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| Shirdi Sai Baba |
If you go to Mumbai (India), you can see, in many places, the picture of a Saint sitting like a royal king, with His right leg folded on His left and unmindful of the tear of His shirt on the right arm, on a stone. Shirdi Sai Baba is a household name now for most people in India, not only in the State of Maharashtra but almost in all States.
Nobody knows His birth details exactly. He is believed to be born in a village near Nasik in Maharashtra in central India in a Hindu family in the late first half of nineteenth century and brought up by a Muslim. The name Sai was also not the name given by His parents but by a devotee. We have records only from the time He appeared as a youth in Shirdi, a small village near Nasik. At that time He was mainly absorbed in meditation for most of the time.
Baba spent most of His time only in and around Shirdi. He never travelled far. He lived in a dilapidated mosque there. He always insisted that God represented in Islam and Hinduism was one and the same, and so often used ‘Allah’ and ‘Hari:’, the Names of God in Islam and Vaishnavam (a sect of Hinduism) interchangeably in His instructions.
Baba left His body in the early twentieth century. Thousands of devotees are visiting the temple built over His samadhi (tomb) in Shirdi daily in the present day.
Baba demonstrated practically the deep meaning of many verses of Bhagavad Gita by means of events in the life of His devotees so that His devotees would never forget it in their life. His teachings displayed a judicious blend of the principles of jnanam (wisdom), saranagati (surrender) and bhakti (devotion), and the doctrines of Advaita (non-duality), Visishta-Advaita (qualified non-duality) and dvaita (duality).
Baba never called Himself God but always demonstrated His oneness with the all-pervading omniscient and omnipotent universal Consciousness of God. That’s why He always took care of the spiritual as well as material needs of His devotees who learned to surrender their Consciousness to Him.
