Sai Baba: Lord of the Air

By Tal Brooke Berkeley, California, USA.

My urge to go to India upon graduating from the University of Virginia was a predictable reaction after years of searching. Maybe it all started when I heard my first ghost story, or got an ouija board at the age of ten. Or perhaps when I was 'into' flying saucers and ESP in my teens, and later LSD. Whatever it was, I knew that I had to settle the issue of truth.

After only three months of wandering across India, I was disillusioned. The land ran amuck with mind-destroyed children, and all the famous gurus had failed the test - J. Krishnamurti, the Ramakrishna Mission, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Kirpal Singh and many others. Of the remaining options I chose Sai Baba. Practically every Indian I met swore to his authenticity, claiming that he was Lord Krishna and Christ re-born.

When I met Sai Baba, he worked a miracle. Then he prophesied great things. When I saw the huge crowds around him, his magnetic charisma and his immense powers, I was almost certain that I had finally found a real 'Master' in India, and that his messianic claims were true. I was his closest foreign disciple for almost two years. I wrote a book for him, spoke before vast audiences, and was given endless personal favours by Baba; then the tables suddenly turned on me. The perfect bubble exploded, and I entered the deepest depression of my life, trying to avoid facing up to the inevitable conclusion: Baba, despite his powers, was not divine. He was a false messiah.

What motives could such a metaphysical pied piper have? The answer lay in a book I had looked down my nose at for a long time: the Torah of the prophets and the Gospels of the apostles. But it had taken two extraordinary years in India, and deep explorations into mysticism, to come that far.

I stood in the large, walled compound of a private residence, on the outskirts of the city of Ananthapur in Andhra Pradesh. It was 1970. That particular evening, forty or fifty Indian devotees watched as three limousines entered the driveway. In the back seat of the main car was a figure in a brilliant red gown, his hair raised up Afro-style. This was Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, the most powerful spiritual personage in all of India. As he emerged from the car, I felt an instant shock wave it would be hard to describe.

Undoubtedly Baba was the most magnetic being I had ever seen. I felt a second jolt as I saw Baba talking to an Indian who was making some kind of request. But Baba knew already, telling the devotee the problem before he could even get the words out. As the devotee's mouth dropped in awe, Baba pulled up his sleeve. He spun his arm in circles with the open palm down - and suddenly the hand was no longer empty. A miracle! From nowhere he had produced a handful of grey powder that he was now pouring into the devotee's hand, telling him to eat it.

Baba's spontaneous access to people's thoughts could only be explained by a key idea of vedanta, the concept of 'thoughtless-all-knowing'. Only an enlightened person, without the limiting ego, could harbour the infinite impersonal mind of God. Baba, then, was a kind of walking doorway into the absolute. When he talked or acted, it was not simply as a man: he was a meeting-point with the Godhead. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. I noticed that a few people came up to Baba, knelt down, and touched his feet. I walked up to Baba. Doing what the Indians call pada namaskar, I knelt down and touched my head on Baba's feet, remaining there as he patted my back saving, "Very happy, very happy." The owner of the house called me aside and said, "You are indeed very fortunate that Bhagavan has plans for you. Just accept these things by faith. They are no mere coincidences, but the will of God."

Our life with Baba soon settled into a pattern. We Western devotees went to the daily morning darshan (discourse), heard a few words from Baba, and then went home till the afternoon darshan. We relished each word spoken by Baba, and every little intuition, dream or psychic experience that any of us had. Early in May 1971, Baba gave us our tenth interview in two weeks. Somebody asked about sadhana (spiritual practices) and Baba replied: "There are many methods. One is japa. Choose a name of God; whatever name you choose, that is also mine - Rama, Krishna, Shiva, Baba - all of them. Then close the eyes, sit in quiet and repeat with bhakti [adoration] calling to God."

"Another method is dhyanam, concentration, with or without form. Sit on the floor in the quiet, with your back straight and your legs in padma asana [full lotus or half lotus]. Look straight ahead, concentrating on the tip of the nose. Then concentrate on one of the forms of God. After a while you become that form. For meditation without form, use a flame - jyoti is light, symbol of God. Imagine the flame in the middle of the brow. Let this light destroy all hate, anger, ego and jealousy and let it fill the body. Keep the head straight, from the base of the spine up."

