sai baba and his teachings

8/12/2019 Sai Baba and His Teachings

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I

THE HEART OF TEACHING

If we study the life of Sai Baba carefully, we can gather invaluable guidance in the art of

living. Indeed, even the study and analysis of the teachings may not be able to afford us such a

rich pleasure of wisdom. Even the most comprehensive and authoritative text books on the

science of medicine, may not prove as useful as the attention of an expert physician. That thefruits of a life lived in accordance with those principles, we learn from his way of life, are

embodied as a promise in the immensity of his own spiritual stature while his teachingsapparently point to different aspects of spiritual life, we find a beautiful synthesis of all of them

in his life and this synthesis affords us something much more than what individual teachings puttogether, for the whole is always some thing more than its parts put together. There is harmony

in proportion. A delicious dish of food is something more than a mere mixture of the severalingredients – in terms of its taste, flavour and perhaps the nutritive value also. Once we study

his life with a discerning eye, we cannot refrain from reflecting and contemplating the same andthe more we reflect, the more we discover ever new dimensions and nuances, and without any

conscious effort on our part similar tendencies of thought – following action engrain themselvesin us. Thus a subtle and imperceptible, a positive transformation, a kind of spiritual alchemy

takes place in our being. It is to be noted that any genuine development in us is bound to beunconscious and only at the end of the long process, if ever we feel like to look back to our own

past, we will be able to appreciate the difference. Otherwise, a profound peace and a good senseof harmony with the whole of existence pulsates as our life and moments pass with a sense of

new realisation, a sense of novelty. We will be able to see the eternal novelty of all existence.Any other form of development, which is self-conscious, is at best spectacular and artificial and

hence it does not last. Every peak experience is bound to be followed by a depression.

The basic attitude of Sai Baba to life and all existence is expressed by the one phrasewhich he apparently uttered every now and then, ― Allah Malik ‖. The more deeply we

understand it, the more our being approximates with the same. It is the summing up of, thequintessence, of all world‘s religions. Let us ponder on its meaning.

Everything in nature is a product, the manifestation of all the forces in nature and in its

turn, acts in accordance with the laws of nature which are innate to that class of things. Even

our body with all its changes and mind, i.e., everything within us, is the result of the interactionof the natural forces and they too act according to their own laws. We can say that nature itselfassumes all these forms – within us and without us and functions accordingly. There is nothing

that is our own in all this. The whole of nature with all its infinite variety of things and

phenomena, is a result of, a manifestation of, a subtle and mysterious force or energy which

religions termed God. Everything in existence is a product and manifestation of that DivineSpirit, ‗Its‘ possession. Everything is God‘s own and nothing (including our body and mind) is

ours; for even they, i.e., we, belong to Him. That is the purport of that pithy phrase. Loosing



sight of this fact is what constitutes Ignorance or nescience ( Ajnana), the veil that separates us

from the Truth. If we know this One Truth and live in constant awareness of It, and throughconstant practice if we can do say so spontaneously, that state constitutes Spiritual Perfection:

‗We‘ no longer exist. Only He exists within and without. This is the true significance of

sannyasa of the Hindus and ‗Fakiree‘, of the Sufis i.e., the spi ritual state of a perfect Fakir. It is

the poverty which the Christ has enjoined in the ―Sermon on the Mount‖ when he said―Blessed are the poor in Spirit‖. The total and true picture of such a stage is the Perfect Master.

Thus a Sadguru like Sai Baba is the Goal and the Way, and also the Truth.

Then the question may arise that if all things in existence are so natural and divine, is not

our Ignorance or nescience also such? On the face of it, the question is absurd in the sense that,

under its shadow, life is a burden and a threat, from which we seek to escape every moment ofour lives, into the world of fancies, fantasies, hopes and recollections, pastimes and gossip. Had

ignorance been something natural, the life as we are living it could not have been a struggle, atale of unfulfilled wishes, frustrated hopes, shattered illusions and shams. It would have been as

unobtrusive and spontaneous as the process of breathing. Our desperate need to be somebody,

to be recognised, acclaimed and thus to be reassured of our value as a human being would not

have arisen. For this implies a deep-rooted feeling that we indeed are no such. The culprit inthis is ‗the tenth man‘ in the story of the ‗Ten wise men‘. Ten fools were travelling together and

they had to swim across a deep and swelling river. Everyone of them was concerned about thesafety of everyone else in the whole group. So after crossing the river, the first one counted the

group and found it consisting of only nine. One was missing! Everyone took a turn and arrivedat the same conclusion. A shepherd enquired from them why they were so perturbed. When told

about the missing man, he had a hearty laugh; for every fool in the group counted only the rest,

and forgot to count himself! As long as we are Ignorant, we ‗count for nothing‘ and that is the bitter tragedy of life. In the loving regard which we hope to gain from everyone around us, wefind an attempt to drown this bitter awareness. How could such a state be natural to us? On the

other hand, it is obtrusive, the one silent mischief maker that persistently robs us of every precious moment of peace and contentment and laughs sarcastically at everyone of our attempts

to achieve genuine joy.

Once we are subject to the strange-hold of Ignorance or nescience, we are at its mercy

and mercy it has none at all. Possessiveness, jealousy, hate, suspicion, fear and the whole pack

of the negative tendencies attack us with a dogged persistence. By everyone of our attempts tofoil them, we find that each of them robs us! We hate ourselves, some times pity ourselves, fear

ourselves and finally learn to tolerate ourselves! But in the meanwhile, we are already caught in

the maze of circumstances created by the play of these negative forces and there is no way out.

By the time we are aware of what is happening, we have already set in motion the causativefactors leading to all the bitter situations that life can afford. We have made our lives miserable

and the lives of the near and dear ones no less better. So is every one around us doing.



Most of our efforts at winning a little security and ensuring pleasure for our selves, like

our efforts to solve our problems, arise from this kingdom of Ignorance and often the results ofour efforts are at variance with our wishes. Or else, by the time we get the thing we want, we no

longer want it. It turns out that it is not what we thought it to be.

The root cause for all this is that we are not what we think we are! We think we are whatwe wish to be, for the simple reason that we wish to be what we are not. And what are we? We

are a ‗naught‘. no-thing. The whole society is a teaming mass of such ignorance selves ejectingclouds and clouds of pollution, material and spiritual.

When the situation becomes desperate, under duress, man does what he ought to have

done freely: for the first time, we genuinely try to seek the meaning of life and of nature.Stripped of our illusions, we have a glimpse of what we are, that we are nothing. We learn that

nothing within us and without us is within our control. Those of us, who have enough of vitalstrength, go the whole-hog in quest of the answer, like the Buddha. They go in desperate search

for peace and contentment.

So too, Sai Baba said that once he, along with his three fellow seekers, debated regardingthe means of attaining the spiritual illumination. The other three companions said that one

should realise perfection by one‘s own efforts, in the light of whatever wisdom they could gainfrom the study of philosophical texts. But Sai Baba said that one has to necessarily resort to a

Perfect Master, surrender one‘s will, body and mind to him and wait upon his grace in patienceAt last, all of them went to a thick forest, perhaps in search of a suitable spot to pursue their

meditations, far away from the madding-crowd. A wood cutter met them and said that it is not

wise for the inexperienced young men to venture into the trackless forest without a guide.Above all, he wished to know what set them on such a reckless adventure. But the young menthought that the illiterate labourer would not be able to appreciate their purpose and did not

condescend to divulge it. But despite his boorish appearance, the wood cutter was full of loveand affection for them: He suggested that they should atleast accept his humble hospitality and

offered them coarse food to eat. The young men probably thought that they were wise enough

to know that ‗man does not live on bread alone‘; that for those who set their eye on such a loftygoal, it is unbecoming to stoop so low as to accept the charity from a man of little

understanding. They went ahead, but soon lost their way.

After wearily wandering about, they atlast stumbled upon the spot where they first met

the wood cutter! It would have been quite a frightening experience, for Baba said that it was by

sheer stroke of fortune that they could atlast arrive there again. The wood-cutter accosted them

and offered them his hospitality! Three of them felt it an insult to their injured pride to acceptwhat they first rejected and went away. Baba recounted that they again lost their way and

wandered endlessly in the forests, no longer in search of God or contentment, but in search offood and water! But on his own part Sai Baba‘s heart was touched by the loving concern of the



innocent soul for them who were at best, strangers to him. The wood-cutter seemed too

innocent even to take the rejection of his loving offer to his heart! The unconditional acceptanceof such pure love, Baba felt, is the proper beginning to spiritual life and so he accepted food

from the rustic.

