The erudite Swami Satyananda Saraswati, founder of the Bihar School of Yoga at Munger, who has written excellent and exhaustive volumes on yoga, was the chief disciple of Swami Sivananda Saraswati, the doctor who became a sanyasi and founded the Divine Life Society, Rishikesh.
Emphasizing the fact that a disciple can conjure a Guru in his dreams at will, Swami Satyananda said, “When the disciple is in tune with the Guru, he will be guided in dreams, thoughts, and daily life, at times even after the Guru has dropped his physical body.”
Sometimes, the disciple may even see the Guru in a dream even before he/she has actually seen Him in person, thus initiating a search for that Master.
I had to mention this before recounting the baffling experience I had when I was about 15 and a half. I was class topper back then, with the rather questionable habit of making notes in the margins of my textbooks. It was my final year in school—the 11th Standard in those days—and somehow I had lost my English textbook!
I could not find it for an entire week, and honestly, it was pretty nerve-racking since it happened just a few days before the final exam.
So there I was, sitting alone while my parents were away at work, feeling completely miserable, when my eyes fell on a picture of Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi that my dad had just brought home. The picture had a simple, rhyming caption: ‘Why Fear When I Am Here?’
“Really?” my skeptical teenage mind shot back. “Then, where exactly is my English textbook?”
That night I had the strangest dream. I felt someone holding my elbow and leading me towards our science lab at the far end of the passage on the ground floor of my school building. The invisible Samaritan then walked up to my science teacher’s heavy teak desk, opened its drawers, and fished out my English book…
And that was it. End of dream.
When I woke up, I smiled to myself, thinking my worried mind had gone into ‘overtime mode’ to cheer me up. I told no one about the dream and went to school like any other day.
Then, during lunch break, just as I was galloping out of my classroom, I heard my name, “Shailaja,” being yelled in the sharp Malayalam accent of my stern science teacher. What followed next was exactly what I had seen in my dream. She opened the drawer of her desk, pulled out my missing English textbook, and handed it to me with a sharp reprimand. “Pray, what is your English textbook doing here?” she hissed.
I was speechless because I was just perplexed. That evening, with folded hands, I told Sathya Sai Baba’s picture, “All right, maybe you really had something to do with finding my textbook. One day, I will come and thank you in person.”
Of course, I forgot all about it.
Sathya Sai Baba: The dream that led me to Puttaparthi
Caught up in the heady freedom of college life—the ‘dress as you like’ excitement and all the other “highs” that came with being a freshly minted college girl—I happily drifted along until June dawn. This time, I actually saw Him. Sathya Sai Baba was dressed in a white robe—apparently that was what he wore before switching to ochre—smiling at a very “shamefaced me.”
“I’m so sorry. I will definitely come visit you; just tell me when,” I muttered. He held out a piece of white paper, and written on it was a date: July 2.
And then, I woke up.
“Is July 2 special in some way?” I asked my mum. She pulled out the almanac and told the “ignorant me,” “Yes, it is Guru Poornima.” She went on to explain that it was the birth anniversary of the great Guru Vyasa and was observed as a day to express reverence towards one’s spiritual mentor.
“Ohh,” exclaimed my mind. This was intriguing!
I rushed to my ever-adoring dad and begged him to take me to Puttaparthi in July so I could meet this saint with a halo of black hair who had visited me in my dream.
The date I had been shown was July 2, but the ‘clever me’ decided we should reach the ashram a week earlier so that Baba could give us an audience before the place got crowded for Guru Poornima.
My ‘smart’ plan fell flat on its face. Four days went by, but Baba did not so much as glance at me as He moved among the devotees, choosing people for private interviews.
On the fifth morning, my new friend, a beautiful French girl named Michelle, and I were sitting on the white sand in front of the modest main building of the ashram in Puttaparthi, which was then a nondescript hamlet in Andhra Pradesh. It has now grown into a bustling pilgrimage center.
I had just finished grumbling to Michelle that my first-term exams were coming up and that I had been truly foolish to land there chasing a dream when Baba suddenly appeared on the open first-floor balcony. He looked directly at me and said loudly in Hindi, “Whoever has an exam coming up can leave; Baba’s Blessing will always protect you.”
Of course, I did not leave. And just as he had shown on that little white slip of paper in my dream, after the grand Guru Poornima celebrations on July 2, He called my dad and me on July 3 for a private interview. During the meeting, he blessed us and, among other things, told my dad that I would fall in love with a boy from college and marry him.
And, well… I did. Six years later.
Swami Nityananda: The day grandpa got his darshan
I had experienced something rather inexplicable before I entered my teens. My devout grandpa had traveled all the way from Calicut to Mumbai for a ‘darshan’ of Swami Nityananda of Ganeshpuri, then a distant suburb of the city.
Swami Nityananda was a towering, somewhat fierce-looking mystic—a recluse (Avalia) known for his unpredictable ways. People said he would sometimes get annoyed and hurl stones at visitors who came asking absolutely absurd questions like which horse would win the weekend race.
When we went to Ganeshpuri, we were told that Swamiji was very sick and that everyone had to move noiselessly through the hall where he was lying with his back turned to the devotees.
My grandpa was disappointed.
“Baby—my nickname at home—do you think he will show us his face if we stand in the line again?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I replied without any hesitation.
And sure enough, when we passed by a second time, the Siddha Yoga guru had turned towards us. My grandpa’s face lit up with pure joy.
Was that just a coincidence? Maybe. But looking back now, it feels more like one of those divine synchronicities—the universe responding to the deep thirst of an old man who had travelled a long distance to see his beloved guru.
When Hari Om Sharan’s ego met baba’s humor
Years later, I would hear a similar story from the legendary bhajan singer Hari Om Sharan while taking notes for his biography, ‘A Song of Surrender’.
“I used to visit Nityanand Baba ji’s ashram regularly and sing the bhajans (devotional songs) Baba loved. Once I took a ‘toli’ (group) of children. As we were leaving, Babaji gave each child a fruit from the huge pile of offerings at his feet as ‘prasad.’ But he gave me nothing.
Hari Om Sharan admitted that his ego felt a twinge. Then this happened:
“But as I was walking away from the ashram with the children, one of the ashram boys came running after me, saying Baba had asked for me. I rushed back. The moment I prostrated once again, he roughly stuffed a huge bunch of bananas into my hands and muttered, ‘I thought you were more sensible than that!’”
Anecdotes like these were not unfamiliar in our home, where faith and spirituality were woven naturally into everyday life.
To read Part II, go to …
Leave a Reply