Journeys and Star Gazing

Sydney, 1974 – Sai Baba at East Sydney Technical College

I went to see the holy man who pulled things from thin air.
Sai Baba, they said—materializing ash, rings, trinkets.
Curious, not convinced, I brought two kids with me—one mine, one a friend’s.
We sat toward the back. The room was full. The mood hushed.
He sat on a tiger skin, legs folded, saffron robe flowing, a man guarding him like he was royalty.

The kids made a bit of noise—nothing wild, just fidgeting, whispers, a child’s need to breathe aloud.

The crowd started turning—finger to lips, stern faces, the kind of anger only silence demands.
Then Sai Baba himself, voice sharp across the auditorium:
“Silence at the back.”

I looked around. Everyone was staring now. One man I recognized—a local artist, normally cool—his face hard with rage.

The kids tried to settle.
Then again, from the stage:
“I want silence.”

I couldn’t help it. Something in me snapped—not in anger, but in clarity.
I stood and said:
“What would Jesus do? Didn’t he say, ‘Suffer the little children’?”

That was it.

Sai Baba’s eyes burned. His hand flicked like a dismissal.
“Go. You are not welcome.”

And the room—every face on the floor, cross-legged in collective piety—turned toward me and said:
“Get out of here.”

So I did.
I shook my head. I walked.

I was shocked at first—he had told me to leave. But what stung more: not one person defended me.
No one said, “He has a point.”
No one said, “Let the children stay.”

But I wasn’t ashamed.
If anything, I felt stronger.

Because silence, when it costs your soul, isn’t holiness.
It’s theatre.