Sathya Sai Baba: the Teachings

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India, Sai Baba, sathya sai baba, spirituality

The book for which this blog is a rough draft will have more narrative to engage an average reader with an interest in, but no experience of Baba. Yet I have been made aware that my own ego-journey has no place here; thus I shall fast-forward through much of that, only slowing to recount what is relevant to the purpose of this writing: why Swami was on earth in a physical body.

First, however, a word about the virulence and hatred which always seems to emerge whenever I write about Baba – and my former accounts were mild, omitting much I thought too baffling or unbelievable for most of my readers. This account will not do that, and the book perhaps ought to have a warning banner for those passionate believers in a random and purposeless universe whhere our lives have no meaning or value. You have to admire the tenacity of their faith in the futility of whatever they become or accomplish. I have less admiration for their need to demolish all spirituality. I was saddened by my friend, the late Christopher Hitchens’ book attacking religion, partly because he was really gunning for Islam via the two other monotheisms, partly because he ignored eastern experiential doctrines, and partly because too many syllogisms were tautological. We were both trained at Oxford – a Gold’s Gym for the mind – and it has taken me 40 years to get that mental muscle under a semblance of control. I understand and feel sorrow for those unable to deduce that the mind creates what it sees – for it can be arrived at objectively, which is a step on the path to an ineffable subjective experience. I can only forgive those who threaten me to stop perpetuating a lie or U ‘will pay dearly for it…’ I say to them, Find me first. If I am ‘delusional’, ‘mad’, or have been hypnotized for 40 years, thank God, because, as I watched Shock and Awe hit Baghdad in 2003, I thought, This is madness! What we call a civilization amounts to a few exquisite paintings, architectural masterpieces, and some beautiful music, too much of it formulaic and rigidified. That’s it; that’s our great western civilization. That’s what we regard as an achievement so immense the world should suck it up…or die, like the 90 million who have died in 313 wars since 1945. Democracy, justice, education – all shams and deceptions; and we know it. But the generation coming up, in their teens and twenties – they will not be so easy to fool, I suspect. The First Nations, near whose lands I live, have always known it; and, finally shedding the shackles of colonial oppression – even attempted genocide – are determined to protect their Mother Earth from greed and depredation. I learn much from their traditional stories and the wisdom of their elders, for whom the wilderness is both pharmacy and supermarket – and deeply respected for that, for gifts of the Great Spirit. They ought to have converted the Jesuits, not vice versa.

You who dismiss spiritual practice as an atavistic aberration ought to have seen the planet 50 years ago. No yoga, no ashrams, no health food, no meditation, no women’s rights…. We have come a long way, because, as John Lennon put it so succinctly, Love is the answer, and you know that for sure… God is love.

Puttaparthi in the early seventies was a newish small ashram, housing possibly 100 or so, on the edge of a thatched-hut village, by a river that dried up every summer, and far from even a small town. During darshan once, Baba told the few devotees around him: “One day this will be a great city and millions will come to visit Swami.” Almost everyone laughed; the thought was ridiculous. Where I live now is actually smaller than Puttaparthi was, yet if I announced it would become a great city no one would even listen. Yet Puttaparthi is now a city, and there were an estimated two million devotees at the last festival I attended.

He ignored me completely for several months. It was not the guru-chela welcome I had read of and expected. He began to irritate me – though whenever he was close my heart opened and ached for him. I had presumed there would be teaching, yet all we had was the chanting of bhajans. I also expected peace and tranquility, such as I now have, but the ashram was frenetically far from peaceful. I also noticed I was forming close friendships that would suddenly evaporate, always leaving a sense of something learned. An ancient Indian woman, Sudha Mazumdar, adopted me like a son, and I still miss her, miss her instructive advice, and her stories of first meeting Swami – for, in youth, she had been a devotee of Shirdi Sai Baba, and was thus very dubious about this man claiming to be a reincarnation; she needed to be convinced, and she was. I will tell you her story later.

