There
are numerous books out now by devotees of Sathya
Sai Baba relating their experiences
with him, including
miracles. Likewise, any conversation with a group of
devotees will result in the most amazing stories from people.
Most of these
stories defy belief yet they are so common,
and related by such sincere people
that, even given a
tendency towards exaggeration, they are truly remarkable.
These are the miracles or other inexplicable phenomena that
I, my family, and
people I personally know say they have
experienced from Sai Baba (to the best
of my ability to
remember them). I can vouch for the accuracy of my own
experiences, and I am sure those conveyed by my family
are also true. As for
the rest of them, I don't personally
know. However, they are not unusual, no
matter how
remarkable they appear. The names of non-family members have
been changed to protect their privacy.
The first time I heard about this holy man, my twin brother in California called to tell me about a book he had read called, "Modem Miracles", by Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson of Iceland. It was an investigation into the paranormal phenomena associated with Sai Baba, and my brother told me I really needed to read it. After we hung up, I got out the Yellow Pages and called literally every book store, new or used, in the entire Washington DC metro area. I just had to have a book on Sai Baba, but it turned out that nobody had one. So I said, "Listen, Sai Baba, if you're who you say you are, then please get me a book about you." The next day, I was walking into my neighborhood supermarket when the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I knew I had to go to the comic book store also located in that small shopping center. As I walked through the front door, a wall was facing me, and on the floor was a stack of books. The top book was standing up and facing out towards me so that I couldn't miss the cover. It was "Sai Baba, Man of Miracles", by Howard Murphet.
Another strange event happened on Fathers Day, 1997. My son bought me a wallet as a present, and when he handed me the bag containing the wallet, I noticed there was a book along with it. The book was "Timeless Wisdom". My son said he didn't buy it, didn't go near a book store, and had no idea where it came from. I had been praying to Sai Baba asking how to be happy, and I suspected this was his answer. I figured that if I opened the book at random, a message would be there. So I did, and it turned out that there was a small section with quotes on happiness. Sure enough, I hit it and immediately read a quote from another Indian, Eknath Easwaran, to the effect that when your little ego is no longer concerned with being happy, then you are.
One morning as I was driving to work, I stopped at a light, and glancing to my left, saw what appeared to be a snake in the next lane coiled up with it's head up and waving around. Since I'm an animal lover, I was concerned that the snake would be squashed by a car, so I immediately got out of my car to rescue it. The snake turned out to be a piece of rope. Why the end of it was up and waving around was a mystery, since it wasn't windy that morning. Sometime after that, I read a quote by Sai Baba that said reality is like seeing a snake in the road and being frightened. But when you get closer, you realize it was just a harmless piece of rope.
Visiting Sai Baba at his ashram called Brindavan, near Bangalore, India, I was sitting in the front row, just behind some students. My daughter had just given birth to a little girl who had severe birth defects and wasn't expected to live, so mentally, I said, "Sai Baba, would you bless my daughter and her child." He immediately looked right at me making eye contact, nodded, and raised his hand in a gesture that means a blessing. So then I mentally said, "Would you also bless my sister-in-law and her children" with whom she was having great difficulties. Sai Baba then immediately looked at me again and did the same thing.
My mother had a couple of extraordinary experiences. She had always been in poor health for years, suffering from several maladies simultaneously. My brother called to say she had suffered a series of three heart attacks, and might not live. Since she lived in Yuma, Arizona, at the time, we agreed to meet in Las Vegas and rent a car for the drive to her house. It was the cheapest way to get there. My brother, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, went to get his flight and was told it was cancelled. Scrambling around the airport for another plane, he was told that the only one available went through San Diego, before continuing on to Las Vegas. Moreover, it was $200 cheaper than a direct flight! When his plane landed at San Diego, a couple of elderly ladies boarded and took seats next to him. Soon, they started talking about Sai Baba. My brother was amazed to hear this since it's rare to meet another devotee. So he introduced himself and they had a nice talk. They said they were psychics. As the plane was landing in Las Vegas, one lady turned to my brother and asked, "How's your mother doing now?" He was flabbergasted since he hadn't mentioned her. So he said, "Funny you should ask. I'm on my way to Yuma to see her because she's had some heart attacks." The lady replied, "Yes, we know. We're working on it." He about fell over. So he and I went to Yuma, and I had to leave earlier than he to go back to work. Meanwhile, my brother took our mother to Phoenix to get an angiogram to find out where the blockage was. The doctor came out and said, "I don't understand it. There's no blockage and no damage to the heart." It was like being shot and not having a bullet hole.
