There is no contraption: Sathya Sai Baba and the Spitball, Part 3

Here are links to the first and second parts of this essay.

Sathya Sai Baba in his mid-50s, during the time I stayed with him, 30 years ago

The white objects are letters he's holding in his hand. Many simply prayed to him for help but those who liked to put their requests and thanks to him in letters would offer them to him as he passed near them in the darshan line. He didn't accept all letters, which often prompted the authors to re-think and reformulate their request or decide that his answer to a request was "No" or "Wait."

The letter ritual also served a practical purpose. Silence was to be observed while Sai Baba gave darshan unless he inititated a conversation, which wasn't an easy rule to enforce if people sitting on the darshan line had a very urgent request. So instead of calling out to Baba, they could hold up a letter.

Regarding his hair style -- while it's unremarkable to moderns it scandalized Indian society in the 1940s and continued to do so for many years. By leaving his hair au natural, i.e., by refusing to slick it down with pomade or oil to hide that it was the hair of someone with African heritage, he was flying in the face of color prejudice on the Indian subcontinent, which first the Mogul rulers then the British Raj had exploited.

While the society that Sai Baba was born into in 1926 could accept Yogis, saints and 'miracle workers' who had swarthy skin, white or a tasteful shade of blue was (and still is) the color used to depict the skin of a god and human avatars of Vishnu, the god representing preservation, and the gods are never represented with frizzy hair. So Indians rolled their eyes in mortification and exasperation when the swarthy-skinned, frizzy-haired Sathya Sai Baba announced that he was the latest avatar of Lord Vishnu and the embodiment of the god of destruction, Lord Shiva, and in fact the embodiment of the lord of the entire freakin' universe.

If only the lord of the universe would use hair pomade, was the thought of many early Indian devotees of Sai Baba.

Yet Sai Baba's decision to leave his hair in its natural state shouldn't be seen as the vanguard of the 'Black is Beautiful' movement; it was to announce that he intended to restore what was beautiful about the ancient past -- a past in which sages didn't pay attention to the state of their hair.

A good metaphor to describe India when Sathya Sai Baba arose is the story of how residents of a village called Harappa used perfectly uniform bricks they found lying around in some old ruins to build with. The same bricks were found and used as ballast in 1856 by the British engineers John and William Brunton, who were tasked with laying the East Indian Railway Company line connecting the cities of Karachi and Lahore.

Those bricks and those old ruins turned out to be part of the incredible Indus Valley Civilization. Serious excavations didn't start until the 1920s but as more of the civilization was dug up linguists, historians, archeologists, anthropologists, religious activists and everyone else with a nag in the race squabbled about the enthnicity, language, religion and genesis of the civilization. (The squabbles continue to this day.)

The use of building materials from an ancient civilization to shore modern structures was the story of India's life, where the artifacts and rituals of ancient times were manifested in the present but with their true meanings long forgotten.

The task is always to rescue the best of the past and leave behind the rest. Yet this restoration project takes precise knowledge of the ancient truths and the ability to demonstrate to human nature that amidst the riot of wise men and religious sects, all purporting to possess the truth of truths, the restorer has the requisite knowledge. Human nature, which delights in deflating a know-it-all, is not as easy a sell as many would believe.

Once, a ranking monk in a Vajrayana Buddhist lineage mocked Sathya Sai Baba's materialization of objects. The monk told me that any garden-variety Yogi could perform the same feats. Then, waving his hand in imitation of the circular motion that Sai Baba often made to presage a materialization he told me, "I can do the same things if I practice."

Let him try to practice this:

Pandemonium in the Abode of Perfect Peace

When all the chits had been drawn a volunteer nodded at me after I showed that I held the chit with Number 1. I stood and the rest in my row followed as another volunteer ushered me onto the temple grounds to the Block A area I described in the first part of this essay. Block A was formed at a right angle to the temple. As I was the first person in line there would be no one sitting on my right. I sat down cross-legged on the sand. Lynn, who'd been the second person in line after me, took her seat to the left of me. Then we waited for the rest of the darshan lines to enter the grounds and settle themselves.

"He's looking at you," whispered Lynn.

That he was. After walking out of the temple Sathya Sai Baba had spent an unusually short time speaking with visitors seated on the temple's verandah, then he'd turned and looked straight at me. Then, instead of heading for the men's side of the darshan lines as was his usual routine, he'd stepped off the verandah on the women's side. Then with an exaggerated slow walk he'd headed in my direction, his jaws working.

Lynn hissed, "What's he chewing? Betel nut?"

"No."

Sai Baba's cheeks distended as he worked his tongue around what was clearly a big wad of something in his mouth, while all the time he slowly sauntered toward where I was sitting.

