Story of the Cross
A Story as Told by Dr. John Hislop
from "Sai Baba, The Holy Man and the Psychiatrist", by Dr.
Samuel Sandweiss, M.D. (p.175)
Baba, a large group of students from the Sathya Arts and Science
College at Brindavan and a few other people, including myself, were
walking down the bank of a road to a stretch of level sand of the dry
Kekkanahalla River bed. I was walking alongside Swami, and as we
passed a bush, he reached over and pulled off a couple of twigs and
held them up like a cross. Hislop, he said, what is this?
"Well, Swami, it is a cross," I answered. He put the twigs in his hand,
closed it and produced three rather slow breaths on it. Then he opened
his hand and gave me a cross with a figure of Christ on it. This is
an image of Christ on the cross, he said-- not as artists have
imagined Him and as historians have told about Him, but as he actually
really and truly was, with stomach pulled way in and ribs all showing
because He had had no food for eight days.
So I said, "Well, the cross, Swami, tell me about that."
He said, This cross is a piece of the wood from the original
cross on which Christ was crucified. Then he said something very
interesting. To find a piece of that wood after two-thousand years
presented a little difficulty. I suppose that is why he breathed
rather slowly three times. Usually he gives one puff, and a ring or
whatever just appears.
I noticed something odd and asked, "Swami, what is the hole at the top
of the cross?"
He replied, That is the hole where they hung the cross on a
standard.
The cross is so small that the details of the figure of Christ escape
the eye. A friend, Walter Wolfe, came down to our place in Baja and
took some photographs of the cross that greatly magnify the details
and show the beauty of the tiny figure of Christ (head size is 3/16
inches and overall length is 7/8 inches).
When Walter Wolfe brought some enlargements of the photographs down to
our house, we were standing around the table, looking at the pictures
and thinking of Christ and Baba, when suddenly - from a perfectly
clear sky - there was a terrible crash of thunder. Then a very strong
wind blew through the house, rattling the shutters, banging the doors
and blowing the curtains. The next day an article in the San Diego
Tribune reported that a mysterious thunder and wind had come up
unexpectedly from a perfectly clear sky at five o'clock the previous
afternoon. My wife reminded me that Christ died on the cross at five
o'clock and that the Bible tells of thunder and earthquakes which
arose suddenly.
I can only conclude that there is a tremendous amount of power in that
little cross.