Another episode concerning my mother was when she entered a hospital for a biopsy on her lungs. I knew she was terrified that it might be lung cancer (which it was), so I offered a prayer to Sai Baba to comfort her. About two hours later, she called me, semi-hysterical, to say that Sai Baba had materialized himself, in the flesh, in her hospital room. She was standing up, so he took her by the shoulders and sat her down on the bed, where he just stared into her eyes for a little while. Then smiling, he disappeared. She thought this must be Satan coming for her, since it was obviously not Jesus. He kept coming to her after that in visions, and she would yell at him to get away from her. So he stopped coming. After that, my brother and I managed to convince her that anyone who preaches love for God is not likely to be Satanic, so she said, "OK, Sai Baba, if you love God, I have to love you too." She said he immediately materialized again and gave her the sweetest smile she had ever seen. Soon after that, she was home, and as she laid down on her bed, she went out of her body where she experienced divine ecstasy. Coming back into her body, the house smelled, she said, like Jasmine, which is Sai Baba's calling card.
My twin brother has had a number of interesting events. In one case, he was awakened at about three in the morning by a voice saying, "God is....", God is ", naming various attributes. But he was too groggy to remember what they were. Eventually, the voice kept saying over and over again, "God is all. God is all. God is all." Then an energy hit him and he said he felt like he was having a thousand orgasms all at once, except centered in the heart. He said the ecstasy was so intense he couldn't stand it, so he asked Sai Baba to cut it out. It stopped, but for the rest of the night, surges of energy would course through him causing him to thrash around in bed.
After reading the book by Haraldsson, my brother still didn't know what Sai Baba looks like, so he asked to be shown a picture. Soon after that, he was driving from the San Francisco Bay area to Yuma to see our mother. Passing through the Mojave desert, he decided to stop for the night, and spotted an old motel. Going to the front desk, he noticed a picture on the wail, so he asked the clerk who it was. He said, "Oh, that's Sai Baba."
My brother also relates several other stories. He said a friend, Fred, suffered periodically from kidney stones. On one occasion, the pain was excruciating, and nothing was relieving it, not even his pain killer Vicodin. Nor did his prayers help. My brother suggested he call on Sai Baba for help, and Fred was so desperate with agony, he agreed. As soon as the prayer was out, the pain stopped and never returned.
In another case, a young lady whom he supervised came to work despite being very ill with a high fever and a throat so sore she could barely swallow. Being a young, single mother, she couldn't afford not to come to work. My brother told her that as long as she felt she had to be there, she should simply lie on the cot in the back room, keep still and simply rest. She said that would be very boring, so he gave her a book on Sai Baba that he was planning to read at lunch. After reading the book for a while, she asked him if Sai Baba would cure her illness. Gerry suggested she simply ask, so she said, "Sai Baba, if you're for real, would you cure me?" Immediately, all her symptoms disappeared. She sat stunned for a few minutes, then burst into tears, saying she had to take a walk and think about what happened. The next day, she came to work and told my brother that it couldn't have happened, and must be some kind of fluke. Her symptoms then returned.
Gerry had a temporary assignment as a pharmacist in a neighborhood drug store. As he was filling the prescriptions, he mentally asked if he should visit Prashanti Nilayam, Sai Baba's main ashram. A few minutes later, the night pharmacist arrived, a Catholic, from Goa, India. Gerry mentioned that he was considering going to India to see Sai Baba, and she said that if he went, he was welcome to stay with her family in Bangalore, the city nearest Sai Baba's ashram. The next day, she said she mentioned Sai Baba to her husband, who came down with what I call the Sai Baba obsessions (like I had when my brother first mentioned him). Later, she asked what Sai Baba looks like, and Gerry said he would bring her a picture the next day. He then went to unload a shipment of paperback books, and seeing one on strange phenomena, idly opened it at random to find a picture of Sai Baba. He, of course, showed it to the other pharmacist, who was quite shocked. The next day, Gerry was sitting in his car, waiting to begin work, and was reading about Sai Baba finding someone's lost keys. He then went into the store to find the night pharmacist, the same lady from Goa, extremely upset. She said she lost her car keys and couldn't get home without them. Together they scoured the pharmacy, but the search was fruitless. Remembering the account of the lost keys in the book he had been reading, Gerry suggested she pray to Sai Baba for help. She said she couldn't as a Catholic, but asked him to do it for her. So mentally he suggested to Sai Baba that this might be a good time for a sales demo, and heard the lady shriek as the keys appeared on the counter in front of her.
Gerry is apparently sensitive to divine energy, or shakti, as it's called in India. On one occasion, he went to a bookstore where he knows books on Sai Baba are stocked. Upon approaching the shelf containing the Sai Baba books, he encountered an ever increasing flood of energy. He said it was like trying to walk into a strong wind. So he retreated to the sales counter and tried to tell the clerk that the Sai Baba books were emanating some kind of power, but his speech was slurred from the energy. As an experiment, he left the bookstore and was restored to normal. Going in again, the same thing happened as he approached the Sai Baba books. Oddly, when visiting other bookstores with Sai Baba books, the reaction didn't occur.
