Guru, Miracle
Worker, Religious Founder: Sathya Sai Baba
by Dr. Reinhart Hummel
Sathya Sai Baba is an interesting Indian guru not only
because he increasingly wins Western devotees. His career and activities demonstrate why a
strong guru personality, under the conditions of contemporary India and the modern world,
can win a mass of disciples and slip by in the role of a world redeemer and substitute
Christ. »Sathya Sai Baba so loved the world, that he sent forth a son, Jesus Christ, that
whoever believes in him will be saved.«
Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, long since revered in India
by several million people as an incarnation of God (avatar) and savior of mankind,
is also attracting a growing number of seekers from the West. They travel to Puttaparthi,
in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where Sathya Sai Baba has constructed his most
important ashram, Prashanthi Nilayam (abode of great peace), with a huge, modern
temple, hospital, college buildings, and frequently overcrowded guest quarters--a city for
himself. People's motives for that journey are often serious or incurable diseases, for
Sai Baba has an unrivaled reputation as a miracle worker. He »materializes« watches,
talismans, sweets, flowers, crucifixes, books, photographs, and, above all, holy ashes (vibhuti)
with a wave of the hand. Miraculous cures with help from the ashes, or from Baba
himself as the surgeon, and even the resurrecting of the dead are attributed to him. Even
if the hoped for wonder healing fails to occur, many turn back (albeit upset and
bewildered) and ask themselves, nonetheless, whether they have not indeed met in
Puttaparthi Christ come again. As such, and still more, Sai Baba describes himself.
Whenever he, enveloped in a long-flowing, orange gown,
donning an Afro hairstyle, presents himself to the waiting crowd, he emits a strong
radiance. Here he drops a word, there he stands still or gazes at an individual; to others
he appears to turn a cold shoulder. If the visitor finally managed to meet him, he would
be startled not only with materializations but also with disclosures of his own life that
Sai Baba, as clairvoyant, reveals. Through all such devices, Sai Baba builds up an
intense, personal relationship that renders the seeker a helpless toy in the hand of an
experienced, skillful champion. The accounts of visitors to Puttaparthi concur: Sai Baba
had brought them into difficult situations, played an unfair game with them, had, as an
experienced psychotherapist, maneuvered them around, sometimes only in jest, yet
frequently with the goal to dismantle their obtrusive ego and to confront them with
hitherto unknown sides of their own personality. Those visitors, who eventually became his
devotees, see that bewildering game retrospectively in a rose-colored light: out of pure
love and in their best interest, Sai Baba had put them through the wringer of
enlightenment to lead them to both submission to and spiritual union with him. He who
resists that maelstrom of events nevertheless goes away from the encounter deeply
uncertain: Who is this worker of miracles, this clairvoyant and master of the game of cat
and mouse?
The Guru as Father God
The
answer to that question has been answered by Sai Baba himself: »I am the omnipresent,
almighty, and omniscient.« Asked about the time between Krishna and himself, he replied:
»Time? I am Krishna! Where is time?« One interview reads:
Swami, you are reported as saying on Christmas Day 1972,
that Jesus said: .He who sent me among you will come again. His name will be truth (sathya).
He will wear a blood-red robe. He will be short, with a crown (of hair).« Does that
mean that it was you who sent Jesus into incarnation? With ineffable simplicity, in his
soft, gentle voice, Swami nodded and said, »Yes.«
In a word: Sathya Sai Baba knows himself as God the father
or as »the embodied, omnipresent divine principle without limits,« respectively. »The
whole universe is in the palm of my hands,« quoth he.
More sophisticated, yet no less pretentious, rings the
answer of Sai Baba in Indian religious language. He interprets his own name as »divine
Mother« (Sai) and »divine Father« (Baba) of all things. He is the
»Embodiment of Shiva and Shakti,« that is, the divine in its masculine and feminine,
active and passive aspects. He is, after Krishna, the second »integral avatar« (purna
avatar) and unites in himself all the attributes of an avatar in contrast to earlier
avatars who exhibited only a limited number of those characteristics. Avatara literally
means descent of the divine in animal or human.
