The first time I saw a picture of Sai Baba in 1990 on the dashboard of a pick-up truck in Laguna Beach, California, I thought he looked like a New Zealand Maori. I said, “Who is that?” J, the owner of the pick-up and the manager of the apartment building where I’d just rented, said, “He’s Sai Baba.”
On hearing the words, Sai Baba, I nearly fell down onto the ground hit by the force of what I can only describe as a kick to my heart! It was not a slap. It was not a punch. It was a full on forceful Karate kick! Struggling to hold back the flood of feelings that were suddenly welling up inside me, I demanded, “What is he?” You see, I realized that something unseen and superhuman had produced that kick which had knocked the breath out of my lungs. And, I knew that whatever that Force was it had radiated from the picture on the dashboard. J replied, “He’s an Avatar.”
Ouch! In my vanity, I didn’t want this new acquaintance to suspect that I had no idea what the word Avatar meant. After all, I had only recently handed over my apartment-rental agreement stating, for the record, that I was practically a genius—an adjunct professor of English, a world-traveled journalist, a published poet. How could I suddenly admit that I was uninformed? I couldn’t. So I just kept quiet.
As soon as I could, though, I looked in my unabridged dictionary. Avatar, according to Webster, is the concept in Hinduism of God coming to earth and taking a human form. Whew! I felt relieved. The drums of Hinduism were miles away from Cliff Drive. You had to cross continents and oceans to really feel their beat. They couldn’t influence independent-thinking me! What a fool I was. I only needed to walk past the Indian restaurant in the nearby Hari Krishna Temple to smell the curry changes on the wind.
Almost immediately after seeing his photo, I began obsessing about Sai Baba, about the Avatar concept, and about being kicked in the heart. Eventually, I embarked on learning more about him. At first J, a former California Highway Patrol officer, and his Hindu wife, N, didn’t seem to want to discuss Sai Baba. We could talk about gardening, cooking, politics, the weather, any subject, in fact, except the Avatar. I found this odd. In retrospect, maybe they didn’t want to be thought of as proselytizing. Then one day, N took pity on me. She gave me a copy of a book about Sai Baba, The Ultimate Experience, by an English psychotherapist, Phyllis Krystal. The more I read, the more I doubted.
But, paradoxically, as I read and re-read The Ultimate Experience, looking for the propaganda, experiencing the writing with my poet’s intuition and analyzing it with my investigative journalist’s mind, I realized that Phyllis Krystal was sincere, credible and that she believed Sai Baba, her Guru, was God. Now I felt the urge to investigate the authenticity of Sai Baba for myself.
First I asked N if she thought he was God. She said, “Yes.” Aha! But, of course, she is a Hindu. Then I asked her if her husband also believed Sai Baba was God. An ex-cop wouldn’t be tricked by a scam, I reasoned. She also said, “Yes.” In this split second I could actually feel my mind opening. I had been accustomed to the idea that God was omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. So, I reasoned that God being God, could do anything—which included taking on the form of an Indian man and living in India. Apparently, N sensed a shift in my energy field; the resistance was lifting. She looked me straight in the eyes and suggested that I go ahead and test Sai Baba’s divinity myself.
She smiled so sweetly and said, “Just talk to him like you are talking to me.”
Right after I left her I entered my adjacent apartment. I locked the door from inside and I sat down on the bedroom carpet next to a small table where I kept a candle and an incense holder. I had been a consistent meditator for nearly 20 years. Over those years I had felt I had made many contacts with God who I had perceived as a kind of ethereal Holy Spirit, and, yes, very far away from me. But today I felt different. I kept my eyes open and I began conversing with Sai Baba as if he were physically there beside me. I had the help being able to stare at a small photo that N had given to me. It was a picture of him in a meditation-like pose. God meditating? Hummm. I did wonder about that.
Nevertheless, I felt very excited by this Kick-me-in-the-heart Afro haired “guy”. Prior to doing this secret testing, I had asked N why, if Sai Baba was God and I had been praying to God for lifetimes, perhaps, and not feeling as if my prayers were necessarily answered, how was praying to him now, in this Hindu Avatar form going to benefit me? N admitted that she didn’t know how it worked. “It’s a mystery,” she said. But she assured me that I would get an answer.
