After almost 30 years of Mission (24 -12 72, in Bangalore), Sathya Sai Baba gave the first of a series of annual Discourses on Jesus Christ. . The Discourse culminates in a preposterous claim that Jesus announced Sai Baba’s future Advent from the Cross. This is still taken seriously by devotees and the Sathya Sai Organization (who accord this Discourse and three others pride of place on one of their websites).
Sathya Sai Baba makes a categorical and surely megalomaniacal claim (at the end of the Discourse), extraordinary even by his inflated standards:
“There is one point that I cannot but bring to your special notice today. At the moment when Jesus was merging in the Supreme Principle of Divinity, He communicated some news to his followers, which was interpreted in a variety of ways by commentators and those who relish the piling of writings on writings and meanings upon meanings, until it all swells up into a huge mess.”
“The statement itself has been manipulated and tangled into a conundrum. The statement of Christ is simple: ‘he who sent me among you will come again!’ and he pointed to a Lamb. The Lamb is merely a symbol, a sign. It stands for the Voice – Ba-Ba; the announcement was the Advent of Baba. ‘His Name will be Truth,’ Christ declared. Sathya means Truth. ‘He will wear a robe of red, a blood-red robe.’ [Here Baba pointed to the robe He was wearing.] ‘He will be short, with a crown (of hair). The Lamb is the sign and symbol of Love.’
But that is not all. Sathya Sai Baba adds that he is not just Christ, but God the Father:
“Christ did not declare that he will come again. He said, ‘He who made me will come again.’ That Ba-ba is this Baba and Sai, the short, curly-hair-crowned red-robed Baba, is come. He is not only in this Form, but he is in every one of you, as the dweller in the Heart. He is there, short, with a robe of the colour of the blood that fills it.” (Sathya Sai Speaks, XI, 54:346)
“The great teachers belong to mankind. It is wrong to believe that Jesus belongs only to the Christians and that Christmas is a holy festival for the West only. To accept one of them as one’s own and discard the rest as belonging to others is a sign of pettiness. Christ, Rama, Krishna – they are for all men everywhere.” (XI, 54:338)
To see the ignorance and confusion of Sathya Sai Baba about the historical Jesus and Christianity in general, see Brian Steel’s academic analyses here.
Sathya Sai Baba Deceptions Exposed 