Sai Baba the Master by E.Bharadwaja

[Guest guest]

Another reference of Sai baba to his early life relates to his meeting

with his Guru: “I found my master in the chavadi here. His calm,

peaceful,

cheerful and meditative face attracted me, almost bewitched me so much

so

that my eyes were rivetted on his face and even a moment’s separation

made

me uneasy. In His company I used to forget even hunger and thirst. I

served him with all my heart for more than 12 years. The duties I had

imposed on myself for him were very arduous. He never left his seat

for

any purpose, not even to answer the calls of nature. Merged in

mediation,

he entirely forgot that he had a body, mind, etc. He ate, passed urine

and

stool there only, on his seat. I fed him, changed his clothes, swept

and

kept his seat always clean. As a reward for this he gave me his

blessings

saying, ‘Wherever you are, here or even beyond the seven seas, I will

ever

be with you to guard and protect you’…..at the start he had asked me

to

pay his fees (dakshina); and on my asking what his fees were, he

coolly

said that his fee was only two paise and these paise were not the

government currency I had been using. His two paise consisted of two

things, nishta (absolute faith) and saboori (cheerful patience). I

readily

gave him these two paise and though I was very eager to obtain from

his

holy mouth some holy spell or formula which I could go on chanting and

repeating, he whispered nothing in my ears. He simply said, ‘I shall

ever

be with you, protecting you by my mere glance, in the manner of a

tortoise

protecting its young ones.’ The entire credit of all my glory goes to

this

Guru. It is the outcome of his blessings”. 5

 

“On another occasion”, writes Swami Sai Sharananandaji in his book

“Shri

Sai, the Superman”, “He (Sai Baba) said to this writer, ‘My guru’s

name is

Roshan Shah Mia’ ”. The same writer who lived for quite some time with

Sri

Sai baba adds, “Subsequently, I marked that Shri Baba was, from time

to

time, also using the word ‘Roshan’. He used it particularly when he

told

some parables. It seems Roshan Shah thereafter had cast off his mortal

coil (his body) and Baba entombed him under or near the nimb (neem)

tree

at present found in Shirdi Navlkar’s wada or mansion. When the

previous

owner of this wada, R. S. Sathe, wanted to put up a story and terrace,

at

the time of putting up a stair-case he unearthed a tomb with an

under-ground cellar or a cave under the tree. Baba was asked as to

what

should be done about the tomb and the cave. Baba said that the place

belonged to his elders and it should neither be disturbed nor opened

but

it should be covered up with a stone as before”. Some boys playing

hide

and seek removed the stone and found under it, several steps leading

further down. They said that the cave was dark but rather long. Baba

once

told Shri Sai Sharananandji, pointing to a pillar near his dhuni (the

sacred fire) in the mosque (Dwaraka Mai) that there was a cave

thereunder

to which he always confined himself, that once his beard grew so long

that

it reached the ground and swept it; that he never came out except to

meet

some holy or religious man. Throwing light on his life during this

period,

once Sai Baba admonished Sagunmeru Naik, “What? Can’t you put up with

a

day or two days’ starvation? I lived on margosa leaves for twelve long

years!”

 

 

(To be contd....)

 

Source http://www.saibharadwaja.org)