Born on 23rd November 1926, Sai Baba’s life has been the consistent manifestation of his divinity. His birth itself was accompanied by strange phenomena: the musical instruments in the house where he was born started playing on their own; a cobra was found lying under the child’s bed.
Even as a toddler, he identified himself with all living beings and abhorring the killing of birds and animals for food, he refused to take meat. Even at the age of four, he could not stand suffering and displaying infinite compassion, was generous in giving charity. By the age of 8 he organised groups of his age to sing the glory of the Lord and Himself taught bhajans, which with his talent for poetry, he himself composed.
At that early age, remarkable miraculous powers manifest in Him, such as distribution, from an empty bag, of sweets as “prasad” after worship of the Lord, fortelling events, materialising articles from nowhere, etc. Fearing that the extraordinary powers were due to the possession of His body by some spirit His relations tried to exorcise the spirit by various means involving bodily torture, all of which He suffered with serenity.
In the course of such attempts, he declard He was Sai Baba of Shirdi reborn.
At the age of 14, on 20th Oct 1940, He announced that he did not belong to His family, that the Maya He had assumed had been discarded and that He was going to His devotees who were calling Him to launch His divine mission.
Following this, a series of miracles emanated from Him throughout His incarnation as He drew to Him thousands upon thousands of devotees, helping them by His powers of omnipresence, curing ‘incurable’ diseases, bringing back people from the dead, turning water into petrol! And manifesting objects for devotees as symbols of His grace. These miracles continued not only around Him but for devotees in all parts of the world.
My first connection personally with Sai Baba was when He apported a spare car key from Lourdes in France to Mojacar in Spain where I was living, where it manifested 18 months later on my balcony when I had been given my first Sai Baba book by a friend to read. I have had the grace to have 7 personal interviews with Sai Baba, a materalisation of Sai Baba, a materalisation of Durga and many inter-reactions where he has materalized Vibhuti into hand and proved to me beyond any shadow of doubt that he is who he says he is – the Cosmic Christ on the planet, the Avatar of our age, transmuting all of the darkness that we at present find ourselves living through as we reach the end of the Kali Yuga age, and heralding in the Aquarian Age with love which is our divine essence.
He has shown me time and time again that he knows every single thing about me, past, present and future, and he has truly guided me from darkness into light where I can now say with true humility, that I am his instrument of love upon this planet in these times of catalystic change both for the individual, collective and the planet.
Sai Baba resurrected and left his body on Easter Sunday 2011 but his presence in Puttaparthi and in the heart of all his devotees is felt even more strongly than before thus reassuring us as he always said “Why fear when I am near” and “The only difference between me and you is that I am God realised and you don’t realise that you are God”.
Truly this is the time we promised to step into our innate divinity, embodying our Godliness and leading humanity forward in these testing times that we “appear” to find ourselves in, knowing only that as greater influxes of light bombard the planet from celestial realms, all the negativity in this play of life that Man has accrued since the beginning of time, is dissolving to herald in the Golden Age in all its glory.
Puttaparthi, the place where the Avatar left his body, is truly holy and I am truly blessed by Sai Baba to take anyone whose heart calls them on a pilgrimage to his divine home.
John De Ruiter
After Sai Baba’s death in 2011, I asked him for another living master and in 2015 he guided me to john de Ruiter. At first, I was not convinced John was the master I had asked for, but in a brief one to one session in the lunch break in India, I asked him if I needed a living master as I still felt sai baba alive in me. he said yes, and I asked how I would know which one as I had recently been with another master. He replied “go where the light burns brightest” and my soul responded aloud “that’s with you”. he responded “then you have to come and it won’t be safe and it won’t be comfortable. These words turned out to be very prophetic!
From 2015 I visited John’s retreats around the world in Holland, Germany, and India, until April 2019 when I was able to live as a member of his community in Edmonton. There have been many wonderful openings during my time with John and also under his guidance, a purification of the self has taken place. I feel now I have ultimately come home, not only to john and the community, but also to the divine, as an ongoing, and sometimes painful, purification and refinement of the self takes place, making it much easier to surrender, give up control, and live in the moment irrespective of what is happening in my life; which I clearly see is not the reality of who I am.
That my life is transient but I am the immortal Atma which has never been born and can never die, and that we are all aspects of the divine which knows only pure love, its essence. Therefore I can more easily live in harmony with whoever or whatever may challenge me in any moment as I see on the deepest level we are all playing our roles in the Leela of the divine and we are all at different levels of evolution on our journey home to oneness.