I think any person who comes to Puttaparthi immediately notices the stunning beauty of this place. Half of the villagers were Muslims, and the other half were Hindus. In the middle of the village was a tiny square, which has survived to this day. There were also several tiny old Hindu temples in the square. In the Islamic part of the village there was a small mosque, which has also been preserved.
I met devotees of Sai Baba who came to Puttaparthi in the fifties. They told me about how this place looked in those distant times. Almost everyone mentioned that it was extremely difficult to get from the nearest city to Puttaparthi, the wagons drove slowly along narrow and broken roads.
It does not matter where and how we begin our life path, but it is important who we are in essence.
6. Where Sathya Sai Baba is born and lives, everything begins to flourish and grow in prosperity.
Sathya Sai Baba incarnates where he sees fit. I thought a lot about this. Why did he decide to be born in Puttaparthi, in a place so unfavorable for fulfilling his great world spiritual mission? At first glance, it would be much more correct to be born in any large city, in a rich and influential family, but Sathya Sai Baba chose a different path. His parents were outwardly quite ordinary people, but appearances can sometimes be deceiving.
Sathya Sai Baba's mother, whose name was Easwaramma, dreamed of having a son and, in accordance with the tradition of her family, took a vow to perform the daily practice of the ancient Vedic ritual called Sathya Narayana Vrata, the ancient worship of the god Vishnu and the goddess Lakshmi. She performed a ritual every day in order to beg the Lord for a blessing on the birth of her son.
Subsequently, Sathya Sai Baba said that when he considered his incarnation on earth, he decided to be born in the family of Easwaramma, only for the reason that Easwaramma practiced Sathya Narayana Vrata with the deepest devotion. He saw the greatest spiritual power of this woman and her devotion with which she performed worship, and so decided to incarnate in her family.
People perform various spiritual practices, such as meditation and prayer, which no one may know about, even neighbors and relatives. Higher teachers, on the subtle plane, know about all the prayers that people perform in the depths of their hearts. What can be hidden from human eyes is revealed to the Lord, for the human heart is like an open book to God. The story of the incarnation of Sathya Sai Baba is one such example.
Sathya Sai Baba gives us the most important lesson in the history of his birth in Puttaparthi. This village was one of the poorest and most inaccessible places on earth. Any person born in such a place would be doomed to poverty and oblivion. People who are born and live in such conditions live their whole lives without any prospect of getting a good education and achieving social success. In Puttaparthi there was nothing but the most beautiful nature. The maximum that a person born in this area could count on, if he was lucky, was to get an elementary education and work all his life in rice fields or in petty trade.
Sathya Sai Baba, only due to his great divine power, became a strong magnet and attracted a huge number of people, many spiritual seekers, and gigantic financial resources. All this made it possible to build in his village the largest ashram in India, the best Indian university, a huge stadium, a modern hospital, an international airport, as well as supply drinking water to all neighboring villages. Truly, where Sathya Sai Baba is born and lives, everything begins to flourish and to flourish and prosper.
7. Little Krishna who settled in a small Krishna temple
From childhood, Sathya Sai Baba began to work miracles. He materialized sweets for neighborhood children, cured diseases, and sometimes even levitated. At first, his parents could not understand what was happening to their little son. All relatives and neighbors thought some strange spirit had moved into him, and they even tried to treat the boy for this so-called illness. Gradually, however, it became clear to everyone around him that Sathya Sai Baba was not an ordinary boy, and they began to treat him like a child with unique abilities.
One of the first significant miracles he performed was saving his village. At that time, the entire area was in the grip of a serious epidemic. The people of Puttaparthi were very worried that one day trouble might come to their house. The boy Sathya Sai Baba blessed all the inhabitants so that the epidemic passed by, and indeed no one fell ill in Puttaparthi, although many people were ill in the surrounding villages. This miracle made a great impression on all the villagers.
As a teenager, Sathya Sai Baba announced to his parents that he was a divine teacher. He said he should leave his home and start preaching. Sathya Sai Baba founded the first ashram in the late forties in a small Krishna temple located in the very center of Puttaparthi. This is a very ancient temple, which has survived to this day. The antiquity of this temple can be determined because it is located far below the level of all other buildings on this street. In order to get to the territory of the temple you need to go down the stairs. The design of the columns and stone carvings also indicate the antiquity of the structure. The temple is very small. Even a person of average height cannot stand up fully and they would need to bend down a little.
This Krishna Temple during Sathya Sai Baba's childhood was abandoned. With his friends, Sathya Sai Baba completely restored the temple and settled in it. It was in the ancient temple of Krishna that he began to receive his first visitors, who soon flocked to him for spiritual advice and healing.
In the fifties, not far from the village, at a distance of about two to three kilometers, Sathya Sai Baba founded his main ashram, which is called Prasanthi Nilayam, which means in Sanskrit – the place of the highest peace. In those years, impassable bushes grew on this territory and villagers tried to bypass this jungle side. It was a dangerous place where cobras and scorpions lived.
The first devotees, who came to this deserted place, were very surprised when the very young Sathya Sai Baba told them this place will have a large temple (mandir), a canteen, a post office, a shop, and large houses where hundreds of thousands of people from different countries of the world will stay.
People shyly listened to Sathya Sai Baba as he spoke about the coming greatness of this wild place. They did not consider it possible to doubt the words of their teacher, but they did believe with some difficulty. However, over time, all the predictions of Sathya Sai Baba came true and became a reality. I was lucky to hear stories about the founding of the ashram from the lips of those people who were direct participants in these events.
8. Sathya Sai Baba forbade the cobras to crawl into the territory of the ashram, and they went to the neighboring mountain
One of the big problems that the first residents and visitors of the ashram came across was the large number of cobras that lived in the area. Once a large cobra crawled into the ashram, frightening everyone present with its large size and hissing. Immediately, Sathya Sai Baba left his room and went to the place where the cobra was. He addressed her as if he were talking to a man and asked that all cobras immediately leave this territory and not dare cross the line as he indicated it to them. After that, all the cobras left the territory of the ashram and still do not cross the indicated line, although they could still be found outside this line.
In subsequent years, a small path was laid along this line, which ran along the border of the ashram. Many times, I passed through it and saw how the cobras crawled only in the permitted area, but never crawled into the territory of the ashram.
Believe me, these are not very pleasant meetings. On hot Indian evenings, I often walked along this dimly lit path to get to my room. Sometimes a characteristic rustling in the bushes was heard. There were cases when cobras showed themselves, but, nevertheless, they never violated and still do not violate the boundaries assigned to them. Cobras live on the mountain and do not enter the territory of the ashram.
I first came to Puttaparthi in 1993. At that time, it was already a fairly large ashram, around which a university was built, one of the best in India, two modern hospitals, a huge stadium, a museum of all religions, and even an airport capable of receiving international class aircraft. In those days, a small town grew up around the ashram, and this place could no longer be called a small poor village.
I was lucky that I traveled to Puttaparthi for twenty years,