When Satya Sai Baba finally returned from high school to the village of Puttaparti just before his fourteenth birthday, he went first to live at his father's house, but before very long moved around the corner to the home of a Brahmin family named Karnum. This was the place to which he had often run as a child to have vegetarian meals when there was a meat meal at his own home. Now he took up his residence there and the housewife, whose name was Subbamma, not only tended him with love and care but also welcomed the growing number of his followers to her home, which was much more spacious and suitable to the purpose than the cottage of Satya Sai's parents.

So it was at the Karnum house, still standing today in the main street of Puttaparti that Sai Baba's mission had its firm beginnings in 1941. The gatherings were at first held in a room, but the crowd soon overflowed into the road outside. So a shed was built; as the months passed this was enlarged and then a tent was added. Still the numbers continued to burst all accommodation. Furthermore, Baba insisted on feeding visitors who came from a distance. Often the amount of food cooked threatened to be totally inadequate, and it was here that he first showed the Christ-like power of increasing the food supply to meet the need of the moment.

A lady who used to help the devoted Subbamma in those early days describes the ritual Baba used for this. When quietly informed that the food was not sufficient, he would ask for two coconuts - always important items for religious ceremonials in India. He would strike one against the other so that they both broke exactly in half, and then "he sprinkled the coconut water on the little heaps of rice and the vessels containing the other items, and gave the signal to proceed with the task of serving all who had come, or who might yet come before dusk". There was always plenty for everyone.

It was in those days of cramped sitting space that he began taking his followers to sit on the sands of the Chitravati. This today is a river of sand, three or four hundred yards broad near the village, and dry except in the rainy seasons. In the early 1940s it was much the same, except that most of the time there was a narrow stream of water running through the sands. Here the Young Sai would sit with his crowd of followers. Here on the sands he would lead them in bhajan singing, advise them on their personal problems, teach them the way to live, and build up their faith by various miraculous phenomena.

On the crest of a rocky knoll on the left bank of the river, about half a mile from the village grows a solitary tamarind tree. In those early years it acquired the name of Kalpataru, or wish-fulfilling tree. This was because Sai Baba used to take his devotees - or at least those who could climb - up to this tree and, ask them what fruit they would like to pick from it. When they named the fruit it would be seen immediately hanging from a branch of the tree. Apples, pears, mangoes, oranges, figs and other varieties of fruit out of season, and some not ever grown in the district, were plucked from the wild tamarind tree.

There were other strange deeply-moving events around that tree. Some times Baba would challenge the youth of his own age to a race up the hill from the sands to where the tree showed its foliage against the sky, some hundred and fifty feet above. It was a steep, rocky climb, almost vertical in places; yet before the others had taken more than a few steps, young Satya Sai would be up there, calling from the summit.

The young men would then stop, and with the other devotees below watch the youth on the hill-top, knowing that something amazing would certainly take place. One of the competitors in the hill-climbing contest, then a college student, tells what he saw there: "the time was a little past seven," he says, "with evening closing in. Suddenly a great ball of fire like a sun pierced the dusk around the youth on the crest. The light wag so bright it was impossible to keep your eyes open and watch it. About three or four of the devotees fainted and fell."

Different visions are said to have been seen on different occasions. Sometimes it was a great fiery wheel or a full-moon with Baba's head in the centre, sometimes a blinding jet of light from his forehead - from the third eye centre - sometimes a pillar of fire. I have spoken to number of people who personally witnessed those miracles of light.

Small wonder that echoes of these village happenings were heard in Madras and other faraway places, and that the curious, the distressed and the true seekers began to arrive from a wide circumference. No doubt there would have been an even greater influx, had the journey been less difficult. But only the valiant-hearted travellers would tackle the exhausting trip with its final stage by bullock-cart or on foot.

Even so in 1944, because of increasing crowds, what is now called the "old Mandir" was built on the edge of the village. This is a kind of double barn with a galvanised iron roof and enough space for fair-sized bhajan crowds. At the back are rooms for sleeping and eating, and some of the visiting devotees used to stay here, or camp nearby. Nowadays it has only historic interest. Visitors to Prasanti Nilayam walk down the two furlongs of dusty road to be shown over the old Mandir. Its walls are lined with quaint old photographs of the young Sai and groups of his devotees, which illustrate, as much as anything, the poor level of provincial photography here in the 1940s. In the world outside it was an eventful decade, seeing World War Two and the start of India's independence. But to a growing number of people the most exciting and most important events were taking place at Puttaparti, and the old Mandir could not always seat the numbers arriving. So gatherings on the sands of the Chitravati river remained popular.

Some of the visitors who came simply out of curiosity remained to pay deep homage, and returned there again and again. Some from distant centres persuaded the young Sai to visit their cities and stay in their houses, where their friends could meet him too. Many of the earliest devotees are still, more than twenty years later, going to the ashram to see him as often as possible and begging him to bless their homes with his presence whenever he is in their vicinity.

The long-standing devotees whom I met proved to be an inspiring aspect of my research on this great miracle-man. They are not, as some readers might suspect, uneducated, fanatical, vague or visionary. On the contrary they are well-educated, rational, practical citizens of the kind whose integrity and reliability would be accepted in any court of law.

I needed to assure myself of such things - as I assure the reader now - because at the time I gathered some of the stories in this book I had not yet personally experienced much of the type of phenomena they describe. Now I have seen so much that my attitude has completely changed. The miraculous has become familiar.

