Читать книгу LEAD ME FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT - Natalya Kobysheva - Страница 8

EVENTS OF 2013—2014

Make one step towards me and I will make a hundred steps towards you

– Sathya Sai Baba

My husband, my eldest son Misha, and I made our first visit to the Prasanthi Nilayam Ashram in early December 2012 for just four days. This was our first trip to India; we were travelling with a group organized by Vladimir Muranov, and Puttaparthi was one of our stops. At that time India was a whole new world for us – and, not least, this wondrous Ashram. The air was filled with the fragrance of flowers in bright sunshine, and everywhere there were people dressed in bright colors. Large numbers of local people came to the Ashram every day, mostly from the villages. When I attended darshans (meetings conducted in the Divine presence, where Vedas are read and then the devotional songs – bhajans – are sung), there was such a large number of multicolored saris that I was continuously drawn to observe the women, their clothing and adornments, and the way they carried themselves. The Mandir (temple) itself was no less brightly colored than the people.

At that first visit, Sai Baba remained a puzzle for me, but we loved the Ashram and its atmosphere to such an extent that we decided we would definitely come back. Four months later, in April 2013, my son and I returned to the Ashram.

We found information about Swami mainly from books, and from talking in the Ashram with witnesses of Swami’s earthly life. We enjoyed going to the Chaitanya Jyoti Museum with the old Swami devotee Igor Mehanoshin who acted as a guide for Russian groups, explaining the Museum’s exhibits in great detail.

In those days Sai Baba was incomprehensible to me, despite my best efforts to comprehend His acts and work out explanations for things that I just couldn’t square with my logic. Eventually I grew weary of these efforts and gave them up, realizing that to comprehend the incomprehensible was simply beyond my conscious ability. All I knew was that simply being present in the Ashram was a one-of-a-kind experience, making us feel completely calm and serene, and that we had never experienced anything like this anywhere before.

From this visit I took home a framed picture of Swami. It was just a photo of his smiling face, but it seemed to me the best likeness that I’d seen. When I returned to Moscow, I put it on a shelf in my kitchen. One day, while thinking about Sai Baba and doing household chores, I heard a crash; that same picture had fallen on the floor! I picked it up and moved it to another shelf. A few days later, as I was watching a video about Sai Baba, I suddenly felt such a strong wave of love and longing for Him that my tears flowed like a river, with this thought swirling around nonstop in my head: «Why didn’t I find You alive, still among us on earth? Why did You call me so late?» It was like waking up from a dream… All of a sudden the same picture of Swami fell down with a crash yet again. That’s when my tears stopped! I sat down and looked at what was happening around me: at that moment, it was as if Sathya Sai Himself had appeared in front of me. He let me know, «I hear you. I see you.» As I came back to myself, I pressed that picture of Swami to me and began to jump and twirl from pure joy. From that moment I began to sense His constant presence by me.

A few days later, mysterious incidents started to happen. A large icon with an image of Jesus Christ fell from the icon stand. When I picked it up and put it back, I was surprised to see what happened to the icon next to it. The face of the Kazan Mother of God was covered with a thick layer of soot, even though I never burn candles around these icons. This coating was only around the face of the Virgin, of uniform thickness and confined to the curve of her face; it didn’t touch her clothing at all. I want to emphasize that all of these icons and portraits were securely fixed to the icon stand and nothing like this had ever happened before. I never could explain the sudden appearance of the layer of soot but I regarded the incidents with the photograph and the icons as a call for me to visit the Ashram once again. So a few days later my older son and I departed for India.

That trip was full of unusual situations, interesting visions, and new acquaintances.

On the day after my arrival in Puttaparthi, a young woman approached me to ask for help, as it was her first time in India and in the Ashram. I gladly agreed, and soon we became friends. The girl turned out to have incredible abilities, which, due to natural modesty, she generally concealed and was in no hurry to share. Without any particular difficulty, she could make quick and accurate predictions of what would happen in the foreseeable future, and had visions of what had happened in the past.

In the evening of that same day, I said I would accompany her to her hotel, which was not on the Ashram’s grounds. At the gates, an elderly sevadal