There are many types of knowledge, all of which are very important for the development of human culture. Sathya Sai Baba never denied physics, mathematics, jurisprudence, economics, or the many other sciences important for development of human society. However, there is a knowledge that is most important, and that is knowledge about the essence of one’s soul.

Who constantly strives to be free from problems and suffering, as well as to find eternal happiness? Who wants to be successful? Who wants to receive genuine answers to the most important questions of the universe and dispel their doubts? Who seeks to know the absolute truth, thinks, and meditates? To all these complex questions, the answer is simple: “I am”.

Even if you say you do not have all these desires and questions, then we can ask: who does not have questions and desires? The answer will be exactly the same: “I” do not have desires and questions.

If someone says he does not believe in the existence of "I" at all, then it is appropriate to ask: who does not believe in the existence of "I"? and again the answer is "I". You have thoughts, feelings, desires, preferences, opinions – you do things, but at the same time, most often you forget to realize or understand who this “I” is, which thinks, feels, and acts.

The true "Self" existed before the birth of the physical body and will continue to exist after one’s death. Sathya Sai Baba never denied the numerous branches of human culture, he even founded several major universities and colleges in India, which successfully taught various disciplines, allowing graduates to get good jobs and build successful careers.

Sathya Sai Baba was extremely active in public and social life, and he taught his followers the same. Of all kinds of knowledge, Sathya Sai Baba considered the knowledge of oneself to be the highest. A person who has known his soul discovers for himself the greatest cosmic secret of the essence of being. Only then all other types of knowledge and all activity, in general, acquires a sacred meaning, otherwise everything is pure vanity.

The omnipresent "I" is invisibly present in wakefulness and in sleep, in happiness and suffering, in birth and death; it existed long before the birth of your physical body and will continue its existence after the death of the body. The body is born and dies, but the "I" is eternally present in the infinite cosmos. Everything in this world is impermanent; everything changes every second, but the True Self is an eternal observer present invisibly and invariably in the center of the constant cycle of impermanence and variability.

It is extremely difficult to talk about Wolf Messing, the famous mystic of the twentieth century. This man is a mystery as quite a lot is known about him, but at the same time almost nothing is known of him. He was the first to recognize and proclaim the truth that Sathya Sai Baba is a divine incarnation. Messing's spiritual path was very complex and ambiguous. Some perceived him as a prophet and a great soothsayer, and some called him a charlatan. Nevertheless, he had unique supernatural abilities and perfect clairvoyance.

All his life he asked spiritual questions about the meaning of human existence, trying to understand why God gave him such a unique talent. Messing accurately saw the future, both of individual people and of entire nations, and when something wonderful was about to happen, he was sincerely happy. With the help of his amazing clairvoyance, he accurately saw the future of people and entire countries but could do nothing to change unfolding situations that would cause great suffering.

Messing was a unique conductor of accurate information. In the twenties and thirties, he traveled extensively around the world, including India, which was then a colony of England. In 1936, he traveled to India and visited Bombay, Calcutta, and Bangalore. While on the train traveling from Bangalore to Delhi, the train stopped at Anantapur railway station. According to some accounts of the story, Messing began to feel strong, intuitive vibrations and walked off the train, telling his escort they must stop in this city. This surprised his assistants, who, at first, tried to persuade him to get back on the train and continue the journey in their comfortable carriage, but Messing was not inclined and remained on the platform while his assistants unloaded things and, although perplexed, remained with him. The reason for such strange behavior was that Messing felt the presence of a great divine teacher nearby and decided to look for him.

I tried to discover more information from some senior Sathya Sai Baba devotees, such as Subba Rao, Padananda, and Maheshwarananda, about how exactly this meeting took place between Messing and little Sathya Sai Baba, who was then around ten years old. There are different versions of exactly how this historic meeting eventuated. Different books describe different details, and the exact details are simply not known. It is only known that such a meeting took place.

The surprise of this event lies in the fact that at that time Sathya Sai Baba was about ten years old, and this meeting was several years before he proclaimed himself an Avatar, revealing to everyone around him the special spiritual mission of his incarnation. In those days, no one treated the Sai boy as special, he was just a simple village boy. Of course, the locals were very surprised when the famous soothsayer from distant Europe, upon seeing the Sai boy, proclaimed the famous words of prophecy: "He is a divine person!"

According to one version of the story, when the train pulled into Anantapur, Messing suddenly felt a powerful motivating energy which caused him to rush out of the carriage, demand a car, and drive in the direction of where his intuition was calling. He came to the village of Puttaparthi and drove to the very house where, the boy, Sathya Sai Baba lived.

According to another version, little Sathya Sai Baba was not far from the railway station that day and Messing, who got off the train, easily discovered the divine child. The details of the story are not so significant for me. The important thing is that Wolf Messing's precise intuitive feeling and his clairvoyance led him to the young Sathya Sai Baba. Messing is acknowledged as being the first person to understand the divine nature of Sathya Sai Baba, and to prophesy who he is.

As was, during the life of Sathya Sai Baba, so now, disputes about who Sathya Sai Baba was, and remains to be, do not subside. There are many opinions. Some consider him the greatest divine incarnation and teacher of humanity, and some consider him a cunning deceiver. There can be no absolute and exact proof of who Sathya Sai Baba is, All evidence given by man is in the realm of logic, and yet, it’s common knowledge that divine incarnation is outside all logical reasoning.

In the Vedic texts and throughout biblical scriptures, there are many descriptions of the qualities of the Avatar and the Messiah: i.e., divine incarnation. All of them are quite naive and have little to do with life, because all attempts to rationally define the Avatar or the Messiah are products of ignorant human ideas about what the Avatar or Messiah should be like. But the peculiarity of the unstable and insidious mind is that for any argument there is always a counterargument.

When Jesus Christ came to earth, many high priests quite sincerely expected the Messiah, but they could not recognize him because they relied upon their interpretations of the many predictions and signs as described in earlier prophetic texts. The chief priests expected the Messiah to come according to their own ideas of what he should be like.