Manoj Nakra

Sai Bhagvatham Manoj Nakra

Sai Bhagvatham is a story of man's engagement with God. The book uses over a thousand personal spiritual experiences and anecdotes that record inner experiences of persons wrestling with their religious circumstances. The experiences, drawn from all religious traditions, are evocative of the operation of God in the experiences of man. The experiences with Sri Sathya Sai Baba are juxtaposed with the narratives of spiritual experiences recorded by seekers over the millennia. The experiences with Sai are uncannily similar to the universal experiences of man with God; they mirror the journey to the Divine that men and women have experienced. Sai is relentless in the pursuit of his purpose, transformation of man, however much man falters, vacillates, resists, struggles, or even tries to escape. With Sai the spiritual journey is tangible, poignant, accessible, and more intense than ever recorded before. The myriad experiences with Sai are experiences of the Divine at work. They are not fortuitous. Everything is planned and intentional. Sai demonstrates that in the relationship of man with the Divine, God is actively engaged with man; he is not an impassive bystander. The engagement of man with God is planned and activated by God, it progresses based upon the responses of man, and the engagement stimulates the transformation of man. Man, in his engagement with God, asks the 'why' questions, seeking to comprehend and explain God. He is also reflective, attempting to understand himself, and realize who he really is. The diverse and innumerable first person incidents with Sri Sathya Sai Baba create a vivid characterization of the persona of Sai, hence the use of Bhagvatham in the title. The methodology of the book is ethnographic. The author has created new compositional settings for the quotes. The material is pristinely presented to avoid distortion of spiritual meaning, making the material self-interpretive. The diverse spiritual experiences taken together present a story of the transformation of man in the company of God. The use of human experiences as the basis of characterization of engagement of man and God is similar to that taken by William James in the classic 'The Varieties of Religious Experience.' Religious experiences are spontaneous and subjective experiences; man is the touchstone to substantiate the impact of God. Religious experiences have meaning when they result in tangible outcomes; the transformation of the person undergoing the experience.