It does not matter by what name it is called i.e. God, Allah, Brahman, Nature, spirit or soul.

[Guest guest]

The conduct and preachings of Baba in the context of the society in which he

lived, indicate that he made reason and faith inter-dependent on each other i.e.

faith cannot sustain without the highest reasoning and no one can evolve with

mere reasoning, without faith in some force much more powerful than him. It does

not matter by what name it is called i.e. God, Allah, Brahman, Nature, spirit or

soul.

 

For example, let us examine a simple saying of Baba like do not take a service

from anyone without paying for it, when he had gone up the roof of Radha Krishna

Mayi at Shirdi. From the point of view of spiritualism or religion this is

forbidden as creative of a negative Karma called Runa (indebtedness). Speaking

from a rational point of view one can always ask as to how a society can sustain

itself happily and progressively, if some people work without getting paid and

others enjoy at the cost of those who work. It is such a situation, played on a

larger canvas that had brought about revolution in France and Russia, where the

French Emperor and Czar had not paid the peasants for hundreds of years for

their labour.

 

A critical study of Shri Sai Satcharitra would indicate that Baba had always

tried to bring about a happy and creative amalgamation of faith with reason.

When he asked the devotees following different faiths to accept humanitarian

concepts of some other religions, was he not pulling reason over faith? No doubt

he was trying to bring about a perfect social cohesion but what about faith in

ones religion? On the other hand, when he had told his devotees that to follow

the Sadguru or the Master will bring about spiritual evolution in them, was he

not asking them to stop reasoning and surrender to blind faith?

 

The greatness of Shri Sai and the ever increasing relevance of his approach in

the context of todays world, remains due to the simple way in which Baba brought

about a happy synthesis between reason and faith in his devotees. This led to a

healthy togetherness among different groups living in Shirdi.

 

If this experiment is tried in the much wider context of our world, then there

can be a better tomorrow for the ever-warring, ever-jealous, human groups

existing in a state of perpetual anxiety and confusion. Whatever be the

prescription of any religion, the fact remains that one will have faith in God

only when he has faith in Man (as a part of God) and one will have faith in Man

if he has true faith in God. It is God who created man and gave him the

knowledge that God exists, and man used his highest reasoning called faith to

perpetrate His existence in his thought process. This interdependence of reason

and faith, as amply demonstrated by Shri Sainath Maharaj in his conduct and

precepts, is the only way to evolve human society.