Most of the old devotees have given me permission to use their names, placing the cause of truth and their belief in the transcendental powers of Sai Baba above all other considerations. In this chapter are some sample stories told by men and women who have known Satya Sai since the 1940s.



Mr. P. Partasaraty is a well-known businessman of Madras, being part-owner of a company connected with shipping. He told me that he first met Sai Baba in 1942 when the latter came to Madras to stay at the home of a neighbour of his. Soon after that he and other members of his family went to Puttaparti.

He stayed there a whole month and witnessed Baba's levitation up the hill to the wish-fulfilling tree, seeing both a bright halo of flame around the young Sai's head and a shaft of light from his forehead between the eyes. He says: "All the time in those days Baba was full of laughter and fun. He would sing songs, and many times a day he would perform some miracle - often as a prank, such as making a clock run backwards, or holding people to their seats by some invisible force. At picnics he would tap empty dishes, and when the lids were removed, the dishes would be full of food, sometimes hot as if straight from the kitchen. I have also seen him multiply small amounts of food to feed big crowds.

"These outings were very happy events always. Often Baba would turn some wild tree at hand into our Kalpataru tree: any fruit we liked to name could be picked from its branches."

Mr. Partasaraty had been suffering from asthma for many years and, soon after his arrival at Puttaparti, Baba materialised an apple with a wave of the hand and told him to eat it as a cure. He has never had another attack of asthma in the quarter-century since that day.

But he says that the most important miracle of those early experiences was connected with his mother. She was completely blind with cataracts when the family first met Sai Baba. His treatment of her was simple - as simple as the paste of clay and spittle that Christ used on a blind person. Baba put jasmine petals on the woman's eyes and held them in place with a bandage. Each day he changed them for fresh ones and at the same time insisted that she should go daily to the bhajan. This went on for ten days, and when he took the bandage off for the last time she was able to see again quite clearly. "She lived for ten years after that," Mr. Partasaraty told me, and had no more trouble with her sight.



Mr. G. Venkatamuni was a leading figure in the fertiliser business in Madras when I used to talk to him about his early experiences with Sai Baba. Unfortunately he has since died, but his son Iswara, also a devout devotee, carries on the same family business. Baba, when in Madras, always stays at least part of his time at the. Venkatamuni home.

An honest, matter-of-fact person, Mr. Venkatamuni, far from exaggerating was inclined towards understatement in all his descriptions. This I found out when I checked some of his stories with other witnesses present at the time. I give here just one or two of the many incredible experiences he had with Baba, as he told them to me.

In the year 1944 he began hearing strange stories about a wonder boy in a village of Andhra Pradesh, the state from which his own ancestors had come. He decided to go and see for himself what truth there was in the stories.

On the day of Venkatamuni's arrival at Puttaparti, Satya Sai, then seventeen years old, took him with a small party to the sands of the river. As they sat there talking Baba put his hand in the sand and took out a handful of sweets, distributing them among the party. "They were hot," said Mr. Venkatamuni, "as if just out of an oven. I had to let them cool before I could eat them." From this he knew that what he had seen was no mere sleight-of-hand trick.

He stayed on at the village, hoping to see further wonders. His hopes were more than fulfilled, he said, and he described the same copious stream of marvels witnessed by the early devotees.

"I was young then," Mr. Venkatamuni said, "and it was all great fun. I used to go swimming with Sai Baba and the other young men, and it was then that I saw the Samku Chakram on the soles of his feet."

"What is that?" I enquired.

"It's a circular mark - you might call it a birth-mark. Hindus believe it's one of the signs of an avatar."

Mr. Venkatamuni and his wife became close devotees of Sai Baba, going to his ashram regularly, and having him stay for days or weeks at their home in Madras.

But it was in 1953, nine years after the first meeting, that they experienced some Sai magic that was in its way unique. They had set off on a global journey that was to begin in Europe and include the Far East. Travelling by air, their first stop was Paris where they planned to spend several weeks.

While out walking in the streets on the first day, they decided to change some traveller's cheques and go shopping. Mrs. Venkatamuni was carrying the folder of cheques in her handbag; or at least she thought so until she opened the bag and found they were not there.

Both decided that she must have put them in her suitcase after all, so they went straight back to the hotel. But the traveller's cheques were neither in hers nor her husband's suitcase. After a more than thorough search, a repeated combing through all their belongings, it became painfully obvious that the precious folder was lost. Where it was lost, they had no idea. Mrs. Venkatamuni had last noticed it, as far as she could recall, in her handbag some time before they left Bombay. It was an awkward and very unhappy situation. Here they were in a foreign city at the beginning of a world tour with hardly enough cash to pay their first hotel bill. They sat depressed and forlorn in their bedroom, wondering what they could do.

What they did would seem utterly crazy to anyone except a close Sai Baba devotee. To him it would seem the only sensible thing to do. With the few francs they had brought to France in cash they sent a cable to Baba asking for his help. After that they felt better, knowing that assistance would come in some form. But they hardly expected what, in fact, happened.