At once he found that it was not the labourer that stood in front of him, but the SpiritualMaster, who demanded what their earlier debate was about! After listening to it, he said, ―I will

show you what you want if you would but follow me. But I tell you, only he who cancompletely trust what I say will be successful.‖ Sai Baba bowed his head and followed him. In

the service of the Master he became what He is.

Thus the very driving force behind the quest takes one to the threshold of realisation. Nature and life, which are innately divine, are so made that they would start a man in the quest

for the meaning of life and it is for him to make the best of it. In atleast a few cases, the Buddhafor instance, nature and life have proved themselves capable of driving man straight to

enlightenment, even without the intermediacy of any Perfect Master. Nature itself has provided

us with the mind-intellect necessary to attain the goal of life and even this belongs to God like

everything else in Nature. Those who have attained enlightenment by their own efforts like theBuddha, or through a Master as did Sai Baba, have realised that there is nothing which is really

their own, not even the self; that the illusory ‗self‘, with all its train of negative forces, is thechief culprit in the mess of life. Sai Baba has summed up the experience of all the great Masters

in the short phrase, ― Allah Malik ‖. To this realisation, he owed everything and he oftenremembered it with all the gratitude; perhaps he intended that we should catch the hint and

thereby realise our own destinies!

Once we are able to contemplate the full implication of this phrase and thus loosen thegrip of Ignorance in nescience even temporarily, we find that our heart is freed from the pool of

these negative thoughts and feelings. We are at peace and for the first time, we realise with allthe gratitude we are capable of, the immense value of a Perfect Master, who not only reaches-

out us such a profound Truth in such a casual manner, but also lives in the fullest realisation of

it every moment of his life. The weariness and agony of life, along with the incessant andgnawing concern for survival, vanish in that moment as a dream does on waking up. The value

of the Guru‘s gift of a word grips our entire being in utter love and gratitude. Henceforth we

cannot help but live in him. His continuous presence in our awareness further strengthens the peace and contentment, and to that extent, prevents our slipping back into our habitual life of

Ignorance. Henceforth, nothing seems worthy of our attention and love than the Guru, as it did

to Sai Baba. Indeed, a devotee like Mrs. ‗Manager‘ has recorded precisely similar impressions

of Sai Baba‘s presence.

Very few like the Buddha seem to reach perfection without the help of a Guru. But this isan exception rather than a rule for very few could muster the inner strength and perseverance



necessary for such an endeavour. Besides, even Buddha is said to have acknowledged that his

attainment was possible only because he served a number of Buddhas during his previous livesIn more recent times, we have the case of Bhagawan Ramana Maharshi, who seems to have

realised Self with his own effort. One day a visitor asked him whether a Guru was absolutely

necessary for self realisation and the Maharshi affirmed. Then the visitor asked how Maharshi

himself could realise without the help of any Guru. The latter replied that he too had a Guru,though not in human form. But who that Guru is, he never revealed. We have a similar case of

the celebrated Avadhuta mentioned by Lord Krishna in the Eleventh Skanda of the BhagavathaHe had twenty four Gurus. All of them are common things or persons we see in every day life.

But his hungry spirit could gather highest wisdom from each of them and ultimately he realised

his self. Obviously the hunger for enlightenment came to him through the realisation of the

inner crisis we have mentioned earlier. His is a rare instance, in which either God on one handor one‘s own Self at the other is figuratively said to be a Guru. It is the Self which precipitates

the inner crises which sets one on the quest. It is the self which thus causes avid hunger inteaching and wisdom; it is also learner in its hunger for its realisation; it itself looks upon

everybody in nature as pregnant with divine wisdom and ultimately realises the Self as having

no distinct existence apart from which it is ALL, that is, God. Thus it can be said that the Self is

the Guru. The same phenomenon can be described in a different way. It is God in the form ofSelf and environment that brings about crisis, sparks quest and sustains it by constant teaching

right upto the goal. But the key factor in the whole process is the relation, though tentative, ofthe learner and the source of learning or the Guru. In the whole of his career, we see Sai Baba

formulate the Truth in this way; when the visitor wished to be accepted as a disciple by SaiBaba the latter said that everyone need not have a Guru, and tha t one‘s own self could be the

Guru and when it is implicitly followed with diligence, discrimination and alertness, one could

reach the goal. Evidently, this kind of formulation is fitting for the particular temperament ofthe seeker. But there is a subtle twist in this formulation; it needed the authority of Sai Baba andhis statement for the principle to be impressed on the seeker‘s heart with all the force of

teaching, and teaching it is. He needed such and he got it. Sai Baba proved himself thematchless Teacher; he teaches while refusing to be the crutch, on which the seeker in question

would shift his own responsibility. It often happens that the ignorant child asks for what he

cannot digest or what does not suit him; but the wise mother has to intelligently put him off it,and thereby it is for him, what is in his best interests. It is imperative that the mother should

know better than the child, and at the same time hide the fact through skill and presence of

mind. While actually playing the judge and teacher she keeps calmly to her image of mother.Thus, in fact, Sai Baba accepted the visitor as a disciple and gave him the teaching and deftly

ensured that the man would have to cling desperately to the teaching, which is the essential

nature of a Guru. As an answer accessory and preaching, He told the man to remember that

every action, either mental or physical, will regularly be followed by the consequences, whichhe would have to accept, for it is part of human nature that we persist in doing what we

like but would like to have the fruit of discipline and wise action and wise effort. As a greatmystic put it, the substance of most in petitioning prayers is that two and two should not equal



four and it is such of us that would like to make God and the Guru our crutches in the hope that

they would enable us to reach the goal, without our having to strive for the correction of ourlameness. Fire cannot help to burn and light cannot help to illumine. Sai Baba the Master,

cannot help to discharge the function of a Teacher to anyone who contacts him at any level and

in any form; to hear of him, to think of him, and even to casually look at his picture is to be

swallowed up in the teaming-army of his beloved children. Thus we see when a visitor arrivedfrom Bom bay for the first time at Shirdi and bowed to him, the Master said, ―I know this fellow

since four years.‖ The man at first marvelled, but later remembered that precisely four yearsearlier he heard of Sai Baba‘s glory and bowed to his picture in Bombay and even at that

moment, the man discovered that he was accepted. No one need ask God for air to breath or

water to drink.

It is easy to see that the visitor who was directed to rely in his own self as the Guru and to

keep in view the rigorous law of Karma, would go through everyone of life‘s experiences in thelike fashion and whenever he forgets it, however minor, the pin-prick of life would be the

reminder and in every context the matchless Teacher too would flash his memory along with

the teaching i.e., from moment to moment life would be the voice of the Teacher for it is from

his authority that the teaching derived its sharpness and depth of impression. Even in His case,the Allah or God is the Malik or Lord that has drawn him to the teacher par excellence and the

teacher is the voice or the word of the Lord made flesh for the devotee‘s sake, the one whodirects his future to the essential principle of living. A true Saviour is one who does not insist

upon the safety, but constantly recognise him as such, as most fake gurus would have it. Whenthe health of an old person is restored to its fullest vigour, even the memories of his earlier

ailment would seem unreal. But on the other hand, if any such continues to live under the

weight of those horrible recollections, the ailment is hardly cured; it has only been shifted to asubtle plane of the mind and the vital energy has not been restored to its fullness.

The basic fact remains that even in case of such teaching as the denial or a need for aGuru, a Guru is a must. In his turn a perfect Guru is one in whom the self has already ceased to

exist, and He alone lives and lives through compassionate concern for those who are desperately

searching the way out. Thus the Guru is the Truth, the Way and the Life. He is the Greatest, theSaviour. He is the Word made flesh. It is to teach us to be the sons of God, the inheritors of

everyone of the Lord‘s divine attributes that they come. He is the Buddha, to whom one has to

surrender; He is the Dharma or the way to which one has to surrender, and He as the in-dwellerof the hearts of his devotees that has to grant him right association or the sangha that provides

the most congenial medium of unobstructed and undelayed growth into spiritual perfection and

to which he would do well to surrender. He is the Srotriya, the knower of the scriptures and the

Brahmanista or the one who ever lives in the unflickering awareness or realisation and thusfulfils the scriptures; and whom Upanishads have enjoined surrender. He is the Muqurrab, one

of those who are nearer to God, mentioned in the Koran. That is, not only one who is rightlyguided by the Lord but also one who knows the right relationship between Haq (reality) Khalq



(world of demon). The Koran while teaching through the voice of Prophet directs those who

doubt to verify the truth from the Muquarrabs, from those who remember.

