My Journey to Sri Sathya Sai Baba

The author, W. M. Stephenson, is a teacher in School News Nationwide (a non-profit organization) in Brooklyn, New York. Being a dedicated teacher he functions as a personal academic tutor to college students who have problems with college-level math and English, and he is available to students anytime during the week. 

“When the student is ready, the Master will appear.”

I had thought that Baba first called me when I saw a video of Him in Trinidad sometime in the 1980s. I was wrong. Baba was beckoning me since I was seven or eight years old. Come with me as I walk down the intriguing memory lane.

I was born in what was then British Guiana, now Guyana, situated on the northern coast of South America. Guyana is the only English-speaking country in South America. It has Venezuela on its west, Suriname on the east, and Brazil (and to a lesser extent Venezuela) to its south. To the north is the Atlantic Ocean.

I was born in a suburb of Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, on Wednesday May 2nd, 1945.

British Guiana was a colony of Great Britain when I was born. Early in the colonization process, the British thought that it was prudent to import East Indian “indentured servants” into British Guiana. The motive being that Britain would not have a monolithic disgruntled African ex-slave population to deal with.

It was early in this social environment that Baba chose to whisper in my ears. By the time I was in my ninth or tenth year, I realized that as a descendant of African slaves I was expected not to have close association with any East Indian. The unspoken instruction was, “Do not mix with those people!”

I faithfully disobeyed both plainly spoken and implicit encouragement to separate myself from my East Indian friends. From deep within me, unexplainable and uncontrollable urges surfaced to treat East Indians as I would any other human being. I could not ignore them. It was at this point in my life that a significant incident occurred.

I was about seven or eight years old at the time. My mother and I were traveling on a train going from one town to another. At a stop during the journey, an East Indian man and his son entered our carriage. The man looked nervous and worried. I soon discovered why. The conductor approached the man and asked him for his ticket. The man said that he did not have a ticket, and he had no money either to pay the fare for himself and his son.

The conductor was of African descent. I watched him closely for he seemed to welcome the situation so that he could unleash the hatred he had for all East Indians on this poor man and his son.

“If you do not have a ticket when the train stops at the next station,” roared the conductor, “I will put you and your son off the train.”  The man’s son began to cry. Amidst sobs he asked his father what would they do when they are put off the train. It was growing darker and electricity had not yet reached the country roads of rural British Guiana. I could envision difficulties and dangers this unfortunate father and son would encounter on their way home. I could bear this no longer.

I tore away from my mother and walked up to the conductor. I asked the conductor how much was the fare for the two of them and handed a coin to the East Indian man to cover their fare. The man took the coin and paid the conductor. The conductor was confused, as he did not have enough change to give back to the man. So he asked the East Indian man to be patient with him while he tried to muster the necessary change.

That night, as a child, I pondered on man’s inhumanity to man. I reflected on the conductor’s undisguised glee at the opportunity of administering cruel treatment to fellow human beings. I thought of the people who were not prepared to help that unfortunate man until they were shamed by my action. This incident changed me forever. My heart and life were overwhelmed with love and compassion. I liked the feeling. So I knew that from now on my heart, not my head, would be my guide.

When I was nine or ten years old, I was a pupil at the All Saints Anglican Primary School in a small town called New Amsterdam in the eastern part of British Guiana. My fellow-pupil and friend of East Indian origin was having some problems with arithmetic. Our teacher, an energetic female, used the rod liberally to get down to the “seat” of our problems—mathematical and grammatical. My friend was fearful of the teacher, who was of African descent.

I decided that I had to help my friend overcome his arithmetic problems. I agreed to go to his home and “teach” him. My brothers and sisters were shocked about this proposition and wondered aloud about the teaching profession and what it had come to!  However, my friend responded well to my tutoring. During these sessions his mother would offer me tasty and spicy (hot) Indian delicacies. These were greatly appreciated and quickly consumed by the little visiting teacher. Then one day something strange happened.

My friend’s mother approached us while we were busy solving a problem, and without saying a word she rubbed some ash on our foreheads. At that time, I thought this was a strange Indian religious custom. I had forgotten this incident—until Baba (who else but He) brought it to my memory, as if to let me know that He was guiding my footsteps even then. I do not know whether my friend’s parents were devotees or not, but I do know that from the moment the ash touched my forehead, the word “Shiva” began echo in my mind. Later, I found myself gravitating toward Lord Shiva and His various manifestations.

Some years ago, I met a Hare Krishna devotee who showed me a book that had horoscopes made by astrologers of his organization. After I gave him my birth details, he turned to the section marked “Taurus” and began reading. Suddenly he paused; when I asked him the reason he showed me a section that said I would see Lord Shiva in this lifetime. I promptly told him that I had seen Lord Shiva face to face. He wanted to know where and when. I told him I had seen Sathya Sai Baba, who is Lord Shiva, when I had visited Prasanthi Nilayam two times.

By the mid-eighties I was married with six children. My wife is of East Indian ancestry. I was teaching in Trinidad, West Indies. My family was away and I was watching news on the television. At the end of the news, an unfamiliar scene flickered on the screen, and I heard Indian music.  My first reaction was to get up and turn off the television, for I did not want to watch “Mastana Bahar”—a local program featuring Indian singing and dancing. But then I realized that Mastana Bahar is aired on Saturday night and decided to watch the program.

To this day, I cannot remember the title of the show or what the show was about. All I remember is that Sathya Sai Baba appeared, and I was transfixed. Immediately, I knew I had found the one for whom my soul had longed for so many years. My heart was filled with inexplicable joy and excitement. A tremendous desire to know more about this being flooded me and could hardly wait to call the telephone number flashed at the end of the program.

I had a restless but happy night. I was too joyous to sleep. The next day I called the number and Brother Gopichand Ramsarran asked me to meet him. He gave me a set of books about Sathya Sai Baba. Promptly I began to read. One day a student saw me reading one of these books in class. She was a Muslim girl and she remarked, “So you are reading about Sai Baba! My aunt is a devotee. She has left Trinidad to live in Canada permanently. She left a box full of books about Sai Baba and other Hindu saints. We are thinking of throwing them away. Do you want them?” Can you imagine my joy? I accepted them as gifts from Baba who, in disguise, was satisfying my thirst for knowledge about Him.

Baba later gave me a job that made it possible for some of my family members and me to visit Prasanthi Nilayam (on two occasions). I am still not a perfect devotee, but the Lord has not finished with me as yet. I am still in His workshop. I see His loving hands smoothing out my rough edges daily. There is still a lot of scraping, sanding, and polishing to be done. But I have placed myself fully and completely in Baba’s hands so that I can qualify for liberation. I cannot get in His way, for I have to let Him finish the job He has begun.

Jai Sai Ram!

~W.M. Stephenson, New York, USA