Ever since my first meeting with Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba on 2nd July 1972, I have been going to Him for spiritual sustenance two or three times a year. Contact and conversation with Him, even simply seeing Him, is an uplifting and ennobling experience. His emphasis on the importance of human values of truth, righteousness, peace, love and non-violence in human conduct and of one humanity bound together in love and service are of critical relevance to today’s world torn by political confrontations, economic greed and religious strife. That is why millions flock to His Ashram at Puttaparthi, and are moved by what they see and spread the word in far corners of the earth that a new Avatar, in the tradition of Rama, Krishna, Buddha and Jesus, is here to usher in the dawn of a new, more humane civilisation.

In these last four decades, I have had several personal experiences of Sai Baba’s supernatural powers; the most stunning revelation, in my direct personal experience, of Baba’s Avatarhood took place on 23rd June 2009. In the course of an audience Baba gave me on 22nd June, I had, in passing, mentioned my wife’s three or four daily prayer sittings at the Sai shrine in our home in Delhi and in our apartment in London. He knew that, He said, and added, “She has devotion, but her faith wavers.” He then looked straight into my eyes and said; “And now doubt is beginning to assail you also!” I demurred, but the All- knowing One was right, of course. I had been paying attention to sarcastic remarks by some ‘devotees’ about the Avatar in wheelchair, or even nursing some disappointment over Baba not fulfilling this or that wish or desire which, in Baba’s divine wisdom, should not have been there in the first instance. Once in a while, I would ask myself whether Baba’s divine powers had come under an eclipse. I love Him with all my being, adore and worship Him as an Avatar, but a tiny taint was lurking in some dark recess of my mind. Baba had decided to root it out.

I was due to leave Prasanthi the following day and Baba had graciously said, He would see me at the Mandir on the morning of 23rd June. Accordingly, on the morning of Tuesday, 23rd June, I took my usual chair in the Mandir’s outer veranda from where I get a clear view of Baba’s arrivals and departures and of much of the round He makes to give Darshan to the devotees assembled in Sai Kulwant Hall. From my seat, I can see Baba almost as He leaves His residence to begin the short journey to the Mandir. He usually takes about three minutes to reach the gate of the hall, the adjoining area of which is reserved for women devotees. Everything seemed normal that morning, and as usual, my gaze was fixed on the spot beyond the gate where Baba would come into view. A moment after Baba came out of His residence, and my eyes caught sight of Him, things started happening the like of which I had never experienced before. All of a sudden, I felt a surge of mild warmth in my body and a change started coming over my vision. All that was static and stable a moment earlier – the boundary wall, the gate, the solid buildings beyond and the serried rows of women devotees in their multicoloured Saris, the vast Sai Kulwant Hall itself – all became a sea of gentle waves of multi-hued light.

Instinctively, my right hand went to the pulse in my left wrist. The pulse beat was normal. I could still clearly see, for a fleeting moment or two, Baba in the wheelchair, accompanied by Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust’s Secretary, Sri Chakravarthi, former Vice Chancellor, Sri S.V. Giri and a couple of other companions slowly advancing towards the gate. Momentarily, the scene changed again, and it was all light everywhere – the purest of pure white light enveloped all!

It looked as if nothing else ever existed there, nothing except the heavenly radiance I now beheld. Whichever way my gaze turned, I saw only light, an all-enveloping luminescence everywhere. Boundary walls topped by iron grills, solid buildings beyond the gate where I had had a clear view of Baba and His companions, and a few thousand devotees seated on two sides of Baba’s route to the temple, Bhagawan Baba and His party – all had miraculously dissolved into that dazzling, transporting splendour of divine effulgence.

While beholding that marvel, I remember saying to myself: I am fully conscious, this is real but so strange. The light is so bright, but it is not harsh on my eyes, and no heat radiates from it! I also observed how remarkably calm I was as my eyes feasted on that cool, bright light which had transformed everything into itself. The supernatural spectacle did not unnerve me. And then suddenly the thought came to me: My Divine Master is giving me a vision of His Reality. No more doubt, man! I am saved; I am blessed!

In a trice, as it were, the scene began to change, the light swiftly receding from all sides to a point about 2 to 3 metres from the gate into Sai Kulwant Hall, where Baba and His party would then have reached. I could now make out Baba at the centre of a quickly shrinking glow. And, then, it was the normal everyday scene of Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba on His usual round to bless the assembled devotees. My eyes were filled with tears of love, joy and gratitude. How long did all this last? I cannot say. Perhaps not more than four or five minutes.

Bedazzled by the transfiguration of Baba and the surroundings into a sea of light that I had witnessed, I sat in my chair in the veranda, oblivious of my immediate surroundings. A few minutes later, someone nudged me, and I saw Baba’s wheelchair advancing towards me in the veranda: quickly I rose and placed my head on His feet. As I rose and looked at Him, He beamed a beatific smile on me and raised His right hand in blessing. No words passed between us; none were necessary. The Avatar had blessed me with a revelation of His Reality.

The Gita says, the man who is of a doubting nature perishes (Samshayatma Vinashyati) Baba had said the previous afternoon that I was beginning to fall prey to doubt, and He had decided to reinforce my faith by giving me a vision of His Reality. The compassionate Master was not going to allow a lifetime of faith and devotion to be tainted with the smallest speck of doubt. Baba did not stay in the temple long that morning. Before leaving, however, He blessed me again and said; “All is well; you can go back to Delhi today.”

As I write this in calm recollection of the event, two weeks after its occurrence, a question arises in my mind: Baba had, indeed, given me a vision of His Reality, but wasn’t there more to the panorama He had laid bare before me? He is that Divine Light, of course, but what about those thousands of ordinary men and women, and the solid mass of insentient matter all around which had also evaporated into light? Are they all integral part of that Being who is light? Hadn’t Baba also given me a vision of the ultimate Truth, namely, the unity of all existence, animate and inanimate?

In this way, Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba revealed Himself to me as Supreme Light, which the Upanishads describe as Narayana, the Highest, the Supreme Reality which is also designated in the Upanishads as Brahman. Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba is that Supreme Light. Blessed are we who live in His time on earth.