Revelation on the road to Puttaparthi

This review is from: Swamis Revelations and Teachings: Quotes from Sri Sathya Sai Babas Speeches about the Golden Age and His Teachings (Kindle Edition)

This is a rather bland e-book of statements by Sathya Sai Baba, compiled by a Western devotee. Sai Baba was a Hindu guru who claimed to be a genuine divine incarnation. He was popular in North America and Europe during the 1970's (I remember reading about his supposed miracles as a kid growing up in Sweden), but he lost most of his Western devotees after allegations of systematic sexual misconduct with children. Now, he is mostly mentioned in books about dangerous cults! In India, by contrast, Sai Baba still has millions of followers (he died in 2011).

This book mostly contains Hindu and Christian-sounding commonplaces about the need to love and forgive everyone, meditate, worship God, and so on. The world is maya (illusion) and the goal is therefore to merge with Brahman after the physical death.

However, some statements sound positively chilling once you remember that “God” is really Sai Baba himself. Below a portrait of the cult leader, we read: “I am the Universal Absolute. I am all that is, was and will be. I am this light, and I am everywhere”. This heavenly clown also declares: “I am in you, you are in me, we cannot be separated”. On a more comic note, there are photos of the guru's luxurious accommodations (is *everything* in his ashram gilded?), while the accompanying quotations from his speeches teach that everything material is really an illusion…

It seems the god-man's loving tolerance does have its limits. Around 2033, Sathya Sai Baba will return as Prema Sai Baba (the portrait of which is suspiciously similar to how Christians envisage Jesus) Then the apocalypse will commence, and after a thoroughgoing cleansing of the Earth, only a small and devoted minority will remain. This will be the Golden Age or the New Age. It's not clear where the date 2033 comes from, but I've heard it before. It's probably one of several proposed dates for the Age of Aquarius!

Well, it's good to know that the sage of Puttaparthi finally came clean about his true identity. He was, of course, the Aquarian Anti-Christ…