Lynn giggled, "Oh no!"

"Oh yes."

"He wouldn't!"

"Yes he would."

"You still have time to leave," she whispered.

"I'm not going to let him run me off the darshan line; besides, he'll just clip me in the back with it if I turn and run."

"What are you going to do then?"

"When he throws it I'll fall to my right," I whispered. That meant the woman behind me would get the spitball between the eyes but that would be Sai Baba's problem.

Sai Baba's saunter had slowed to a snail's pace as he busied himself with the wad in his mouth, which seemed as big as a golf ball. I began to lose my nerve.

"I can't watch this anymore or else I'm going to run," I whispered to Lynn. "Do me a favor. I'm going to close my eyes. When he starts to throw the spitball say, 'Duck!' and I'll fall out of range."

"Okay."

"Make sure you watch him like a hawk because he'll be quick with the throw."

With the plan in effect there was nothing to do but wait.

"It looks like he's finished mashing it up."

I hadn't asked for the blow-by-blow but I didn't want to distract the lookout by saying anything.

"He's raising his arm. Now he's putting his hand to his mouth -- DUCK!"

I flung the upper part of my body onto the sand to my right but I wasn't quite quick enough. I still had my eyes shut but I could feel the spitball, which felt much smaller than a golfball, bounce off my shoulder and land in my lap.

At that second a bird flew directly above and dropped what must have been a terminal load of diarrhea on my head.

As the runny poop oozed onto my face I tried, all at the same time, to shriek for help, shriek at Sai Baba and shriek at Lynn to get the spitball off me.

I was dimly aware that pandemonium had broken out in Block A as everyone tried to discover what was happening in the front row of the darshan line.

"This isn't a movie! I am going to be blinded by bird shit -- get that spitball off me," I yelped with my eyes still squeezed shut.

The darshan line sprang into executive action. Lynn grabbed the spitball and I felt myself being lifted by several hands then led off the temple grounds amidst much sympathetic clucking. I was led to a fountain, where Indian ladies took turns sacrificing clean handkerchiefs to the chore of cleaning the shit off my face while I vented my rage.

"The lord of the universe is a two-year old," I sputtered. "This explains everything."

"What's going on?"

Victoria's voice. Lynn started to explain then the laughter she'd been struggling to swallow burst into gaffaws.

"It's not one bit funny. Throwing a spitball at an innocent woman on his own temple grounds," I snapped.

Through laughter that sounded oddly close to sobs she cried, "Here is the spitball Sai Baba threw at you. Look at it! Look!"

When I wouldn't open my eyes she grabbed my hand and thrust something into it while crying out, "Look! It's candy! A sweet for the sweet!"

I opened my eyes a slit. There was a piece of candy in a prettily-decorated cellophane wrapper.

"Was there any spit on it?"

"There was no spit on it! He must have palmed it or materialized it at the last second," she cried. "There was no spitball! He faked you out," and with that she doubled with laughter. The laughter was tinged with an emotion I couldn't place.

Lynn and Victoria walked me to my room then I agreed to meet them at Raju's after I'd cleaned myself up.

From one nonexistent spitball many lessons

As I washed my hair, bathed and changed into clean clothes I pondered the incident on the darshan line and reviewed the events leading up to it.

Victoria had arrived late for darshan, as usual, and as usual stood behind the low wall that separated Block A on the temple grounds from the rest of the ashram. But by then people in the back rows of Block A had jumped up to see what was happening at the front, blocking her view.

So by doing things her way and flouting the rules for darshan attendance she'd missed out on an incident which involved her to some extent. Moreover, she'd missed seeing Sathya Sai Baba in a very rare mood. During his youth he'd been a prankster but while he'd retained his sense of humor he'd showed it less and less on the darshan lines in recent years.

More importantly, she had missed the satisfaction of seeing that Sai Baba had agreed with her point that my joking had gone too far. Just as I'd told her that I'd only been joking about throwing a spitball at Sai Baba, so he'd demonstrated during the morning darshan that he was only joking about throwing a spitball at me. Yet he'd given a graphic demonstration that such misplaced and malicious joking could have untoward results.

Victoria also learned from hearing about the incident that her view of Sathya Sai Baba needed revising. She'd spoken of his physical form as a mere place-marker for the divine and dismissed as boring his daily interactions with people. Because of those views she'd spent her time in India listening to second- and third-hand accounts of him, gleaning information about life in his ashram from insider gossip, and reading books about him.

So while Vicky knew a thousand stories about Sathya Sai Baba virtually none of her knowledge came from her own experiences with him. This meant she had gained little direct knowledge of the spiritual truths Sai Baba taught; she'd relied instead on the writings of mystics and philosophers to guide her.

