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Interview with Baba
(Part Two)
by R.K. Karanjia
Previous Chief Editor, Blitz Magazine
India
September 1976
Puttaparthi, India
Published: BLITZ, 1974
Web Posted: July 28, 1999
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Mr. R.K. Karanjia, Editor-in-Chief of Blitz tabloid, and previous journalist of Time of India
and Sunday Standard, has interviewed world leaders as Nehru, Khrushchov, Fidel Castro, Arafat, and
the Shah of Iran. Karanjia is also the author of a dozen books.
Here is the second part of a 2 ½ hour interview Karanjia had with Sathya Sai Baba in
September 1976.
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Karanjia:
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You are believed to have performed miraculous cures to the extent of resurrecting the dead. There
are cases where you reportedly have saved people from drowning and other accidents in distant
places. Medical experts have attested to remote-controlled surgical operations performed by you.
How do you manage these?
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Baba:
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By my own sankalpa—that is, divine Will and Power. As an Avatar, this power is intrinsic,
inherent , total and natural to my will and decision. I need no tantra and no yantra
(rituals) to perform the so-called miracles which are natural to my state. My powers are simply the
expression or assertion of the reality of Godliness which merges me with everything, everywhere, at
all times and places. The miracles belong to the boundless power of God.
Now coming to the main points of your question, this healing phenomenon has a dual aspect. I can
cure, save, even resurrect people provided they are in a spiritually receptive condition. It is
like the positive and negative currents of electricity. My capacity to heal can be compared to the
positive current. Your devotion to me is the negative current. Once the two come together, the
devotion provides what is called the miracle of healing.
It is man’s mind that is really responsible for his illness or health. He himself is the cause or
motivator of either. So when it comes to healing or curing, the necessary faith has to be created
within his mind for the purpose. All I do is to invest him with the confidence, will and power to
cure himself. It is my abounding love reciprocated by the intensity of the devotees’ faith in me
that produces the desired result.
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Karanjia:
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So these are not siddhic-powers or magical tricks, as your critics suggest?
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Baba:
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They are neither magical tricks nor siddhi (developed occult powers) powers. These [siddhis]
can come to everybody with the appropriate discipline and yoga exercises, but my powers to protect,
heal and save people and materialise objects originate in God and can be used only by an Avatar.
They are in no way designed, disciplined or developed, but flow from Cosmic Power itself.
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Karanjia:
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Some say that you command invisible Spirits, which can transfer objects from one place to another
on your orders?
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Baba:
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There is no need for me to command invisible Spirits since my own Divine Will materialises the
objects. I am everything, everywhere, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent; and so whatever I
will instantly happens. Like the qualities of truth, love and peace, these are things that generate
the Atmic or Cosmic forces behind the universe.
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Karanjia:
Your followers in India as well as abroad claim positive evidence of the
presence of Baba in their innermost hearts. Some have written of you as their indwelling God. What
is the explanation of this phenomenon?
Baba: This is the grace begotten of my love for them reciprocated by their devotion.
After all, as I repeatedly say, we all belong to the same Divinie Principle. The Godliness which is
present in everybody in the form of a little spark exists in me as the full flame; and it is my
mission to develop every little spark of God in every one to the fullness of the Divine flame.
The first imperative of this development is that the receiver of the grace also provides from his
or her side the devotion necessary to the consummation. Those who carry the presence of Baba in
their hearts like an indwelling God belong to this kind of devotees. They come to me, see me and
hear me, experience my love for them and receive it with devotion. Thus, they become part of me and
my Divinity.
To the doubting or confused ones, I give this illustration. Those who want to secure the pearls
from the sea have to dive deep to fetch them. It does not help them to dabble among the shallow
waves near the shore and say that the sea has no pearls and all stories about them are false.
Likewise if a person wants to secure the love and grace of this Avatar, he must also dive deep and
get submerged in Sai Baba. Then only will he become one with me and carry me in his innermost heart.
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Karanjia:
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The critics of Swamiji asks why Sai Baba does not help people in distress by bringing rains in
times of drought or creating food where there is famine by means of his sankalpa shakti
(divine will-power)? Cannot an Avatar help humanity to control the natural forces and prevent
calamities like earthquakes, floods, droughts, famine and epidemics?
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Baba:
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This is precisely what I am doing by incarnating the indwelling God in man to overcome such
calamities. There are two ways in which an Avatar can help people: an instant solution as against a
long term one.
Any instant solution would go against the fundamental quality of nature itself as well as the
karmic law of cause and effect. Most people live in the material world of their desires and egos,
which is governed by this law. They reap the fruits of their actions. This brings about their
evolution or devolution. If the Avatar intervenes to instantly solve their problems, it would stop
all action, development, even evolution. This solution can be ruled out because it totally negates
the natural laws.
The other and more effective alternative presents a long-term solution whereby the Avatar leads the
people themselves to a higher level of consciousness to enable them to understand the truth of
spiritual laws so that they may turn towards righteousness and steadfastly work for better
conditions. This will relate them back to nature and the karmic law of causation. They would then
transcend the cycle of cause and effect in which today they are involved as victims and thereby
command and control the natural forces to be able to avert the calamities you mention.
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Karanjia:
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You mean that you are presently raising the consciousness of mankind to a godlike condition to
enable them to command their own destiny?
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Baba:
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Exactly. They would become shareholders of my sankalpa shakti (divine will power, universal
energy). I have to work through them, rouse the in-dwelling God in them and evolve them to a higher
reality in order to enable them to master the natural laws and forces. If I cure everything
instantly, leaving the people at their present level of consciousness, they would soon mess up
things and be at one another’s throats again with the result that the same chaotic situation would
develop in the world.