It is worthwhile to ponder a little on the impact of the teaching ―Allah Malik‖ on the

hearts of those who received it. The basic urge of life is to wish and strive for pleasure and to

endeavour to ward off pain. Under the influence of this twin urge, man learnt to view things andto associate them with the pleasure or pain that did arise from them. Society and culture teach

him to look upon things, persons and possessions as the source of security and pleasure; orotherwise. Henceforth his life would be an enslavement to this; an endless need to go on

appeasing them, which is in essence degrading and humiliating to him. He has to live as their

slave to keep up the illusion that he is their Master and thus life is a long path of slavery and

dependence. Besides, with regard to nature and the whole of existence man has a sense ofmystery, which is the most important factor in the enchantment of life. Such a sense of mystery

is not necessarily the mark of ignorance and that of primitive tribal element in mind. It is thatwhich is human and sublimely so in man. It sets man on the quest for truth. It is the source of

inspiration of all art, of literature, of science and religion. But it means man looks upon every

natural phenomena as a divine force or a deity and he hopes to appease them in his attempts to

secure pleasure and to ward off pain and loss. Though such an attitude need not necessarily bemere superstition; but when man‘s fear and hope of them is disproportionate, that is, when it

lacks insight of the one supreme God-Head which orders them, it itself had developedinto superficial enslavement of one‘s self. In such a situation they are an added burden to his

soul, which is already weighed down by countless enslavemens in his social and cultural life ofthe world. Dread and terror can be the dominant features of their attitude to life. When such a

one is reminded that Allah is the Malik and that these ‗deities‘ along with the things, persons

and situations of worldly life are too subservient to His will and that He alone is the Lord, thewhole weight is lifted off his heart. He is a slave to none except to God. His nagging weaknessgives place to a new strength and a sense of self-respect. Fear gives place to hope and

independence. The foggy, trackless sense of surrounding terror gives way to recognition ofwell-laid track leading upto one‘s home in the Lord. Now all things, persons, situations and

even ‗deities‘ are his fellow beings, partakers of the common adventure of the life and their

mutual relation is one of loving, give and take and none of dependence. Such a one stopslooking upon life as an endless sequence of joys, sorrows, and threats, and starts welcoming

them as the punctuated voice of the master, full of love and admonitions and ceaseless watching

on one‘s spiritual needs and transformation. Allah is not only the Malik and ours is not a mereenslavement. It is slavery of love, and the spontaneous slavery of love, a willing surrender to

the rapture of the mother‘s loving caress. Be it a pinch or a kiss, it only tickles.

However rosy the above picture may appear, can everyone of us live in its awareness? Isthere any certainity about it or do we waver between this love and the possibility of its being a

rosy piece and self-deceptive? It is at such crucial moments that the learning image of theMaster in one‘s heart sustains him, for in him we can see a spontaneous loving in its certainity.



For instance, one day Sai Baba was laid up with the severest attack of Asthma. He could hardly

sit, eat or even breath and the devotees feared that the dreaded end was nigh. One of themactually started weeping and requested him to accept medical assistance. ―Fie upon you. Why

do you weep? Allah has given me this and He will take it away in a few days. He alone is my

physician and nurse.‖ said Baba. Indeed in three or four days he was completely through from

the ailment. Occasionally too, the devotees observed that He refused to give Udi or sacred ashto some or rejected the Dakshina (money offering) which they offered to make. When asked

about it, Baba used to say that God did not permit him either to give Udi to that particulardevotee, or to accept the offering of another. So devotees found that he always lived in the

continuous awareness that Allah is the Malik, and he had no will of his own. The repeated study

of his life impresses with such precious lessons on our heart, and finally wherever we waver, we

have a steady reminder of the fact in mind, for he lived in such continuous awareness of it, thatit is proper to look upon that expression as his essential nature, and therefore his divine name.

His form, therefore, is the visible body of his teachings, again, Word made flesh, the Way andthe Truth, and the True Life. When we thus associate his form with his basic teachings, as,

indeed it ought to be done, even as illumination is associated with light, the contemplation of

his form or even of his life spontaneously becomes the contemplation of his teachings. Slowly

and gradually we imbibe the same attitude. This silent communication between the hearts is thereal teaching and whereever we are, He is with us.

Fine as this whole scheme of Sadhana is, how many of us would be able to attain

perfection thereby? In this everything seems to rest with us. We can make of it what we canHow willing and ready are we? And this eagerness shows itself in the way we think and act. Do

we wish to eat the cake and have it too, that is, do we naively hope to make the best of both the

worlds, that is, do we insist on living as our own regenerate selves and wish and hope that Hewould do the sadhana on our behalf, but credit the fruits thereof to our account. Such an attitudeonly shows that our yearning is not genuine, that we indeed hope for all those things in life,

which we imagine, would give us security and pleasure and would persist in our illusion that wecould get what we want. By treading the path of worldly life with all the enslavements we have

mentioned earlier is characteristic of the unregenerate way of living, from which the ringing call

of the Master ― Allah Malik ‖ tries to awaken in us. When we have sold our whole -self to thisway of living, we indeed are left with nothing to offer the Sadguru and our conception of the

Guru is nothing but an abstraction, a collective form of all our lay enslavement and hopes. To

such, though unconsciously, Sai Baba is another form of either the glittering call or the softcomforts of fame and authority. It is natural that in such a heart even that form of the Guru is

bound to be as unstable, insufficient and therefore the symbol of what he is not. Naturally we

love him and hate him alternately, remember him only when we are sad with the underlined

accusation that the source is He, for the simple reason that we are the source of our misery andour conception of him is but a reflection of our own selves. This is what precisely Jesus Christ

meant when he said that he would not save his devotee who merely went on saying ―Lord‖,―Lord‖, without either bothering to put any of his teaching into practice, that such a one is like a



man who builds mansions on a sandy bed in a river, which would be washed away in times of

flood; such of us tend to justify our own stand by saying ―Did not Sai Baba say, ‗Sit quiet. I willtake you right upto the goal;‖ but the question is do we sit quiet leaving everything to him? The

choice of whatever we want in life is ours, and it is only his essential teaching that we have left

The astute Master as He is, the best course for him is to let life be our teacher, which may

perhaps make us ready to learn the proper attitude at the appropriate time.

It is regarding such of us that he gave the symbol of the mango tree in full bloom. Howmany of them grow into ripe fruit? Many of the flowers fall away and many a tender fruit too-

may be on account of the wind or insects or the mischief of monkeys and mischief of children.

Even when a few of them grow into mature fruits, many of them have been eaten away as

vegetable and the stones inside them are eaten up by pigs. Very few of them remain to ripenessBut even those few needed a little of attention and protection. The truth is such even with regard

to our devotion to the Guru and the fruits thereof. Having thought on this much, He seems tosay, ―The rest is with you. You are given the talent. Whether you keep them buried in naivety or

give a good account of them and thereby derive more is left to you.‖ Indeed, often Ba ba

complained that he was eager to give away sumptuously from his limitless spiritual treasure,

and that he did not find even one who wanted it. Have we then a right to ask, when and whereall of us who resort to him, attain the goal: if anything it is He that should ask us the question.

But the mother never would ask. To the child, whether he would deserve of her care andattention, she only gives and gives, and perhaps silently suffers and patiently bears with him if

he does not make the best of it and his inward too even to a sense of love that went into it. God,and the Guru who is a manifestation of His mercy for mankind, have taught us repeatedly that

He is Just and that his justice is an expression of his call of love for all. He has given us the

way, the blessedness and warned us sufficiently often of the fruits of our failure. He providesthe standard warner in the Guru. All that we are asked to do is to free ourselves of all the burdens we pile upon our own back owing to lack of understanding. Often we imagine that even

the power of understanding, He is to bestow on us. But that He has already bestowed it on us isamply proved of the cunning we muster in our worldly life. It only means we are not willing to

exercise it, where it properly belongs. The Hindu, the Buddhist and Jains‘ scriptures have given

us a detailed picture of right living that leads us to perfection and also knowledge concerningthe law of Karma that governs our phenomenal life. The Bible and the Koran have given us the

concept of judgement on the last day and laid down the proper way of life. The perfect Masters

are there, as the tangible proof of the promised rewards of right living. What else do we have toask for? ―We can take the horse to the pond, but we cannot make it drink‖ is most appropriate in

this context. Now the question confronts us: how many of us can realise, or are willing to

realise the goal, which the association with Baba promises us? It is for us to answer and take it.

