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The Holographic Universe
A Pocket of Miracles
Page 150-153
You can get Something for Nothing:
Sathya Sai Baba
Perhaps the most famous modern-day materializations are those produced by Sathya Sai Baba, a sixty-four-year-old Indian holy man living in a distant corner of the state of Andhra Pradesh in southern India. According to numerous eyewitnesses, Sai Baba is able to produce much more than salt and a few stones. He plucks lockets, rings, and jewelry out of the air and passes them out as gifts. He also materializes an endless supply of Indian delicacies and sweets, and out of his hands pour volumes of vibuti, or sacred ash. These events have been witnessed by literally thousands of individuals, including both scientists and magicians, and no one has ever detected any hint of trickery. One witness is psychologist Erlendur Haraldsson of the University of Iceland.
Haraldsson has spent over ten years studying Sai Baba and has published his findings in a recent book entitled Modern Miracles: An Investigative Report on Psychic Phenomena Associated with Sathya Sai Baba. Although Haraldsson admits that he cannot prove conclusively that Sai Baba's productions are not the result of deception and sleight of hand, he offers a large amount of evidence that strongly suggests something supernormal is taking place.
For starters, Sai Baba can materialize specific objects on request. Once when Haraldsson was having a conversation with him about spiritual and ethical issues, Sai Baba said that daily life and spiritual life should "grow together like a double rudraksha." When
Haraldsson asked what a double rudraksha was, neither Sai Baba nor the interpreter knew the English equivalent of the term. Sai Baba tried to continue with the discussion, but Haraldsson remained insistent. "Then suddenly, with a sign of impatience, Sai Baba closed his fist and waved his hand for a second or two. As he opened it, he turned to me and said: 'This is it.' In his palm was an acorn-like object. This was two rudrakshas grown together like a twin orange or a twin apple," says Haraldsson.
When Haraldsson indicated that he wanted to keep the double-seed as a memento, Sai Baba agreed, but first asked to see it again. "He enclosed the rudraksha in both his hands, blew on it, and opened his hands toward me. The double rudraksha was now covered, on the top and bottom, by two golden shields held together by a short golden chain. On the top was a golden cross with a small ruby affixed to it, and a tiny opening so that it could hang on a chain around the neck."58 Haraldsson later discovered that double rudrakshas were extremely rare botanical anomalies. Several Indian botanists he consulted said they had never even seen one, and when he finally found a small, malformed specimen in a shop in Madras, the shopkeeper wanted the Indian equivalent of almost three hundred dollars for it. A London goldsmith confirmed that the gold in the ornamentation had a purity of at least twenty-two carats.
Such gifts are not rare. Sai Baba frequently hands out costly rings, jewels, and objects made of gold to the throngs who visit him daily and who venerate him as a saint. He also materializes vast quantities of food, and when the various delicacies he produces fall from his hands they are sizzling hot, so hot that people sometimes cannot even hold them. He can make sweet syrups and fragrant oils pour from his hands (and even his feet), and when he is finished there is no trace of the sticky substance on his skin. He can produce exotic objects such as grains of rice with tiny, perfectly carved pictures of Krishna on them, out-of-season fruits (a near impossibility in an area of the country that has no electricity or refrigeration), and anomalous fruits, such as apples that, when peeled, turn out to be an apple on one side and another fruit on the other.
