PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Yogananda

The story of Tigrett is an introduction to my own journey to Sai Baba.
 The book Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda was on my shelf for 11 years before I finally opened it. Reading it in 1976 made me an instant disciple. Steve Jobs directed that everyone who

attended his funeral be given a copy.  Dennis Weaver of Gunsmoke

was a follower. Sri Yukteswar, Lahiri Mahasaya and Babaji are 3 gurus of Yogananda.  Moselle Scharff Milner was volunteering in a vegetarian office run out of my home and seeing pictures of several masters on the wall, she the next day brought 2 gift books. One was called Baba by Arnold Schulman, a very successful Hollywood screenwriter. The second was by San Diego psychiatrist Sam Sandweiss called The Holy Man and the Psychiatrist. Immediately upon reading Schulman I believed every word and became a follower. Raised as a Catholic, it was interesting that my first 3 links to Baba were Jewish Americans. I had been Jewish
in a previous life.  (If all were able to see their previous lives they would know how pointless it was to be a foe of the practitioner of another faith or member of another race.) I felt Yogananda was my upaguru or guru along the path and that Sai Baba was my sadguru or eternal guru.

Indian prime ministers

indira Gandhi was one of at least 5 Indian prime ministers who were devotees. Baba told Indira her son would die in a plane crash. He later told her that her son's practice of rounding up men at gunpoint to take them to have compulsory vasectomies was very bad. On the other hand he said families should have no more than 2 children. There is video on the internet of George Harrison

and Ravi Shankar seated in darshan line as Baba materializes healing

powder (vibhuti) for them. Rod Serling of Twilight Zone was a disciple

and produced a free 50 minute documentary about Baba called

Man of Miracles.

Rod Serling Film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AkhwI5uLCk

Shirley Maclaine recounted a story on the Larry King show. A friend

of hers Richard Bach was filming Baba at the ashram. He ran out of

a color film which at that time could not be purchased in India.

Baba excused himself from the room for a moment and came back

with several rolls of the film. Returning to Los Angeles, Bach went

to the Beverly Hills Camera Shop. An employee at the store said

that on that day a man with an Afro and orange robe came in to

buy the film, gave more money for it than necessary, and did not

wait for the change. One year over a million people came to celebrate

Baba's birthday. There are literaly billions of stories of his miracles,

his opening of people's hearts etc.

Desire to See Baba
Having found out about Baba i wanted to go to his ashram. We had not an extra dime for a trip. Within a short time after
conceiving that wish, an envelope arrived in the mail. My grandmother had died in 62.. 18 years later.. her estate was settled and a check for $5000 was inside. My partner was
attracted to Eastern masters but not to Baba, yet he wanted to see India. We would spend 14 years together before amicably separating.  We bought Pan Am round the world tickets for $1100 each. One could go to 12 cities but must choose all eastward or all westward. If the passenger got off the plane s/he had to stay at least 2 days in the city. We paid several months rent on our home before leaving. (Our landlord was a 7th Day Adventist who believed it was wrong to take excess profit off of tenants. He gave us our little cottage for $250.00 a month on a street in which many homes rented for $1000). First we went to London .. and wanted to stay there for a few days. I asked Baba and opened in one of my spiritual books at
random to "Although the lord is omnipresent he is situated in one place."  I like millions of Baba's followers believed then and now that he is a poornavatar, or an avatar incarnating with every power of God. We left for India within 2 days after arriving in England, but like Winston Churchill in New York I nearly ended my life looking the wrong way stepping in to the street. We arrived on the 21st of August, 1980.

Darshan
 The rooms for visitors were $1.00 a day.  Seated in the ashram line in the following month Sai Baba stopped in front of me and wished me a happy birthday.  Hari Om said that when he experienced his first sight of Baba a wave of joy came over him and he immediately became a believer. One night there he dreamt that he and I had been Hindus 500 or so years before, and that he had become attracted to the opulence of the Muslims who had recently invaded the country. While there i got a serious foot infection. I'd been going barefoot. Dr
Vijayalakshmi had said the foot was not responding to antibiotics and would have to be amputated. The morning of the next day i dreamt that Shirdi Sai Baba said to me "the chickens will rise today."  One of the interpretations was that in my previous life and until my 20's in this one, I hadn't been a vegetarian. The karma of causing suffering to innocents was being forgiven. That day in the ashram Baba gave me padnamaskar (touching the feet of the guru). My foot slowly began to heal from that day on. I followed Baba to the Gokulam
one day. Baba advisee vegan diet but provides milk for the millions of nonvegan Hindu vegetarians who come to see him. No cow is ever harmed. As He got out of the car I knelt in front of him. He asked where I was from and I replied "Washington DC'. He asked the same question again and I responded "I am from your heart." He materialized an orange rose and from 3 feet away tossed it to me.
 On the way back to my room from my rulebreaking adventure  (one was not supposed to try to follow Baba) Dr Bhopaya came up to me with a gift of 9 books. There were hundreds of small cards at the ashram with different quotes from Baba's books and interviews. The card sticking out of 1 of the books I was given had an orange rose on it, the same color and species I'd just been given. On it was the text "Be silent like the rose which communicates through fragrance." One fractures the perfect ceramic egg of silence when speaking, and introduces duality into a world of advaita or oneness. That time following Baba i was
rewarded for breaking the rules, but when another time I tried to follow, Baba turned around and gave a stern '"no!" Another time I asked him once when Sai Baba of Shirdi was born and he replied
"many times".  