The Sai Trinity
Sathya Sai Baba sees his own work in connection with an
»avataric design,« a »trinity« or »continuity of three Sai incarnations,« in which
he himself stands in the middle: Shirdi Sai, Sathya Sai, and Prema Sai. Shirdi Sai is a
historical person, a Fakir who was revered by many Hindus and Muslims as a saint and who
called himself Sai Baba. He worked in Shirdi, in the west Indjan state of Maharastra, and
died there in 1918. Holy ashes played an important role with him, too. Sathya Sai from
Puttaparthi regards the Sai Baba of Shirdi as »his previous body,« himself as Shirdi
Sais reincarnation. Sathya Sai himself, according to his own testimony, will live to be 96
years old and thereafter reincarnate anew as Prema Sai, who wiIl be born in the Mandya
district of Karnataka (previously the state of Mysore). In his »previous body« as Shirdi
Sai, Sathya Sai laid the foundation for his spiritual mission, namely, to bring about
Hindu-Muslim unity. His present task as Sathya Sai is to raise the edifice on that
foundation, that is, in directing his new universal religion which he calls Sai religion.
It represents the essence or the extract of all religions. As the coming Prema Sai, he
will at last »set the spire soaring to heaven« on that structure. The avataric design
aims toward a unification of all religions.
That is symbolized in the buildings of the various Sai
centers, above all in the Sarva Dharma Prem Aikya stupa of the Bombay center. That
slender column, with a spire in the shape of a lotus and words from the holy scriptures of
different religions chiseled at its base, is meant to express »The unity of all religions
in love«--that love which Sathya Sai Baba himself personifies. »All religions are
mine.« That claim further expresses itself in the emblem of Sathya Sai's religion: around
the center picture of a lotus lie, as petals, the symbols of Hinduism (the mantra OM), of
Buddhism (a wheel), of the Parsi religion (fire), of Islam (star and half moon), and of
Christianity (cross). The Sai motif, by the way, is also found in the formula »Sai
Rama,« which is used as Sai Baba's surname, as a mantra for the purpose of meditation,
and as salutation (as in ISKCON you are greeted with Hare Krishna).
The Evolution of an Avatar
Now just who is this tricky guide of souls, miracle
worker, and founder of a religion? He was bom on 23 November 1926 in Puttaparthi as
Sathyanarayan Raju, fourth child of a theatrically talented father who, in his own youth,
also distinguished himself in that region. In 1940 Sathyanarayan was bitten by a
scorpion--according to a later version, he voluntarily left his body in order to help a
devotee in need--and behaved so oddly thereafter that his parents consulted an exorcist.
Two-and-a-half months later, at 13 years of age, he materialized sweets and flowers,
declared »I am Sai Baba,« namely, the Sai of Shirdi, and asked the gathered crowd to
worship him every Thursday. Shortly afterwards, he threw his schoolbooks out of the house
and left his family.
Already by the end of a further 10 years, on 23 November
1950, Prashanthi Nilayam was established. In 1961, when the number of his
supporters had grown substantially, Sai Baba inaugurated the »Sathya Sai Era«. In 1965
he had Vedic sacrificial rites performed by Brahmins and founded an academy for Vedic and
Sanskrit studies. In 1967 he held the first »All India Conference of Sri Sathya Sai Baba Seva
Samitis« (service committees); in 1968, accordingly, the world conference. In
that same year he visited his followers in East Africa (he has never been to the West) and
established a College for Women in Anantapur, India. In 1972 the first »Summer Course in
Indian Culture and Spirituality« took place.
The development culminated finally in the proclamation of
the Sai religion on the first of October 1976. The English draft of the announcement
concludes with the invitation:
All you who have entered the Sathya Sai Organisation, if
anyone asks you what is the religion of Sathya Sai and of Sathya Sai Organisation, you
must have the courage and the determination to say with one voice that the essence of all
religions is the religion of the Sathya Sai Organisation.
The German version tones that down: »This is the Sai
Religion which nourishes and fosters all religions and which emphasizes their common
greatness.«
The first foreign centers arose in the USA through the
initiative of individual women and men who had visited Puttaparthi during the mid-'70s and
had become Sai Baba's devotees. By 1979 there were, according to official statements,
3,800 committees in all of India, over 10,000 Bhajan Centers for the cultivation of
religious singing, nearly 20,000 trained members of service groups (Seva Dal), and
over 35,000 students in Sai religion's own school program (Bal Vikas). The
total number of followers at that time was said to be over two million.
