I heard this amazing story from those who were directly present at this event. Think about it, people came to this Shivaratri festival with nothing foretold about such an unusual event about to happen only to become witnesses to Sathya Sai Baba materializing a wonderful Lingam from his mouth and being told they each had reached the highest point of their development upon seeing this great object of power and had now found liberation from the cycle of birth and death.
How to relate to these strange and mysterious words? Is it possible to just attend the Shivaratri festival and gain complete liberation? Such statements can only be made by Sathya Sai Baba, who is the highest divine incarnation. His words possess absolute divine power.
8. Mystery of the Cosmic Egg
In many parts of India there are temples of Shiva, in which Lingams of various shapes and sizes are placed on the altars, from the smallest that can fit in the palm of your hand to gigantic ones, the size of an entire house.
Lingam worship is one of the most mysterious aspects of Vedic mysticism. There are many speculations and misunderstandings around the symbolism of the Lingam. The Lingam outwardly looks like a golden egg. The egg is a symbol of the "cosmic source" from which the entire universe emerged.
Probably in the symbolism of the Lingam, we can see the simple and uncomplicated figurative thinking of those ancient people who first noticed how life appeared from a chicken, ostrich, or crocodile egg. Birds and reptiles produce offspring from the egg, so it is obvious that this reproductive form has become a prototype of the great cosmic source of vitality. The symbolism of the cosmic egg has manifested into the framework of many cultures of the world, including ancient Slavic legends and myths.
Over the years, Sathya Sai Baba has materialized many different Lingams for the Shivaratri festival, thereby proclaiming the significance of this tradition.
Quite often, after Sathya Sai Baba materialized another wonderful Lingam, he made a speech in which he explained the deep symbolic meaning of this greatest object of power.
The egg-shaped form of the Lingam is the absolute divine consciousness. Of course, God cannot be limited by form, but it is the perfect form of the Lingam that can serve as an image of absolute perfection.