California
One day in front of a group of people he said 3 times to me "Are you from California". Virginia Field asked if I had heard. I nodded. Virginia had gone from Syracuse to Weed California. One day Ed

Freundschuh had given her a copy of a book about Baba. She was sipping a drink at the time and rested her elbow on the book. Suddenly from the book a shock went up her arm. One of many meanings for the 3 time repetition of the question was that in my immediately previous life I was a follower of Yogananda who lived in Pasadena. Hari Om and I had
the privilege of meeting Dr Kasturi, formerly of All India Radio, Om, an anthropologist who came to study the natives and stayed to learn at their feet, and Ambrogio Vittadini, selected by Baba to translate Sathya Sai Speaks into Italian. (Now there are 73 volumes of Baba's
discourses listed at sathyasai.org. His radio station is radiosai.org.)  Ambrogio said that whenever he was stuck for the right Italian word he would hear Baba's voice giving him the answer. Our friend did not travel with us. She dreamt that Baba was a steer behind a fence.
She said to him "I love you Baba but I prefer Jesus."  He replied "That's fine." This woman did not think it important to give up eating cow flesh. It was an obstacle for her.

Japanese
While there I was talking one day to a Japanese man who had come to push the wheelchair of another Japanese man seeking a healing. The English speaking chairpusher said Baba spoke more perfect Japanese than he did.  Yet another time a group of Africans were listening to him speak and each heard him in his own language. While there Hari Om and I met a woman who had come to seek a cure for cancer. She told us Baba was slowly healing her. Her sores were disappearing. There are enough experiences to fill countless books. We were guided to leave the ashram
in the last third of October.  It was indescribable to see Mt Everest to the north of the plane, her peak, tall enough to be a mountain on its own, visible above the clouds. Witnesses knew most of the huge mass of the world's tallest mountain was unseen below the water spun into white masses. Her snows were glowing pink in the rays of the sun.

JBO And Kamakura
Our third stop would be in Tokyo to visit JBO and
her husband. She took us to the several story high Kamakura Buddha. While Hari Om was chanting outside, I climbed the inside steps and meditated inside the massive head of the Buddha. About that great master Baba said that in a previous life he had come
across a tigress and her 2 starving cubs and had lain himself down in front of her as a sacrifice to feed her.  (I thought.. perhaps in 1000 more lives I could do such a thing.) Hari Om said that there was orange vibhuti on my picture of Baba. Vibhuti is the ash he has materialized in countless millions of places and at millions of times. Numberless healings are ascribed to it.  We sadly left JBO and her husband and son, and continued eastward, stopping at both of our families' homes. Hari Om's father pointed out that it was SA1
(Saturday the 1st) on his wristwatch, something which occurs once or twice a year. Next we went to Miami. The following day feeling drawn to return to Maryland I asked about the plan and opened to "Uttaryana: today the sun begins its northern journey."
When we arrived at our little home in Takoma Park, we had less than $10 and the oil furnace was empty.  We had not told anyone we were back. Mark Banks called and said "I was just meditating and Baba told me to bring you a space heater."  Linden Hill stopped by. We had not said anything about our financial situation to him, but he just
went to a flat surface and wrote out a $500.00 check for us.  Hari Om within 2 weeks had a transportation job.  

**

Baba remains my guru. He taught us that each has his or her unique path back to God who dwells inside every being. All paths are perfect.   Baba has millions of followers who are Christians, Jains, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, former atheists, agnostics etc. We are all on a journey from love through love back
to divine love. It is inevitable that we will all arrive and enter the portal of eternal ecstasy.  Jai Bhagwan.  I bow to the divine within you.

Footnote:

Sai Baba was born exactly at dawn on Nov 23rd, 1926 and left his body on April 24th, 2011.

This writer did not realize until years later that if one says Lahiri Mahasaya and Babaji together s/he is saying Sai Baba.

73 volumes of Baba's books are free online.

https://sssbpt.info/english/showers.html

http;''sathyasai.org

http;//radiosai.org