And then there’s the experience I had
at Baba’s ashram in 1996. In the middle of His Christmas
discourse, Baba waved His hand and materialized a small
gold-covered book - bringing a gasp of amazement from the crowd
of 50,000, me among them! (I was seated very close to Baba -
and was certain it was a genuine miracle.) That night at around
9 o’clock I heard that Baba had announced earlier that angels
would be flying above the ashram that evening. I looked into
the sky, but didn’t see anything unusual, so guessed I’d missed
the show. However, a couple of nights later, two friends came
running up to me on the street and said, “Ram Das, the angels are back! Come on,
you’ve got to see them!” So I
followed them up to a rooftop, away from the lights of the
ashram, lay down and looked up...
And in the sky above us was one of
the most astonishing sights I’ve ever seen: hundreds of thousands of
self-luminous beings flying through the air, zipping around at
great speed in what seemed to be an ecstatic dance of joy!
They looked a little like shooting stars - yet they were closer
to the Earth, and moving not in straight lines (as asteroids, or
any similar phenomena would be) but in curves and curlicues. Considering Baba's earlier announcement, I
didn’t see any reason to doubt that these glowing beings were
indeed angels, celestial helpers in His world mission: no other
phenomena I knew of could explain the sight. Sometimes
two would pair up for a while as they zipped about, and they
seemed to be pouring forth from some invisible gate above the
ashram, where I guessed they had maybe just received Baba’s
darshan and instructions for their work... The event had an unquestionably
supernatural exuberance about it that left all three of us
gasping in amazement. It was probably the most inspiring
sight I’ve ever witnessed, ringing out more clearly than a
thousand manifested rings the divine identity of Sathya Sai
Baba.
Why would so many
angels congregate in such an extraordinary way, other than to
have the darshan of God?