One day, sitting waiting for darshan, I noticed a young western man who had just arrived. I watched him walk to find a seat and had the vividly irrational feeling that I hated him. Just his strutting walk infuriated me; his smug class-nerd’s face needed punching; even his hair was annoying. How could one hate a complete stranger? For weeks thereafter I was always thrown into his company one way or another, until I grasped the fact that I had to learn to love him. I soon found qualities I liked, but during the process Swami always paid him special attention in my presence. He was a lawyer, for example, but Baba said, “Not lawyer…lover…” As soon as I began to see his soul was one with mine, our paths rarely crossed again. This process of drawing out personal faults until they were identified was intense, and the ashram was unlike any other place I have been. The energy seemed fiercely tangible, almost visible. It was still a while before I realized that this was in fact the potency of Swami’s teaching: a complete environment where souls were smelted, with the crap rising up to be scraped away. A 100 years of life’s lessons passed in months. I became painfully aware of the karmic flaws in my character that were so deeply embedded they were more like animal instincts: a cat does not choose to chase the rustling leaf or bird. There is no space between sense perception and action. Lust seemed like that to me. Certain western girls there evoked an instant response: I want, I want, I want… They seemed to know it as well, one always pulling her sari up until only her eyes were visible – and eyes don’t lie. I was always able to discern a woman’s sexual interest from her eyes, but in India the secret of concealing in order to reveal is still understood, and ought to be studied by western ladies who think a man is attracted by virtual nudity. After a while in India ankles would light my fire – and the women know this too, wearing jewelry and bells above the heel. It went without saying that Indian women were unattainable, virgins until the wedding bed; thus the westerners were more troublesome, a tempest rocking the frail raft of my inner work. I also found myself becoming friends with men even more lust-afflicted than myself. One, a tailor named Khan, even assured me that sex in the astral planes was even better than down here. “You get a hundred wirgins,” he said, “and no matter how much you do this-thing they are still remaining wirgin. You tire of these, you get one hundred more, all too much beautiful – for the God is too much good, isn’t it?”