Baba reached down and positioned me in the meditation posture, which was quite an effort to hold. "Then when purification comes, the energy, called kundalini shakti, can pass from the base of the spine tip. Then one day, it will pass all the way tip and - bas - enlightenment! The play is over!"

Enlightenment is no easy matter. Without grace, Baba emphasised, it would be impossible to attain. "Grace is always coming from God, showering like rain from the clouds. But the devotee must be willing to hold the cup to receive God's grace. Trust the Lord, and have no doubt, sir. Then the tiny holes of doubt can be repaired by steady sadhana, spiritual discipline."

In the private moments I had spent with Baba so far, I had made considerable leaps of faith. The week before I had found myself declaring, "I want to love you with all my heart and soul, Baba. I want your will to be mine. I know you are God." This time, however, I was far less satisfied about myself. "What do you want?" Baba asked. "Baba, I can't stand the evil in myself. Help me get rid of it; anything that holds me back." With patient understanding, Baba ran through my sins. "Too many bad thoughts, impure sanskaras [trait from past lives]. Thoughts of material things: anger, jealousy, hate, ego and thoughts of girls. No good."

Baba wrapped his arms about me and hugged tightly. If the hallmark of this session with him was my own impurity, I thought, then I was under a spiritual microscope as never before. The embrace of Radha-Krishna, the avatar of the Dwarka Yuga (Baba) and his lover (me) was the highest resolution of two polarities. My inner voice likened the embrace with Baba to the meeting of cosmic lovers. God and God, breaking the wall of maya to merge. Baba's hug grew tighter. Then a thought crept out of some dark abyss. His breathing is deeper, more intense. Why does he need to twist his pelvis in this way? Is this some strange divine passion? Am I warping something that is innately pure with the evil of my own suspicions? My mind was reeling. Was the test not only that I comply, but that I see and know the holy in Baba's act? The Indian scriptures declared repeatedly, "Anything done in total purity is without blemish." My belief in Baba's deity began to outweigh surface appearances. "Too much at stake. I have got to believe in him. Lust contradicts Baba's nature; therefore it does not exist in him. He cannot sin, because it is not in him to do so. Blind faith. Baba is innocent. And what about his miracles?"

The crowds had gathered for the great festival. That night all over India the Saivite sect would be paying homage to the great lord Shiva, god of destruction in the Hindu triune godhead. Those across India who recognised the avatarhood of Sathya Sai Baba would dwell on his name and form, singing bhajans to him in family halls. He was considered by the Saivite sect to be Shakti-Shiva the male and female principles of the universe combined. They and the devotees of Vishnu agreed that he was Narayana, God come to earth with human and divine attributes.

All over India, Baba's five million devotees were hoping that tonight Baba's miracles would bring them to sat-chit-ananda - the being, consciousness, and bliss of the absolute. Freed from their painful, tragic existence, they would emerge into a state of infinite, ecstatic awareness. Baba chanted a sloka from the Bhagavad Gita, stretching his arms like a bird: "Renounce all dharmas: and take refuge in me alone. I will liberate you from all sins; grieve not."

After forty minutes speaking Baba paused, looked at the audience, and fell back into his seat. He looked away as though concealing great pain. Though his head jerked in spasms, his smiles of reassurance gently told us not to worry. This indestructible man was taking on the infinite torments that we deserved. His grace was covering our debts of karma. Suddenly Baba lurched forward. In an explosive movement, a brilliant stone - a sacred lingam (phallus) larger than an egg - shot out of his mouth onto a handkerchief. Baba held the object high for everybody to see it shining. Then he set it down on the table in full view, spun round and went out.

"Special grace," Baba announced. I concentrated on his bare forearm whirling around, and felt a surge of energy, as his palm closed. When he opened his hand there were five rings, each neatly plaited from seven strands of metal. The girls sighed as they put them on and studied them; each ring was the perfect fit for its wearer. Baba looked over to the male half of the room. His hand began whirling again in huge arcs. Another surge rippled through the room only this time Baba's hand was holding something so large that it glinted through his fingers. Baba opened his hands to reveal eleven oval metal plates with a photographic likeness of himself enamelled on each of them.