And by refusing to interact with Sai Baba on a personal level, Vicky had robbed herself of the opportunity to establish trust in his judgment The ability to trust another comes from repeated interactions with the person. But her intellect had quashed her intuition and sapped her of direct experience, thus rendering her ability to trust Sathya Sai Baba into a very small and frail boat to carry her through the storms of life. Now her time with Sai Baba was coming to an end; family matters would soon return her to England.

Lynn for her part had learned from the morning's darshan that she'd assigned Sathya Sai Baba a role in her life that was not necessarily correct. Believing her Karma to be very bad, she'd decided -- on the basis of zero empirical evidence -- that the way Sai Baba would help her work through the pile of shit that her presumed bad deeds in past lives had created for her was to mete out punishment while she stayed with him.

My assumption that Sai Baba would punish me for being disrespectful had prompted me to take a defensive action with the result that I got pooped on. So, Lynn saw with her own eyes what could happen when one expected the worst from Sai Baba and acted in accordance with the expectation.

And her view of Sai Baba as an impersonal engine of justice overlooked the person she was in her present incarnation. She was clearly someone with enough conscience to fear the doing of evil and to so regret any presumed evil done in past lives that she meekly submitted to what she believed was her bad Karma manifesting in demonic attacks on her while she slept.

As with Victoria, Lynn's view of Sathya Sai Baba had very effectively limited his approach to her by creating a kind of false idol of Sai Baba and putting faith in it. On the darshan line that morning Lynn saw that the real Sai Baba was marvelously astute at distinguishing between a deed done with the intent to harm and a thoughtless deed. And that he was very creative at devising a punishment that precisely addressed a misdeed while recognizing the person's good qualities and true intentions. Thus, the candy. "Sweets for the sweet."

There was another lesson for Lynn in the incident although it was not immediately evident to me. The ax had fallen very close to her, so to speak. Lynn wouldn't have thought to disrespect Sai Baba by joking about throwing a spitball at him, yet she'd laughed at my joke and gone along with it because of her friendly feelings toward me. The friendliness had ended up making her a party to the incident.

Later I learned that Lynn had a tendency to ignore her better judgment in order to 'get along' with someone she was friendly with. This revelation was the best answer to her worry that Sai Baba would wreak punishment on her for evil deeds in her past lives. He could punish her so thoroughly it would wipe out all her bad Karma. But unless she made efforts to change, the tendencies that had led to the bad Karma would land her right back in the soup.

This was a point Sathya Sai Baba stressed in his teachings and gave as answer to people who pleaded that he intercede more in 'worldly' affairs to stop evil in its tracks. He said that the appearance of previous avatars had been accompanied by epic wars in which good and evil battled it out with much bloodshed. He said that this time around there was so much evil afoot that all were touched by it, so that the epic war was now within each person, with the heart serving as the battlefield if the individual struggled to improve his character.

He promised that just as the avatar Lord Krishna had served as the humble charioteer to General Arjuna in the epic war recounted in the Mahabharata, so he would use his vast powers to aid and protect anyone who made sincere efforts to reform his character.

I found several lessons for myself in the spitball incident. The one that rose to the top, but only in retrospect, was that I placed more stock in my intelligence and experience than anything else. This could be a very grave problem when I didn't leave room for considering factors I hadn't been able to predict.

I'd never heard of anyone on the darshan line getting pooped on by a bird. Those were very respectful birds, so to speak. And the bird that shit on me actually hadn't pooped on anyone in the darshan line; it was just that I'd thrown part of my body outside the line. Therefore, an event I couldn't predict had skewed my plan to dodge what I assumed was a spitball.

Given the precision of the bird's strike and the amount of poop and the context in which the strike occurred, this was not a random event; it was Sai Baba's leela. The leela was a dramatic illustration that I'd thought of everything by way of evasive action except what I would have deemed an extremely unlikely event if I'd thought about it. Yet the likelihood of the event was so remote I hadn't thought about it.

For reasons I didn't understand at the time, Sathya Sai Baba was determined to get that particular lesson across to me, and he repeated it in variations throughout my time with him. Twenty years after the spitball incident, at a moment that was beyond the eleventh hour -- at one minute to midnight, so to speak -- I suddenly grasped the full import of the spitball incident and the lesson about the peril of discounting the unlikely in certain situations. Thus, a great tragedy that would have involved many people was averted.

The Macrocosm in the Microcosm

There were generic lessons embedded in the spitball incident as well. And it served as a demonstration that Sathya Sai Baba could compress the macrocosm of his teachings into the microcosm of a mundane event, and that he could do this without recourse to dogma. This allowed very different psychological types and intellects to benefit from the same teaching.

