Sai Baba the Master

[Guest guest]

Once, one of the devotees was wasting his precious after-noon in reviling

one of his acquaintances behind his back in the wada. A little later, the

said devotee met Baba at Lendi garden. Baba then pointed to a pig and said,

“See with what relish it is gorging on night soil! Your conduct was similar.

You go on reviling your own brethren to your heart’s content. You have

obtained a human birth as a result of much merit in your past life. But if

you behave like this, what can a trip to Shirdi do to you?”

 

The perfect skill with which Baba could bring home a moral to one or more

devotees through a single, complex, situation involving all of them is

wonderful. He engineered, as it were, a situation so that the teaching did

not remain a merely abstract one. It was such as to expose the undesirable

aspect of the devotee’s personality in action so that the devotee could no

longer close his eyes to it.

 

Once a Ramadasi visited Baba and stayed in his presence for some days.

Everyday, after his bath the visitor used to read the ‘Vishnu sahasra nama’.

One day Baba requested him to fetch sona mukhi, a mild laxative herb, from

the bazaar as he was having pain in his stomach. When the Ramadasi left,

Baba picked up his book ‘Vishnusahasranama’ and gave it to Shama and said,

“Shama, this book is very efficacious. Once, my heart began to palpitate and

death seemed imminent. Then I hugged the book and it gave me immediate

relief! I thought Allah himself came and saved me. I want to present you

with this great book. Read it slowly little by little, at least one name a

day and it will do you good.”

 

Shama thought that Baba was playing a joke on him by trying to set the

Ramadasi against him and said, “Baba, the Ramadasi is a very ill-tempered

man and he will quarrel with me thinking that I have stolen his book.

Besides, I cannot read Sanskrit”. But Baba was not merely joking; he was

really bestowing his grace to the beloved devotee by giving him an

efficacious book consecrated by his touch. He forced Shama to accept it.

 

The Ramadasi returned a little later with sona mukhi. Another devotee,

Anna Chinchinikar, wanted to help Baba in playing the practical joke. So he

at once told the Ramadasi of what had happened. The Ramadasi flared up and

started charging Shama with theft of the book and in his rage he said that

he employed Baba as a ruse to send him to the bazaar so as to knock off that

book! He said that if Shama did not return the book he would dash his own

head before him and die.

 

Source: http://www.saibharadwaja.org