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.
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) |
