37. Sathya Sai Baba in the Himalayas
In the early ‘60s, Sathya Sai Baba made one of his pilgrimages to the Himalayas. The most ancient and sacred city located in the upper Himalayas is Badrinath. It is hot there in summer and a lot of snow falls in winter with severe frosts making life in the mountains extremely difficult. The road leading to lowland India is closed for the entire winter season. Few people are able to live in Badrinath all year round and most pilgrims and tourists go for the summer and leave in the winter.
Badrinath is a small town nestled among snowy peaks surrounded by a few ashrams and hermitages in the gorges. In the center of the town there is an ancient temple of Lord Vishnu. Pilgrims from all over India come here to receive the blessings of the Divine. In previous eras, getting to the Badrinath area was difficult, with yogis and hermits being protected from the bustle of big cities and military conflicts.
The city of Badrinath got its name from the fact that the ancient temple of Badrinath is located there. This temple is so ancient that it is difficult to say who founded it and when. It is only known that a long time ago it was a temple of Shiva. There was a period when the temple was abandoned. In the eighth century the temple was restored by the great mystic and philosopher Shankara, who materialized the main statue of the Deity. Nearby is a sacred lake. According to legend, Shankara materialized the statue right under the water and then took it to the shore. It was Shankara who restored the temple and installed a miraculous statue there.
Some of the most significant teachers have the power to create from the world of their imagination objects that do not previously exist in the world. There were cases when Sathya Sai Baba materialized statues underground. Usually it happened like this: Sathya Sai Baba blessed a piece of land and then ordered the men to dig in the indicated place.
To the astonishment of those assembled, stone or metal statues of various Deities were dug up. Some of the statues that Sathya Sai Baba materialized in such an unusual way were small in size and some were quite large. I saw a huge statue of Ganesha that Sathya Sai Baba materialized near Bangalore in southern India.
The very fact that Sathya Sai Baba visited the Himalayas several times in his life is very curious. About five thousand years before the birth of Christ, the sage Vasistha lived in the Himalayas. His ashram was located in a cave on the banks of the sacred Ganges. Legends about this cave ashram have remained since ancient times, but no one knew where it was located.
During a trip to the Himalayas, Sathya Sai Baba pointed out the exact location of this sacred cave and gave his blessing for a small ashram to be built at the entrance to the sacred cave. Thus, the cave of the sage Vasistha was rediscovered. I have visited this beautiful place many times and have been in awe of the magnificent mountains, fast icy waters of the Ganges, fresh air, and amazing atmosphere. Anyone who comes to this fabulous place feels the beauty and power of the Himalayas.
In the ‘60s, Sathya Sai Baba visited the Himalayas several times and his route was always the same. He would come to the holy city of Rishikesh, in the foothills of the Himalayas, and then he would travel with a small group of devotees up the Himalayas to Badrinath.
He spent only a week in the Himalayas and then returned back to the south of India to his ashram. The great and mysterious question is: why did Sathya Sai Baba make repeated pilgrimages to the Himalayas? This amazing region of the world is famous for the fact that great Yogis and Mahatmas have lived here since time immemorial.