MAJOR WORLD CATASTROPHE PREDICTIONS
ATTRIBUTED TO SATHYA SAI BABA IN THE 1970s

Among the many major predictions Sathya Sai Baba made, these disaster warnings are perhaps the most dramatic. Yet much more important are a wide variety of other failed prophesies and promises, many of which are listed here

THE MUCH-CIRCULATED PREDICTIONS PRESUMABLY MADE BY SAI BABA TO 18 STUDENTS IN THE LATE 1970s - BUT LATER CONTESTED BY SOME SOURCES (KATHERINE - 'SALAD AUNTIE' AT THE P.N. CANTEEN) WHO CLAIMED THAT THE PREDICTIONS WERE MADE TO KNOWN STUDENTS IN PUTTAPARTHI - NOT DURING A SIMILAR INCLIDENT AT OOTACAMUND WITH ALVIN DRUCKER

The predictions made were summarised in various lists - one containing 27 points, and other (shown below) 38 points. These were so drastic that they created a furore among many devotees for years on end. Sathya Sai Baba did not react to this until well over a decade had passed, when he flatly denied - to John Hislop, Robert Bozzani and others - the rumours which had been spreading world-wide in the Sai movement. Some of those devotees who took the dire world catastrophe predictions seriously decided to become residents in his ashram, for these would be saved from it all! It is typical of religious cults to enrol and entrap people in this way. Such rumors are their bread and butter. Did they think a good time would be had by them while all while the rest of the world suffered massive carnage and its aftermath? One has to wonder.

Sathya Sai Baba probably told his students these things in his well-know boasting mode to impress and also to cow them. It was said by persons in the ashram who claimed to know about this that the students were strictly told by him never to tell anyone else about them. This is typical of Sathya Sai Baba's way of telling 'secrets', which soon leak out. Whether he simply tries to intimidate those who he tells so as to control them, or whether he uses this as a way of sowing stories that will tend to enhance his importance and influence etc. is anyone's guess. Suffice to say that the disaster predictions were written down by someone - reportedly by a mother of one of the 18 fearful young boy students - and spread religiously and undercover by various permanent residents in the ashram, including a Westerner lady, Catherine, who introduced and made salads for years for the canteen (known to many as 'Salad Auntie'). The version below, which list the predictions as 38 points in all, came into my hands as a secret privilege and sign of confidence from an elderly Danish lady devotee we knew well (Tove Hansen). When I laughed at them, this lady was most offended and insisted on their genuineness. I had already heard enough of them and some of the details from other devotees who were very keen to confirm them, but also to spread them. Firstly, here is a word-for-word 'copy' of the predictions, warts and all (for those who wish to check this further, see the scan of the paper as it was widely circulated for years).

The allegedly "all-knowing" Sathya Sai Baba let this scaremongering continue to spread unchecked until faced with a pending crisis in the Sai movement. The rumours were so rife and widely reckoned to contain some truth that leaders of the Sai movement and Organisation were repeatedly questioned about them, but could neither confirm nor unconfirm them. Peggy Mason informed that she was phoned up from around the world by disturbed followers (often neglecting time zones and waking them in the mid of night). Around Christmas 1991, SB responded with denials of the rumours to worried questioning from a series of top foreign Sai Org. officials, including Michael Goldstein, Robert Bozzani and Bernhard Gruber. The concern and anxiety did not die down even then, and so Sathya Sai Baba made a public denial in his Shivarathri discourse in 1991, where he massively berated the 'rumour-mongers' in quite threatening terms. This was a great relief to some leaders in the Sai Org., for at last they were able to refute the rumours. See "No Global Disaster to be Apprehended " p. 63, Sanathana Sarathi March 1991).

