By R.D. Awle
Here are four representative
stories, from among the thousands I’ve heard and read, which
reveal a glimpse of Sai Baba’s divine power, compassion and sense
of humor. The first is the account of Bhagwandas Daswani, a
prosperous businessman of Hong Kong (reprinted from Face to Face
with God, by V.I.K. Sarin, former senior journalist at one of
India’s leading newspapers):
“On May 10, 1977, I was struck with a
massive heart attack. I was admitted to the Queen Mary Hospital on May 11,
and I learned later that at 4 a.m. on the same day Baba had called my son,
who was studying in Swami’s College at Whitefield, and told him, “Go to Hong
Kong immediately, as your father is having a little heart trouble.”
Daswani said, “I actually died for two
minutes and was revived by doctors.”
Although Daswani came around, there was no
improvement in his condition and he was confined to the Intensive Care Unit.
On May 20, he suffered a relapse and started hemorrhaging from the anus. He
was losing about four pints of blood a day. He had drips in both arms and a
pad over his heart. The hemorrhaging continued for three days and by May
24, his family had lost hope for his life, and so had the team of doctors.
“On the morning of May 25, at exactly 4:10
a.m.,” recalled Daswani, “Sathya Sai Baba walked through the wall of the
room and sat on the bed. He showered
vibhuti all over me. The vibhuti came pouring out of his hand in a
never-ending flow. With the vibhuti bath I suddenly felt a surge of
strength all through my body. I was completely baffled by the appearance of
Baba in the room, and thought I was dreaming or hallucinating. I therefore
said, ‘Baba are you really here or am I dreaming?’ He said, ‘I am here all
right. What would you like me to do?’ I said, ‘Just put me on that couch
over there next to the bed, so that I know I am not dreaming.’ He then
lifted me up as though I was a feather and placed me on the couch. The
drips in my arm remained intact, nothing was disturbed. Baba then left the
same way as he had come.
“I then rang the night bell to call the
staff nurse. A horde of nurses came rushing into the room. Their
astonishment was beyond description. ‘How did you get here?’ they asked.
‘I walked,’ I said, aware that it would be impossible for them to believe
the truth. ‘Who has been in here? And what is all this dust all over the
bed, and all over you?’ they asked. I said, ‘Don’t ask me. Just collect
that dust and put it in a paper bag for me.’ They did this and collected
one and a half kilograms of vibhuti.
“I began to improve rapidly after this, and
the doctors and the staff kept questioning me as to what had happened.
Finally an Indian doctor showed up and he said to me, ‘Look, I am an Indian.
You can tell me what happened.’ I told him, and he kept my secret. On May
29 I was able to walk by myself to another ward. I made a complete recovery,
and what is more, my diabetes has disappeared and my blood sugar is normal.
I owe my eternal gratitude to Bhagavan Baba.”1
Here is the testimony of Kitty Lamonte of
Scotland (as related in Divine Glory, by V. Balu & Shakuntala Balu):
“My story begins sometime last summer, when
I first became aware of Baba. I was invited to visit some Indian friends of
a friend of mine and they talked so lovingly and honestly about Baba that I
decided to read more about him. I read ‘The Holy Man and the Psychiatrist’
[by Samuel Sandweiss], and in fact used it almost like a Bible, in that I
read the writings of Baba everyday.
“At this time I had something of a drinking
problem and was consuming far more alcohol than was good for me, but was
unable to stop. I decided that I would enlist the help of Baba, so for
three nights I sat there with the book, Baba’s photograph and the whisky. I
poured my drink on the 27th November, at 11:45 p.m. and sat down to watch
T.V. I put my hand on the book, looked at the photograph and said, ‘You
really will have to help me to stop this.’
There was an almighty noise and the glass
exploded into a million bits. It went everywhere in the room, it was under
tables, on top of books in a bookcase and some of
it was found by my housekeeper the following day, under the cushion I had
been sitting on. . . .
“The most interesting thing for me happened
two days later. I was on a train and had not been able to get the sound of
this exploding glass out of my mind, when a voice in my head said, “Did you
notice that not a bit of it touched you?” I cannot tell you the feeling of
absolute joy I experienced at that moment. I suddenly realised that only a
miracle could have stopped this glass from damaging me very badly. It was
no more than a foot away from my face.