This was the way the wise ones taught in the old days, the really old days, before literacy. And even after writing came into existence they still didn't rely on the spoken word, which can so easily be misinterpreted by the hearer. They communicated teachings in the language of the heart, at a deeply intuitive level. No 'initiations' were required for such teachings, no transmission of special energy, etc. No faith in the guru was required; no dogma was necessary. All it took was the student's determination to pay close attention to the teacher and the ability to muster patience -- two qualities in shorter and shorter supply as the eras have unfolded.

This is not to say that Sathya Sai Baba didn't teach in words and writing. He spoke oceans of words over the course of his lifetime and wrote countless letters to devotees. But he taught me in the ancient tradition and anyone else who mustered the patience to learn in that way. In my case his teaching style was a great gift because eventually I met the person who would be my main guru is this lifetime and he spoke far fewer words to me than Sai Baba did.

In fact, that teacher made a Zen master look like a chatterbox. If you didn't get it the first time that was too bad. And there were no recordings, no video, nothing to download from the internet, no books, no chat rooms where you could ask others what they thought a teaching meant. So if not for the concentrative power and patience I gained by learning from Sai Baba I wouldn't have been able to benefit from the guru's teachings.

(The guru looked as Lynn had described him, for those who read the second installment of this essay.)

And as with Sai Baba, when my time with that teacher was up, it was up. In the old school, there was no hanging around the guru for decades, asking for ever more teachings while not bothering to absorb even Lesson One.

Sathya Sai Baba had many functions in addition to teaching, yet time and again I heard people on the darshan line ask him for a teaching. Darshan was one big school, and class was always in session from the moment Baba stepped out of the temple.

There is No Contraption

The next morning Victoria joined Lynn and me on the darshan lottery line.

I couldn't resist saying, "Welcome to the party."

From that morning on, Vicky sat in the darshan line along with the rest of the proles. It was a good thing she did. Sai Baba's rare mood continued for a few weeks, and during that time the men's side of the darshan line looked on in envy as the women's side rocked with laughter.

In those days at least, in that part of India, rural Indians didn't think much of laughing aloud; I think they tended to associate it with mental instability. But Sai Baba's evoking of uproarious laughter from the Westerners on the darshan line served to clue the Indians that the nutty Westerners were in his life to stay. So they might as well learn to laugh and bear with us.

I'll bring the tale of Sathya Sai Baba and the Spitball to close by telling two stories that involve Americans and one involving an Indian.

The first is an exchange between Baba and an American name Jack Hislop. He was a staunch devotee of Sai Baba's for many years and wrote at least one book about him with Sai Baba's blessing. He had many interviews with Sai Baba and was instrumental in establishing formal Sai Baba centers in the USA over Baba's initial objections.

One day Sai Baba said, "Hislop! Do you believe Swami is God?"

Jack replied, "Of course, Swami, you're God!"

Sai Baba shot back, "Then how is that when you're in America you think Swami is in India?"

The other tale concerns a husband and wife team of psychologists. When they learned about Sai Baba they watched all the films they could find about him with an eye to figuring out how Sai Baba was producing objects such as rings and necklaces, seemingly from thin air. The more they studied footage of him producing objects the more certain they became that he was performing sleight of hand.

Finally they decided to pose as his devotees and visit his ashram so they could attempt to learn exactly how he produced the objects and then expose him as a fraud.

Once they arrived at the ashram they made a huge fuss over Baba with the aim of gaining his trust. The more they did this, the more Sai Baba materialized objects around them. The more they saw the materializations the more certain they became that he was pulling off the trick with the help of a contraption he'd strapped to his right arm underneath his robe. Soon they could actually see the outlines of the contraption.

So to their delight Sai Baba soon called them for an interview. They whispered that they should make sure to get a seat on the floor of the interview room as close as possible to him. Then, when he materialized something one would grab his arm and yank up his sleeve and the other would grab the contraption.

Everything went exactly as they planned. They yanked up the sleeve, spied the contraption, then yanked it from his arm. So they didn't mind when Indian volunteers ordered them to leave the ashram; they left clutching the contraption.

Countless times I and countless other people watched Sathya Sai Baba bring forth objects while his sleeves were rolled up. Countless others and I saw him materialize objects at some distance to himself. But the husband and wife had gotten exactly what they'd wanted from Sai Baba: a worthless contraption. They left happy with that.

An old Indian man who tottered onto the Prasanthi Nilayam temple grounds one day had wanted much more from his visit to Sai Baba. He'd taken his seat on the men's side of the darshan line (this was before the lottery system was established) and sat in silence as Baba walked along the line. Baba didn't notice him.

After darshan ended the old man continued to sit. A volunteer approached and said he had to leave the darshan area so the sand on the temple grounds could be swept. The old man didn't move or reply.

