Prophecies which Sai devotees claim were made before Sathya Sai Baba’s birth and even back to the time of the sage Brighu (around 3000BC) have been circulated around the world in books and web pages. No prophesy, however, which names him as such became public until AFTER the points mentioned in it were very well known in India at least. The first such major claim was the prophesies of the Suka Nadi presented by long-term devotee Narayana Shastri of Bangalore. No independent historian or author (i.e. no one who is not a blind devotee) has published any information or named reliable sources which show any prophecy specifically naming Sathya Sai Baba, nor have non-devotees supported these massive claims. That in itself is sufficient to refute these as being post factum contrivances.
Much has been made by Sai followers of the alleged reference to him in the Bible’s Book of Revelations. Hardly any part of the Bible has been subject to more spin and prediction than that book, and the attempt to make it a prophecy about Sai Baba is really absurd as there is only the thinnest of associations to hang the claim on (that he will have a sword of truth, for example – but there are countless claimants to having that sword). Likewise the attempt to fit Nostradamus’ obscure and vague Latin writings to the Procrustean bed of Sai Baba’s “advent’. Edward Cayce is also recruited to this end, but it is all too transparently obfuscated towards the end of proving that Sai Baba is what he claims (in his unsurpassed megalomania).
In short, we are faced with a mythology evidently invented after the fact to justify Sathya Sai Baba’s claims, expressing only devotion in trying to promote Sai Baba and those aspects of his teaching which have some common appeal. Such attempt always fail in the long run, though the unquestioning believers can be fooled for a long time.
Reported prophecies of the coming of Sathya Sai Baba as avatar and what have you have been collected and published by numerous devotees in articles, books, web pages etc, such as by T. Wolke of the Netherlands, Krishna Nandan Sinha (in “Sai Baba, the Rose Fire Of Heaven”) and on saibabaofindia.com. They have been spread as propaganda for many years and in many countries in different languages. The fairly complete set I shall post from here in a series of blog – on the posting at saibabaofindia.com. The prophecies are in brown text, my comments in black:-
“Sri Maha Vishnu’s tenth incarnation is that of Kalki. He will be born towards the end of the Kali age, the age replete with all kind of vice and godlessness. Dharma will limp only on one foot. Even that will gradually vanish.
At this time Sri Maha Vishnu will incarnate in the world as Kalki Deva, assuming black complexion. The wicked will perish and Dharma will regain its supremacy ushering in a new age.”
(Predicted by Sri Pandrimalai Swamigal : taken from the book Dasavatara, by Shri S. Ramakrishna, Bharathi Vidya Bhavan).
There are enough other claimants for the title of the reincarnation of Vishnu as Kalki Avatar. The most prominent currently having a wide foreign following isKalki Bhagavan, or Sri Kalki Avatar of Bangalore, advertising himself as ‘The Living Avatar’.
In a futile attempt to ‘prove’ that Sathya Sai Baba is Kalki, his 60th birthday chariot was drawn by four white horses, as Kalki is predicted to have along with him.
“- Dr. E.V.Sastri, a prominent member of the Indian Astro Occult Research Association, New Delhi, during the course of his research, found out ‘Nandi Grantham’ available in Tamil Nadu, which had all the indications about Sathya Sai Baba’s horoscope written by a famous erudite Pundit, some five hundred years ago. It was written on a piece of palm leaf of the size 36 centimeters long and 2 ½ cms broad. It reads : ‘The person to whom this horoscope relates and whose name is Sathyanarayana Raju will renounce the world in his boyhood, will start schools and hospitals, will publish books for the upliftment of the World, will spend every day of his whole lifetime for the establishment of Dharma, which is his ideal and objective’. It is further mentioned that, “He will be an Avatar amongst the Avatars”. (Taken from the book ” ‘The Grace of Sai’ by R.Lowenberg).
