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224 SPIRIT AND THE MIND
basic. It is a spiritual revolution with love and compassion both as its means and end. It is the hope for humanity at large.
THE PLACE
Arriving in the mountain city of Bangalore, some 450 miles southeast of Bombay with a population of about 1 million, we were met with large welcoming signs draping the airport entrance. Similar banners canopied the road on our 120-mile journey to the village of Puttaparthi. The three-and-a-half-hour ride was punctuated by rest stops where Sai volunteers served coffee, tea and biscuits.
Prasanthi Nilayam, Sai Baba’s ashram (the name meaning “abode of the highest peace”) is the place of pilgrimage for hundreds of thousands of people the world over. Its location, just outside the village of Puttaparthi, Sai Baba’s birthplace, tells much about his values.
Although Sai Baba is now famous throughout India and could choose almost any location for his ashram, he remains close to the village of his birth—still serving, supporting and protecting his family, early friends and fellow villagers. He tells his devotees that friendship should deepen and mellow with age—that “old is gold.”
Devotees around the world have asked Sai Baba to visit their countries. “First a person must have enough strength to care for himself,” he says, “and if he has strength beyond this he must serve his family, then his community, his city, state, and then country.” Only when one can serve people in this fashion does he have the right to go outside his country and give advice, he says.
Sai Baba seems to have universal appeal, drawing all colors, creeds, nationalities, religions and languages—people from every station in education, culture and life—people usually separated by a myriad of boundaries and distinctions, all gathering now, as one unified family—an estimated 200,000 in all coming to this event.
Seated in this vast gathering, experiencing the intensity of the power, energy and excitement moving in the crowd, one wonders what must be held in the soul of this being who so attracts and inspires. An Indian child born in an obscure, remote Indian village, literally a cow pasture, is now surrounded by an enormously impressive array of bricks and mortar, hearts and souls.
The physical plant housing this gathering was immense and still growing. Hundreds of acres of once untended land are now occupied