Sai Baba - The Saint of Shirdi by Mani Sahukar.pdf

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SAI BABA - THE SAINT OF SHIRDI
(by Mani Sahukar)
I. The Guru's Initiation
II. Sai Baba Comes to Shirdi
III. Surrender to the Guru Is the Only Sadhana
IV. The Glory of Shirdi
V. Shri Sai Baba's Leelas
VI. How the Master Lived
VII. What the Master Taught
VIII. Sai Baba Speaks: His Charters and Sayings
IX. The Passing of Sai Baba
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SAI BABA - THE SAINT OF SHIRDI
Guru's Invitation
It is man's privilege that he has been endowed with the capacity to
experiment with Truth and to achieve in that process a new orientation of
his personality. The pathos of life with its unstable vicissitudes and
frustrations leads man at last to seek for the light that is not dimmed, the
light that liberates man and gives him a taste of a higher existence and a
more nearly divine perfection of his whole being. Tired with the limited
assurances of mere intellectualism and dry academic knowledge which
seems still to leave his personality deeply disintegrated, tired also of his
endless oscillations from pain to pleasure and pleasure to pain- man
craves for wisdom, and craves even more for that peace which passes all
understanding.
This is the first step. But once this Divine discontent is felt, very often it
serves as an incentive to further researches into unexplored levels of
thought and experience. It is here that one begins to look for inspiration
and unconsciously one's being hankers for the Master, the
Guru,
who
alone can reveal to man his
sadhana
and help him to grow more and more
in spirituality until he eternally abides in the Lord. One does not need to
search for the
Guru;
the
Guru
finds his own and gathers unto himself the
earnest with a vibrant compassion.
Almost from the dawn of her history, it has been the sole privilege of our
Bharat
to give birth to these supermen, these
maharishis,
and it is the
exalted spiritual culture which these realized souls have taught from time
to time that India has the privilege of bestowing as her unique contribution
to the world. Swami Vivekananda said: " Like the gentle dew that falls
unseen and unheard and yet brings into blossom the fairest of roses, has
been the contribution of India to the thought of the world. Silent,
unperceived, yet omniperceived in its effect, it has revolutionized the
thought of the world." Poets sometimes,and sages even more than poets,
are alone capable of substituting enlightenment for knowledge, for they
have some mysterious source of inspiration, and drawing from this source
they are able to touch the mainsprings of human endeavor. Lowell has
stated this thought aptly in
Columbus
except that I would substitute the
word "sages" for "poets".
... And I believe the poets: it is they who utter wisdom from the
central deep, and listening to the inner flow of things speak to the
age out of Eternity.
One such
maha purusha
was the Saint of Shirdi-Sai Baba, as he is
popularly and lovingly called by his innumerable devotees-my Master and
Guru
to whose grace I owe an unspeakable debt of gratitude, at whose
lotus feet I find my only refuge.
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SAI BABA - THE SAINT OF SHIRDI
It was in the year 1942 that I first got to know of Sai Baba, when the
revered Narasimha Swami of Madras, perhaps one of the oldest living
devotees of Sai Baba, came to my house through the kind offices of a
friend. Singling me out from among the six or seven persons who had
assembled for his darshan, Narasimha Swamiji took me aside and
presented me with his books on Baba and lovely photograph of the Saint
with a benediction and words of encouragement and hope. This is my first
contact with the Guru. It seemed then to be an accidental contact; but, it
appears nothing happens without the consent of the Divine, and very often
there is some deep purpose underlying these seemingly coincidental
contacts. Strange that this old and illustrious Swami should have come all
the way to Bandra during his brief sojourn in Bombay to visit an
insignificant and an unknown being, who at that moment had not even
conceived of any spiritual values, but lived engrossed in the illusory
preoccupations of wordly pursuits! and yet not strange when one recalls
the almost peremptory saying of the Master: "I bring my men to me from
long distances under many pleas. I seek them out and bring them to me.
However distant, even thousands of miles away, my people might be, I
draw them to myself, just as we pull birds to us with a string to their feet. "
How little I did guess at that time how pregnant with deep possibilities this
meeting with Swamiji would prove for me ! To yield or not to yield to the
call of the Guru, we are no more free than the ebb and flow of waves; but
when the realization of that contact becomes conscious in one, then one is
thrilled; then one's spiritual sadhana is really said to have begun. True,
there are many failures and setbacks, and at times for long periods, losing
sight of the high ideal, one even slips back to old grooves of thought and
habit; often there is a deluded sense of progress through a projection of
one's confused self as the ideal- in short, there are many pitfalls and
obstacles. But, shouldn't these difficulties be necessarily there, seeing that
the ideal one has set oneself is the highest? And besides, the awakened
"Self" in one now no longer allows any failures. Once ignited it draws
man's whole being irresistibly onwards until the tiny spark becomes a
flame.
