RARE DISCOVERY!
Here is an editorial article from the archives of the New-York based magazine - The Newsweek - on Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba where the critical piece concludes on a note of awe and respect. The article was written in 1969!
Swami's glory spread so far, so quickly that even in 1969; USA's No.2 magazine carried an awe-filled and beautiful article on Him just before His 44th Birthday Celebrations.
Sadly, the article was not available anywhere on the internet. Thanks to a devotee, a scan of this paper, 44 years old, was obtained. The article and the scan are both presented here.
So, for easy reading a typed copy of the article is provided herewith for the convenience of all:
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Sathya Sai Baba:
Newsweek: Contents November 17, 1969:
RELIGION ………………………. 110
An Indian holy man builds a legend.
The God-Possessed:
When Sathyanarayana Raju was born, his mother recalls, the family tambura twanged of its own accord and a cobra appeared mysteriously beneath his crib. As a child, he showed mystic powers and a love of sacred verse. And one day when he was 13 years old, he returned home from school and told mother, a well-to-do matron in the village of Puttaparthi: “I am no longer your Sathya. I am Sai Baba. I do not consider myself related to you. My work is waiting. My bhakthas [devotees] are waiting. Good-by. Worship me every Thursday.”
With that, Baba left home to begin the life of a god-possessed holy man. His mother pleaded with him to come back, but it was too late; throngs of Hindus were already crowding around the youth calling him “tiny prophet,” “mysteriously prodigy and “God on earth.”
‘Divine’: Such events are not unusual in India, where thousands of self-pro-claimed gurus and holy men roam, begging for living and teaching their faithful. But Baba the god-possessed is unique. He claims to be “the Lord come in human form,” a reincarnation of Krishna, one of the major Hindu gods. And thousands of devout Hindus believe that the 42-Year-old, bushy-haired holy man with flashing eyes and a voice “like the sound of a bell” can perform miracles, heal the sick and project his mind through time and space. Each November, 50,000 Indians trek to Puttaparti to celebrate his birthday.
The former chief scientist in the government’s Ministry of Defense insists that Baba is “beyond the laws of physics and chemistry, a divine phenomenon, an incarnation.
Since he began leading the life of a holy man, Baba’s “miracles” have become legend throughout India. A leading lawyer swears that Baba cured him of Parkinson’s disease with a wave of his hand, and Baba is said to have walked along seashore at Cape Comorin in South India with prayer beads forming magically at his feet after each step. He reportedly produces the Bhagavad Gita and sandalwood statuettes of Krishna from the sand by magic, and once when travelling in a car that ran out of gas, is said to have turned a bucketful of water into gasoline. When a murderer appeared at his religious school disguised in holy garb, the story goes; Baba detected the villain immediately and told him: “Confess your crime. There is no escape.” And Charles Penn, and American pilot, insists that Baba miraculously appeared at his side during a crash landing in India.
Stroke: But Baba probably performed his most spectacular “miracle” in 1963 at his Puttaparti School. His doctors say he collapsed with a stroke and four heart attacks, and refused medical help for a week. Then he was carried into his prayer hall and miraculously cured himself before an audience of 5,000. Baba explained that he had taken on himself the heart attacks and paralysis of “a forlorn person,” since only he could survive them.
“You may call these miracles,’ says Baba, “but for me they are just my way. For me they are no mystery. They are part of my essential miraculousness.
Baba apparently showed the promise of divinity at an early age: as a school boy, he is said to have amazed his school mates by making pens, pencils and books materialize out of thin air, and once he held a teacher helplessly stuck in a chair with a mental whammy.
Today, Baba leads a colorful and comfortable life, rising before dawn to lead his followers in chants and religious songs, then withdrawing for meditation. He dines on milk and sweets, and each day selects several followers for interviews and counseling. Twice each day in the morning and evening – his students throng around him for a bhajan (religious song) meeting and burn ceremonial camphor sticks. Baba tells them to lead a clean life, observe strict silence, avoid gossip and study Hindu scriptures.
Unlike nearly all Indian holy men, Baba never accepts gifts or cash contributions.
Path: Westerners may remain skeptical about Baba’s miracles, but his skills as a minister and teacher are not to be lightly dismissed. Baba says his mission is dharma-samsthapana – restoring justice to the world, teaching men how to follow the ‘moral path.” Sometimes Baba’s advice is full of mystical double-talk, and sometimes he preaches the most threadbare platitudes. But occasionally he rises to the mystic simplicity that lies at the heart of Oriental religion.
“Do not fall so much love with the world,” he once said. “You find out the world is mad and foolish, full of crooks and cranks. Use the world as a training ground for liberation. Stand a little apart and watch both the play and the director with produces it.”
At bottom, Baba’s lasting appeal may lie not in his miracles or his claim to be Krishna reincarnated, but as one Indian Government official put it, in his “human touch, his ability to enter into the hearts of men and plant a seed of faith.” And that he surely has done. As one devout middle-aged woman put it; “He is my god. He is divine. What else do I want?”
Re-typed from the scanned copy of the Magazine Page by: Debasis Bera (Debasis Sai).