If we say that man is by nature forgetful of the most precious things of life, we are advised to beassociated with the Guru, study his life and teachings so that we may remember. Unless we

undertake such a study few of us can hope to derive the best from our contact either with SaiBaba or any great Sadguru with whom we happen to come in contact. For they constitute the



deaths and in consequence they were born as these two creatures. But Baba keeps on his

promise across lines. But does either the frog or the snake know anything about the value oftheir association with Baba? Indeed, He always keeps his word and we, never. He always is

with us but we, on our part, drift in the world of our dreams punctuated by the deepest slumber

In dream perhaps we mutter, ―He has to bestow on us even the understanding.‖

Nanavalli, a queer celibate came to Shirdi a few years before Sai Baba arrived there. As

soon as they met for the first time, Nanavalli blurted, ―Uncle, Have you come?‖ Perhaps of allthe people he alone knew the supreme spiritual state of Baba and his mission and perhaps it was

not yet time for the secret put out, ―Hush not a word,‖ Baba warned and the gruff, hefty young

man never spoke out anything but divined of Baba, everyday he used to visit Baba, every now

and then and with a themely bow he would walk away. One day when he met Sai Baba, thelatter said, ―The treasure is locked up and the key is with you. I never speak untruth.‖ This is

what Baba has got to say all of us. Our spiritual slumber is the lock and Sai Baba, the livingembodiment of the perpetual teaching ―Allah Malik‖ has given to us. What we do with the key

is our wisdom. It was in this sense that he stated to the other devotee Chinna Kisna Raja Saheb,

―The key of my treasure, I keep in your hands. Ask for what you want.‖ Chinna Kisna was wise

enough to ask for the only thing that matters. But what about the rest of us. Baba said,―Everyone comes to me with all absurd wishes and impossible desires. There is hardly one

among you who is willing to receive all that I can give.‖

Are we not asking him all the time for freedom from ignorance and misery? Perhaps mostof us do ask. But there is an asking and asking. Whenever the desire is heart-felt, we ask for the

hand with all our being; we may put forth our petition vocally to those who can give in our

worldly life. We try to do a good turn for them in the hope of obliging them and we may servethem long in the hope of disposing them favourably. We go here and there, leaving no stoneunturned and that is real asking. We may even betray those who love us, if it seems to work. We

brood over it night and day and that becomes the main concern behind all our dealings witheveryone. Are we asking Baba for the enlightenment in this manner? When everything we do in

our daily life is precisely opposed to whatever we say to Baba in this sense, does it amount to

asking? Do we not hope to see the only one, who is concerned with our well being? Do we notthereby presume that he is a fool, a simpleton to take us on our word? If ever this thought

occurs to us, we do not hesitate to hope that he would pardon this little bit of desensity. Do we

wish and hope that he should pluck us from all the necessary things of life we cling to and plantus forcibly in the depths of realisation? Can we stand, if he does? And do we not accuse him of

having denied us everything that a common man wishes to have in life? There is no doubt about

what would happen to us if he chooses to do so. The native beedi [Rolls of a kind of native

leave which is smoked like tobacco] vendor often offered his fare to Baba as gifts. One finemorning he had a fancy that the best thing to ask Baba would be his own state of ‗ Fakiree‘ [The

Muslim renunciate who has taken a vow to voluntary poverty]. Baba told him to be patient tillthe right moment, but the man insisted and pestered Baba beyond measure. One such day, Baba



flung his empty fist towards him in a gesture of throwing something at him and muttered

something in Arabic. At once the man‘s attitude and manner radically changed. He forgot allabout his family, house, and business and wandered as a recluse, always muttering something to

himself. People thought he went crazy and prayed to Baba to restore him. Baba told them to

wait for the proper time. The villagers and the man‘s kinfolk found that almost everyone of his

stray utterings was coming true. One of his friends one day jeered at him and teased him callinghim ‗mad‘. The crazy fakir flung his empty fist towards him saying, ―you too become like me.‖

Strangely the second man too was transformed and he too wandered. A few weeks passed. Oneday he accosted Sai Baba at the mosque and submitted that he could no longer bear this state of

Fakiree. He desperately wanted to be relieved. Baba made another gesture as though plucking

something invisible from him saying, ― Lao Bale Idar ‖, and he was his former self

instantaneously. He did not remember anything that transpired during that period and carried onhis trade as usual.

Most of us do not have even this much of wisdom. We are like the wealthy man who one

day drove to Shirdi in a hired tonga and urgently demanded of Baba ―I learnt that you readily

bestow realisation on those who ask for it. The Lord has given all that I can wish for in my

material life. If I get realisation too, there is nothing more I need.‖ As minutes passed by, hewent on urging Baba and asking repeatedly, ―I have to get back quickly and the hired tonga man

is waiting for me.‖ Somehow Baba managed to divert his attention with a little casual talk andsent one of his errand boys to fetch Rs. 5/- from a local businessman. But the businessman sent

word that he was not at home. Baba sent the errand boy to a few places, but none would oblige.After a little while, the richman resumed urging Baba to grant his wish. Baba atlast smiled and

said, ―All the time I have been trying to teach you. Haven‘t you learnt anything? I have been

desperately trying to secure Rs. 5/-. You remained a silent spectator while having fifty timesmore than I was asking for. But you would not give. It is so with the teaching also. As a begging Fakir, I am not entitled to borrow money from any body for I cannot repay and so none

would give. When I am not fit to borrow, you cannot give me anything even when you have itin plenty. In order to gain self-realisation one has to surrender the five. Realisation is not for

one who cannot do so. As per you, your God is only the money you already have in plenty.‖

The man realised his folly and returned. Can we say that he asked for Baba for what Baba wasonly too intelligent to give. Then we know what it is to ask truly. Then alone is the promise of

the Master ―Ask and that shall be given‖ is valid for us. That is why Sai Baba once said, ―In the

spiritual path one has to exert with all his might. It is more difficult than even crossing the Nanhe Ghat on the back of a male buffalo.‖ The man to whom these words were addressed had

to cross a very steep mountain range called Nanhe Ghat and he had to travel on the back of a

male buffalo. The ride was more painful to the man.

If enlightenment is so hard to get by, is it worthwhile to try? The point is that when we

truly want something, even the severest of efforts seem as nothing, while even the minutesteffort looks most exacting, if our wish is not sincere. Then the question arises, ―If we too put in



all the efforts by ourselves, why do you need to resort to Sai Baba or any other Master for that

matter?‖ Indeed, we have been exerting to our utmost, all-through our lives for this and thatEven the most ideal of men can be considered to have exerted himself to his maximum in search

of perfect idealness. We are asked to do nothing more than this. We are only told to direct our

efforts in the right direction so that it would prove meaningful. But there is another aspect to the

question, which a similitude can explain better. If a boiling oil in a cauldron were to spillsuddenly and we are constrained to take our feet off the ground instantaneously, would leaping

up into the air help us? We just keep leaping and falling and face sliding. But if we could find astrong support above our heads to which we can hold and hang, and perhaps pull ourselves up.

Now could we ask, ―If all the pulling has to be done by ourselves, of what use is the support?‖

The question which the Master could ask us in return is, ―Could all your willingness to pull

yourself up help you, if you were not supported over-head?‖ There are only two alternativesEither we hold on and pull ourselves up by the support or keep debating.

Above all, what is the effort we are asked to put forth? Besides whole-heartedly

remembering the total meaning of the piercing call ―Allah Malik‖. The most important part of

this effort is whole-heartedly remember Sai Baba the Master, who is the living embodiment of

the central teaching. If, instead, we are deep searching for alternative ways we are bound to befrustrated. We are like the impatient man who went on digging a few feet here and a few feet

there for drinking water. If he were going digging in one place, he is sure to strike water.Whatever alternative way we hope to adopt, common sense tells us that we cannot learn

anything effectively without the guidance of one who has attained the goal in that way. So weare back to root one. If Sai Baba refused to accept the hospitality held out to him gratis by the

innocent labourer at the first instance, ultimately he will have to accept it again on the next

occasion, or else run the risk of wandering aimlessly in the woods seeking nothing, but waterand food for the both. There is one more possibility, but which is far ours. Now a days, there aremasters and masters, and masters of nothing, but self-aggrandizement and advertisement, there

are good public relations men with a whole army of agents. Addicted to the ways of the world,we are likely to choose the most advertised of the goods, and in the matters of spirit it is an iron

rule that the most valuable goods are the least advertised. They have no sophisticated jargon of

philosophical word-play, no taped voices and not many picture albums of photogenic poses, insome looking like Jesus Christ and in some like every conceivable Master. Sai Baba the Guru

and Sai Baba of Shirdi represented the true spiritual tradition. The fact is that no light had to

proclaim itself as such; nor did any delicious fruit. It is we that we have to recognise them forwhat they are and make up them what we could. Let us remember that God is the most hidden

of all things. One of the most important things for our life, the common earth under our feet,

and the air we breath, are the last things that call for our attention. The infinite space, which

contains myriads of galaxies is the last thing we can ever notice, while the glittering stars andthe bright sun which are nothing more than speck or dust living not longer than a few break

moments in the cosmic section of time, are the only things we commonly look up and wonder,―Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. How I wonder what you are.‖



Why not wonder what we are? Sai Baba in his most unobtrusive way has given us thenecessary caution, ―A true Fakir is very rare‖, but we have a plethora of gurus manufactured

daily and hourly and in every corner of the earth, everyone of them running the rat-race to make

the tallest of the claims as the Avatar, the Messaiah and so on. Do we deserve anything better?