Near the end of this interview, he briefly left the room and returned with a computer card which he handed to a woman called Gill. "You couldn't have done that", Gill exclaimed, "I just mailed off my claim a few days ago." Gill had suddenly noticed that the card, from the San Francisco branch of the Bank of America, happened to have that day's date stamped on it. Not even a private Phantom jet could clock up that sort of time. "I have the whole world in the palm of my hand," Baba replied. "Divine will, sir. Space and time are no obstacle to Swami."

We followed Baba back to the town of Whitefield with his final words of the birthday festival echoing loudly in our minds; "I am the embodiment of truth. This is the first time in history that mankind has had the chance of being with me in this number. The moment you come into my presence, all your sins are forgiven. Do not try to compare my power with those petty powers of magicians. My power is divine and has no limit. I have the power to change the earth into the sky and the sky into the earth. I am beyond any obstacle and there is no force, natural or supernatural, that can stop my mission or me. Do not lose this chance, it is more important than you will ever realise. Do not forfeit the chance to be in my presence." The impression made on us was vivid. Sai Baba was clearly not a human being. A human body he had, but he did not think or operate as other people did.

A few days later Baba gave us the first group interview since we had returned to the town of Puttaparthi. Baba started out on a sweet note; "You see the dhobis going to the Chitravati river every day, cleaning and beating the clothes on the rocks? Well, I am spiritual dhobi. I am the best dhobi, cleaning the minds of my devotees - every day with love."

"Baba," I said, "Ed [a friend of mine] wants to be your disciple. Came all the way to India to see you. Now he wants your permission and a letter to stay." Two other friends, India and Marsha, had a similar problem. But even with Baba's written permission to stay, they had to account for at least six months they had spent illegally in the country without visas. Baba sat in his chair, grinning from ear to ear. In his hands was a white scroll. He already knew of their dilemma. Baba proceeded to read the letter. Gill squirmed - then interrupted, "Baba, that's a lie! India and Marsha were not with you in Whitefield all that time."

The scroll in Baba's hand shuddered. "Not a lie! Not a lie! Your mistake, your misunderstanding. God is everywhere. I am everywhere. Darjeeling, Whitefield, Prasanthi Nilayam is all with me. I wrote this letter out of pure love, divine love. Not a lie!" The subject was closed. "Faith is very important for sadhana for spiritual path," Baba said. "Doubts are evil and enemies - doubts come from ego, envy, jealousy, hatred ... all bad qualities."

In February, I returned to Whitefield with my fellow Baba devotees. Arriving late at night, we were dismayed to find that the 'Major's house' where we had stayed before was already occupied. Where could we go? I had all but forgotten the two missionaries whom I had met a year previously, when they came to invite us all over for Christmas. Their offer, should we ever have need, now came to my mind. Arriving at the house, the door swung open and there was Mrs. Carroll, the missionary's wife, smiling warmly. Conversation wasn't light for long. Evidently the Carroll's had some kind of 'burden' for us, but I was no less zealous that the Carroll's should accept Baba, whose name, equally with Christ, meant Truth! There was a vital struggle between the two opposing systems of belief. Both could not be true at the same time.

The Carrolls pointed to one Christ and one occurrence of incarnation. "Agreed", I said. Christ was a person in history as much as Tiberius or Xerxes. But he was also the Cosmic Christ, incarnated previously as an absolute principle. As such he has touched all scriptures in all forms. "Where does it say that?" the Carrolls asked. "And how interesting that not once in the New Testament does Christ refer to any of the Eastern concepts of pantheism. If each man can pick and choose for himself what is true, where are you? If our basis for judgement is a private inner experience or intuition, well, experiences contradict. What standard could I use to discern the false from the true, the counterfeit prophet from the genuine article? For the Bible warns of counterfeit spokesmen for God, awesome in their subtlety of argument."