However, in addition to the 27 and/or 38 predictions, a number of reports tell of Sathya Sai Baba allegedly materialising maps and sometimes a globe in interviews, showing how the world would look after a global catastrophe. These tend to back up the likelihood of Sathya Sai Baba having actually made the predictions, despite his last ditch denials made more than a decade later. In the late '80s, rumours were circulated (and reached me) of a Hungarian group that had been shown such a globe in an interview. Allegedly, much of the known world had disappeared and little remained of Western Europe but for England isolatedly in the Atlantic ocean. A Danish friend knew the Hungarian man who reported this, but it was impossible to trace him again. I made various attempts to identify and question this group, including one through Mr. Lucas Ralli (then the UK Central Coordinator who was receiving many questions about this). Ralli knew well the leaders of the Sai centre in Budapest, but they could not confirm anything to him. However, Mr. Bernhard Gruber of Germany, then Central Coordinator for Europe, told the European leaders' group (Easter 1991, where I was present and heard him at Sai House, Divignano, Italy) that he had at a recent interview asked Sai Baba about the disaster predictions from the Hungarian source. SB had told him there was no substance in it. Then he asked whether Sathya Sai Baba had produced the globe in an interview, to which he said Sathya Sai Baba replied as if affirmatively, then adding the following exact words "...it is not ready yet". No more could Gruber ascertain than that!

Further, at that time, I knew an American lady, Mrs. Marge Hendel, who assured me that a Californian family she knew had been given by Sathya Sai Baba in an interview a map of the future post-catastrophe world (which in fact agreed on several major features with the above predictions), which she claimed to have seen herself. She said the family had rejected Sathya Sai Baba and so had eventually thrown the map away. Similar reports of maps and predictions by Sathya Sai Baba in interviews are found in some of the writings of devotees in the ever-growing hagiography by amateur writers on Sathya Sai Baba.

The once-prominent US devotee, Al Drucker who held lectures for foreigners in Prashanthi Nilayam in 1984/5, stated that he had been present at Ootacamund teaching a class of boys when Sai Baba entered the classroom and began to tell them stories about his childhood and youth. Then Drucker, who had sat at the back of the room, told how Sathya Sai Baba 'materialised' a kind of metal globe and sent it around for examination, saying that the names of 18 students who would run the 18 states of India at some future date were inscribed on it. The boys produced a magnifying glass to try to study the characters on the object, but Sathya Sai Baba became thunderously angry and told them they should concentrate instead on him, the avatar, in whose presence they were so fortunate to be. He then took the globe-like object and threw it into the corner of the room, where Drucker said it could not be found later on. Believe what one can of all this... but the account itself is at least further evidence that Sathya Sai Baba indeed HAS made these kinds of predictions.

Most of the 38 points of the above predictions seem to be a hodge-podge concocted partly of borrowings from prophecies by various known soothsayers, including the alleged US clairvoyant Edgar Cayce (eg. as to the sinking of continental masses and a time of excessive overheating of the earth). Apropos, none of Cayce's predictions have so far come true. Some are proven false already, for he predicted that Bermuda would sink beneath the waves before 1950!). Whether or not Sathya Sai Baba really made these predictions, despite his vehement but very belated denial (Sathya Sai Speaks Vol 24 - p 37f) is not really so important. Firstly, there is already enough evidence to show that he denies what he has has predicted in private and tells untruths as it suits him. Secondly, he did not lift a finger to quell the massive unease among many devotees for many years... which shows that he does not care or that he is far from omniscient... but most likely both at once! At the same time, such rumours attract more followers who already have fears about some forthcoming apocalypse - especially when they believe they have been let in on what is a secret not for outsiders. Sathya Sai Baba can then announce outwardly that no such predictions were made or will come true (and note that this is yet another prediction!).

The incident with the 18 students above is doubtless the same as referred to by Ra. Ganapati in his semi-official biography of Sathya Sai Babawhere he wrote:

"His college students had the privilege to see another unique creation in the Ootacamund Summer Course in June 1976. Svami, who declared that He would live to see ninety six years in this body, mentioned that eighteen important institutions would be established by Him all over India in the remaining forty six years, and circled His hand.
Immediately there appeared in His hand a big medal with the map of India engraved. There were inscribed therein the eighteen institutions that are to appear in the next near-half-century. Not only that, the medal also carried the important 'achievements-to-be' of Svami in the future, in microscopic Devanagiri characters in the Samskrit language." (Baba: Sathya Sai Vol II - page 85)

The discrepancies between this account and that of Al Drucker, who told a group of us in the Prashanthi lecture room in January 1985 that he was the only adult present to that incident, are considerable. This is just typical of the highly varying accounts and rumours that fly about every incident due to the secretive Sathya Sai Baba and his staff. Drucker had remained behind after the Summer Course to be with some students, and it was then that Sathya Sai Baba - who was believed to have left Ootacamund - came into the room without warning.

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