Activities
The many activities of Sathya Sai Baba's organization
rarely offer something new and innovative; rather, they proffer a cluster of commonly
familiar religious and social functions. They are categorized by Sai Baba under four
rubrics: cultivation of the Vedas (the classical religious literature) and of science;
protection of bhakti (devotion) and dharma (the eternal order which is
looked upon as the duty of the avatar to reestablish). The performance of Vedic
sacrificial rites, as previously mentioned, indicates an agreement (a coming to terms
with) with Brahmin orthodoxy. The common singing of bhajans (religious songs) is,
in India, extremely popular: public mantra singing (nagar sankirtan), as promoted
by the Sai Baba groups, is widespread among the devotees of Krishna, as one can see, for
example, in the Hare Krishna movement.
Along the line of reformed Hinduism lie the
endeavors toward training and education (above all for women) and religious peace between
Hindus and Muslims. Furthermore, the Sai religion seeks to activate the laity to voluntary
service and to create organizations in which members from different castes can come
together. For all of those activities to be bundled together, a dynamic point of
crystallization is needed, and a guru like Sathya Sai Baba is exactly that.
Forms of Meditation
>Sai Baba's recommended meditation practices also
remain within the customary scope: in the mornings and evenings half an hour of sitting
meditation is the rule for the average, working devotee. A sound (mantra), a picture of
the divine (Krishna, Rama, Jesus, or Sai Baba himself), or a light can serve as the object
of concentration. In the meditation upon candlelight (jyoti upasana), the light
should move, first of all, in to the heart, then to other parts of the body, and finally
to the crown of the head. From there the light itself can expand to people and animals,
friends and foes, and finally the whole universe. »To expand beyond self and see that
your light is the light of the universe is liberation.« In the concluding phase of
meditation, the light should be brought back again to the heart and be held there the
whole day. That meditation can be enriched with religious songs and the »recitation of
the name of the Lord« (for example, the name of Rama, Sai Rama, Krishna, or Jesus).
With respect to more demanding meditation
methods such as Tantric kundalina yoga, Sai Baba externally advises against them. In the
immediate circle of devotees around him, however, they are practiced and probably serve
also in gaining paranormal powers (siddhis). Sai Baba himself is said to have
possessed those powers since his birth and hasn't needed to meditate or to practice
ascetic exercises. Tal Brooke, an American who once belonged to the inner leadership
circle of Sai Baba's movement, has reported on the internal meditation practices which
serve to awaken the serpent power (kundalini) and lead it ever upward to the crown
of the head. The lower chakra, the seat of the serpent power, rests near the genitals, and
Brooke was appalled that Sai Baba busied himself with these exercises to stimulate not
only his genitals but those of other meditators. For the broader membership, however, Sai
Baba recommends the »easier way« of devotion to God (bhakti). His followers consistently
refer to themselves with the English word devotee, which means one who practices bhakti.
Devotion to God is put into effect concretely in submission to Sai Baba himself. The guru
worship is valued as the shortest and surest way to liberation from the circle of
reincarnations.
Functions of the Guru-Avatar
Let's pause a moment and try to understand the process
that began with the birth of Sathyanarayan Raju and culminated in the emergence of the Sai
religion. From the psychological perspective, the question is posed how such a
superiorally inflated self-assertion and presumption can emerge that goes even beyond the
limits of the traditional Indian guru image. To be sure, the Indian image of the gurus is
not static, rather it has changed and broadened. The private religious teacher of ancient
times has, through many intermediate stations, turned into the guru as sect leader, as
founder and leader of a religious mass movement in which the average member rarely finds
personal contact with the master. That does not exclude, of course, that that member
experiences (even from a distance) a relationship with the guru and a bond with him that
surpasses in intensity all other human relations. Members believe themselves to be loved
by the guru, understood, led step by step, and directed to the final goal.