Suffering and misery are the inescapable acts of the cosmic drama. God does not decree these
calamities but man invites them by way of retribution for his own evil deeds. This is corrective
punishment, which induces mankind to give up the wrong path and return to the right path so that he
may experience the godlike condition of sat-chit-ananda—that is, an existence of wisdom and
bliss. All this is part of the grand synthesis in which the negatives serve to glorify the
positives. Thus death glorifies immortality, ignorance glorifies wisdom, misery glorifies bliss,
night glorifies dawn.
So, finally if the Avatar brings the calamities mentioned by you to an immediate end, which I can,
and do, when there is a great need, the whole drama of creation with its karmic (universal,
inescapable duty) law will collapse. Remember these calamities occur not because of what man has
made of man. Therefore, man has to be unmade and remade with his ego destroyed and replaced by a
transcendent consciousness, so that he may rise above the karmic cycle to command Nature and avert
its calamities. This is the work of the Avatar, which I am presently doing.
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Karanjia:
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Dr. V.K. Gokak, former Vice Chancellor of The Bangalore University, has described your
socioeconomic experiment as "the revolution of revolutions", transforming the individual as well as
society as a whole. Would you explain the methodology as well as the machinery of this revolution?
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Baba:
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I have no methodology or machinery in the accepted ‘organisational’ sense. My methodology is a
simple one based on conversion by love, and the machinery is one of human cooperation and
brotherhood, again deriving from love. What we need today are one single caste of humanity, one
common religion of love and one universal language of the heart. This is the simple methodology or
machinery through which both the individual and society can be transformed.
So the basis of the change is individual transformation through love. Love is my instrument and
merchandise. Whatever I do in the field of sociology or economics is sought to be done by and
through love. Both the wealthy and the poor who want me can come to me only on a basis of absolute
equality and I use them to synthesize parts into a whole the existing socioeconomic contradictions
into a cooperative brotherhood.
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Karanjia:
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Have you succeeded in bringing about this synthesis, Swamiji, particularly with the wealthy and
powerful classes?
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Baba:
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I have not reached them all as a class, but to the extent that I am able to contact them
individually, the results are encouraging. The wealthy and powerful, of course, present a difficult
problem in the matter of transformation. They need a special approach. The poorer people, on the
other hand, are very cooperative. They understand, appreciate and help my plans and ideas.
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Karanjia:
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What is your solution to this escalating conflict between wealth and power on one side, and poverty
and weakness on the other?
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Baba:
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The transformation of both into a single cooperative brotherhood on terms of equality without
competition or conflict. This can result only from truth and love. The main issue is to fuse the
two classes into one single class. The problem, however, is one of bringing them together on a
common base or platform. Wealthy people live isolated in a certain state of condition. The poor
also are similarly isolated in another state or condition. How do we bring them together?
I do so in many subtle ways by breaking the barriers of wealth and poverty and creating a feeling
of equality and oneness between the poor and the rich. In this ashram you find them living and
working together, even performing menial labor on terms of complete equality. Here there are no
distinctions whatever, nor any special facilities for the rich. They live, eat, work, worship and
sleep like the poor. All live like a community of workers to share the common austerities of the ashram.
Despite our rigorous discipline, industrialists and businessmen want to come here. Why? Because
they secure peace of mind beyond physical comfort which no wealth or power on earth can purchase or provide.
Thus we open to them a wonderful new world of spiritual treasures and the must sacrifice material
wants and comforts. My mission is to show them the way to the peace of mind which everybody, poor
and rich alike, desires. In that process of spiritual evolution, the seeker learns that this
blissful state cannot be purchased for money in a shop or gifted to one by anybody but oneself. It
can come only from the universal source of divinity, the indwelling God that embraces poor and rich alike.
This concept creates a common fellowship, a brotherhood of give and take between the wealthy and
the poor. Those who have too much are obliged to give up their unnecessary wants, while those who
have to little get their needs fulfilled.
After all, in spiritual terms, all of mankind belongs to one and the same class, caste or religion.
The divine principles in each and all of them derive from one and the same God. This fundamental
oneness has to be made manifest to them through direct contact with spiritual realities and the
persuasive expanding power of love, till they become part of the universal religion of work,
worship and wisdom.
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Karanjia:
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All this would be simple and welcomed evangel for the poor since they lose nothing and gain
everything from your philosophy, but what about the rich who would have to lose all if they
followed it?
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Baba:
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That is the crux of the problem. They simply have to lose, surrender, submerge their false values
if they want my grace. So long as people continue to be slaves of materialistic definitions of
wealth and poverty, there can be no solution. I therefore, try to convert their minds and hearts to
spiritual values and truths.
After all, who is the richest man? One who has the largest wants and, therefore, troubles and
worries? Or one who is satisfied with the barest necessities of life and, therefore, is more or
less desireless and comparatively happy? Judged from this criterion of happiness, the poor are
spiritually rich while the rich are spiritually poor. It is not material but spiritual satisfaction
that ultimately makes life worth living.
As I have said before, life without desire brings divinity to man; and those who seek grace must
shed desire and greed. Riches provide a fatal temptation. They are the source and cause of human
bondage. The desire to raise the standard of life can never be satisfied. It leads to
multiplication of wants and consequent troubles and frustrations.
The solution lies in our emphasis on the quality as against the standard of life, on high thinking
and lowly living. The mind is the horse, the body the cart; to achieve mental peace, you must put
the horse of high thinking before the cart of physical comfort.
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