A day or two later they went window shopping again. Mrs. Venkatamuni decided to make a list of the things she would buy when she had some money. She opened her handbag to take out her pencil and notebook, and her heart gave a great bound. There, right on top of everything, lay a folder of traveller's cheques. They proved to be their own. It was the folder dropped or left behind in India. Mr. Venkatamuni told me that his wife's handbag was a medium-sized one, and that they had both searched through it many times, emptying everything out on the bed to do so. There was, under the circumstances, no possibility whatever that they could have overlooked the folder if it had been in the bag earlier. Mr. Venkatamuni had no doubt that Baba had teleported the folder from wherever it had been lost. A most useful miracle!

They sent another cable from Paris - one of thanks. When they returned from the enjoyable world tour, they were able to tell Baba personally how deeply grateful they had been for his timely and super-human help. He just smiled, saying nothing - and they asked him for no details.



A well-known and highly-honoured citizen of Madras who confirms what others have said about Baba's early miracle-phase is Mr. V. Hanumantha Rao. This man, now retired, was Transport Commissioner of Madras Presidency (which then included part of the present state of Andhra Pradesh) when he first met Sai Baba in 1946.

The relationship between Baba and this grand old philanthropist and his wife is a moving story, involving aspects other than the early miracles and pranks of the fun-loving Sai. I will tell it in another chapter where it belongs. But here I want to mention an interesting little story that may throw light on the modus operandi behind at least some of Baba's phenomena production.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Hanumantha Rao have often told me about the wonderful celestial quality of those early Sai Baba years when he used to drive with them in their car, how he would sing beautiful songs and ask them to name whatever food they wanted, or whatever out-of-season fruit they fancied. Then with some gesture he would produce instantaneously the things they had requested. And how when he stayed in their home he was as natural, spontaneous and care-free as a child, and yet seemed to have the power to command with his will all the forces of the three worlds.

Once, they said, on the birthday of Lord Krishna Baba was walking aimlessly, it seemed, about the sitting room of their Madras home. Suddenly he turned to Mrs. Hanumantha Rao and remarked: "There are some devas (angels) here waiting to give me a bowl of sweets."

As she looked, seeing nothing, he held out both hands and took from the air, as if from some invisible person, a large, carved-glass bowl. The bowl seemed suddenly to materialise. Baba handed it to Mrs. Hanumantha Rao. It was filled, as they described it, with "divine-tasting sweets of many varieties from different parts of India."

After this incident Satya Sai asked for an apron. When it was brought he put it on and began singing lullaby songs. He acted the part of a nursemaid carrying the baby Krishna, and soothing it to sleep. Then from the folds of the apron he took a carved sandalwood idol of Krishna which had certainly not been there, or anywhere else in the house, before.

Mr. and Mrs. Hanumantha Rao showed me, when I visited them, the glass bowl and the Krishna statuette, two treasured items brought long ago into the home of the transport commissioner by some mysterious method known only to the young Satya Sai. But it seems from his remark that he has beings of another plane of existence under his command for such transportations.



Mrs. Nagamani Pourniya, who lives in Bangalore, is the widow of a Government District Transport Officer and the mother of the popular novelist Kamala Taylor, who is married to an Englishman and lives in England. Nagamani first met Sai Baba in 1945 and spent many long periods at his ashram. I found her always happy to talk about Baba and she helped fill out my mental picture of the early period, confirming the main features and adding some new ones to the bright tapestry of those years.

Nagamani has herself written a book on Sai Baba, but there are one or two of her experiences that bear repeating here. Many have described to me Sai Baba's miraculous production of figures - usually statuettes of Hindu or other gods - from the sands, and I have seen it myself. But Nagamani told me that on one occasion when a party went with Baba to the sands of the Chitravati river she saw idols rising up out of the sand themselves. Baba simply scraped away a little sand to reveal the top of the head, then the figure itself began to rise, as if driven up by some power beneath.

First, she said, came a figure of Siva, then his consort Parvati, and then a lingam. As each rose a few inches above the sand Baba pulled it out and threw it quickly to one side. This was because the objects were made of metal and were quite hot - too hot to hold for more than a second. After they had cooled, he took them back to the old Mandir for puja (ritualistic worship).

But one of the most striking of her many fantastic experiences has to do with a surgical operation, by Baba. I have had from devotees several descriptions of such operations, but Nagamani reports the earliest one of which I have heard.

A man and his wife came to stay at Puttaparti. Nagamani observed the man had a bulbous, tremendously swollen stomach. He spent all his time lying down, either in his room near the old Mandir or outside in the open. She heard that he was not able to eat anything, nor even to take coffee. This latter seemed the "last straw" to Nagamani, who loved her coffee. She went to Baba and asked him to cure the man.

But the days passed and nothing happened, so she said again: "Please do something for that poor man, Baba! " He smiled and answered: "Do you think this place is a hospital?"

Then one evening all the devotees were going with Baba to the sands of the river bed. It was not a very large party, and each of the women decided to take some item of food for a picnic. Nagamani took the coffee. She also left a pot of water on an outside wood fire, not far from the Mandir. With this warm water, she said, she was hoping to bathe Baba's feet on their return from the sands.

At the river bed they all had a wonderful time singing songs. Baba told them beautiful stories about the gods, occasionally producing some appropriate object from the sand. All this kept their spirits at a high level, so that when three wild cheetahs came near them to drink at the stream they felt no fear whatever. The cheetahs seemed to regard them as friends and went about their business unperturbed.

When they returned to the Mandir, Nagamani went to stir up the fire under the pot and Baba disappeared into the room of the sick man. After a while he came running towards the fire, asking her for some warm water to wash his hand. She looked and saw that his right hand was all red.