Suddenly Sai Baba, who'd been on the temple verandah in deep conversation with some of his administrators, turned and saw the man.

Baba let out an exclamation then ran toward the man crying, "Your son is healed!"

The old man didn't reply but Sai Baba was so deeply moved that tears began flowing from his eyes and the purest white vibhuti ("holy ash") began flowing from his palms. The more Sai Baba cried the more the vibhuti flowed. The people who witnessed this were transfixed with wonder. They'd never seen so much vibhuti flow from Baba, not even during festivals, and they'd never seen Sai Baba cry.

The vibhuti flowed and flowed onto the old man and the piles of the white ash rose and rose, until the onlookers feared the old man would be buried under a small mountain of ash. Finally some of them gently told Sai Baba he had to stop crying. Making a supreme effort he got hold of himself and the vibhuti flow stopped.

Then he told volunteers to bring water and food for the man and give him a room at the ashram where he could sleep that night, and to give him money for his return journey to his home.

When the old man had been restored enough to speak, he told his story to the volunteers. His only son had been suffering from an incurable disease and was dying. Someone who stopped by to offer sympathy mentioned that he'd heard there was a wonder worker named Sathya Sai Baba in the south of India, in Andhra Pradesh state, who was rumored to be God incarnate.

The old man was very poor. He had no money for a bus ticket so he walked to Sai Baba's ashram in Puttaparthi, not stopping for food or drink or for rest for three days and nights, and all the while praying to God to keep him alive so he could ask the wonder-worker to heal his son. But when he got to the ashram he found himself too weak to do anything but sit down outside the temple.

When the old man returned to his home he found his son hale and hearty and completely cured.

Few of us can muster the faith of the old man who so greatly moved Sai Baba but I don't recall him ever asking anyone for that much faith. What I recall most is that Sathya Sai Baba staged a whale of a show to demonstrate that nothing we do, not the smallest act, not even a joke about throwing a spitball, takes place in an impersonal scheme.

He produced the play with the help of many Indian devotees of his who served as volunteers at his ashrams. The volunteers put up with a great deal from foreigners they knew didn't understand India's history and religious traditions. My hat's off to those volunteers.

Well I hope Noam Chomsky reads this essay someday, seeing how I wrote it for him. In any event I hope he doesn't die before realizing that there is no contraption; there is no machine, no box, no container, no limitations. There is no dividing up humanity according to the oppressors and the oppressed. There is just a dynamo humming underneath our daily awareness, always there, always there. It's a big help to ourselves and others if we learn to tune our inner ear to hear it.

Corrections and update to Sai Baba post

UPDATE AND CORRECTIONS - 4:20 AM ET, Tuesday April 26
From Rediff's series of short reports on Sai Baba's death, some corrections to information I pulled from other news reports posted on Sunday and posted here. According to Rediff:

> 6,000 police (not 10,000) had been deployed to help keep order.
> Sai Baba will be buried, not cremated. The burial will be in the hall inside Prasanthi Nilayam where he gave darshan.
> Whatever unrest in Puttaparthi in the immediate wake of the news of Sai Baba's death was either exaggerated by an earlier press report or very short lived. Rediff reports:

Meanwhile, the devotees who were extremely angry with the members of the trust for withholding information on Sathya Sai Baba's health, have now made their peace with the passing of the spiritual leader.

They now say that it was Baba's wish to stay on at the hospital for this long so that his devotees would not be shocked at the news.

Rediff also reports:

The manner in which the trustees, police personnel and volunteers have managed the rush of devotees -- who have flocked to the town to pay their last respects to Sathya Sai Baba -- is commendable. Not a single incident of unruly behaviour has been reported so far.
[...]
Inside Sai Kulwant Hall, where his body lies in state, at least 100 volunteers are managing the crowd skillfully. They are dressed in white shirts, trousers and a blue scarf inscribed with Om Sai Ram. These volunteers constantly urge the devotees to stick to their queues.

This comports with what I recall about the work of the volunteers at Sai Baba's ashram. There was never an incident of violence during even the largest festivals, and that the volunteers managed to feed and otherwise serve the huge crowds without incident during those times was something to behold.

Also of note is that the Dalai Lama has expressed his condolences about the death of Sai Baba; although his message is brief, that he made it public is extremely important for reasons that would be of interest only to those who keep tabs on the rocky course of Tibetan Buddhist-Hindu relations.
*********************

There is no contraption: The Tale of Sathya Sai Baba and the Spitball

Around 2 AM on Saturday I read a summary of a speech that Noam Chomsky had given in Amsterdam in March. I don't agree with Chomsky's politics or his unrelievedly negative view of American defense/foreign policy but I have a soft spot in my heart for him because of what he did decades ago to the Behaviorists and in particular the followers of B. F. Skinner. 

