In 1954, Sathya Sai Baba personally told Namagiri Amma that she should start carefully recording all the stories, miracles and spiritual instructions she had witnessed firsthand.
Sathya Sai Baba predicted that this diary would be of great importance in a few decades, and many devotees would be informed and inspired by reading these immortal lines after they were published.
Namagiri Amma never kept a diary, but her daughter Kannamma did. She later wrote a famous book based on the unique entries. In 1956, Kannamma began to carefully record all the stories and testimonies, including hers and her mother's. These became the start of the great diary that would later play an important role in the history of Prema Sai Baba.
This blessed family came from the city of Mysore, the ancient capital of the state of Karnataka. Sathya Sai Baba often visited there and talked a lot with the first devotees, telling them secret knowledge, including about his future birth as Prema Sai Baba.
Back in the mid-1950s, Sathya Sai Baba said this diary should be published in the future. These recordings lay in the Kannamma family for several decades and were not published until the 1990s, first in Kannada and then in English.
Several publishers published the manuscript. As a result of the translation of this great book from the original Kannada into English, some strange metamorphoses have taken place.
Unfortunately, when translating into English, the most important elements of the manuscript were subjected to ruthless editing, especially the ninth chapter. In those distant years, in 1944, when Sathya Sai Baba was only eighteen years old, he described in detail where and when Prema Sai Baba would incarnate.
The ninth chapter of the book contains the authentic words of Sathya Sai Baba that Prema Sai Baba would be born one year after the completion of Sathya Sai's mission. The book also indicates the exact place of birth as the village of Doddamallur, where the ancient temple of the god Vishnu (Aprameya Swami) is located.
Interestingly, Sathya Sai Baba even indicated he would incarnate in a poor family that would live by that time in a small house right behind the ancient temple. All these crucial details have been omitted in the English translation.
Fortunately, the first edition in the local Kannada language was made by an independent publisher, so it was in the first edition that the original text of Sathya Sai Baba's prediction was preserved. I was able to find this first unique edition and arrange for the translation of the ninth chapter from Kannada into English and then into Russian. The original message of Sathya Sai Baba with my comments is given in the next chapter of this book.
Why did some publishing structures go for falsification? It is obvious that such a decision was not made by chance, as if someone was trying to artificially confuse information and misinform a wide audience. In fact, many close associates of Sathya Sai Baba are well aware of all of his predictions. Regardless, some people artificially create confusion and hide the real information.