"Have you been painting, or something?" she asked in fun.

"It's blood," he replied.

Then peering closer in the fading light she saw that he carried in the blood-smeared hand something that looked like "a dirty-coloured ball of old banana leaf." This he tossed away, and then washed the blood from his hand in the water she gave him. "Well," he said teasingly, "you've been insisting that I turn this place into a hospital so I've just done the necessary operation on the man.

Was he joking? She had seen blood and something horrible that he had thrown away. Had he removed a growth from the man? Sai Baba, apparently reading the queries in her mind handed her a roll of cottonwool and said: "Take this and help the man's wife put a fresh bandage on him."

She went to the door but remained outside. She wanted very much to see what had happened but somehow felt afraid to go in. Presently Sai Baba came and took her into the room. The man was still lying down, his wife sitting beside him. Baba went and pulled up the man's shirt to show her the operation.' (delete) There was no bandage, but across the stomach was a thin mark, like a cut that had already healed, and the stomach was no longer large and swollen. Both the man and woman were looking silently at Sai Baba as if he were God. No word was spoken.

Baba led Nagamani out again, and finally permitted her to bathe his feet.

Next morning, dying to know just what had taken place, she returned to enquire about the health of the patient. He was sitting up eating a hearty breakfast. He told her that Sai Baba had come into the room on the previous evening; and waving his hand, produced from the air a knife and some other instrument. Next he produced some ash and rubbed it on the sufferer's forehead. This seemed to act as an anaesthetic because the man lost consciousness and knew no more until the operation was over, and Baba was telling him that all was well. The cut had felt just a little sore, but now it was quite normal.

Nagamani wanted to know how it had healed so quickly. The wife told her that Baba had simply held the opening together with his fingers and it had healed up immediately. Then he had smeared some vibhuti on the wound, held his hand there for a while, assured the patient that he would be all right, and left.

Nagamani realised that Baba's instructions to her the evening before about a bandage were simply to give her an excuse for going to see the patient. She was surprised that he had been pleased to satisfy her curiosity, but perhaps it was because she had shown concern for the sick man. She felt no amazement, only awe at the discovery of this new wonder. Nothing Baba ever did surprised her any more; everything simply added to her profound love of him.



There are other types and varieties of phenomena in the chronicles of the early years, but as I actually saw examples of these with my own eyes during the 1960s it is better that I describe my personal experiences.

Come to me with empty hands. I shall fill them with gifts and grace.
SATYA SAI BABA

One winter in Madras Sai Baba invited my wife and myself to spend the following June with him at his summer retreat at Whitefield, near Bangalore. We were filled with joy at the prospect, but we had learned by then that it is far wiser to have no firm expectations about Baba's future movements. There is such a colossal demand for his presence and time, and it seems that he goes wherever he is most needed; or in other words he does whatever is most relevant to the advancement of his mission. At least that is the interpretation we put on Baba's movements, but the fact is that they follow some law beyond our comprehension. So we told each other that we might, if lucky, be with him for a day or at Whitefield. As for spending a whole month in his presence well, it was all right to hope, but presumptuous to expect.

Still in this state of mind, we arrived in Bangalore at the beginning of June and stayed the night with a fellow member of the Theosophical Society. He drove us in his car the next morning to Whitefield, which is on rising ground about twelve miles outside the city. On the way he explained that Whitefield had come into being as a British community, but now there were very few Europeans left. It was, we found, a widely spread-out place, with most of the houses large and in broad, pleasant gardens. Eventually, set in a high brick wall, we found a gate with the name "Brindavanam" above it and a khaki-clad Gurkha on guard. We knew from the name that this was Baba's residence.

Just inside the gate was a cottage from which came a benign, snowy-haired man who proved to be Mr. M.S. Dixit. He installed us in a room of his cottage, which I supposed had been the lodge in former days, and gave us the good news that Sai Baba was in residence. We could see no signs of another house, and I wondered where Baba actually lived.

However a little later in the morning Mr. Dixit led us across the tree-studded grounds, through wandering tribes of monkeys, and up a flight higher terrace. Here was a park-like garden of shrubs and covered walks and a good-sized house where we found Sai Baba surrounded by a party of resident guests, with many day visitors from Bangalore.

"Swami", as his devotees mostly address him, welcomed us like a mother who is happy that her children have come home. He offered us the choice of moving into the big house with him, in which case we would have to separate, Iris sleeping dormitory-style with the women on one side of the house and I in the men's dormitory on the other. Or we could lodge where we were with Mr. Dixit, but have our meals and spend as much time as we wished in the big house. We chose the latter.

That morning we watched a "thread ceremony" in the central hall of Baba's residence. The boy receiving the sacred thread was the son of Mr. Jawa, owner of the Joy Ice-cream factories. The parents, grandmother and other family members, all of whom are Baba devotees, were present for the ceremony and the hall was crammed with spectators. Under Sai Baba's supervision, pundit priests from Prasanti Nilayam carried out the ritual. At the right moment Baba stepped into the centre of the scene, waved his hand in the now well-known manner, and from that occult niche in space which he sometimes calls "the Sai Stores" produced the necessary thread to place around the boy's neck.