One of Gerry's friends is Jewish, but has an interest in Sai Baba. This man, Bob, has tales of his own concerning Sai Baba, but one concerned my brother. Bob was sitting in his easy chair not too long before his usual bedtime, when a book spontaneously flew off the top of the bookcase behind him and landed in his lap. It was the only book on Sai Baba that he had, and it was given to him by my brother. He was surprised, to say the least, but didn't know what to make of it. After retiring for the night, he had a dream which he said was a real as waking reality (a lucid dream). In it, Gerry appeared as Moses walking down from Mount Sinai with the tablets containing the Ten Commandments in hand. Suddenly, Sai Baba appeared, took the tablets and smashed them on the ground. He then told Bob to give Gerry a message. Bob asked why Sai Baba didn't just tell Gerry himself, and Sai Baba replied that Gerry wasn't ready to have psychic gifts. He then proceeded to give ten detailed commandments of his own concerning what Gerry should do in his life. Bob then woke up and wrote them all down verbatim. He said he couldn't forget the exact words even if he tried. Upon showing the list to my brother, Gerry was astounded to see those inner thoughts and concerns that he hadn't shared with anyone explicitly addressed in the list.
One of Bob's tales concerned his having just gotten a picture of Sai Baba during a vacation to Barbados. He didn't have a frame for it, so upon arriving home, he went to the garage to get in the car for a drive to wherever they sell frames. However, in the garage was a picture frame leaning against his car that fit the picture perfectly. In fact, it looked just like what he had in mind for the frame to look like. He had no idea where it came from.
My brother met a lady from the People's Republic of China, and started dating her. He never mentioned Sai Baba to her, but one day she said she had a dream in which a strange man in an orange robe and "afro-style" hair appeared and told her to believe in him as God. She didn't know what to make of it. Gerry went to get a picture of Sai Baba, and showing it to her, she was astonished to find out that it was a real person that had visited her.
This lady had another strange experience that concerned being pulled over by the police for doing 85 MPH on the freeway. Her difficulties were compounded by having an expired drivers license. When she asked the State Trooper for a reprieve, he said, "Tell it to the judge". While the cop was walking back to his car to make out the ticket after taking her expired drivers license, she prayed to Sai Baba for help. The trooper thereupon stopped, turned around, walked back and silently handed her the license. He then drove off without saying a word.
My brother's oldest son was working in a factory during a summer break, and realizing he had forgot his wallet and had no money, he spent his lunch hour wandering around the factory. He said he reached an unused portion of the factory and saw a dirty, old, metal cage with a rusted lock on it. For some reason, the lock fell open when he tried it, so he entered the cage. Noticing a box with Chinese characters on it, he opened it and found a thick roll of money. He was amazed, but decided that this was Sai Baba' s way of providing lunch money, so he carefully peeled three dollars off the roll, figuring that was all he needed, and went to buy lunch. As it is, he only spent two dollars, so he walked back to the cage to put the other dollar back. Taking it out of his pocket, he found it had changed into a $50 bill. He is quite certain it was a one dollar bill originally.
A person in our Sai Baba group, Ed, has many stories. One involved his needing dog food for his collie, and having only five dollars, he figured he might as well spend it to feed the dog. On his way to the grocery store, he encountered a beggar, and since all he had was the five dollars, he gave it to the man. Wondering what to do about dog food, he started back to his place. At that point, he said a five dollar bill appeared on the skin of his arm, and slowly came off. It was sort of yellowish in color, but it had actually emerged from his skin. He spent it on the dog food.
Ed also mentioned being in someone's home, and telling the couple who lived there that Sai Baba would never materialize money for a devotee (this before the previous incident). As soon as he said it, money started showering like rain out of the ceiling. He then heard Sai Baba's voice say, "Don't tell people what I will or will not do."
In many places around the world, a holy ash called vibhuti; sometimes exudes from pictures of Sai Baba. Ed was in the home of a woman who was complaining that vibhuti never formed on her pictures. Suddenly, vibhuti started shooting out of the walls like fountains and covered everything in the room with the gray ash. She had mixed emotions since she had just bought a new set of furniture.
Another person who used to come to our satsang until moving away, said that when she lived in Malaysia, she had become a Sai Baba devotee and built a small altar to him. She said that on Hindu holy days, vibhuti would come out of the wall and form the Sanskrit symbol for the word "Om". On Christian holy days, kumkum (a red powder) would then exude from the wall and form the shape of a cross.
A fellow in our satsang, John, went to visit Sai Baba at his ashram. At the ashram, there are large crowds (over a million people on his birthday), so they arrange everyone in rows according to a lottery system. John was in the back, and wondered how he could get close enough to deliver a bunch of letters from our satsang to Sai Baba who was walking by. He said the letters immediately disappeared from his hand and appeared again in Sai Baba's hand.
John also said that he did get the front row at the ashram on one occasion, and as Sai Baba walked by, he stopped and looked at John for a moment. John said he temporarily lost consciousness, and coming to, saw Sai Baba walking away. At that moment, vibhuti started coming out of John's arms, hands, and feet. The people sitting around John tried to grab it as it was being exuded, but couldn't. John then understood that he was to give the vibhuti only to certain people, so gathering it up as best he could, he put it in packets and distributed it.
Those are the stories I can remember for now. Some are obviously second and third hand, so I don't know how accurate they are given the propensity for exaggeration that most people have. However, there are many books out now that detail stories even stranger than these, so nothing listed here is beyond credibility.