As a  philosophy it posed more questions than it answered – yet not if lust was your Holy Grail. It was for Khan, and – although it was not my ideal eternity – it was for much of my time down here. My slavish obedience to the King of Lust only became shamefully apparent when I was drinking chai outside the ashram one day. Propped against a wall and sitting in filth and dust was a young beggar girl dressed in rags so dirty no western mechanic would have used them to mop oil spills. No more than eighteen, she was, I now saw, so beautiful – huge almond eyes, full lips, flawless bone-structure, teeth like pearls – that in the west photographers would fight to shoot her Vogue covers. She also had a baby, either a very big baby, or a three-year-old pushing the easy life for as long as he could get away with it. Two things then occurred: she pulled aside her wretched sari, revealing no choli and the kind of full perfect breasts shown by Indian erotic art, but rarely found in reality without a surgeon’s help. The huge grimy infant immediately went hungrily at a nipple as roughly as a man eating mangoes. Then the girl did something I had never seen before nor ever saw again: she hoisted the bloated child, took his penis in her mouth briefly, and then extracted it urinating – urinating into her mouth, and swallowing the contents, of which there had to be half a pint, since the pissing poseur’s stream lasted over a minute. Thoughts collided in my head like a pile-up on the LA Freeway. Men in India pissed wherever they felt the urge, so primitive sanitation was not an explanation. Auto-urine therapy is a feature of Ayurvedic medicine, even practiced by Prime Minister Moraji Desai, as he happily informed the media. ‘Auto’ is the operative word, however: you drink your own piss. The therapy is not without virtue, either, since urine does contain natural antibiotics (going into a war zone, I was told to piss on a bad wound if nothing else was available, wondering how this could be explained to a wounded Arab). A severe infection, though, only responds to the fiery purge of modern synthetic drugs. I also recalled that Mandarins in old China used to wash the face with baby’s urine to prevent signs of age [free business idea for someone in an anti-aging scam, with compliments]. Was the girl simply thirsty? Or was some rustic superstition involved? Halting this pile-up to remind me I was his slave, his creature, his toy, King Lust pulled out all the stops. She’s hoping to make a rupee after sitting there for 12 hours, I thought, leering over at her as I schemed. For 20 rupees she’d follow me to a mountain cave and do anything. But she ought to wash. And what about the infant imposter? Before long, the shag gland now sultan of my mind had her installed in a nearby cabin, with new saris, and a general makeover – perhaps during a trip to Madras (now officially Chennai). Had I known she could probably be bought, a sex chattel, for around 300 dollars, I would almost certainly have added this perquisite to my plans for benign sex slavery, the Thomas Jefferson of Andhra Pradesh. Why stop at one? The Kama Sutra often required a few women, and some complicated equipment. The domain had everything, and rivalled Khan’s astral whorehouse, obviating death as a prerequisite for admittance. Yes, it had everything – except any consideration for that girl’s dignity or free will. I froze in horror, recalling a parable by the Marquis de Sade, where an aristocrat, who enjoys sex whilst torturing and murdering, confesses he is depressed to think that, after death, his victims find peace and joy. He seeks a way to pursue them with agonies through all eternity. Sade’s point, as so often it is, shows lust, like every desire, can never be satisfied, always promising satisfaction through some greater excess, its grip ever firmer, never leaving hold until your death. Desires can only be transcended, never fulfilled. Of all the things I have ever desired and attained, the only one to deliver a permanent fulfillment is the quiet mind, equanimity, and the certainty that divinity is in all existence, for nothing but God exists. Separation is a mental illusion, for we bring imprints from possibly millions of previous lifetimes into this one, and need the maya or illusion to expel whatever prevents us recognizing our divine oneness. I consulted the teachings on transcending lust, because I now saw it as a monstrous obstacle in my path. The usual Indian advice is to regard all women as your sisters. Since I have no sister, I found this hard. Nothing worked until I tried thinking of them as my children. This got me around the ashram safely, at least. The next skeleton in my fault closet was impatience – closely related to an intolerance of stupidity. No doubt the reader can imagine how these twin faults were identified – yes, I found myself assigned to teach five of the stupidest 14-year-olds that ever learned to feed themselves. Concomitantly, someone nominated me as assistant to the assistant postmaster [if there was an actual postmaster I never saw him]. Nothing could ever be found in this office, since there was no filing system. Raju, my boss, had some mental block about any system not involving piling documents etc wherever there was room for them. He refused to accept that work would be 50 times easier if we just created areas for subject matter – an alphabetic approach was problematic when half our papers were in languages that either had 30 more letters than my 26, or else possibly did not operate at all upon a principle of interlinked letters or glyphs. My epiphany came when I jumped up onto our unstable table and, possibly frothing at the mouth, screamed at the assistant postmaster, my boss, Raju, every insulting expletive that came to mind. For a moment it even looked like a torrent of green slime poisoning the room, the village, the world. Instead of violent outrage, or instant firing [which was technically impossible since I wasn’t hired or paid], Raju began weeping, looking up like Oliver Twist, and I suddenly saw vividly the toxicity of these uncontrolled and unhelpful emotional reactions or mind-states. It was like riding a horse for ages without noticing the reins were broken and it charged wherever it liked, oblivious to heel or voice. Worst of all was the revelation that unloving thoughts and deeds permeate the whole universe with their poison.

I do not pretend that I was ‘cured’ or purged of these flaws, but, thanks to Swami, I was ever after mindful of them as potential snares, weak links, portals leading to darkness. Lust and impatience did not vanish, of course, but I strove to make the former part of love, and to ensure the latter was both justifiable and helpful in a situation. Every emotion has a valid use, but to be used oneself by these emotions creates a universal imbalance. Those who have children will know that there are times when you’re obliged to be angry with them – but you must never lose your temper. Never: uncontrolled anger crackles through a home like electric storms, and then adds more anger to a world already mad with fury.

