What concerns the talk between Swami and the Russians, I can tell only about my observations of their dialogue. It was a very interesting dialogue not in words but in gazes. It means that the talk was going as on two levels: on the first visible one they told about usual things. Swami in details said about lives of two of them, different domesticities, work and their passions. And everything was true, as they confessed later. But when the third had asked to speak about his life, Swami answered that it wasn’t really important for him, and that he should occupy himself with the work he was occupied all the time. Then he said that the work was very important and asked others to help the third. In the end of talk he promised to help the third too and to be always near. Sometimes Swami silenced for a minute and intently looked the third in the eye and he answered Swami the same. When we got out the temple I asked the third: what could their strange significant silence mean? And he answered me:
«We’ve told not with our tongues but with eyes. One can transfer much more information in visual images than in words, and it takes less time to make it. One can remember any painting in a museum in a minute, but an hour wouldn’t be enough to retell its contention. I loaded to him in images what I knew myself; he too sent me something on level of images. But we had known for long time what he told us, and what we had brought was quite new for him. It can change much from what is happening today in India and the world. Because Sai Baba, or precisely somebody using him forms here in Puttaparthi a new world religion, which would absorb all the best from other religions but would never abandon the worst from all of them: from atheism that is necessary condition of crowd-“elitism” stability in society. Grisha, I’m sure that Sai Baba is a kind man and he truly wishes people well. But he himself is a prisoner of the ashram, of the temple, and primarily of that ancient aggregor, which is used to maintain the stability of Indian society crowd-“elitism”. Grisha, agree that it’s really quite difficult to keep the crowd in exaltation for dozens of years. The tandem of brothers Strugatskys called this process so: “It’s hard to be a god”, as I remember. But I would add: If you don’t know who and what for appointed you to play a god on the Earth».
Having finished his retelling Grisha silenced for a while, as if he was reflecting upon whether to continue the topic or tell of problems connected with his own life in India.
It was at a turning point that time; I couldn’t decide completely whether to stay here or to leave. At first the guests from Petersburg called me to return to Russia, but after I shared my opinion about the essence of what was going here they considered that I was better to stay in the ashram. Because neglecting the total worship, from their point of view Swami seemed to be very lonely, and he probably needed a help of some close friend. Really, feelings I have to Swami are even more lofty that to my parents.
Grisha silenced again and looked at Holmes absently as if trying to summon an image of Sai Baba.
But what were the questioned asked by Russians that Sai Baba rejected to answer in women’s presence?
They wanted to ask about who was the true initiator of the submarine “Kursk” wreckage, which stroke the world on August 12, 2000. They had been told that Swami was able to show it creating something like a virtual TV-set. But during the conversation they abandoned this idea; may be because he answered very dimly on their questions about the Universe structure. They had the harmonious theory about it, which they considered to be known to ancient Egyptian and Indian zhretses. May be they tried to check their theory, but they explained to me, that even if Sai Baba had known it he wasn’t able to retell it and moreover on an alien language. Probably that system of knowledge is thus closed from people not privy to it. I can only witness for that in the end of discussion Swami was much more interested in his guests than they in him. And for a farewell Swami told that Russians would help India to wake up and India would follow Russia.
And what did the Russians tell concerning the “picnics”?
They explained that the problem was not what was painted at them, but in the morality of those, who interpreted the symbolic pictures of the “picnics”. Little by little I began to understand that in the case of the wreck of submarine “Kursk” they worried even not because the fact of such perfidy, though they thought that “Kursk” was sunk by torpedoes of the USA’s NS. They worried whose insane will or insouciant automatic execution of duties had brought the world before the nuclear war. In their opinion, not a single country (and the USA as well) has a right to unleash nuclear war, which would mean the ruin of the whole civilization. And that’s why they had a strong conviction that the USA would be punished stronger that one could imagine. And that retribution was somehow encoded in the third “picnic”. Surely when I had learned the “black Tuesday’s” events and the time of the first attack of the WTC I unwittingly returned to pictures of the third “picnic”. Moreover the Indian analytics were among the first who had noticed the symbolism of the number 11 connected with the kamikaze-planes. And what can you say, Mr. Holmes, about the catastrophes in New York and Washington?
Now I would say only that the “picnics” strangely follow me all over the world. However, I’m not going to keep from you that I really occupy myself with them and have collected much interesting material. I hope that it directly concerns the solving of our riddle.
Holmes briefly narrated about his meeting in Switzerland, Spain and Egypt. Then he proceeded to India.
In the last year in October the press wrote a lot about Russia’s President Putin’s visit to India. I wonder if he was here, at Sai Baba. How do you think?
I can’t say precisely. However, according to many traces, he was. In India they know how to organize visits in such way that nobody would see anything. He surely was in Bombay, and Russian delegacies, which always were much in the ashram and that time they were seven, waited for their President impatiently. During the second meeting with the Russians Swami evaluated the Presidents Clinton and Eltsin with a single word: bad. When he had been asked about Putin he answered: very good. That’s why if Putin had wished to meet with Swami, such meeting could take place, though there was no official information about it in Indian press. But I think that something infiltrated through the cover of secrecy. Two months later I got a videocassette from Russia with the telecast “Puppets”, devoted to the secret visit of Putin to Sai Baba’s ashram.
And what is “Puppets”, Grisha?
It’s one of popular TV-shows in Russia, which is watched by near one hundred millions watchers every Sunday. It’s an analogue of French popular show “Guignols d’Info”. There, all the first persons of the state and other famous political figures appear as puppets and plots are every time taken from the Russian or foreign classics.
In its matter it is right: statesmen are “clock-work puppets”, programmed by the official “Protocol” and professional duties. They stop to be puppets only after they have understood it. Then human relations with ordinary people, other politicians or journalists became more significant for them than official etiquette and hierarchy. Only after it the power can serve to everybody as it should: on the base of personal human relations in the sphere of ruling. As the Russians said, the epoch of “the Protocol” had ended and an epoch of business common to all mankind began. Now personal relations are more important than any official power. And the basis for it is the unity of emotional and notional soul system of everybody, which becomes common for different people.