Happy 90th Birthday to My Guru, Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi

By Terry Reis Kennedy

Dearest and most beloved Bhagawan, Happy Birthday!

For the record, I want to say thank you for being my Guru, for rescuing me from the terror and vicissitudes of life that sometimes overcome me.

Thank you for feeding me, for clothing me, and for nurturing me.  Thank you for always being there for me.  When family turned its back on me, when friends betrayed me, when those I love rejected me, you have stayed with me. People say you have left the body, that you are dead.  To me you are more alive than ever.  You are in my heart, you, Sweet Everything, are the very breath of my life.

Through the darkest nights of my soul, through sickness, defeat, loss of reputation, loss of money, and loss of all my possessions, you did not abandon me. And it is because of you that I have managed to rise up from the ashes of my own life, on so many occasions.

Most of all, thank you for allowing me to come to India to be near you, and affording me some of the most soul-satisfying experiences a person can enjoy—swimming in the sacred Ganges, studying the dazzling stars of a Himalayan night, planting a lush garden on a patch of land that was once a garbage dump and watching that garden take root, flourish and give glory to you.

Maybe most of all I should acknowledge the countless prayers that you have answered.  But it was those you didn’t answer (or haven’t yet) that forced me to go deeply within myself to find my own solutions and in so doing taught me self-reliance.

During those desperate times I didn’t know how, or if, I would surface from the depths of such self-inquiry.  But I did.  And I am still smiling—thanks, again, to you.

If, as you have said, on your birthday you bless others, I ask that throughout the coming years you never let me forget what you have said about the significance of birthdays: 

“Every human being has four birthdays.  The first is when he emerges from his mother’s womb, and being neither holy or unholy, craves only for food and shelter; the second is when he begins his spiritual study to lead him from darkness to light; the third is when he has gained wisdom, having mastered the disciplines propounded by the rishis for achieving self-realization; the fourth and last is when he realizes his true identity and merges with Brahman.”

Sweet Bhagawan, may I celebrate all my birthdays with you!