These so-called ‘nadis’ (claimed to have been written thousands of years ago by sages like Brighu, Kumar and others) are one of the biggest ‘occult’ money-earning scams in India on a level with Hindu astrology. At least hundreds of readers of palm leaf manuscripts (‘nadi’ ) are to be found. Narayana Shastri was told by Sathya Sai Baba personally NOT to publish his claims, but he went ahead anyhow.
Another well-known palm leaf (‘nadi’) reader, Kantilal G. Pandya of Bombay, whose prophesies very seldom come to pass, was promoted by the Sai-deluded author Phyllis Krystal, until she realised that she had been duped and denounced him. Sathya Sai Baba endorsed that nadi reader and sent numerous devotees I know there to have their fortunes told. In the interests of investigation, my wife and I went to see him, though we were sceptical about the weird and wonderful claims made for these palm leaves. His predictions for our lives have very signally failed to come to pass and most have already been unproven by events!).
The above ‘prophecy’ would have been easy to construct by a Sai follower. The ‘shastri’ from Bangalore who wrote it indeed had long been a keen follower, besides making his living from these ‘readings’ of sages’ prophesies!
There is not a scrap of evidence that this prophecy is other than sheer propaganda by a zealous devotee who intends to promote Sai Baba by any means possible. Ther is no scan of the alleged palm leaf in question, nowhere is the original text preserved, and there is not even a direct translation of the alleged text. These soothsayers like Narayana Shastri work mostly on intuition when they give readings for individuals, just as many astrologer, palmists, Tarot readers, and others who make their living by such doubtful methods do.
More information about the occasional accuracy of some nadis, however, is provided to my by Barry Pittard, who had a great interest in the nadis, and visited a number centres representing different nadi traditions. He later corresponded with many who had also been to them and still others, for example academics from East and West, keenly interested in nadi shastra. He has written this note for me:
Barry Pittard On Nadi Shastra
“Like Sathya Sai Baba himself, the nadis (and I confine myself to those in the hands of the small few owners whom I do not think are rogues) require complex discussion – one which I have, these days, scarce time, purpose or inclination to pursue. I will state simply my view that careful investigation throws up some challenges to those of rational bent. Necessarily, one would rule out discussion with those who already have their mind made up either way.
The sheer specificity of information relating to a subject who, in one of the traditions, submits a thumb-print is difficult, if not impossible, to refute – particularly in the case where the investigator sets up a number of empirical screens against being duped, such as going to separate nadi centres and ruling out any chance that e.g., one has been subtly ‘milked’ for information which is then spuriously played back to one, or that a hotel or stooges etc., may have got one’s biographical details and, in cahoots with a nadi reader, provided the information surreptitiously.
Even here, the references that await one in the reading refer (including by name and by other specific details) to, e.g., other family members, situations and even some references to abstruse detail to other individuals in one’s life. It can be a bit like coming into possession of a secret government file opened up under a Freedom of Information submission. I do not know how such a feat is achieved in the case of nadi centres which use the thumb-print method such as in South India largely in the State of Tamil Nadu, but found through exceptionally extensive enquiries via interview of subjects that something – whatever its nature – extraordinary is the case. What, however, and in my intensive and prolonged enquiries, I did find was that the predictions bore no such high correlation. In short, stunning accuracy of identification of subjects and considerable question about the success of the predictions. Of course, it should be made clear that attempts to follow up rigorously on outcomes of predictions was, necessarily, often ruled out by the consideration that the fulfilment times had not been reached. However, as I was able to determine in my own various readings and those of an array of other subjects – and so far as I was able to get some data from serious investigators – there are real problems in regard to accuracy of fulfilment. Yet again, the situation remindful of Sathya Sai Baba: things to be said affirmatively and things decidedly not, and still other things too difficult to decide.”
For a rather comprehensive examination see PROPHECIES ABOUT SATHYA SAI BABA AS GOD AVATAR, MIRACLE MAKER AND SAVIOUR OF MANKIND
Sathya Sai Baba Deceptions Exposed 