After the ceremony came a feast on the broad verandah. We sat cross-legged on the floor in two long rows, eating Indian dishes from plantain-leaf plates while a servant kept the monkeys: at bay with a pole. Swami walked around making sure that all his guests were happy. On this festive occasion men and women ate together, but normally at Brindavanam they use the dining room at separate times, Baba eating with the men and sometimes visiting the ladies to talk to them during their meals.

Sai Baba has found that it certainly would not pay him to advertise. Even without the benefits of publicity, crowds tend to impede his movements. So my wife and I felt honoured when he confided to us quietly that he was taking a small party to spend a couple of weeks with him at Horsley Hills, some ninety miles north of Bangalore, and we were overjoyed to learn that we were to be included in the party. All accommodation arrangements had been made by one of his devotees, Mr. T.A. Ramanatha Reddy, the Superintending Engineer of Roads and Buildings in the large area which included Horsley Hills. We should be ready to move, Swami said, in a couple of days' time. We understood that this was confidential information.

As we had expected to be away from headquarters at Adyar for the whole summer in various types of climate, we had a good deal of luggage with us. So we began to plan what to take and what to leave stored at Brindavanam. It was good, we thought, that Swami had given us plenty of warning. If anyone else at Brindavanam knew about the pending move, they said nothing and we said nothing to anyone.

We prided ourselves on having learned to keep a secret, but we still had an important lesson to learn. Like Yama, the god of death, Baba may sometimes give you a warning but you can never know the exact time when his beckoning finger will be seen. Next morning we were awakened from our slumbers about 6 o'clock by a stern voice saying: 'What, aren't you ready? Swami is leaving in five minutes' time."

It was a terrible situation; our things were scattered everywhere. We had neither showered nor dressed nor had a cup of tea, let alone packed. And Baba was waiting to take us away for two weeks. How long would he wait? Would he go without us? We staggered around blindly trying to think and throw things into suitcases.

The stern voice of the devotee at the window agreed to give us a quarter of an hour. But even that still presented an impossibility. When we came out in about half an hour with our cases and valises, we were told that Swami had left. Our hearts sank, but it was not as bad as it seemed; he had gone on ahead in one car, but left another for us. In it we found a few other lucky devotees bound for the hill station, including Mr. Ramanatha Reddy who was to guide us there.

In a forest a few miles along the route we were happy to see Baba's car waiting beside the road, his red-robed figure and a small group of men standing beside it in the morning sunshine. He teased us a little about taking so long, looked startled at the amount of our luggage, then led the whole party in among the fragrant trees for a picnic breakfast.

After that there was a reshuffle of passengers and I had the privilege on my first journey with the great man himself. Raja Reddy, perhaps Baba's closest disciple at the time, was driving the car, two teenage boys sat in the back with Baba, while Ramanatha Reddy and I were in front with the driver. We rolled on through empty barren country and an occasional village or town with people teeming like ants over sugar. Slate-coloured rocky hills began to outline against the sky. The last town we passed through was Madanapalle, the birthplace of J. Krishnamurti. Just before we climbed the steep Horsley Hills we passed a road sign to Rishi Valley where the well-known school run by Krishnamurti's followers is located.

Right on the crest of the hills, some 4,800 feet above sea level, we came to the white Circuit House, our destination. It is not very large but has the comforts of a first-class hotel, being intended primarily as a guesthouse for government ministers and important official visitors. Our host, Mr. Ramanatha Reddy, had been able to secure it for what was to his mind the V.I.P. of all V.I.P.s; Satya Sai Baba, plus whatever party the latter cared to bring along.

Besides the host and myself there were four males in the group: Dr Sitaramiah, Mr. V. Raja Reddy and two teenagers; and there were half-a-dozen women, including three Indian princesses. Being the only married couple in the party, Iris and I were given a suite to ourselves. This was only two doors from Baba's suite, and opened onto a broad balcony from which there was a wonderful view of the country far below.

The plains were a smoky dun-and-green carpet, with isolated hills like children's blocks scattered carelessly over it, and the scores of water "tanks" shone like broken pieces of mirror fallen on the giant carpet. We were living up in the sky - in more ways than one. Here, we thought, we could at last have Baba to ourselves, just a small group of us. At last the ubiquitous crowds were left behind. We could live on intimate terms with this superhuman being from morning till night. We could see what his life was like and enjoy his wonders to the full. No matter how early we arose in the crisp mornings we found that Baba was already up, usually sitting writing by his open door; he attends to his large correspondence himself, besides writing regular articles for his ashram magazine, Sanatana Sarati ("The Timeless Charioteer").

Sometime during the morning, after breakfast with us, he would gather all of us into a room for a spiritual discourse. This would often take the form of narratives from the Ramayana, the Mahabbarata, or the Srimad Bhagavata. Interpreting the stories, Baba would reveal in sharp relief the profound wisdom of Bhakti Yoga.

After a walk in the gardens, followed by lunch and a siesta, would come afternoon tea in the lounge. The first difficulty here was to persuade the Indian women to sit on chairs, for they thought it incorrect to be on the same level as their Swami. Indeed some to the very end insisted on sitting at his feet on the carpet, leaving empty chairs. But when Baba had managed to get the majority onto seats, albeit stiffly and ill-at-ease, he would usually launch into some comic theme, making us all laugh. Nevertheless, this always had practical hints and implications on the ethics of right living.