No fruit bearing tree advertises itself and God has left it to our own common sense to judge thetree by its fruit and not by its leaves and branches. While even the sturdiest of trees is uprooted

by the storm, the gentle and humble across the wind, humble to every foot that trace it. But lo,at the end of the storm it alone remains nodding its head for the mankind to see and lament that

in this mysterious universe show of strength is weakness and humility is strength. Did not the

Christ show the way to write the judgement when he washed the feet of his disciples. The

Sadguru is the father, mother, friend, master and self in one. If he is the Master of the wholecreation, He is so only by willing to be the humblest slave of all creatures and the only trusted

slave, and no slave advertises himself. How famous was the Guru whom Sai Baba served andwho alone could give the precious gift of Sai Baba to mankind? ―Uge Mooge‖ ―He who knows

keeps quiet‖ said Sai Baba. The Guru is one in whom the whole universe exists and he alone

exists in the whole of the Universe and besides him nothing else is. So says the classic script

that is dedicated, expounding the nature of a True Guru to man-kind- Sri Guru Geetha. Howmany of the Jewish prophets were recognised for they were in their times?

Accepting that we are ready to follow Sai Baba, how long are we expected to serve before we reach the goal? Let us remember that we never ask in our daily life, ―How long are

we to go on earning money and acquiring things.‖ Except a sick -mind, no one ever asks howlong we are go to on living or eating and breathing. The more the better and God forbid it as an

end. Does not this question indicate that at heart we hate the end that we pretend to love most.

Do we have a hope? In fact, this was the question that the rich man asked who returned emptyhanded from Baba (figuratively speaking). By implication such a question never occurred to SaiBaba when he met and recognised his Guru; not even when he was suspended head-downwards

in the well. Else what have we surrendered? Does genuine love ask how long one has to keeploving? The question is again either we want realization or we do not. It is for us to decide.

None of the worthy disciples of any master ever asked his Master such a question. They only

felt that they could not serve better and love enough.

Does it mean that we should give up everything else in life and stick to thinking of Sai

Baba only? It is not too dear a price? If you do think wisdom asks in return, have you not beensacrificing, dedicating all your efforts to the need of the moment every time in your life? Do

you have anything at all in your life for yourself, or do you go on trying to please every one

around you all the time to impress everyone? The Master is the only one whoever calls from us,

to have all for oneself, for the only thing that can give us lasting peace and contentment, theonly thing that makes life worth-while and stop feeling about. Baba has never advised anyone to

do what we fear most. He only wanted us to go about with a sense of what it is all about, a littlestudy, understanding. Sai Baba‘s Guru did not ask of him even to give two paise in return for



his teaching and so Sai Baba does not make any such demand upon us. He only tells us to be

sensible in our life.

When a father gives the most precious gift to his son, it is natural for his loving heart to

caution the child against loosing it through his carelessness. So too Sai Baba who has bestowed

this invaluable teaching ―Allah Malik‖ also warned us, ―There are thieves in the mansion. Theycan rob you of every thing.‖, ―It is necessary that we know each one of them.‖ A thief is one

who watchfully watches for the moment when our attention is diverted from our treasure andknocks it away. Obviously, he is referring to all those little vanities of life which make us loose

sight of, the only source, the inner freedom, self-confidence and freedom from insight, the

teaching ―Allah Malik‖ and its living manifestation Sai Baba. Once we forget these, we are

instantenously enslaved by everything else around us. That is why once he emphatically said,―We must recognise Guru. Else, what are we here for? To gather fuel for our funeral.‖

Underlying the meaning of his principle teaching, he once said, ―The earth bears seeds,the clouds rain and the sun affords light. But none of these stop their course. Are they joyous

when the plants grow, or do they greave when the plants wilt? If you too can learn to live like

that, where is room for sorrow? Freedom from sorrow is liberation.‖ It means that clouds, sun

and the earth have always been proclaiming ―Allah Malik‖ and that there is nothing which istheir own. We have eyes, but do not see. We have ears but do not hear. We have minds, but do

not understand. Indeed we are born free. But we insist on enchaining ourselves and we arescared to death of the only one who dares to remind us of it. But is it not too gloomy,

pessimistic, if we have to remember that nothing is our own. If this be so, Lord Krishna, JesusChrist, the Buddha, Sai Baba and Ramana Maharshi - the only ones that ever adored to be

blissful, and who could be the inexhaustible sources of peace and contentment to all those

myriads who are bogged down by their possessions or the like of them, should have beengloomiest of all creatures. But were they? To know that there is nothing of our own, is torecognise that even we are not our possession. We belong to him. It is not we that exist; only He

exists in us and to Him everything belongs. By the same logic, to recognise that there is nothingof our own is to realise that everything is our own. The empty space, to which nothing belongs,

is indeed a call to be Vice Regeant of all that is, and not to plod on as bond-slaves.

Can we atleast know when we can be sure that our discipleship to Sai Baba has borne

fruit, when we are no longer obliged to go on with it? Indeed, this was the question which arose

in the mind of one Bapu Saheb Joge. But he had the moral courage and necessity to formulate itin a most straight forward form. One day when he sat in Dwarakamayee, it suddenly occurred to

him that it is said in the scriptures that a perfect Master would alchemize his disciple into his

own lifeness, ―How is it that He did not do so to me?‖. Instantly Sai Baba nudged a devotee

sitting by Him, and pointing to Joge, He said, ―Look here. This fellow wants to push me out ofmy seat and occupy it himself.‖ Everyone was amazed and Joge was frankly shocked. The

meaning is quite clear. There can only be one perfect means that we should be able to live uptothe description of the Guru cited from the Gurugeetha earlier, to live at-one-ment with all that



exists. If we could be identical with all the gurus, Gods, living creatures and all else, and when

we can say that when our body is dead and buried, our tomb will speak to its devotees; when wecan be a Moslem to Moslems and a Vedic Scholar to Hindus; when we can be dead for seventy

two years and be alive again for decades after; when we can know of every lizard that ticks,

every bitch that is beaten and every pit that is humiliated, that is living like Him. The Kafni

which he wore is not a sign of the vow of spiritual discipline he had undertaken. He was a Fakirin the sense in which God himself is a Fakir. Everything is His, but He never possesses

anything. He gives and gives but never takes anything except for teaching us how to give. Toape him in mere external form, without having the stuff, is at best a mockery and symbol of real

enslavement to the least valuable of all worldly things, fame.

There is one more aspect of it. With all His spiritual glory Sai Baba was humblest to thehumble and never claimed to be anything more than a slave of God and that was his teaching

too. He dressed and lived in the spirit of it. Often he said that whatever devotees think He was,was all the result of his Guru‘s blessing. It is said that one of the hallmark of a genuine Guru is

that he is the disciple of another. Indeed, in this spiritual lore one does not have a guru. He is

figuratively described as an illegitimate child. No sane man would afford to be ashamed of

owning his father, however despicable the latter may be, though it is much more humility to beillegitimate child another man, however pious he might be, than to be the legitimate child of a

worthless man and so is it in the spiritual field. Unless we can justly claim to be the disciples ofSai Baba, we cannot hope to live like him at any time, and it is not a simple thing. When a

gentleman went on proclaiming himself as his disciple, Sai Baba admonished him saying,―Whoever could claim to be my disciple. Among all the thousands that come to me, I have not

found one who could serve as I served my own Master.‖

How come then that he could be the Avatar of Dattatreya when the latter is God Himself – as the Guru, the Guru of all Gurus? If we study the story of Dattatreya in all his

manifestations, one fact stands out predominantly. He always claimed to have won his spiritualglory through discipleship. Dattatreya is not only the ideal Guru, the highest Guru, but He was

also the ideal disciple and the greatest of them. A man wanted an engineer to build a fifty

storeyed mansion for him. The latter complained that he did not have the means of taking waterupto the fifth storey. Then the man said, ―What an engineer you are? First raise the fiftieth

storey, raise an over-head tank on it, and with the water you can complete all the other storeys.‖