I am writing with the knowledge that humanity is entering a period unlike any other in history. Baba mentioned this to a small group 40 years ago, even giving a date 60-odd years in the future when human consciousness will either transform, or all that is solid will melt into air, by whatever means we have so industriously invented for our own destruction, or by a mighty judgment from Mother Gaia. The planet will not miss us. The greed of a few has ignored the warnings of scientists about climate change since the eighties [see Paul Kennedy, Preparing for the 21^st Century], when it was pointed out that the planet is designed to be a closed, self-sustaining system, producing or dispensing with whatever she needs. By releasing millions of tons of gases like methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere we have disrupted this perfect system, stripping our atmospheric shield from ultra-violet and other harmful spectra of light. Skin cancers soar; species become extinct daily – tiny things you have never even heard of, but which perform a vital role in keeping the eco-system balanced – and balance is something the whole universe craves. Bad must be balanced by good, etc etc. Scientific lackeys were even unearthed by corrupt corporate politicians to refute the science, when its data were irrefragable and even visible. When water warms its volume increases. Antarctica, the world’s largest ice mass, has already lost enough melted ice to cover Mexico. In the fifties, Albert Einstein and the philosopher Bertrand Russell – generally considered the two most intelligent men alive when I was a child – personally paid for a full-page ad in the Times where they stated unequivocally that if we did not immediately dismantle and ban all nuclear weapons humankind would destroy the planet and itself within 100 years. President Eisenhower’s farewell speech similarly warned of a dangerous collusion between big industry and the military that would make war too profitable to resist. People listened to three of their most respected men, but they did not hear. Believe Sathya Sai Baba or Einstein Russell, it matters little which, but we have a couple of decades left to unite as one in order to save our home.

It took all of human history for the global population to reach one billion, around 1900. Since then, in a mere 100-odd years, we have added over six billion more. If the planet warms another 1.5 degrees Celsius, rice will not grow, and two billion people in China and India will starve. As sea-levels rise tens of millions will become refugees. The problems are immense, and many climatic effects are imponderables. Is this where evolution has been heading? No, because Darwin’s theory is nonsense, most of it actually disproved. Species adapt, but this does not demonstrate progress. Life in Old Kingdom Egypt or Vedic India was infinitely better than this armed madhouse. Their communities recognized the evils that destroy peace: wealth had to be spread around; each worked according to his ability, with all regarded as equals – much as we don’t view our hands or feet as lesser parts because of the work they perform. Rulers were once wise men, enlightened sages, whose decisions were based upon divine principles. Recorded history is simply the account of a steady decline into ignorance. We now approach the consequences of lives lived for acquisition of things that are worthless, since the King of Death himself has nothing beyond this world, and we shall certainly leave it bereft, unless we face our only certainty and use it to work out why we are really here. Death defines life; and also contains its meaning.

Baba said: “The mind is fed by five senses. Take away those senses and only you are left. No world, no things, no sound, no taste, no thought – yet consciousness is there. The God of Moses says, I am that I am, yes? This is the truth of your soul. It is never born and never dies; it dwells in eternal bliss, at one with all. You are all divine and eternal, yet you do not realize it. This is why I am here – not for anything else. Love is God, and you feel this in your heart. You feel goodness and compassion there too. They are not thoughts. Make the mind a tool, but control it to be silent when not required. Like a monkey it leaps about to little purpose. Make the mind do one thing – mantra, counting breath, it does not matter – and you will control it, having also peace. Practice this each day, and you will then know that Swami, you, and God are one and the same. The soul can never be harmed, so why fear? I am here and will always be with you. Be happy, love all as one, and the whole world will reflect happiness and love. It is so simple that your busy mind overlooks it. One moment of giving love and peace to all is worth ten million dollars, even more. But all karmas must be settled, for people and countries. I shall have to leave this body when that time comes, because this big hair and red robe distract you from the divine in your heart. I want no worship; I need nothing; but I come because you are all free to do whatever you wish. Too many are now wishing to be bad. I come to protect you from them, and to repeat eternal truths, laws that never change. When this body is no longer seen, you will understand more, and see this world of maya for what it is. Never fear; always I shall be here, for where else can I go? Where can you go? Be good, do good, see good. Yes? Oh, it is still too simple for you!”