For those to whom their own religious
tradition appears stale and empty (that is present not only in India but even more so in
the West), the encounter with a powerful, »charismatic« guru provides new experiences,
and they are told that those experiences are exactly that which their own religion should
have supplied them with but failed to do. One function of the guru consists in recharging
and revitalizing the religious traditions which have become powerless, or are perceived as
powerless, with his energy. When Western pilgrims return from an Indian ashram laying
claim that now, for the first time, they have experienced and understood who Christ really
is and what he had intended, exactly that recharging of Christian terms and ideas has
occurred. (Naturally, that is also a reversal of poles from the standpoint of the Hindu
meanings as well.) It should give us pause to think that frequently the healthy and
diseased from the West, only upon meeting an Indian guru, pass through such heart- and
soul-seizing religious experience.
In addition, many contemporary Indian gurus,
especially Sathya Sai Baba, lay claim to a harmonizing, quasi-ecumenical function. By
representing their own, often greatly simplified teachings as the essence of all
religions, they reach all those who feel unable to comprehend the traditional differences
between religions and confessions and are on the lookout for synthesis. In India the need
for structures that transcend the caste boundaries is an additional factor. Many modern
guru movements represent such a structure by enabling people from various castes, at least
ideally, to come together without fear of discrimination. A man like Sathya Sai Baba, with
his totally non-Brahmanic appearance, seems particularly suited for that function. The old
Indian yearning for unity finds visible fulfillment in the form of a guru who stands
beyond caste and confessional boundaries.
The Guru-Avatar as Religious Founder
The ardent desire for living religious experience and
religious unity gives every guru who has the requisite personality--however it may be
assessed--a chance and the power to bring about that synthesis. (The fatherless society of
the West is in no way an adequate explanation for the emergence of guru movements.) In the
last century it was Sri Ramakrishna who was, not by chance, worshiped as avatar, although
some members of the Ramakrishna Mission considered that going too far. Later gurus have
had less and less restraints to give full expression to their epochal self-assessment. The
last decade has brought an inflation of avatars, Perfect Masters of a new era. Not only
the Western, but the worldwide (above all the Indian) need for revitalization and
unification of religious traditions brings forth such guru-avatars, and in each of them
lies hidden a potential founder of a religion. Older examples are the masters of the
Radhasoami Satsang and the Ruhani Satsang. Two newer examples are the religions of
Rajneeshism, which grew from the Bhagwan movement, and precisely the Sai religion with the
»integral avatar« and father God on top. It is less a question of individual
self-assessment than the willingness to take up the avatar's robe from the dust of the
Indian road and the ability to wear it with the dignity and roguishness required. In the
case of the masters of the Radhasoami tradition such as Kirpal Singh one notes the
dignity; with Rajneesh and Sai Baba, in comparison, rather the roguishness.
The restriction must be appended, of course,
that the majority of these new guru religions bring forth little newness with regard to
content. It is essentially the old assertions bearing the imprint of Hinduism in a
simplified, comprehensible form and with a new centering on the guru as savior. They are
»essence religions« of a synthetic, artificial appearance. The essence of the Sai
religion reads: »There is only one God. He is omnipresent. There is only one religion,
the religion of love. There is only one caste, the caste of humanity. There is only one
language, the language of the heart.«
Outwardly, these guru religions do not define
themselves exclusively. They want to superimpose (in the sense of fulfilling) the other
religions, not supercede them. More or less outspoken, they advocate a double membership:
outwardly in the inherited religion, on the esoteric level in the proper guru religion.
Hinduism can tolerate the guru religions in its midst; yea, it lives, to a considerable
extent, from the powers which they continually supply. But the relation between
Christianity and the guru religions is quite a different matter.
Seen Through a Christian's Eyes
What Sai Baba's »miracles« are all about is, from a
distance, difficult to pass judgment on; from immediate contact, of course, still more
difficult, for this master is surrounded by an atmosphere of solid belief in miracles in
which it is almost impossible to keep a critical distance. Miracle is faith's dearest
child and so faith in Sai Baba produces an abundance of rarely verifiable reports of
miracles. The art of »materializing« things with a wave of the hand is something trick
artists also hold in their power. A chemical analysis of Sai Baba's holy ashes has shown
that they are composed of aromatic sediments of scorched husks of rice. Numerous diseased
men and women return from Puttaparthi unhealed or, at least, without permanent recovery.