The miracle of the miracles. We have a plethora of gurus who had never been disciples. It may be true that in this space age ex: gravitation is no great hurdle. But man still breach and loves. A

man wanted to be accepted as a disciple by a guru. The guru tried to put off saying ―How tough

a task it is to be a disciple than a master.‖ The ambitious fool said, ―Make me a Master instead.‖

The point is no Avatar of the Lord has ever gone a begging recognition as such. Even

Lord Krishna, the greatest of Avatars in Hindu religion, had never proclaimed himself as such.He only said it to a very few, very intimate ones like Arjuna. To everyone else, he was a mere



chauffeur of Arjuna in the battle and a predominant man in the Yadava clan. Though he was the

king-maker, he was never himself a king and he is depicted in the Mahabharatha to haveassiduously followed his spiritual discipline, getting up early in the morning, attending to his

ablutions, his daily meditation and before he set out, to touch the feet of all the elders and the

learned and with their blessings only he proceeded on his embassies. Like any other common

mortal he served his Guru Maharshi Saandeepani. In this dark age of Kali, the code of law thatgoverns spiritual life seems to have been amended and we have many self-styled avatars. A

genuine Avatar may be known by what He is and not by what He claims. None of the Avatarsof Lord Dattatreya ever claimed to be such. It is only the people and especially the posterity that

has recognised them as such. Genuine Fakirs are indeed hard to come by. Their one watch-word

and the hall-mark of their whole life is summed up in the one short saying ―ALLAH MALIK ‖.



“We have come to discover Guru – What else have we

Come for? To gather fuel for the funeral fire?”

- SAI BABA

II

THE REAL MASTER

Sai Baba said that unless we can live like him we cannot take it that our discipleship has

borne fruit. What if we study minutely how he lived and tried to cultivate the habit of living like

that, would do any amount of serving him indeed? Is it necessary to repeatedly study his life

and teaching and to lovingly remember Him all the time?

Let us see. Sai Baba lived all alone for several decades before any devotees worth the nameever came and sat with him. But if we try to do so? We immediately remember that man is a

social animal. Quite a truth indeed. The one thing of which we are terribly afraid is loneliness.

The moment we try to do so, in a short while, we will find ourselves busying ourselves with

people around us under different pretexts; or atleast our mind is much more crowded withmemories of things and persons than even a crowded city. We may adopt some spiritual

discipline to keep ourselves busy with, but soon it degenerates into dull, mechanical, routine.We grow more irritable and less acclimatised to the presence of others. Shortly our spirituality

will start consisting of harassing others, telling them how to conduct themselves, and therebyshowing the green signal for more and more people to flock to us in search of spiritual teaching

from us, which indeed proves to be the gloomy cloud of ignorance that envelopes us. If we

persist a veritable battle starts in us and our minds become more and more cunning and astute inthe art of being cunning and squeamish. All the supposed negative tendencies will get over-charged and we could at best put up a pretence of sanity. We have to invent ways of getting our

daily bread and to receive the necessary succor in times of illness and financial needs. No onehas ever succeeded in trying to sacrifice worldly association as a matter of conscious choice.

That is why Sai Baba is very careful to point out that when he saw his Master, all recollections

of His home and hunger vanished of their own accord. It is the law of human nature that anoverwhelming love and something more alone can withdraw our heart from other lesser loves.

When we contact a real Guru, all Sadhana or spiritual discipline starts on quite spontaneously

and un-self-consciously. Then there will be no time when we do not yearn to be alone withoutGuru. People who burst into the arena of Gurudom without genuine discipleship, will end up by

having a wild out-growth of commercial establishments trading in the name of religion. It is

good to remember the eternal Truth that Christ spoke out, ―No man can serve two Masters, God

and Mamon.‖ No genuine Master or other God is in this mesh. Let us look at the lives of SaiBaba, Akkalkot Swami, Manikya Prabhu, Sri Narasimha Saraswathi and Sreepada Sri Vallabha

If one tradition is not enough, let us look at the life of Hazarath Tajuddin Baba or DhunivalaDada of Khandwa. The cadilier gurus or the estate-gurus, inspite of themselves may serve some



purpose in the life of the society: initially by drawing the attention of the society to them

spiritually and ultimately by showing them by example what they ought to shun at all costs. Butfor themselves they are worst than a common man who drudges his life out in honest labour for

his daily bread and does nothing more than offering an incense stick to the picture of his guru;

but atleast the latter is honest and humble and he can hope for the better. This is the next most

important truth we can pick up from Sai Baba‘s life.

As the most obtrusive of the Gurus, He did not mill out millions upon millions of words orso-called teaching, which everyone hears, no one remembers, or bothers to practice. ―Ask and

Thou shall be given‖ is their principle. They only speak out as much as the devotee can absorb

and endeavour to bring into practice. They know that too much of intellectual knowledge only

serves the purpose of self-deception and intellectual arrogance and finally ends up in findingways of rationalising one‘s own failures. That is why Hindu religious law has ear -marked the

founding of institutions only to conscientious men of the world and the house-holder. Arenunciate is strictly forbidden from any such. Unless he has learnt to live honestly as a humble

house-holder and unless he has seen senselessness, and futility of all craving for fame and

wealth, he is not entitled to step into the portals of spiritual wisdom. It is lack of such training in

the school of life that makes a few fool-hardy enough to venture into the chair of Guru. TheSanskrit word ‗Guru‘ ironically, has another meaning, a burden or weight and that is what th ey

prove to be to their followers and ultimately to the society.

It should not be difficult to distinguish such gurus from the genuine ones. Despite theteaming of thousands of devotees that flocked to him, Sai Baba never conceived of forming an

organisation or founding an institution or organising regular service activities on a large scale.

He never wanted his devotees to stand apart from his stream of social life. Instead, He onlywanted them to learn to lead their normal lives with a greater awareness. Many of his teachingstherefore, pertain to the wrong attitudes that propped up in our day to day life. ―Do not call any

one as your enemy. Who is whose enemy? All are one.‖ He pointed the way of overcoming all petty jealousies. ―If some one prospers we need not feel jealous of him. What has he taken of

what belongs to us? Not realising this, we go on giving vent to our feelings by speaking ill of

him to others. But we do not gain anything thereby; nor does the other man lose anything of hisown. If anything, we are the losers.‖ One day a few of his devotees assembled in one of the

apartments of Shirdi and one of them was speaking very ill of some one else behind his back.

Baba at once sent word to him to see Him that evening near the Lendi Bagh. Precisely whenthey met, a pig was gorging on night-soil. Sai Baba pointed it out to the man and spoke to the

effect, ―Look, it is taking the filth to itself and giving its own cleanliness to the soil. Anyone

who speaks ill of another does the same. He takes the filth into his own mind and washes out

the evil Karma of the other man. If you do so, even your visits to Shirdi will be of no avail.‖ SaiBaba never wasted his time or the devotees in talk about lofty themes in spiritual wisdom. He

merely effected necessary minor corrections in man‘s day-to-day life. We see that the Christ‘steaching too are such. Complex spiritual jargon is always a designed cover up of total ignorance



and vanity. He never exhorted his disciples systematically to cultivate love, peace, truth and

such other virtues. For the greatest psychologist He is, He knows that such preaching is counter- productive. In struggling to cultivate peace, the common man learns to maintain external façade

of peace and either his blood-pressure goes up or he lets out his steam in the intimate corners of

his domestic life and no one can love by choosing to do so. The more he tries, the more do the

natural springs of love narrow down. It is easy to say that no one can fall in love deliberately.All such teaching becomes alive only when the Master can hold out to his devotees his own

unconditional love without demanding any obedience to his teaching, nor claiming itself to besuch. Even in his ways and gestures, Sai Baba never demonstrated his love. He just addressed

his devotees some times with the familiar words of kinship, like Bhavu (brother), Mama (uncle)

or Kaka (grand sire) more generally he addressed people just by their names. In the name of

discipline he did not assume the pontificial attitude of a Guru and never treated any one as hisdisciple. It is upto the devotee how he conducts himself; for discipline should be spontaneous,

being prompted by the immense love for the guru, quite unconditioned by the hopes of eitherspiritual or material gain, for only such is true love. The value of love is absolute; it is a value

by itself, and does not point to anything beyond itself. His love lived itself always in his

watchfulness of the spiritual and material interests of his devotees. And He was never negligent

of even the minutest details of their daily life, for the seemingly unimportant things of life arethe most vital elements in spiritual life. His Omniscient eye was ever watchful all what every

one of his devotees did or thought. Promptly he used to suggest the study of any work ofspiritual value like the Jnaneswari, the Ekanath Bhagavatha or some other such, which was

most appropriate to his mental state. The sum and substance of his teaching was that we shouldalways remember that He is present in all the creatures around us, and treat them accordingly.