[To be continued]

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Puttaparti

Tags

India, religion, Sai Baba, spirituality

            Not the easiest place to reach in those days, with your choice of transport limited to eight or nine hours in a bus with wooden seats and unpaned windows, regularly stopping for chai or roadside passengers, often accompanied by  livestock – usually goats and disgruntled chickens – until the vehicle was packed to standing-room only, and your two-seater bench accommodated four or five. You arrived covered in dust, exhausted and aching. But for a journey  equal to travelling from Toronto to Quebec City, the price of about 50 cents was not unreasonable. Your other choice was a taxi in which its driver also lived, though plainly could not wash. This ride took four or five hours, but cost about $ 40. Thus the trick for more well-heeled pilgrims was to share a taxi between four or even five people. Bill Byrom had told me that westerners stayed in Bangalore at a small hotel called, incongruously, the Bombay Ananda Bhavan, on Grant Road. Since Bangalore was a few hours’ flight south from Bombay (now Mumbai), one wondered why the place was named thus. But at three dollars a night it could have been called the Cairo Hilton for all I cared. Now an excessively overcrowded and ostentatiously wealthy Indian version of Silicon Valley, Bangalore, 40-odd years ago, was just a sleepy ex-Raj cantonment, famous for the British era bungalows and mansions, with their broad monsoon porches and Moghul-Rococo style. Confusion still reigned over street names, changed after Independence to more Indian titles – except no taxi driver knew the revised names, and to find Grant Road you had to ask for St. Mark’s road, and make a right half way along it. The signs still bore only their English names, apart from Mahatma Ghandi Road, Main Street, which was now known as ‘MG Road’ by cab drivers, who could never locate a Mahatma Ghandi Road if asked for it.

            The city was then also a tropical garden of Bougainvillea, flame trees, and parks full of countless exotic blooms. City transport was by auto-rickshaw, a kind of motor scooter pulling a two-wheeled covered carriage, and at a hazardous speed. I took one from an airport, like the one in Casablanca, where you walked from the airplane steps to the terminal building, on whose walls were framed pictures of Swami garlanded with wilted flowers. He was clearly the only reason westerners came to Bangalore, since he had already built a college at Whitefield, an Anglo-Indian village ghetto some 20 minutes’ drive beyond the city, and where he often spent long periods of time away from the Puttaparthi ashram. Bill had advised me to check where he currently was before deciding on my destination. The hotel was where one did this easily: if it was full, Swami was clearly at Whitefield. If almost empty, he must be at Puttaparthi. The place was an old mansion converted, to some extent, into a guest-house. My room, for instance, had four beds draped with mosquito netting, and three doors, two of which led into other rooms. The bathroom had a squatter toilet yet no bath or shower. Two taps at knee height perched over a red plastic bucket with a jug hanging by its handle from the rim. Instead of toilet paper there was, near the squatter’s porcelain footprints, a long-spouted plastic watering can, such as one might use for house-plants. I got the concepts quickly, and within weeks was accustomed to washing from a bucket, and also knew why food should only be taken in company by the right hand.

            Heading out in search of a meal, I ran into a blonde American from Montana now named Vijaya. She had three friends looking for a fifth passenger to share taxi-fare to Puttaparthi. They planned to leave at 3. a.m. the next morning – a time I usually went to bed. But the deal was agreed upon, and I ate some kind of curry with chapatis prepared by the hotel’s owner and sole employee, imagining I would sleep in the taxi.

   Wrong. Vijaya and her three friends, one named India, were part of Hilda Charlton’s satsang (spiritual gathering), and knew Bill Byrom well. This discussion over, they all sang bhajans for the entire trip, excitement building as we turned left by a sign reading Puttaparthi, stopping briefly to give a blind beggar about 2 cents, possibly because he carried a picture of Swami on the tray from which he also vended beedies. Had the road sign indicated distance, I might have relaxed for a bit longer, since it was around 40 miles further. While the temperature in Bangalore was hot but pleasant enough, this proved to be because it stood on a 7,000 foot plateau. But now we were down in the burning plains of Andhra Pradesh, a desert wasteland of rocks and scrub, lined by ochre, black-capped mountains, these peaks, as India told me cheerfully, burned by the tail of Hanuman, the monkey god, servant of Rama, as he flew to do battle with the demon Ravana in Lanka (then Ceylon, now once more Sri Lanka). This charming yarn did not make me appreciate the landscape more than I had before hearing it. Barren, deserted, hostile, the area seemed to have never attracted inhabitants of any species. It made the moon look like fertile savannah; and the heat, by 8 am, was staggering, one vast kiln – and this was where a divinity chose as his birth-place? The image now always comes to mind when I think of a world whose climate proved impervious to control.