And I did! I knew exactly what to ask for. I had just gotten back form an 18-month fellowship to Australia to study and report on the writers and the writing scene there for Sand Script Magazine, a Cape Cod, Massachusetts literary journal published by Barbara Dunning; and I needed a car in order to get a good teaching job nearby. I had sold my old Ford Fiesta before leaving in order to have extra cash. I knew from experience that California bus routes were not very efficient for getting travelers to and from nearby places. For example, if I wanted excellent paying jobs teaching English they were waiting for me at community colleges only 30 and 35 miles away. But the bus trips would take three and four hours—one way! Meantime, there were no return buses at the late hour I’d be traveling back to Laguna Beach. So, I saw a car as my first priority.
I decided to “test” Sai Baba’s powers by asking him for a car. It now seems ridiculous, asking God for a car when you could ask for something really spiritually significant, like Liberation itself. Obviously, I was not as informed about divine matters in those days, as I had led myself to belief. I didn’t even pray. I remember saying to Sai Baba, “If you are really God, then show me that you are by getting me a car.” How egomaniacal it now sounds.
On the other hand, I was sincere while I was speaking and strangely frightened at the same time. In fact, I observed that my manner was child-like. I felt shy and awkward. My grown-up self warned that maybe I was playing with fire. I had been raised a strict Catholic and my idea of God then was a far-off Entity, so far off, in fact, that I couldn’t even conjure up an image. Meanwhile, the picture I had of Jesus in my mind came from years of indoctrination that he was the only “begotten” son of God. Sadly, my Jesus image was covered with so much blood and suffering that I didn’t really want to look at it. As a kid I used to think, if God put his own son through so much torture I certainly don’t’ stand a chance. What’s more, we were taught that we were so full of sin that we had to go to confession once a week. Yet, at the same time we were told that Jesus had redeemed us by suffering and dying for us on the cross. It was all too frightening and confusing for me. So, basically, over the years I became a respecter of all religions but a practitioner of none.
Nothing religious or spiritual that I had ever experienced over my lifetime including living with Native Americans, participating in their sweats and medicine dances, had prepared me for the possibility that God, in 1990, could be a 64-year-old, small-boned, 108-pound, Indian man with jet-black, bushy, African-type hair. But here I was, sitting cross-legged on the floor of my bedroom, speaking to that very image. I was talking to Sai Baba just as if I were speaking to you. When I finished I got up, left the apartment, and walked down to the beach to watch the sun set.
Within three days I received a greeting card in the mail. I have no recollection of registering my new address at the Post Office. But the card was addressed to my new flat! I was stunned. When I opened the card I saw it was from an elder woman, L, whose home I had stayed at for a few days on arriving back in Laguna Beach and who I had been very close to for a few years. I used to take her shopping, to the bank, or out to lunch, as I lived near her and she had difficulty getting around. I liked her company very much and enjoyed inviting her to go out with me—not as any volunteer service for the old, for I thought of her as a very dear and savvy friend. L talked about God a good deal of our time together; and she was herself a disciplined daily meditator. In fact, we had met each other in a group, The Infinite Way, based on the writings of Joel Goldsmith, a mystic, Vedanta teacher, and healer.
Well, anyhow, the card was from her and it said, “Thank you for being such a wonderful person.” Enclosed in the card was a check for $1200 US dollars! I was very pleased but didn’t connect it to my “prayer” to Sai Baba. I called L right away and told her I knew she was not a wealthy woman and that I could not accept her gift. She protested when I insisted that I must return the check.
In fact, she scolded me and told me that I had to keep it because a couple of nights before, while she was meditating, God spoke to her and told her to give me the money because I needed it. “I told him I didn’t want to give you the money,” she admitted. “But he said I had to. He told me the amount to give you too. That’s why I can’t take it back,” she said. “I’m just doing what God has told me to do.”
To be continued...
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