You would need to have lived through that era in the United States to know how close the Behaviorists came, with the cooperation of U.S. public school educators, at turning American public school students into Stepford Children. The Behaviorists, building on the research of Pavlov, had found what totalitarians had always sought: they'd discovered how to condition their human test subjects into adopting just about any kind of behavior they wanted to produce. Then they'd peddled their findings to the U.S. government and school systems.

By the time Noam Chomsky finished taking apart the theories of the Behaviorists, the field they'd come to dominate, psychology, had turned on them, and the U.S. government and school administrators had backed away from them.   

So I was alarmed while reading his Amsterdam speech to discover that Chomsky, the very antithesis of machine-like behavior, had in his old age constructed a kind of mental contraption in which the vast varieties of human experience were reduced to the Oppressed and the Oppressors.

Under ordinary conditions my reaction would have been to dash off a cutting essay for this blog but because of the inestimable service Chomsky rendered American schoolchildren I couldn't bring myself to do that. Yet I didn't want to let my observation go without remark. Chomsky is one of the most influential intellectuals in the world, and if he'd drifted into echoing the mechanistic Behaviorist outlook was something that needed to be pointed out in the public sphere.

So I put on my thinking cap. Suddenly I recalled a prank Sathya Sai Baba had played on me many years before. The recollection had come from the outfield but it would be a way to illustrate my point about Chomsky. After I'd slept on it I decided to ditch the idea. I had enough on my plate without receiving emails from devotees of Sathya Sai Baba informing me I was being disrespectful to him, Hindus who told me I was insulting their religion and clowns telling me Sai Baba was a fraud and a pederast. Noam Chomsky would just have to wait until I came up with a less incendiary way of driving home my points.

Around 2 AM Sunday I checked Google News one last time before calling it a day. One particular headline caught my eye. It referred to Sathya Sai Baba in the past tense.

"Must be a typo," I muttered.

That's how I learned Sai Baba had been gravely ill for weeks and had died that morning.

Now it was decision time. I didn't deserve to give him a proper eulogy and it would be up to others to attempt to detail the millions of humanitarian projects done over almost a century in his name or inspired by his example and teachings.

Nor could I be the one to explain what British-ruled India was like in the year of his birth or tell about Sathya Sai Baba's single-handed resurrection of religious traditions that centuries of British and Mogul influence had wiped out. His contributions in those areas would be for Indian historians to document.

What I could do was what I'd thought of doing: tell a story from my experiences with Sathya Sai Baba to illustrate that this realm is not bound by the laws of political discourse and that the human spirit is not circumscribed by victimhood.

To tell the story, however, I would need to turn back the clock to about 30 years ago, to a time when Puttaparthi was still a sleepy little village; a time when there was no airport, train station and "super-speciality" hospital serving Prasanthi Nilayam ashram; to a time before the grounds in front of the mandir (temple) at Prasanthi Nilayam had been expanded to the size of two football fields and paved over with marble and roofed.

This wasn't the earliest era at the ashram, when guest accommodations were just large sheds and Sai Baba freely walked the grounds and casually chatted with visitors. But it was a time when the formal, twice-daily darshan (in this context "seeing the ultimate truth, especially in the form of a holy person or divine figure") on the temple grounds was a simple affair. The crowds during the non-holiday times were still small enough that Sai Baba could easily interact with people sitting crosslegged on the ground in the darshan rows arrayed on the temple grounds.

It was also a time when a lottery system was instituted to determine who got to sit where on the darshan rows. When I first arrived the old seating system was still in effect, the old system being sharp elbows and scrimmaging.

The new system was part of the reality of the ever-growing numbers of people who were visiting the ashram. But it came about after Sai Baba, who lived at that time on the top floor of the temple, asked, "What is that thundering herd of elephants outside my window every morning?"  

Thus, the lottery system, to the great relief of the foreign devotees -- and in particular the Germans, who could not bring themselves to battle for seating position outside a temple, and so never got anywhere near the front of the darshan line until the lottery system.

The Indian villagers for their part were philosophical about the new system; after hogging the front line ever since darshan on the mandir grounds was first instituted, they were willing to put the matter of seating in God's hands.

I never took a camera to the ashram but I've found a photograph on the internet that to my memory seems pretty much the way the temple and darshan area looked like while I was at Prasanthi Nilayam. The photo helps set the stage for my story so I include it here. Because the temple grounds and the process of darshan played a significant role in the tale of Sai Baba and the spitball I'll go into some detail to describe both.




