Sai Baba the Master by E.Bharadwaja

[Guest guest]

We have noted earlier that he walked now and then to Rahata and

Neemgaon.

Once when he went to Rahata he had brought with him several varieties

of

seeds. After cleaning and levelling a certain plot of the village

land, he

planted the seeds and watered them regularly. A devotee by name Vamana

Tatya supplied him every day with a pair of new, unbaked, earthen

pots.

Baba drew water from a nearby well and carried it in the pots on his

shoulders and watered the plants. In the evening he would leave the

pots

at the foot of the neem tree and, strangely enough, as soon as he left

them there they would crumble to pieces. The next day he would get a

new

pair of pots from Vamana Tatya. This went on regularly for quite some

time

and in due course a beautiful garden grew up. Visualizing the whole

process, it seemed symbolic of the elevation of a god-forsaken village

like Shirdi into a powerful spiritual center and of the common rung of

the

society that came to him into a luscious spiritual crop. In fact, at a

later date, (as we are to not later) this was the symbol he used when

he

told Upasani Sastry, whom he alchemised into the great saint Sri

Upassani

Baba Majharaj of Sakori, “You must plant trees that will live for many

centuries, from which people will derive much benefit.”

 

The whole act of growing the garden, too, seemed to signify what is to

come ultimately. For it was on that plot of land that subsequently his

samadhi mandir was to stand! Is not that an eternal flower garden of

the

spirit?

 

In the early days of Sai Baba’s second advent at Shirdi, the majority

of

the villagers took him for a mad fakir. For, while he mingled with no

one,

he was often found muttering something to himself. Occasionally he

would

even burst into a rage and go on heaping abuse as though he was

subject to

some hallucination. However, in his ‘saner’ moments he was normal. He

used

to meet some of the noble souls and saintly persons that sojourned at

the

village. It was only the testimony of some of the acknowledged saints

regarding his spiritual greatness that induced a few more natives of

the

village to respect him.

 

(To be contd....)

 

Source http://www.saibharadwaja.org)