Deflecting the Limelight: Accounts of Guruji’s Siddhis

Amma, Guruji, Haran Aiya and Sakuntala.

 (from "The Goddess and the Guru"):

“One of the ways Aiya deflects the guru-wonderworker limelight [from himself] is to extol the powerful capabilities of his own guru, Guruji,” explained scholar Corinne Dempsey in an in-depth study of Aiya’s temple in the early 2000s. “I have heard Aiya on a number of occasions remark that Guruji, who appears to have accumulated extraordinary siddhis through his extensive Sri Vidya practice, has no need for the elaborate rituals Aiya promotes and performs. Guruji’s powers are such, according to Aiya, that ‘all he has to do is touch you’ for your desires to be realized.” Dempsey continued:

The only time Aiya asked me to turn off the tape recorder during an interview session was when he described in detail one of the more spectacular feats he witnessed Guruji perform. Guruji himself does not want people to know the extent of his abilities, and Aiya is trying to be a good disciple. … But people, Aiya included, do talk freely about the ‘lesser’ miracles Guruji performs. Barbara, a devotee in her late thirties … told me of such an instance. During the 1999 Guru Purnima observance in late July, an annual festival for honoring one’s guru and guru lineage, Guruji and his wife were in the United States and came to Rush for the festivities. They arrived ceremoniously in a devotee’s van, and were greeted by a large group who waited, barefoot, on the parking lot in front of the temple. Barbara was among them:

“So I was out here with this whole crowd of people and standing on this pavement, lifting one foot at a time, trying to cool them off because it was terribly hot. And he comes up in the van and gets out, and it feels like the pavement got cold, or like it cooled down and was tolerable. And I turned to the lady next to me and—she said it first, she said, ‘Is it my imagination or did the ground just cool?’ I said, ‘It’s not your imagination because I was about to ask you.’”

Aiya recounted another curious phenomenon during the same visit. A congregant had prepared his backyard to host a full-scale yagna, installing a specially constructed homa kunda and a marquee, hiring a Vedic priest, and preparing food for scores of visitors. But when the day of the big event finally arrived, torrential rains scuttled his plans.

“It was pouring—I mean, pouring cats and dogs,” Aiya said. As the gathered guests peered glumly out from under the marquee, “Guruji sat looking at the homa kunda with no expression. Then suddenly he stood and quietly walked into the house. We couldn’t see him; we didn’t know what he was doing. But a few minutes later he came back and very casually sat down again.”

Within minutes, Aiya said, “it was as though somebody had turned off the tap. It stopped raining. Then I noticed that if you looked around at about a 50-foot radius, outside that radius it was still pouring! But inside it, nothing. So I quietly nudged [the host] and told him, ‘You know, something’s happened here.’”

Catching a glimpse of Aiya’s inquiring expression, Guruji quickly turned and disappeared into the crowd.

On the drive home later on, however, Aiya asked him about the incident.

Guruji said, “Well, this poor gentleman went through so much trouble to give the people some benefit from this homa. How could we just let all of his efforts go to waste?”

“Yes, yes, we know all that,” Aiya pressed him. “But what did you do?”

Guruji shrugged and said, “I used a Brahmastra”—a celestial missile from Hindu mythology, said to have been forged by Lord Brahma. He declined to discuss the matter further.

“And that was just one occasion,” Aiya concluded. “One place.”