The circular construct in front of the temple is ornamental grillwork enclosing vegetation and Sai Baba's Sarva Dharma (all faiths) symbol. The circle also separated the seating sides on the temple grounds for males and females.  The gold-painted statue is of the elephant-headed god Ganesh, remover of obstacles.  

The area to the right of the circle in the photo was reserved for women; a part of the men's area on the left, which isn't shown, had some shade. The women's side had no shade, no matter what time of day.

It's not clear in the photograph but there was a veranda running the length of the front of the temple. It was there that schoolchildren and sometimes visiting VIPs were seated. People chosen by Sai Baba from the darshan line for an interview inside the temple were also directed to sit on the veranda until darshan ended.

The brownish stuff on the ground is packed sand that was swept by volunteers before people entered the temple grounds for darshan. Although Sai Baba left Prasanthi Nilayam during the hottest months, often by the time darshan got underway the sun had risen high enough that the unshaded area on the women's side was not unlike sitting in a toaster oven.

The blazing sun was hard on elderly women in frail health. This prompted me to write a letter of complaint to ashram administration, which eventually resulted in small roofed seating structures being built along the wall that marked off the darshan area on the women's side from the rest of the ashram. 

No umbrellas were allowed during darshan. But people were allowed to bring cushions and folded blankets with them for darshan, which gave a little relief to one's bottom from the scorching sand. The comforts were abused by some Westerners, who brought cushions as wide as boats in the attempt to eke out space on either side of their place on the darshan row; this so they didn't have to sit what was for a Westerner uncomfortably close to others.

The counter-tactic was Indian volunteers who walked along the darshan rows, glowering at the worst offenders, making scooching movements with their hands and hissing, "Move over to make more space for others."

If the space hogs didn't like being squished they always had the option of decamping to the back rows, and the real wimps could sit on chairs to the side of the darshan line.

However, all this adjusting and measuring of millimeters around one's personal space could include minor squabbles when people tried to advance their position by sticking their knees into the backs of the people in front of them or leaning on the back of the person in front.  This unsporting behavior on temple grounds sometimes resulted in Sai Baba not coming out for darshan.

Then everyone got to go through the entire routine at the next scheduled time for darshan, and the next, until enough people drew a connection between their rowdiness and Sai Baba's refusal to leave the temple.

I add that the veterans eschewed cushions, preferring to endure scorched bottoms for the chance to quickly advance if someone nearby gave up a choice position on the darshan line.

Just another day at the office at Prasanthi Nilayam, "the abode of perfect peace."

There was a low curving wall marking off the temple grounds where darshan took place. People left their footwear along the outside of the wall before proceeding to the grounds; this practice of shoe removal was only done for darshan periods.  

A large sandy area just outside the temple grounds is where the lottery lines formed for the women's side. (I can't recall where the men's side formed their rows.) When there were so many people in the ashram that the lottery area couldn't accommodate them, which happened during festivals, the darshan on the mandir grounds was suspended. Then the large Poornachandra auditorium was opened for darshan; seating there was on a first-come, first-served basis with hordes of volunteers present to maintain order.

The lottery system was simple: as people entered the area after breakfast or the afternoon snack they sat behind the person who'd entered before them. When one line stretched back so far, a volunteer directed the next person entering the area to start a new line.

When all the lines had been established the person sitting at the head of each line drew a chit from a bag held out by a volunteer. The number on the chit showed the order in which the line would proceed onto the temple grounds.

The formation of the darshan rows was split into two -- one formation of rows facing the temple and the other facing the opposite end of the mandir grounds. This arrangement provided the opportunity for two front rows. Thus, it could be hard to tell during the lottery drawing which number on the chit meant a front row seat.

Only those in Line 1, the first to enter the mandir grounds, were guaranteed a front row seat. This line made up the first row in the formation that faced the opposite end of the grounds. I'll call this formation Block A. Much else depended on the number of people in the ashram on that day and how long the lottery lines were. When the crowd was small, sometimes people on the Number 2 line hit it lucky and got to sit in the first row in Block A if there was still enough space in the front row to accommodate a few more people.

When the first formation filled up, the line with the next number got to form a first row in the formation facing the temple -- Block B. And so it went until the Block B formation filled up. Then everyone settled down to wait for Sai Baha to emerge from the temple.

His darshan walkabout varied, but in general he stopped first to speak with the people seated on the verandah. Then he proceeded to the men's side of the temple grounds, stopping sometimes to chat with a man, taking letters offered to him, blessing books or other objects held out to him, allowing some in the front row to touch his feet, and sometimes materializing vibhuti (sanctified ash) or objects such as rings and religious medallions, and choosing people for an interview.

