35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

‘I AM ALWAYS WITH YOU’
and tennis shoes; dhotis with denim vests. Most looked as if they
also had American Express cards tucked away somewhere, too: Don’t
renounce the world without it.
‘Sai Ram,’ she said, hearing my plight.
A kindly old woman from New York with white hair and a
necklace made of large nuts offered to show me where I could rent
a room. Beyond the ashram walls, at the foot of a steep hill, I found
Nagamma’s Hotel: six ten-by-six-foot concrete rooms off a bare
corridor, sharing a toilet without running water and without any
fixtures or fittings except for a hole in the floor. The rent was five
hundred rupees a year. I handed over the full amount. I planned to
stay a year.
Who is Sathya Sai? This name is not the name of a body. It is the
name of the divine consciousness which is enthroned in the heart.
This consciousness is universal: it is there for all human beings,
not merely my devotees. Vishnu sleeps on Shesha, the great
serpent, in the ocean. Similarly, Sathya Sai sleeps on Sathya or
Truth. Truth, which is something universal, is the substance of his
bed. It is this truth, this principle of life that animates this body.
And this is how you must recognise the inner significance of all
persons and personalities.
– Sathya Sai Baba
Sathya Sai Baba was born Sathya Narayana Raju on November 23,
1926, to a family of pious Hindu farmers. By our standards, they
were comfortably middle-class. His brother and sister still, in 1974,
lived in the same little house off a dusty lane in Puttaparthi village.
They were their brother’s devotees now, but apparently enjoyed no
more privileges than anyone else in the ashram that had sprung up
on the outskirts of the village. They occupied their days more with
teaching, agriculture and animal husbandry than with devotions.
As a small child, Baba had exhibited magical powers, his school
friends reporting that he materialised sweets and other objects for
them out of thin air. In a land soaked with superstition and
supernatural yarns, these antics were a cause more for concern than
for celebration. The family called in exorcists and pundits, often
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