The Carrolls defined truth in uncompromising terms. "Man is at enmity with God," they said, "separated from Him by a gulf of sin. The stupendous thing about God's grace to fallen and imperfect man is that he loved man in his sin. That love was shown in the space-time incarnation of the Logos as the long predicted Messiah, Jesus Christ."

Now came the proclamation of utter exclusiveness that truly made Christianity the 'straight and narrow way'. Ivan Carroll opened his Bible.

"There is no salvation in anyone else at all," he read, "for there is no other name, under heaven, granted to men, by, which we may receive salvation." The narrow gate was to accept Jesus Christ exclusively as Lord and Saviour. Not bow down to any other - Buddha, Krishna, Chaitanya or even Sathya Sai Baba. I searched my mind for a reply. I told them of Baba's great love, and the goodness of the people surrounding him. I gambled that such goodness would break through to the missionaries. But this introduced a whole new line of thought.

"A man can appear good and still be deceived. Our own seeming goodness is not enough to bring us into the full light of God. Scripture tells us 'none is righteous, no not one'. In fact there is no better salesman for counterfeit truth than a good man." This thought hadn't entered my universe.

Now Winona Carroll opened up her Bible. "Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light," she read. "It is therefore a simple thing for his agents to masquerade as agents of good." My friend Surva Dass sought to stem the tide of this fanaticism. "I just can't see someone running around with little horns and a tail."

"The Bible doesn't ask you to believe Satan has little horns," the Carrolls replied. "Think of the way Paul describes it: 'Our fight is not against human foes, but against cosmic powers, against authorities and potentates of this dark world, against the super-human forces of evil in the heavens'."

The Carrolls attacked Surya Dass' idea that the Bible was directed mainly to highly spiritual initiates. On the contrary, Christ was reaching out to those whose only credentials were a humble, sincere hunger for God's love and forgiveness. Turning to his Bible again, Ivan Carroll quoted: "Few of you are men of wisdom, by any human standard, few are powerful or highly born. Yet, to shame the wise, God has chosen what the world counts folly."

I challenged the Carrolls to admit that they might not have total understanding of all the truths of scripture. They agreed, with commendable humility. But nothing shook them. By about 1:30 in the morning, it was finally time to turn in - but only after the most heartfelt prayer by the Carrolls that Christ would speak directly to our hearts and convict us all of the Truth through the Holy Spirit. We visitors nodded to ourselves knowingly.

I heard Surya Dass' footsteps near the front porch. I knew as soon as I saw his face that there was a surprise coming. He stood in the doorway, hands on hips, sighing and shaking his head slightly.

"Well ..." he began and stopped. I guessed the rest of the sentence: " ... I'm not going to believe what you're about to tell me?"

"Right!"

"It's about Sai Baba." My heart was beating furiously. "Okay," I said, "Let's hear the whole thing."

"You know the teahouse in Whitefield? Well, I went in there and ran into some guys I've talked to a number of times. I got on to the subject of Baba. They wouldn't say a thing. Finally a guy called Raymond went for a walk with me near the Carroll's. He asked me to swear to keep this a secret. He said he had a sudden feeling of responsibility for my soul. So he was taking a chance, despite his fear of Baba's supernatural powers.

"Raymond told me that two years ago Patrick - the real good-looking Anglo-Indian with the long hair - went to the town of Brindavan one day and sat among a whole crew of Americans who were passing through. Baba thought Patrick was one of the freaks from the States. So he kept him for a private interview. When the others left and Baba got him alone, he did his usual number of materialising things and telling him his inner secrets, though I don't know why he didn't know that Patrick lived just down the road. Well, the next thing that happened was Baba reached down and unzipped Patrick's flies." I did not want to believe what I was hearing. The problem was, I knew it was true.

"Okay," I asked despondently, "are you ready for this? Among the guys who Baba has 'purified' in the same way are Wendel, Phil, that disciple of yogi Bhajan, and 'Alpine' Schwartz. But that's not all ... he has done it to me. But unlike Patrick, I did not respond. Up till now I've kept pretty quiet about the whole thing. I thought it was some form of tantric purification, or a test of allegiance." We got up and started to make tea, wandering around in a daze.