            Yet, as we approached Puttaparthi, this blasted wilderness gave way to lush green rice paddies, and verdant palm groves. Sweet-faced, rubbery-black water buffaloes plodded slowly home along a dusty umber road, driven by small boys or smiling women, all escaping the building inferno of a summer day. A few cube-shaped concrete huts appeared, and thatched stalls selling Campa-Cola, rose-milk, Limca, baddam-milk, and other unfamiliar drinks. Then there was a high-walled compound, surrounded by flimsy shacks vending solely Swami memorabilia – posters, lockets, stickers, key rings, books, etc.

    Nodding at the high wall, Vijaya said, “That’s Swami’s ashram. First we go to the office, though, and then see if we have missed morning darshan.”

    We skirted the wall, passing an arched gateway bearing the symbols of most major religions fashioned from painted steel. Through it I briefly saw a gigantic statue in black stone of the elephant-headed god, Ganesh, son of Siva (and doubtless a big surprise), ‘Remover of Obstacles’, always prayed or chanted to first in any ritual ceremony. The wall curved somewhat, bringing us to a large pair of open metal gates. The ‘office’ was another concrete cube, whitewashed by a slovenly hand, and containing one table, with one chair behind it, upon which sat a small round man, his shiny orbed face emanating an expression of immense self-satisfaction. Very deferentially, India asked him if any rooms were available.

            “No,” he said, pretending to examine some  papers, then elaborating, “All full.”

  I wondered how these Americans in saris would take such news. They seemed very docile, whispering among themselves about alternatives. I disliked this official a lot, finding it hard to imagine that anyone liked him, and even that he did not wish to be liked. I was also scorching hot, caked in dust, and extremely underslept.

            Therefore I said, “Listen, you, whoever you are, I came half way round the world to be here, and I want a room, any room. I will have your room if nothing else is available – which I don’t believe. I think you just enjoy what miniscule power you have, and that is mostly refusing rooms to foreigners, because you hate foreigners. You’re a pocket Mussolini, and I shall tell Swami of your rudeness the moment I see him. So give me a room and act politely or I will throw you and your crappy table out and live here. Am I making myself clear?”

     By now I was leaning over a few inches from his glossy face, which had begun to express fear. I doubted if anyone had spoken to him in such a manner ever – although I came to learn that most Indians were frightened by overt expressions of anger or indignation.

     “Some rooms are being painted,” he said, quite humbly, “so room is available, but painter must work.”

     “These ladies will take one of them,” I told him, “and I will take one. Give us the keys. Now! And bear in mind that not all western devotees will tolerate your ill-mannered crap…”

   “Jeez,” said India, as we carried our bags over fine sandy ground, “I’ve always wanted to put that asshole in his place, but I figured it would have me thrown out of the ashram. Swami’s officials are often obnoxious, and no one knows why he gives them such jobs.”

     “Let’s ask him,” I suggested.

     “Yeah, right!” was all she said.

     The rooms were in a new three-storey concrete block opposite the ‘temple’, which was enclosed by a low wall, and had  clearly been yet another, if larger, concrete rectangle. Now parts had rickety bamboo scaffolding tied together on the exterior. The roof already possessed a new white dome, and a narrow semi-circular balcony had been added, with a pair of solid silver doors behind it. The current work seemed to consist of numerous mythical creatures sculpted from concrete and then painted. None were particularly identifiable, except for one resembling a flying armadillo. The colour scheme was ill-advisedly garish: pastel blues, greens, and pink. Most of the building was white, blindingly white in the torrid sunlight, so the colours were unusually brilliant. All over the grounds were hand-painted signs bearing, presumably, Swami’s wise sayings, which then struck me as banal, simplistic, and often more like advertising slogans than wisdom: Be good do good see good; Love all serve all; Love is God, etc. His public talks proved to be equally simplistic, essentially urging his audience to lead good lives and treat others well. The Oxford-educated brain does not take simplistic philosophy with much enthusiasm. It likes paradox, conundrums, syllogisms, dialectic, teleology, epistemology, ontological arguments, and indeed anything but simple truths.

