shri sathya sai A Child Shall Lead Them

Anyway, arrangements were made for her to do the typing, and thus she was introduced to the miracles of Sathya Sai Baba. One of her two grand daughters, eight-year-old Mayan Waynberg would, at times, help Pearl by reading aloud the material to be typed. While the grandmother felt sceptical about the miracles, the granddaughter accepted them without question. To the child they seemed quite natural.

The typing of the first few chapters had been completed when Mayan, who had lately been looking very pale and had been bruising too easily, was taken to a doctor for a blood test. The doctor was appalled at the results. He phoned Mayan’s mother, Helen Waynberg, and strongly advised that the child should be collected from her school and taken home to rest without delay. He also made immediate arrangements for her to be given a bone-marrow test at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney.

At this stage the family became very worried indeed. Pearl told me about it when I called to find out how the typing was progressing. I could see she was afraid, very afraid, that her little granddaughter might have some drastic, killer disease, like leukemia. It proved not to be leukemia, but something equally lethal – aplastic anaemia, in which the bone-marrow fails to produce the vital blood components in sufficient quantity to maintain health and life.

Her blood picture at that time showed the haemoglobin count at less than half normality, the white components of the blood about a third the normal level and the platelets way down to one-fifteenth of the normal count. Mayan was put under the care of a specialist who told her mother that the only treatment was the use of certain drugs, one a male hormone named Prednisolone and another, Fluoxymesterone.

From both of these, distressing side effects could be expected, such as stunting the child’s growth, causing puffiness and obesity, hair growth on the face while causing baldness on the head. The patient would need to have constant blood and bone marrow tests to monitor her condition. As Mayan had a deep phobia about needles piercing her skin and blood vessels, this was a frightful ordeal for her and everyone else concerned.

But the most tragic part of the situation was that, after going through this treatment and suffering its side effects, she would still not be cured. The best that could be expected was a few more years of life, with very limited activity. The drug therapy was not a cure, the elders were told; all it could do was to delay the inevitable for a time. No one could say how long that period would be.

In this sad situation Pearl thought about the Sai miracles she had been typing. She writes:

“I must admit to complete lack of faith in religion, considering myself a Jewess by tradition but not by observance. I had typed about many miracles that Sai Baba had performed, and had thought how interesting it all sounded intellectually, but had not this dreadful illness occurred to my own granddaughter, I might have let it go at that.

Then it was as if my mind suddenly opened with a jerk, and I began to think that perhaps there was something real in all I had typed. Howard and Iris Murphet were most concerned when I told, them about Mayan. They said they would bring some Vibhuti over and Mayan could start taking it immediately.”

It has often been said and written that Sai Baba is specially interested in anyone in whom his devotees are interested. So the link was there. Yet, I remembered him saying emphatically that two necessary ingredients of divine healing are faith and surrender. Could we find such ingredients in this Sydney suburban home, where no one seemed to have religious or spiritual interests, and Sai Baba was a remote, almost fictional, figure in a far-off foreign country?

Well, we could but try. To Mayan I said earnestly, ‘You must really and truly believe in the power of Sai Baba!’

‘Oh, but I do’, she replied, and in the way she said it I sensed the simple, child-like faith that Christ had put of first importance.

A little later, Grandfather Jack Harrison made me feel that he too may be fertile soil for faith. He said, standing in the garden of their home, ‘I am going to India as soon as I can to thank Sai Baba for curing Mayan.’ He did not say, ‘If he cures her.’ The Sai treatment had hardly begun, yet he seemed to have no doubts about its effectiveness.

We may be born with faith, that inner certainty of the omnipotent Supreme, or we may acquire it, but we can never acquire it through reasoning and logic. In fact, the reasoning mind can be a handicap, blocking the birth of the deeper knowledge that men call faith.

Grandmother Pearl had her intellectual barriers but a very warm heart. Mother Helen was non-committal. Judging by her talk, she was atheistic but she was willing to try the Vibhuti treatment. We kept assuring the family of the importance of prayer – constant prayer. They agreed to pray to Swami for His help. My wife and I prayed to Him fervently and regularly.

There was, however, an urgent question to be answered. We knew from studying many cases that Swami sometimes cures people through drugs prescribed by doctors, while preventing any bad side effects. Sometimes, on the other hand, He will not let drugs be used at all. What would be His Will in the case of Mayan?

The only way to be sure was to ask Him. In the meantime, we thought, it would be best to let the child start the drug therapy, particularly as the doctors had said that no side-effects would become evident for about three months. We had to find some way of asking Swami the vital question as soon as possible. He must be asked directly.

By a stroke of good fortune, our friend Lynette Penrose was about to set off on a visit to Sai Baba. Incidentally, it had been in Lynette’s home in Balmain that we first began Sai meetings in Sydney. Lynette agreed to take to Swami a photograph of Mayan, and letters asking the vital question about drug treatment. We hoped, moreover, that she would have the opportunity of asking Him this question, herself, orally. She went off to India, and we all eagerly awaited word from her. It was not long before an airmail letter arrived.

Lynette told us that she had been granted an interview and had given the photograph and letters to Swami. When He looked at the photograph, she wrote, ‘His face had become very, very soft and compassionate.’ About the drug therapy His reply was, ‘No, no drugs, just Vibhuti in water twice a day.’