Sai Baba the Master

November 2, 2005

An Anglo-Indian once visited Baba, not out of faith but idle curiosity. Baba

emptied the pots in the mosque, of water and placed them inverted. The visitor

thought the fakir was crazy and enquired, mockingly, what he did. Sharp came

the reply, “Some pots (i.e., individuals) come to me like that. What can I do

for them?”

B.A. Patel, an athlete used to demonstrate his physical power by forcefully

massaging Sai’s body, lifting him up and carrying him to his seat. One day he

tried his utmost to do so but could not lift Sai up. The latter laughed

mockingly. ‘Baba taught me not to be proud of my physical strength. For it is

nothing before spiritual strength,’ Patel says.

Sai once repeatedly asked a sadhu for dakshina of Rs.5/-. The latter said, in a

temper, “You know that I have no money. Why do you ask me still?” Sai smiled

sportively and said, “You may have nothing to give, but why lose your

composure?” What a practical method of teaching!

The Master

Though clothed in the human frame Sai Baba is essentially a mystic, a saint.

That was how everyone treated and approached him; and the very name which they

tagged on to him reveals that. If he lived and moved amidst the frail mortals,

it is chiefly as a missionary of God and of the life divine. “I am the slave

of God”, he said. “Allah Malik” is his constant thought. “This is a brahmin, a

white brahmin, a pure brahmin. This brahmin will lead lakhs of people to the

subhra marga (the path of purity) and take them to the goal right up to the

end. This is a brahmin musjid” –

That sums up the essence of Sai Baba in his relation to the people amidst whom

he lived. But what was he, as viewed by himself, and his relation to the rest

of the creation? For that alone ultimately decides whether he was chiefly a

man or a mystic. In different contexts he said, “I live at Shirdi and

everywhere. I am Parvardigar (God)” “I am formless and everywhere!” “I am in

everything and beyond.” “I fill all space. All that you see taken together is

Myself. I do not stir.” “All the Universe is in Me.”

It would be utter perversion to identify Sai Baba with the physical frame, to

look upon him as a mere human being in the light of what we have noted in the

earlier chapters. This, no doubt, was the significance of the cryptic words

which Baba, in a vision, once uttered to Das Ganu Maharaj: “All the oil men

and grocers of Shirdi teased me a lot; so I left the place.” This is, of

course, his characteristic way of referring to the lower propensities of the

people as though he was referring to certain individuals.

Recommended Posts