            I usually like simple rooms, though, but the one whose padlock I opened  was far too simple. It was not even minimalist, as I understand the term. It contained nothing at all, except four concrete walls, whitewashed by a familiarly inept hand, with white splotches decorating the bare floor like remnants of a decomposed carpet. The windows had shutters, but no glass or screening. There  was no washroom. Since Vijaya and friends were a few rooms down, I went to make inquiries, finding their door open and mattresses being inflated. Bill had not mentioned a dearth of bedding. To my query, Vijaya said that toilets and washing facilities were some distance away and clearly marked Ladies and Gents. Gender separation was, I soon found, of obsessive importance in the ashram – but one adapts to anything in life (I can assure you, as can Julian Schnabel’s masterly film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).

            Before I could improve my living quarters, people were gathering to sit on the sand surrounding Swami’s temple, ladies in an arc on one side, gents on the other – a sign that darshan would be soon. Thus, I hurried down, leaving my sandals by the low wall, as others were doing, and sitting behind the first row of gents. There were only 70-odd people there in total, three or four of them westerners, hippies wearing an assortment of Indian clothes, dreadlocks, beads, and one fellow in Bermuda shorts. I wore khaki shorts and a T-shirt. Within a few years, however, a strict dress-code would be enforced, with all men in long white trousers and white shirts with the tails untucked, which meant many wore traditional Indian outfits, although the Indians tended to favour western shirts with collars. Women were all in saris, their heads covered. I learned that this dress-code was in fact the brain-child of some official in one of the many Sai organizations that were to spring up, forming bureaucracies, as any collection of people will do – for want of anything useful to engage them. Politicians are the same, forming committees when any problem arises (these committees, at preposterous expense, eventually produce reports no one reads, because other problems have eclipsed the former one, which the public has long forgotten). After some fifteen minutes, the sun had heated my head so ferociously that I moved to the shade of a palm tree, where I stretched out and nearly fell asleep when a buzz of excitement fizzed through everyone, and people edged into the front lines, all eyes trained on…what? Even the men sculpting winged concrete tigers, or whatever they were, had stopped in their work to stare, as the bamboo scaffolding lurched dangerously beneath them.

            Then I saw him, a tiny man with a prodigious Afro, wearing a long orange robe covering his bare feet, and, about to think something banal, I felt my heart suddenly explode with a love so intense that I simply burst into tears. Ignoring the crowd of devotees, Swami chatted cheerfully with the workmen, pointing to things, and obviously asking questions about their work. I quickly returned to my old spot, aglow with pure love, as he suddenly turned towards the ladies, now standing almost immobile, a forefinger seeming to write on the air, as his other hand revolved slowly, cupped, as if to test for rain, then turning his middle finger in a manner suggesting it spun a small disc. His gaze looked above the expectant, adoring faces; and then he began to walk with a slow uncanny grace along the arc of women, occasionally stepping back if someone tried to touch his feet, taking notes from some, which he handed to a humble attendant – who proved to be Dr. Bhagavantam, one of India’s preeminent nuclear physicists – and then stopping by an elderly woman, moving his right palm in a polishing motion, releasing from it a small stream of grey powder, which the woman caught, and he marked her forehead with the remainder, flicking his fingers. He next approached the gents’ section, and my overwhelming love grew, teardrops almost blinding me. Again he stood still, his hands writing and revolving; his eyes seemingly looking into other worlds, deep, yet blank, with no sense of a person behind them. Though tiny – five feet tall at the most – he had the aura of a mighty king, his bearing majestic, noble. His body was slender, delicate, a young boy’s, yet his neck was unusually thick, almost muscular. His skin was a very pale brown – unlike the dark Dravidians typical in the south, where no one had Afro hair, or even knew it existed. Yet, as photographs of him as a youth show, he wore the Afro long before Jimi Hendrix or Angela Davis were even born. His features too were strange, sharp in profile, yet broad when seen full-faced. As he approached along the line where I sat, love erased all thought, and I had no idea what to say or ask him. For a man next to me he produced vibhuti with the same polishing motion, but now I was so close that I saw the ash actually pour from the centre of his palm, as if through a hole in space; as it fell he turned his hand to catch it, handing some to the man and the rest to another man, whose forehead he also marked. Now he stood right in front of me, and I felt certain he would say something; yet his eyes looked all round at faces behind and before me, but I seemed to be invisible to him. Not a glance; nothing. Then suddenly he was gone, ambling now with a rolling, bear-like gait back to the temple, where a side door led into his rooms. I thought I was about to feel let down, perhaps angry, yet something assured me I had got Swami’s message, which was love, divine love, the love that is the self, the love that created and sustains this universe. As dear John Lennon puts it: Love is the answer, and you know that for sure.