“I have now made a firm commitment to
Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, never to drink alcohol again.”2
One day Baba called a poor Muslim family in
for an interview, and along with them, one Hindu man. (The person who told
me this story heard it directly from the Hindu man.) A boy in the family
was distraught because his two best friends had gone on a pilgrimage to
Mecca, and his parents couldn’t afford to send him along. (As a consolation,
they’d brought him to see Sai Baba.) Baba started the interview by saying
to the boy, “So, you want to go to Mecca.” The boy burst into tears, and
Baba then turned and spoke to the others for a while. The boy continued
crying, and finally Baba turned to him and said, “You really want to go to
Mecca, don’t you!” Baba then tapped the wall of the interview room with His
hand, and the wall disappeared - and in its place, a street scene from Saudi
Arabia appeared. “Look, there are your two friends. Now go! You have half
an hour.” The boy walked into the street scene... and the wall reappeared.
Baba spoke with the stunned family for
another half an hour, and then tapped the wall again. The street scene
reappeared - and the boy walked back into the interview room, proudly
carrying some souvenirs from Mecca!
A month later, when his friends returned
home, the boy’s parents asked them, “How long was he with you?” Confirming
the boy’s account, his friends replied, “Two weeks.”
(Clearly Baba is a Master of both time and
space - as well as being That which is beyond time and space! That’s the
fourth story I’ve heard about Sai Baba instantly transporting someone to a
distant land through His interview room wall.)
Here is an account of the resurrection of
V. Radhakrishna, as told by V.I.K. Sarin in Face to Face with God:
“The miracle took place in 1953.
Radhakrishna was seriously ill with gastric ulcers and other complications,
when he visited Puttaparthi [from his home town of Kuppam] in the hope that
Baba would cure him. He was accompanied by his wife Radhamma and daughter
Vijaya. On arrival at the ashram he was put straight to bed. Baba, who was
then only 27 years old, visited him but made no attempt to heal him.
Radhakrishna complained that he would rather die than continue to suffer the
extreme pain he was in. Baba smiled but made no comments.
A few days later Radhakrishna
went into a coma and his wife and daughter, who were at the bedside, heard
the “death rattle” in his throat. Swami came and examined him, but still
did nothing. An hour later Radhakrishna’s breathing stopped. He turned
blue, and then went cold and stiff. A male nurse pronounced him dead. Baba
examined him again. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Everything will be all right.”
But he still made no attempt to revive him. The faith of the wife and
daughter was put to severe test. The following day they sat loyally by the
bedside anxiously awaiting any signs of returning life. But there was no
indication of revival. Somehow the two women managed to cling on to a
vestige of faith that in His own way and in His own time Swami would revive
Radhakrishna. On the morning of the third day the body turned dark, quite
stiff and began to smell. It was suggested to Radhamma that the “corpse”
should be removed from the ashram, but she refused adamantly to countenance
such action without the authority of Baba. His aides asked for instructions
as to whether the body should be sent back to Kuppam or be cremated at
Puttaparthi. Baba replied enigmatically, “We’ll see.”
The two women were in despair. They went
to Baba and pleaded with Him. He simply said, “Have no fear. I am here.”
He did, however, promise
to visit their room and examine Radhakrishna later. An hour went by, then
two and there was no sign of Baba. It was then that Radhamma and Vijaya
gave up hope. Then, suddenly, Swami appeared in the doorway of their room,
calm and smiling. The two women burst into tears, like Mary and Martha, the
sisters of Lazarus, weeping before their Lord who, they thought, had come
too late.
Gently He asked them to leave the room, and
as they moved out He closed the door behind them. They do not know - nor
anyone else knows till this day - what really transpired in the next few
minutes in that room where only Swami and the dead man were present. But in
just a few minutes, Baba opened the door and beckoned the women in there, to
see their loved one sitting up in bed and smiling! The stiffness of death
had vanished and his natural colour was returning. Baba said to him, “Talk
to them, they were worried.” Radhakrishna, with a puzzled look said, “Why
are you worried? I am all right!” He was not aware that he had been in a
deathly coma. Swami then said to Radhamma, “I have given your husband back
to you. Now give him a hot drink.” Thereupon He blessed the family and
left. The next day the patient was strong enough to walk. On the third day
he wrote a seven-page letter to a relative in Italy. A few days after that
the whole family returned to their home in Kuppam. Not only was
Radhakrishna raised from the dead, but the gastric ulcers and the other
complications were completely healed. It was a repetition of the raising of
Lazarus.”3
1 Face to Face with God, V.I.K. Sarin, Sai Towers Publishing,
Prashanti Nilayam, 1993; pp. 227-228.
2 Divine Glory, V. Balu & Shakuntala Balu, S.B. Publications,
Bangalore; 1985; p. 297.
3 Face to Face
with God, op.cit.; p. 142-3.
Source:
http://www.saibaba-aclearview.com/contents2.htm
[Copyright 2001. Dated August 2001.
This material may be downloaded, reproduced and distributed
freely,
as long as the source is
clearly attributed.]