All his miracles have this common theme and were never intended to merely impress the

devotees with awe and wonder. If any one leisurely slept on till late in the morning for no validreason or if he wasted away his time in meaningless chatter of futile things, he would not allowthe devotee to step into the mosque, but would stretch out his hand-full of Udi signifying that he

should keep off. If any one entertained negative thoughts of feeling towards anyone else, heused to grow wild and heap abuse on him so as to impress upon his heart the gravity and

magnitude of his folly. For as the Christ said, ―It is not that which we take in that pollutes us. It

is that which comes out of us that does so.‖ If a little ru bbish falls into a fresh water well, it isenough if it is removed. But if the very springs of water are brackish nothing can be done about

it. So too, when the heart is unclean, and the feelings, thoughts, words and deeds which emanate

from there are unholy, nothing can purify such a man. Fortunately, unlike the well, man has theopportunity of changing his way of thinking and thereby purifying his own heart and that is the

business of life. It is for the same reason that He never allowed anyone to treat anykind of food

as unholy. If it is used as food and nothing more, all food is holy. It is the daily bread which the

Lord in his mercy has granted to all living creatures. If one still tries to cater to his own plate,then any kind of food is equally harmful to his self-discipline; it will make him forget the very

object of man‘s life and ultimately would enslave him. He does not eat it, rather it eats him up.As in all other things of life, He set an example to all by his characteristic way of eating. He



mixed all the items indiscriminately and ate just enough to quench his hunger. However, he did

not confuse the standards of living that befit a recluse and a householder. While he never droveaway cats and dogs that fairly ate from his earthen pot, he was particular that all his householder

devotees should scrupulously take sufficient quantity of food and leave it outside for all other

creatures. For if every house-holder presumes to ape him, it is pride and nothing else. Baba‘s

sense of utter equality with all living creatures spontaneously springs from his perfect identitywith all of them, and only such can honestly do so. It is for this reason that all the ancient

Dharma Sastras strictly forbid any one from eating what is tasted by animals. It is enough if weremember that food is a right, which is granted to all the creatures by the Creator and whoever

denies it to any of His creatures would be appropriating to himself what does not legitimately

belong to him alone.

Just as ―Allah Malik‖ is his central teaching pertaining to the spiritual aspect of our life,

―Work. Utter Lord‘s name. Study holy books.‖ is his principal teaching that pertains to theconduct of our daily life. The first one keeps the body active, and is the prime condition to

deserve one‘s f ood. Every creature in nature does it utmost and thereby vindicates its existence

When the body is kept active in useful work, the mind would calm down and it will be easier to

pre-occupy it with what is valuable, viz., sacred study and remembering the Lord. In fact, itwould then be much easier for any one to realise the attitude ―Allah Malik‖ for no slave is

expected to keep idle. Besides, in work man can easily over-come his chronic self-consciousness. The whole philosophy of Karma Yoga is summed up by Baba in that one phrase

Sacred study and reflection will help us in correcting our attitude to work. Instead of lookingupon it as a drudgery and an unavoidable evil, we can learn to look upon it as a means of

perfecting our abilities and keep ourselves in tune with the whole of nature, for nothing in

nature is idle or still – our breath, heart-beats, the diurnal motion and the annual circuit aroundthe sun – everything goes on as it should. As Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavadgeetha, nevercan anyone keep inactive even for a second. If even keeping still is action, not doing one‘s own

proper action is only negative action, in that it is a failure to do one‘s duty.

The two other phrases, above all, preclude us of vain chattering and gossip, for nothing

spoils a man as much as gossip does. All conceivable negative thoughts and emotions pile up inone‘s heart. It is a criminal waste of precious moments, which never return. As one goes on

remembering the Lord by uttering his name, the right attitude of ―Allah Malik‖ gets impressed

more and more deeply on one‘s heart. The whole of one‘s physical activity then becomes a practice of obedience to divine order. The study of holy texts strengthens our right

understanding and attitude to life and to God. It restores right sense of values. Again Baba

Himself has set an example in all those things. He dug up a piece of waste land, planted seeds

of flowering plants and watered them everyday by carrying pitchers of water from the well inLendi Bagh. Sometimes in the afternoons he was found mending his torn Kafni at the mosque.

He never spoke anything that was not useful to his devotees. Even he had to deal with hundredsof devotees everyday, his scrupulous attitude to everyone of them is summed up in the saying,



―I have to count to the Lord for every pie that comes to my hand.‖ The pie does signify the soul

which comes to him. All the time he was absorbed in the spontaneous contemplation of thesupreme spirit. Everyone of his slightest gestures was prompted only by the will of the supreme

Every idle word that is uttered by us marks a falling of from this objective, and more than that,

it drags down everyone around us.

The study of holy texts by ourselves is not self-sufficient, for everyone understands them

only to the limits of his innate maturity of understanding and many of us cannot boast of muchmaturity. It is for this reason that he summed up the essential philosophy of life, as expounded

in all the scriptures of the world, in his one saying, ―I am in you and you are in me. Go on

contemplating this truth and eventually you will experience it.‖ How true this is, is evident even

from slight reflection. All our physical bodies are essentially made of the same materialsubstance. The heart-beats, the motions and the mental abilities are more or less the same.

Whtever, which seems to make each of us distinct, is only the detail of form and the objects ofour thoughts, feelings and actions. Whatever else we are, besides this, is the Self which all great

Masters have said, is one. At the emotional level this comprehends the basic law of all morality

and ethics; ―Do unto others what you would have done Unto.‖ and logically follows ―Love Thy

neighbor as Thyself‖. But again these statements derive their fullness in practice only f rom thefact that all the creatures are ultimately His creatures and all life is a school where we are

expected to learn the right attitude to all of them and to God, the more fully we can comprehendthe fatherhood of God, the more fully can we comprehend the brother-hood of creatures. All

attempts to love deliberately without caring much to impress the fact of the fatherhood of God,are therefore, bound to be a pose and a show, and subjectively, the best course to go on forcing

oneself to love. Such a one will go on feeling ever more and more, that fewer and fewer

creatures are really worthy of being loved. He finds distrusting negativity everywhere, which infact, is a projection of his own inner-set. The life of Sai Baba demonstrates another veryimportant aspect of his teaching. He lived althrough as a poor begging Fakir and even out of the

little bread he got, he ate very little. His needs were very few. He had only one set of clothes forhis body and had no possessions beyond that. Thus what he took either from nature or from

humanity is very little and is next to nothing when compared with what he gave out. In those

days his daily personal expenditure was never more than a quarter of a rupee, or even less,where as he gave away about Rs. 500/- in charity. Besides the money, he gave away all the

clothes and the delicious dishes that were offered by the devotees. The service he rendered to

humanity in terms of spiritual succor and guidance is invaluable. To sum up, his basic philosophy of interaction with the world and nature in his saying, ―Everyone keeps saying

‗give‘, ‗give more‘ and my Master keeps telling me to give and give away.‖ Indeed that is the

basic principle of almost every other creature in nature. The earth receives just one seed, but

gives us lots of fruit and crops. Even then, He asked for Dakshina from his devotees; He saysthat for every rupee he receives, he has to benefit them ten or even hundred fold, while for most

of us the case is quite the reverse of it. That is why all religions had to lay down a minimumlimit to what we should give. However, this giving should not be limited to clothes and money.



The essential thing is to give out love and to give with love. Such a giving does not weigh or

count how much it gives or how much it receives. It is the question of trying to cater to theneeds of others; the needs may be spiritual protection, guidance and alleviation of suffering.