Nevertheless, after allowing for all of
that--what may be interpreted as either swindle or the product of fantasy--there remains
in the eyes of a conscientious observer an unexplained residue. Many astounding reports of
cures are, in their authenticity, hard to shake. After all, demonstrations of amazing yoga
powers have been seen in India for a long time. Also, the oft-reported ability of Sai Baba
to see through people clairvoyantly could belong to that yogic capability, although Sai
Baba's devotees deny that and speak, rather, of the innate power of the master. That is a
question which parapsychologists would like to clarify. More important is the obvious fact
of the matter: many of Sai Baba's miracles are carefully calculated in terms of their
timing and psychology and, therefore, aim to stun the potential disciple to put him or her
off balance and, in that way, win over his or her doubt and resistance. They are part of
the aforementioned puzzling games and the building of a personal relationship in which Sai
Baba holds all the strings in his hand. Therein they distinguish themselves clearly from
the miracles of Jesus which served, for the most part, to put an end to human need. (By
the way, the miracles of Jesus are not in any way that which made him Christ and Savior.)
It is important to see through Sai Baba's purpose in making people defenseless through his
demonstrations of power. They are proselytizing miracles that should cause the potential
devotee to accept Sai Baba as father God and »integral avatar.«
In a Christian's ears that claim must
doubtlessly ring blasphemous and unacceptable. Of course, Sai Baba, like other Indian
gurus, limits or qualifies his claim by conceding to his devotees: you also are God.
According to Hindu understanding, every person carries within him- or herself potential
divinity and has only to realize that potential. This also stands, of course, in
irreconcilable opposition to the Christian view of man in which the person--body, soul,
and spirit--is a creature of God, not a potential or realized god. The claim of Sai Baba
is the absolute top, the unsurpassable zenith of self-assessment of modern Indian gurus,
which finds its expression in the formula »I am God.«
Traditional Hinduism started from the
assumption that divinity in its highest form, namely, without attributes and without
limitation, forfeits some of its quality when it appears in human form on earth. Sai Baba,
however, describes himself as »divine principle without limitations«; that means as
divinity in its highest form. In general, Sai Baba's self-assessment is inconsistent
vis-a-vis Hindu measurements as well. A perfect liberated being is supposed to have
concluded, once and for all, the cycle of reincarnation. How then can a liberated person
like Sai Baba of Shirdi incarnate himself in Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi and he then in
Prema Sai? And how can Sai Baba simultaneously be an avatar and the one who has sent Jesus
as avatar?
A guru of Sathya Sai Baba's type represents a
post-Christian form of Hinduism which has erected an insurmountable wall to the Christian
faith. This type of guru presents himself consciously as substitute Christ. He replaces
Christ and is, in that sense, an anti-Christ. The Greek prefix anti means, principally, in
place of, instead. It signals that one will substitute for the other . Hinduism as such
can and should not become characterized as anti-Christian. In guru avatars like Sai Baba
this religion displays, nevertheless, an anti-Christian potential that can also have the
effect of attracting Westerners.
In the meantime, however, there are indications that the
notion of Sai incarnations has a tendency to proliferate further. In a small village in
the vicinity of the northern Indian state of Nasik, Vital Baburao Bodke (a 20-year-old
man) declared himself in 1981 to be the reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi. Perhaps still
others will feel a call to take up from the dust of the Indian highway and wear the ample
Sai Baba robe and present themselves to humanity in it.
Dr. Reinhart Hummel has been director of the Evangelische
Zentralstelle fur Weltanschauungsfragen in Stuttgart since 1981. Previously, he had served as a pastor in
Schleswig-Holstein, as principal for seven years of a theological college in Kotapad,
India, and researcher on guru movements and Eastern religions at Heidelberg University.
Dr. Hummel visited the Sai Baba center in Bombay in 1981.
The original German version of this article first
appeared in Materialdienst der EZW, 47 Jahrgang, 1 February 1984.
Translation by Linda W. Duddy is reprinted by their permission.