In the late afternoons or evenings the party frequently went for a drive, followed perhaps by a walk, weather permitting. Otherwise there might be another enlightening discourse by Baba. On one occasion we all visited an Indian village, far off the busy highways and beautifully, unbelievably silent. Here at the home of some Baba devotees we were entertained to dinner, while the whole village crowded around in the courtyard to see and be blessed by the avatar.

But within the first few days another element began to disturb the even tenor of our Horsley Hills idyll. Even in this remote spot the crowds began to gather. Somehow the word had spread that Sai Baba was in the area and people came from far and near, by car, by bus or on foot. Before breakfast the first few would appear, and then throughout the whole day a crowd would be standing in the grounds looking up at the balcony, waiting for the blessings of a look and a sign from Sai Baba.

And he never disappointed them. Often he would go out onto the balcony, look on them with loving compassion and raise his hand in a characteristic gesture of upliftment and benediction. Sometimes he would go down and walk among the visitors, talking with them and producing vibhuti or something else to help those who were sick or in troubled. If a crowd of poor people had come a long way on foot, he would give them all money so that they could go home by bus. Every evening he would bring all who were there into the large foyer and front corridor of Circuit House, and lead them and us in beautiful bhajan songs for half an hour or more.

Interspersing all these daily activities were the miracles of physical phenomena, several each day. Here are some of the more outstanding ones.



One afternoon soon after our arrival we all went for a drive and, leaving the cars, strolled about on a rocky knoll of the hills. Baba several times picked up a piece of broken rock, played with it awhile, and then threw it away. Finally, just as we were returning he kept a piece about the size of a man's closed fist and carried it back to Circuit House.

Arriving there, he took us into one of the suites and sat on the carpet while we sat in a semi-circle around him. He began to talk conversationally on everyday topics, occasionally throwing the piece of rock a couple of feet in the air and letting it fall on the floor. Presently he tossed it over to me, asking:

"Can you eat that?"

I examined the rock closely. It was hard granite, streaky and rather lightish in colour. I admitted its inedibility and bowled it back to him he was not more than two yards away from me.

He took the stone and, still chatting casually, threw it in the air again, while a dozen pairs of eyes watched expectantly. I felt that something strange was going to happen and never let the stone out of my sight. Now as it lay on the carpet I could see a slight change in its appearance. Although of exactly the same size and shape, and still streaky, it was a little lighter in colour than before.

Swami rolled it back to me across the carpet. "Can you eat it now?" he asked. To my amazement and joy it was no longer rock but sugar candy. Baba broke it into pieces giving us each a portion to eat. It was sweet and delicious as candy should be. Is this an illusion, I wondered, are we all hypnotised? So I put a piece in my pocket. I still have it and to it's still sugar candy.

I thought of the popular song about 'The Big Rock Candy Mountain' and jokingly said to him, "I wish you would turn the whole mountain into candy or chocolate." Baba seemed to take this seriously or maybe as a kind of challenge. Anyway he replied solemnly that it would not be right to interfere too much with Nature's housekeeping.

Then it occurred to me that my joke was rather superficial. If willpower, or whatever power it is, can transmute a small piece of igneous rock into an entirely different substance, why not a large piece? And why not into any substance? Gold, for instance? So how very important it is that a man who understands and can employ the occult laws of Nature, must be above Nature: must be beyond normal human desires for such things as power and material gain. Otherwise what might happen?

Writing on this theme in the last quarter of the nineteenth century when a good deal of 'physical phenomena' came before the public eye, A.P. Sinnett said[5]: "It is enough to say that these powers are such as cannot but be dangerous to society generally, and provocative of all manner of crimes which would utterly defy detection, if possessed by persons capable of regarding them as anything else but a profoundly sacred trust." He goes on to say that such powers in the hands of people willing to use them for merely selfish and unscrupulous ends are productive of disaster - as it is said to have been for the Atlanteans.

Today in our world men of exoteric science have learned the secret and hold the power of disintegrating matter into atomic energy, and this stands as a constant threat to the very existence of humanity on this earth. They have also learned to transmute base metal to gold though the process is too expensive to be economically and socially disruptive. A safeguarding law of occultism is that spiritual and moral advancement should keeps pace with the growth of the intellect and the acquisition of the knowledge of Nature's deeper secrets. When this law is broken a dangerous situation must inevitably arise.



One sparkling morning I was walking with Swami and the two teenage youths in the gardens of Circuit House. Baba was wearing an ochre coloured robe which fell like a smooth cylinder from shoulders to ground. As Iris had ironed some of his robes a couple of days earlier, I knew for certain that they contained neither pockets nor places where anything could be concealed. His sleeves were straight and loose, without cuffs. He carried nothing in his hands.

One of the young men was returning to Bombay next day and wanted to take photos of Swami, so the latter posed for several pictures. Occasionally, as we strolled and talked, he paused to pick a berry or a bud from one of the shrubs. This he would examine with the concentration and thoughtfulness of a botanist: then after a while he would throw it away as if it were not quite suitable to some purpose he had in mind. Finally he picked a small bud from a bush, examined it, seemed satisfied, and handed it to me, saying. "Keep that."

Soon afterwards we went back up the steps to the front entrance. Baba did not go to his own suite but walked straight into ours. He sat on an armchair while the young men, my wife and I gathered around him on the carpet.

Swami asked for the bud that he had given me. I handed it to him, and he held it in his fingers for a while, discussing it.