The many thousands of devotees of Sai Baba will bear me out when I say
that Master's peculiar characteristic is that he clings tenaciously to his
devotees as much as he expects the devotees to cling tenaciously to him.
Rarely has there been a Guru who has had the same insistent attachment
for his people- though attachment is not perhaps a very happy word- as
Baba showed for his flock, when he was alive, and continues to do even
now almost 60 years after his
maha samadhi
.
It all began with a vision that was vouchsafed to me soon after I acquired
Baba's photograph. Somehow one feels loath to speak of an experience
so intimate as the initiation of oneself by the Guru. It is sufficient to say
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SAI BABA - THE SAINT OF SHIRDI
that happily for me the Saint of Shirdi elected to cast his spell on me and
awoke me to the realization of a higher rhythm and a deeper purpose of
life. Man's subconscious and unconscious are gravely unillumined regions
which give rise to chaotic thoughts and impressions and to the all too well
known complexes of fear and frustration. But, somehow also lies hidden
infinite treasures of the Spirit. How shall these be unearthed? The Master
hints at
complete surrender to the Divine
.
Throwing out all fear from one's consciousness, for fear is the greatest of
enemies, he compassionately exhorts his devotees to "Cast all your
burdens on me and I will bear them." Such gift is a gift. We must,
therefore, cultivate it and cultivate too a receptivity and a capacity to open
to the
Guru's
force, for only so can his Divine grace work satisfactorily in
us. Has not the Master said again and again-"Look to me and I will look to
you ?"
May his infinite grace shine upon this humble effort to pay homage to his
resplendent life and teachings.
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SAI BABA - THE SAINT OF SHIRDI
Sai Baba Comes to Shirdi
Sai Baba came to Shirdi- that seems to be the starting point. From where
he came, where he was born, the time of his birth, who his parents were,
and what his creed and religion-all these important facts, important from a
worldly point of view, are shrouded in complete mystery. It was a mystery
which Sai baba took delight in perpetuating. To the many queries that
were put to him from time to time regarding his birth and parentage, the
Saint of Shirdi returned evasive replies; at best, he sometimes spoke in
parables which if taken too literally, resulted in a mass of contradictory
beliefs and theories, each set of people believing what they wanted to
believe. The Hindus thought him to be an
avtar
of some Godhead; the
Muslims said that he was a
pir
sent by Allah to liberate men. To one man
he was the
avtar
of Dattatreya; to another he was Akalkote Maharaj
incarnated. Each individual saw in this unique Saint the personification of
his own favorite deity, and incarnation of his own chosen ideal, and
worshiped him as such.
Through all this maze of contrary beliefs, Baba lived unperturbed with
perhaps a glint of humor in his eyes for the perplexity which these
unimportant speculations about his caste and creed roused in those who
surrounded him. For Baba was full of keen sense of humor. Though he
had attained to the highest kingship in the realm of the spirit, he was not
like many another
yogi
absorbed in the contemplation of his blissful state.
He always walked, talked, and laughed with his many devotees. He loved
fun and loved to poke fun at the discrepancies of human nature, though
his humor was always tempered with tenderness. His
durbar
in Shirdi in
those glorious days when he was in the body was a veritable abode of joy,
and in no sense did it resemble a gloomy cloister bereft of laughter and
sunshine.
The Saint of Shirdi baffled his admirers. No one definitely knew whether
he was a Hindu or Muslim. He dressed like a muslim and bore the caste
marks of a Hindu! he celebrated with the same childlike eclat the festivals
of both the communities! If the Hindu protagonists felt a pride of
possession in the thought that true to their customs Baba was always
burning the sacred fire, or
dhuni,
before him, they were also reluctantly
compelled to admit that after all he lived in a
masjid.
He quoted the
Koran
and delighted his Muslim worshippers and then made them look askance
at his profound knowledge of the Hindu
sastras.
He called himself a
fakir,
and on his lips reverberated constantly the incantation
Allah Malik.
But,
then, he called himself a pure Brahmin too and showed a remarkable
proficiency in all yogic practices. It was a magnificent tribute to his
luminous presence that the most orthodox members of both the
communities prostrated themselves at his feet. Perhaps, such a
phenomenon is yet unknown in the history of this vast and bewildering
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