            I also knew for sure then that I had better find a mattress to buy, along with other essentials.

            The Puttaparthi ashram was not actually in Puttaparthi, as I soon discovered. The village where Swami had been born was about a hundred yards down a dusty track past a memorial built for the avatar’s parents. The few inhabitants awake, in what resembled an impoverished settlement from the Iron Age, assumed I was here to see the house where Swami was born. Not wanting to seem ungrateful, I allowed myself to be led to what looked like a collapsed cow-shed, boasting a sign which, translated from the Telegu, read: Birthplace of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba. ‘Humble’ hardly described it. ‘A step away from homeless’ was more accurate. I was even introduced to Swami’s brother, who looked like everyone else, and worked a rice paddy. Sometime later, I met him on a bus ride, learning that he was his brother’s devotee, yet had no more access to him than anyone else did. He was proud of the ashram, though, terming it ‘very big’. In the village I asked where I might purchase a mattress, but no one knew what a mattress was, so I called it a bed instead, learning that the village had no shops as such, but there was a carpenter who made beds. All the shops were back up outside the ashram walls, but they only sold Swami trinkets and posters. I asked how long this carpenter would take to make a bed, and was taken to the craftsman himself, who, after a 20-minute chat in Telegu with my guide, replied that a bed took an hour to make and cost a dollar. I paid, asking if the bed could be delivered to my room. It could, arriving four hours later, and comprising a wooden frame with stumpy legs, and a web of rough string criss-crossing the frame. It may be better than sleeping on concrete, I thought, but not much better. Outside the ashram I found a tailor who wanted to make me shirts, but very reluctantly sold me his whole bale of white cotton heavily laced with rayon, or some such plastic thread. Unrolled on the bed’s string, back and forth until, after five layers, it ran out, there was a serviceable enough covering for the bristly rope. I lay down, feeling the bed wobble in a disturbing manner, and then soon fell asleep. I had a strange dream in which I saw only Swami’s feet, touching my forehead to them, and then gripping his ankles, as if trying to save myself from drowning. In Hinduism a holy man’s feet are sacred, the only part of him in contact with the earth, thus the only part to which humanity can connect. Devotees often tried to touch Swami’s feet during darshan, yet he usually skipped back beyond their reach. The trinket stalls outside sold pictures of his feet; and elsewhere I would see depictions of other gods’ or gurus’ feet. Yet, normally, I had no interest in feet, no desire at all to touch those of Swami, no grasp of the concept behind this foot worship. In the dream, however, I felt my very salvation lay in holding onto those ankles so my forehead remained pressed against the toes, sustaining me from harm, providing access to a heavenly realm. It reminded me of Jacob’s ladder, where the angelic consciousness is in constant flow up and down from higher spheres in a metaphor showing earth’s ineffable contact with the divine light. When I awoke it was time for the afternoon darshan.

 

[To be continued.]

Love, Paul William Roberts