"What flower is it?" he asked.

We confessed our ignorance. He suggested that it might be a button rose and we agreed.

Then looking at me he asked: "What do you want it to become?"

I was at a loss to know what to say, so 1 replied: "Anything you like, Swami."

He held it in the palm of his right hand, closed his fist, and blew into it. Then he asked me to stretch out my hand. I gasped, and my wife gave a squeal of delight as from the theurgic hand that held the flower bud there fell into my open palm a glittering diamond of brilliant cut. In size it matched the bud, which had completely vanished.

Baba graciously presented me with this beautiful and amazing product of transmutation magic. I still have it.



We were on the floor around Baba expecting a morning discourse, perhaps one of those wonderful stories from Indian mythology which lead the mind to the deeper truths of life. However, before talking, he showed us a green leaf and wrote on it with his fingernail.. Then he handed the leaf to me, but I could make nothing of the writing, which he said was a mantram in Sanskrit.

Next he asked for a book, and one of the ladies who occupied the suite passed him her Telegu grammar. Placing the leaf between the pages, he shut the book and tapped its cover several times. Now he opened it and took out the leaf. The writing was still on it, but instead of being green and fresh as it had been a moment before it was brown and so dry that it easily crumbled into dust.

Baba tossed the book on the carpet nearby and, after talking for a while, left the room. Well, I thought, on the face of it this miracle would not stand up to the sceptic; the brown leaf could have been somehow "planted" in the book earlier. So I picked up the volume and searched its pages for the missing green leaf, but could find nothing.

Why am I doubting, I asked myself when I have seen him do so many things equally incredible and inexplicable? Sai Baba had somehow blasted this leaf, as another One who stood above Nature had blasted a tree two thousand years ago. It was as if, for the leaf, many months of summer had been telescoped into that one magical moment when Baba tapped the book.



On the subtle planes of being, interpenetrating our physical plane of existence, there may well be classes of entities for whom our physical space would be actually non-existent: our "here" and "there" would be all one to them. The ancient wisdom teaches that there are such beings. It also teaches that a physical object can be disintegrated into a subtler substance, or "energy-system", which can be moved by some agency at near light speed, and reintegrated to form the original object. This is the general principle behind the phenomenon known as an apport; that is, so far as it is understood.

At Horsley Hills Sai Baba produced a particularly striking example of such telekinesis. One evening a party of us were sitting on the carpet in his suite; Ramanatha Reddy, the doctor, the young men, Iris and myself were there. Swami asked me the year of my birth, and when I told him, he said that he would get for me from America a coin minted there in that same year.

He began to circle his down-turned hand in the air in front of us, making perhaps half a dozen small circles, saying the while: "It's coming now..... coming..... here it is!"

Then he closed his hand and held it before me, smiling as if enjoying my eager expectancy. When the coin dropped from his hand to mine, I noted first that it was heavy and golden. On closer examination I found, to my delight, that it was a genuine milled American ten-dollar coin, with the year of my birth stamped beneath a profile head of the Statue of Liberty.

"Born the same year as you," Swami smiled.

What would the sceptics say about this, I wondered. Would they suggest that Baba carried around with him a stock of coins so that he would have one to match my year of birth. Such old American coins, now long out of circulation, would not be easy for him to obtain in India through normal channels.

I have no doubt whatever that this was one of Baba's many genuine apports. While he circled his hand before us, some agency under his will had dematerialised this gold coin at some place somewhere, carried it at space-annihilating velocity, and re-materialised it in Sai Baba's hand.

From where did it come? Who knows? Baba would never say; perhaps from some old hoard, hidden, lost, forgotten long ago, and now belonging to no one alive.



Although I had come to know through first-hand experience that Sai Baba was certainly not an impostor and that his miracles were genuine, I could not help thinking that the use of sand as a medium for production was something which gave fuel to the sceptic. Admittedly several of his followers had told me that in fact everything he had produced from sand he had also produced at other times without it that is, from the air.

Even so, an objective psychical researcher, hearing the stories of the sand wonders, is bound to raise the queries: are the objects previously "planted" in the sand? Or does Baba by some lightning sleight-of-hand slip them in just before he digs them out? In fact, for anyone who had neither seen the miracles for themselves nor felt the spiritually elevating presence of Sai Baba, I suspected that "sand productions" must leave a bigger question mark in the mind than "other productions". .

But this was because such events had not hitherto been fully and thoroughly reported to me by a careful observer. At a later period I had my own close observations of the sand miracles confirmed by several of India's leading scientists - but that is jumping ahead of the story.

The first point I want to make clear about my Horsley Hills experience of Baba's "sand productions" is that on the journey from Circuit House to the place of the miracles I sat in the front of the car with Sai Baba and Raja Reddy, who was driving. Baba carried nothing in his hands, and he was wearing his usual robe; none of the objects later produced could have been concealed on his person.

A few miles from Circuit House the car, and several other vehicles following it, stopped by the roadside. We all got out and went to a patch of sand some fifty yards away which had been seen from the road on an earlier journey.

Baba asked the young men in the party to make him a sand platform, so they scraped and pushed the sand with their hands to build a flat stage about a foot high and four feet square. Baba sat cross-legged in the middle of this and the party clustered in a semi-circle around him. I was in the front row of the spectators, right at the edge of the sand platform. The thought passed through my mind that if any object had previously been buried here, near where Baba was sitting, he would have to dig down more than a foot through the newly-piled sand to reach it.