"But there's another side of this," I added, "there is an occult aspect about the semen. Phil told me that semen is used in really heavy occult stuff. The vital essence of life or whatever." We sat stunned, as the night passed, and continued talking into the early hours. Twenty-five years of being guided to this incredible peak, backed up by all kinds of complex life patterns, intuitions, omens and signs and an absolutely astounding philosophy. You invest all that you have and are in it, and in just a second, it's all ripped away.

Shedding quiet tears, wandering the fields around the cabin, I was never able to see beyond the dense cloud surrounding me. I had been tainted by something I did not fully understand. I cannot hope to convey this state of occult desolation, it has to be known to be understood. In grim loneliness, I struggled with the question, "If I can be so totally blinded and deceived, then can I ever really know the truth after this? Will I ever be able to tell the true man of God from the false?"

On my final day in Puttaparthi, I chose to go off alone up the hillside overlooking the ashram. I brought out my wrinkled New English Bible. Muddled and confused as I was, I still dared to search for the truth. Soon I was deep in it. Truly this book spoke as no other book - its searching honesty was unique, its stand on the way things were, utterly exclusive. I turned to Matthew 24, and a startling disclosure was revealed to me. I felt a fiery conviction as I read, "Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Messiah', or 'there he is', do not believe it. Impostors will come claiming to be messiahs or prophets, and they will produce great signs and wonders to mislead even God's chosen, if such a thing were possible. See, I have forewarned you. If they tell you, 'He is there in the wilderness', do not go out; or if they say, 'He is there in the inner room', do not believe it. Like lightening from the East, flashing as far as the West, will be the coming of the Son of Man [Jesus Christ]."

There was so much in this passage, I had to close the book and meditate. I filed it away as evidence for an alternative explanation of what Baba was. According to the Bible, he was one among many miracle-working deceivers. Then another fact began to sink into my mind. I had believed for all these years that Baba would reincarnate, assuming that he was the same part of Brahma as we all were. But that wasn't the meaning here in the New Testament. The long-promised Messiah entered the world by birth on only one occasion. Never again would he come through a human mother. This fact nullified the claims of every guru who claimed to be Christ come again. For when the ascended Son of man returns for the second time it will be straight from heaven in power and glory. I went out into the starlight, broken and confused, to bring my despair before God, whoever and whatever He was. I uttered the Lord's prayer, at the end pleading with heavy heart to be shown by God Himself His true nature, without fear of deception. I prayed that God would open my eyes to the real truth, because I was unable to find it on my own. Behind locked doors in the Bangalore guesthouse, five of us held conference: Surya Dass, Mark, two other distraught ex-devotees and myself. I began to explain to the others why Surya Dass and I had left Baba. They were not altogether surprised - each had had inklings that there was an unwholesome sensuality beneath Baba's holy veneer.

They asked me who I thought Baba was. Shakily I repeated what I had read: "Impostors will come claiming to be messiahs or prophets, and they will produce great signs and wonders to mislead even God's chosen, if such a thing were possible."

"Then who is the real Christ?"

"Christ," I replied. It was so simple, so incredibly simple. I was beginning to see things in an entirely new light. It was dawning upon me in full power; I was not God. I was not even a god. I was Tal Brooke, a bleary eyed creature lost in the spiritual night. I told the others, "This is what the Bible says we are. Creatures made by God. Mortal, vulnerable, flesh-and-blood people, made from the common elements, and God-breathed with a soul-life."

I was ready now to concede that Christ is the only way, without need for any man, guru or celestial being. His is the most honest and simple salvation imaginable. It has to be that open, that honest, that straight, to be right for any man - not just a few chosen initiates who carve their own gateway. Some people have told me since, that when they were 'saved' or 'born again' nothing dramatic happened. But now, in front of the others, I was on trembling knees, praying with tears. I utterly renounced Baba. I admitted the depth of my wrongdoing. Repentance for me meant a heart repudiation of sin. I confessed that Christ alone is the way, the truth and the life. I bowed to Jesus Christ as Lord and asked Him to enter my heart, to take over the reins of my life. I got up a different creature - a man made new.