The routine was repeated on the women's side. There were complaints from the women about being second, although sometimes Sai Baba reversed the process and visited the women's side first. But the women's side could take twice as long to visit as the men's side because the babies (both male and female) were with their mothers on the women's side.

Women would hold up their babies for a blessing, no matter how far back they sat on the darshan lines. Maneuvering the babies and their mothers to the front or side of a row where Sai Baba was standing could take time. And often he'd materialize talismans for the babies and mark their foreheads with vibhuti and talk at length with the mothers about the babies. Then he would talk with the mothers about their home situation in general, make vibhuti for them, and so on.

By visiting the women's side last Sai Baba could take more time with the women without keeping the men waiting -- a point the complainers didn't tend to consider.

That's all the technical details I can recall of the darshan process on the mandir grounds and I think that's enough detail for the purposes of my story. I'll add two points, the significance of which will become clear when the story gets underway:

> The person at the head of lottery line who drew the Number 1 chit would enter Block A first and would have no one seated on her right.

> The low curving brick wall was repeated on the Block A side; again, it separated a side of the temple grounds from the rest of the ashram. It was behind this wall that a woman I'll call Vicky was standing during a part of the story. So while she could see Sai Baba when he approached Block A, she couldn't see what was happening amongst the women in the first row of the block who were facing Sai Baba. Nor could she readily hear what was being said on the front row of Block A.

The details I've provided about the mandir darshan suggest that Prasanthi Nilayam wasn't so much a melting pot as a clash of cultures that was kept to a dull roar by Sai Baba's oversight and a small army of dedicated Indian volunteers. Prasanthi Nilayam 30 years ago was a microcosm of every problem arising from 'East meets West,' and every problem arising from the clashes between modern and traditional societies.

Indeed, one way to describe Prasanthi Nilayam in those days is to say it was in the vanguard of the globalized society.

But as more foreigners from myriad societies took their place among Sai Baba's devotees, the Indians had to learn to "move over and make more space." This caused great resentment, particularly among the villagers, who didn't see why the foreigners couldn't get their own Avatar of the Lord and leave theirs alone.

And the emerging urbanized Indian middle class of Sai Baba devotees, traditionally more tolerant of foreigners, also had to struggle with resentment, as its members saw Sai Baba becoming less and less available for interviews. They struggled, too, with worries that Prasanthi Nilayam and Hinduism itself would be overtaken by Westernization.

For their part the Western devotees, whose ideas of the divine and monotheism were vastly different from the Hindu ones, were put off by the way so many Indians treated Sathya Sai Baba as a household Hindu god.

Such Westerners didn't understand that Sai Baba was acting not so much in the manner of a Hindu god as in the manner of the ideal kings in the ancient world, who were bound by duty to grant a reasonable request put to them by any subject who approached them for help. Those kings did double duty as judges, as a reading of the Old Testament makes clear.

One of Sai Baba's most important functions among the Indians was to resolve disputes. Again, this was a chief function of kings in ancient times.  While both foreigners and Indians asked Sai Baba for healing from physical ailments, one line separating the Westerners from the Indians was that Westerners tended to approach Sai Baba in a quest for 'answers' -- whether answers to personal problems or spiritual questions -- whereas many Indians wanted his help in settling disputes.

There were striking exceptions; e.g., Westerners who'd made Sanskrit a lifetime study or were scholars of Indian history, but most of the Westerners who visited the ashram simply didn't have the knowledge to put the historical and religious significance of the traditions around Sathya Sai Baba in proper context.

That was okay with Sai Baba, who placed his teaching emphasis on character development and universal values. But the Westerners' dearth of knowledge about the ancient traditions that Sai Baba represented meant they tended to supply the context for him rom their own experience. For many of the American Westerners this worked out to a concept of Sai Baba that was a concatenation of New Age philosophies, pop American psychology and Judeo-Christian theology. This version of Sai Baba made no sense to the rural Hindus and even to many urbane Hindus, which also contributed to an undercurrent of tension at the ashram.

These gulfs in understanding say nothing about the resentments among followers of different Hindu sects who venerated Sai Baba but stayed with their own sect and its dogmas.

Add to this caste prejudices that lurked in even the most prosaic situations at the ashram, which Western foreigners in particular rarely noticed. Even the darshan lottery system had upset the caste ecosystem. No longer could a group of Indians shut out members of a lower caste from 'their' part of the darshan line.

Yet all the above doesn't begin to describe what the ashram was like. One part Canterbury Tales, one part Tales of the Arabian Nights; the human drama at its most sublime and wretched, its most silly and mundane, all worked into a tapestry of the mystery of the divine and its involvement with human affairs.

It's against this backdrop that my tale of Sai Baba and the spitball unfolds. Here I'll break off and take up the story in the next post.

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