38. My acquaintance with two priests
In the 1990s, I was twice lucky to meet Orthodox priests from Russia and Ukraine in Puttaparthi. The Vatican takes a more flexible position in relation to various Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese religious and philosophical trends. For example, I know several cases when in Catholic seminaries in Europe and America, Buddhist teachers from Tibet and Thailand taught meditation practices to seminarians.
Unfortunately, Orthodox churches, both Russian and Greek, are more closed. However, there is a big difference between the position of church leaders and what Christians themselves think and feel. Among Orthodox priests there are quite a lot of spiritually seeking and free-thinking people.
Twice in the ‘90s, I met Orthodox priests in Puttaparthi. It was interesting and symbolic that one of these priests was from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. When I saw this man, I immediately understood from his appearance that he was a Christian priest. Getting to know him better, I learned that he really was a priest from the Kiev Lavra.
I was pleased to meet this priest, because the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra is the mother of all Russian Christian monasteries. It’s great that a priest from the greatest Orthodox Lavra came to Sathya Sai Baba.
It is sad, but the leadership of the church, and the Lavra itself, are quite cautious and negative about contacts with other traditions. I cannot give his name because it might cause problems for him. This priest learned about Sathya Sai Baba from his friends and immediately wanted to come to Puttaparthi in order to see the famous Indian teacher who preaches universal values, love, and compassion for all living beings.
The priest wanted to see everything with his own eyes, and then draw conclusions about the truth of Sathya Sai Baba’s teachings based on his own experience. Subsequently, my friends from Kiev met with him, he cordially received them at his Lavra. He continued to serve as a Christian Orthodox priest, but of course he could not openly declare to his church authorities that he had visited Sathya Sai Baba.
I met the second Orthodox priest in the ashram a couple of years later, it was already in the late ‘90s, and he was from the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. This is very symbolic, since the Sergius Lavra is also one of the most important shrines of Christian Russia.
This priest came twice with great interest to see Sathya Sai Baba. I do not know how his fate developed in the future, whether he remained within the framework of the Orthodox Church or not. For me, these stories are important because even if they are thin threads, they still connected the Kiev-Pechersk and Trinity-Sergius Lavra with Sathya Sai Baba.