He began as usual with a spiritual discourse which, apparently, always has the effect of harmonising and purifying the psychic atmosphere around. Maybe this is a necessary preparation for the miracles. Then with his forefinger he made a drawing on the surface of the sand just in front of him, and asked me what it was. From where I sat it looked rather like a human figure, and I told him so.

Laughing, and with the expression of a happy child playing on a beach, he scooped up the sand to form a little mound above the drawing, about six inches high. Still with an air of happy expectation he put his fingers lightly into the top of the mound, perhaps an inch down, and drew out, head first, a silvery shining figure, like the drawing he had made. It was a statue of the god Vishnu, about four inches in height. He held it up for everyone to see, then put it to one side, smoothed out the mound before him to make a flat surface again, and began once more to discuss spiritual topics.

Soon he made another drawing in the sand on the same spot as before. Again he scooped sand over it, making a mound - a wider flat topped one, this time. Again with a happy chuckle he felt with his finger-tips into the top of the mound and scraped a little sand away; less than an inch down was a photograph. He pulled it out, shook the yellow grains away, and held it up for us to see. It was a glossy black-and-white print, about ten inches by eight.



He passed it around for some of us to look at closely, and later I examined it at leisure back at our quarters. It was a photograph of the Hindu gods and avatars, standing in two rows to form a forward-pointing arrowhead, with Lord Krishna in the foreground at the tip. Heads of Satya Sai Baba and Shirdi Baba could be seen as small inserts on the body of Krishna. This print, I felt, was not produced in any earthly studio. Baba later gave it to Mr. and Mrs. T. A. Ramanatha Reddy, our hosts. It stood with the unearthed statue of Vishnu for some days on a side table in the dining room at Circuit House.

Other objects produced from the sand in the same manner went to various people in the audience. There were, for example, a jappamala (rosary) for Mr. Niak, the Collector of Kolar District, and a pendant which was given to a revenue officer.

But there was one supreme production from that sand patch of which we all had a share. Baba did his outline sketch, which I could see from where I sat was a little container of some kind. Then, in the usual way, he scraped the top sand with his open hands to make a tiny hill above the drawing. Pausing a moment with a delighted smile, he felt into the crown of the hill and took out a silver-coloured container. This was of circular shape with a neck and a screw-top. At a guess its spherical bowl would be perhaps two and a half inches in diameter.

Sai Baba unscrewed the lid and a wonderful perfume pervaded the air. Putting the container to one side, he went through the same process again of drawing and mound-building. This time the product was a golden spoon like a small teaspoon. With this he stirred the contents of the bowl and, standing up, began to give some to each of his spectators.

Like the others I opened my mouth while he poured a spoonful onto my tongue. The word that came into my mind was "ambrosial"; it seemed nothing less than the food of the gods; it suggested a mixture of the essences of the most heavenly fruits, the divine archetypes of the loveliest fruits of earth. The taste is quite indescribable; it has to be experienced.

The devotees call this glorious nectar amrita, which has much the same meaning as ambrosia - the food of the immortals. Several devotees, including some westerners like Nirmalananda and Gabriela, had told me about seeing it produced on rare occasions from the sand, and all tried in vain to describe its exquisite taste and aroma. Others, including Dr. Sitaramiah, had witnessed Baba produce amrita by squeezing his own hand, and in other ways. But no one at this time had seen manifestation of amrita for about three years, and I was very grateful that Baba had given my wife and myself this personal experience of a thrilling, deeply-moving miracle. It was witnessed on this occasion at Horsley Hills by about forty-five men and more than a dozen women. Baba went around giving some to all, except to the women who were staying at Circuit House. There was enough amrita for everyone to have a spoonful each and the bowl was still not empty. Baba handed it to me to carry back to our quarters. I felt very honoured and held it carefully in my hand as we drove up the sharp bends to the crest of the hill. Sand still clung to the designs carved on the silvery metal, which I was told was the sacred alloy panchaloha. On the balcony of Circuit House I handed the container back to Baba and he straight away walked around giving some to each of the ladies who had not yet tasted the "food of the gods".

I sometimes wondered afterwards what had happened to the little bowl but about a year later a Bombay devotee told me he had visited Baba at Horsley Hills a day or two after the event and been presented with the panchaloha container. It still held some amrita which he and his family enjoyed, and the miracle bowl now occupies a place of honour in his home.

So here are the answers to the two points raised by my inner psychical researcher. First, the objects could not have been previously hidden in the sand patch ready for Baba to take out because they came from the top of a mound, made before our eyes, on the top of a foot thick sand stage, also built while we watched. Secondly, even if Baba could have carried the objects to the sand patch that night without my seeing them, an utter impossibility, he could not by the most expert legerdemain have slipped such articles as a glittering idol, a large photograph, a bulky jappamala and a shining bowl of nectar into the sand under our noses without our being aware of the fact. If he could, he is superior to the most expert conjuror and should be making fame and fortune on the stage as an entertainer.

Quite apart from the miraculous production of such objects there is the strange mystery of the amrita itself - its ambrosial out-of-this-world quality, its power (shown on various occasions) to increase in quantity to meet the needs of whatever numbers happen to be present. What, I wondered, was its actual significance? I determined to ask Sai Baba about this at the first opportunity.