The point of it all is that anyone who is genuinely interested in spiritual advancement, has to

venture to taste all of God‘s mysterious protection, more so without even the worldly

employment and stable income, which bind the man down to undesirable pastimes andcravings. One of the closest of His devotees is Mahalsapathi. He was a gold-smith by trade. Sai

Baba told him to give up his trade and to live on begging. Dasganu originally worked in the police department. He always [******* 1 line missing from SaiBharadwaja.Org {Sai Baba of

Shirdi and His Teachings, eBook} *******] maybe spiritual protection, guidance and

alleviation of suffering [******* 1 line missing from SaiBharadwaja.Org {Sai Baba of Shirdi

and His Teachings, eBook} *******] to stamp out this gift in his heart and increase him moreand more in material cravings. So Baba insisted that he give up his profession. The man evaded

for quite sometime. Once he even demanded of Baba how he had to sustain himself after givingup the job. Baba used to say, ―You go on singing Kirtans and I will take care of your

maintenance.‖ Dasganu was not sure about it and stuck to his guns. Ultimately the will of the

Master prevailed. A series of unforeseen developments took place and he was left with no

alternative but to quit. Soon Dasganu received unforeseen help from different quarters and helived a happy content life devoting all his energies for the spread of the spiritual message

Indeed, it was owing to his Kirtans that hundreds and thousands of people were drawn to Baba.The Master was particular that his devotee should not only go on singing about God‘s grace and

message, but he should taste it for himself. It is easy to discern that slowly and steadily He wasdrawing those who were worthy to His own mode of living.

There is one reason why He weaned Dasganu away from his fondness for cheap street-playscalled Tamashas. Not only did they divert his attention from the only legitimate object of life, but they also plant seeds of gross worldliness in a man‘s heart. This however does not mean that

all art is undesirable. The Master only meant that all the artistic talent of man should be put tothe proper use, that is, to nurture one‘s own devotional nature. Music and dance, when properly

practiced and used, link man‘s body and mind with the music of the spheres and cosmic

harmony. They can influence one‘s emotional nature either way. Even in this, the Master set anexample himself. In the early decades of his arrival at Shirdi, he often went to the meeting place

of wandering Moslem Fakirs, the Takia, and there in their holy company, with trinkets around

his ankles he danced ecstatically singing songs of Kabir and other great saints. But he neverdanced or sang anywhere else. The instruction is clear.

The most important theme of his life is, however, of his phenomenal devotion to his Guru.

On a few occasions he vividly recounted how his Master sat deeply engrossed in meditation andtotally oblivious of the world around him. Sai Baba diligently served him for twelve long years,

in the hope that he could win a Mantra from him by way of spiritual initiation. In the radiant presence of His Guru‘s silent love, he forgot all about his home, parents, food and sleep. After



attending to the needs of His Master, he used to spend all his time sitting in front of His Guru.

With all his vital energy centered in his eyes through loving attention, he fixed gaze on theGuru‘s form. All through the day He could think, of nothing else than his Guru. If anything else

occurred to him rarely it was only the hope of receiving a Mantra from him, with which he

could perfect Himself. The Guru never addressed him or enquired of his welfare or even about

his wishes; nor did he promise anything. Sai Baba does not mention any kind of spiritualexperiences, such as, mystic visions, prophecy, healing etc. It was only a bond of indescribable

love. The greatest miracle is that without the need of any miracle, his heart was held on by theover-whelming bond of love and the immeasurable peace that brushed aside all thought of

anything else, of anything other than the Guru and the burning longing to receive his

instruction. At the end of twelve years even, the Master did not teach Him any Mantra. He got

the disciple‘s head cleanly shaven and then demanded Dakshina of two paise. The two paise hewanted was not the minced metallic coins, but the two supreme virtues of Nishta or unwavering

awareness (usually called concentration on the Guru) and Saboori or cheerful, limitless patience. Baba offered the same. Then the Guru put his hand on the disciple‘s head by way of

blessing and said, ―Wherever you are, here or beyond the oceans, I am ever with you, protecting

you with my spiritual gaze (attention or watchfulness.)‖ This short statement is all that he ever

spoke as a reward of twelve long years of arduous service.

The importance of this episode for the devotee of Sai Baba is underlined by Sai Babahimself. One day, a devotee had a dream vision of Baba, giving him appropriate advice on his

Sadhana. On learning of this, Dabholkar felt depressed as he did not get any such teachinginspite of prolonged spiritual practice. Even as the thought flashed in his mind, Baba at once

told him to get up and visit the house of Shyama for a chat with him and get a Dakshina of Rs.

15/-. When Dabholkar conveyed Sai Baba‘s order to Shyama the latter could not at firstunderstand what he, an ignorant man, was expected to say to the learned visitor. He silently prayed to the Master and spoke on whatever occurred to him and precisely the account of Sai

Baba‘s service of His Master flashed in his mind. Later when both the devotees together wen t tothe mosque, Baba blessed Dabholkar and said, ―If you clearly impress this one episode on your

heart and reflect on it, it is enough to attain blessedness.‖

Now let us reflect a little on the two accounts of Sai Baba‘s meeting with the Guru and

serving him. The perfect Guru never tries to parade himself as such and is characterised by

unconditional love for the welfare of fellow-beings. He proffers guidance only to those who canrecognise and respond to his love. But again he does not try to lure them into his discipleship on

any tall promises or self-glorification. He does not even try to demonstrate his love in any

showy manner. He does not make a fuss of it. His simplicity and livelihood too are spontaneous

and natural and not assumed. He does not try to marvel and astound people through a display ofany miraculous-powers. He does not indulge in all the jugglery of words of sophist as show of

erudition. He cares little for philosophical hair-splitting and has no childish craving for sayingsomething original and new. He does not claim to have any divine mission to save mankind, or



herald a new age in the spiritual history of man-kind. No claims of God-head. Their way is just

like that of a mother feeding her children. They do not pull all show of religiosity, the holier-than-thou attitude. Yet their immense love and the power of their realisation are unmistakable

and their very silent presence is enough to win the unconditional and total surrender of the

deserving soul. The real Master does not demand surrender, it must be noted. He just conquers

the heart silently, by his power and love. As Mrs. Manager records in her impressions of SaiBaba, ―There is no room for any doubt in such a one‘s presence, a mysterious confidence and

courage that no harm can overtake them rests in his devotee‘s heart. He does not tell Hisdevotees not to seek wisdom elsewhere, nor forbids them from visiting any other teacher. Only

when the devotee, of his own accord and free-will, sticks on sufficiently long to him, only when

the discipleship state is complete, this Master speaks out with complete authority that He will

protect him wherever he is, by his omniscient and omnipotent love.‖

It is important to note, in the above account, that the worthy disciple just forgot all about his possessions and home and he was not specifically instructed either to live with them or to

surrender them for the Master‘s mission. Indeed, the real Master is only a giver and never

demands for anything. Even the final demand for the meagre Dakshina, it should be noted, is

not for the coins. In fact, it is the final and the only teaching that matters. He is assured of protection and guidance, wherever he is. To keep this in clear view through the loving

remembrance of the Guru is the first coin. The courage to face and accept every situationwithout being anxious about the results is the second coin. A little thought would reveal that in

fact this final teaching is the implication of the cardinal teaching ― Allah Malik ‖. The first paiseis the first word in the phrase and the second word is the second paise. Together they represent

the spiritual state of the Master. Under the show of demanding Dakshina, the Master has indeed

given himself totally to the service and protection of the disciple. In spirit, it is the Guru thataffords Dakshina and it is for the disciple not to lose it. It is evident that one cannot be a teacherwithout being a living manifestation of the heart of his teaching. He is the Way and the Goal.

And such is True Life. It is important to note that the Guru has not told the Chela to doanything, nor did he prohibit anything. The disciple himself has to decide these matters in the

light of his only task of standing upto the Dakshina he has offered to the Guru. The spirit of this

demand for Dakshina is brought out by a beautiful story in the Hindu spiritual lore. A disciplewho was enlightened by the grace of His Master, wondered what he could offer His Teacher in

return as an expression of his gratitude. The Master said, ―Keep to this state of realisation and

that is the only Dakshina I demand.‖ In the complete account of this episode, Sai Baba mentionsclearly that he silently bowed to his Master. It is worth pointing out that Hindu gestures of

salutation, a joining of the two palms together, signifies this promise on his part made to His

Master. The hands which a man naturally uses in striving and craving and perhaps in fighting,

are now joined together in surrender to the protection and guidance of the omniscient andomnipotent Guru. While one of the palms represents the first paise, the second palm the second

paise. The joining of the two, teaches us that Nishta has to be supported by Saboori and Saboorihas to be supported by Nishta. These two together henceforth constitute his heart, his whole



attitude to life. The gesture of bowing the head is an acknowledgement of the realisation that

there actually is no such entity as the Self in him beyond what God has created and what Heguides. The disciple sees the loving manifestation of the truth in the Guru and having realised

the Truth unresolvedly assents to it. That is bowing. As a sincere and heart-felt expression of

this recognition, the act of bowing follows only after the disciple is won over by the genuine

experience of his Master‘s love. Such salutation was not made by Baba as a mere formality andat the outset. We must remember how Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa encouraged youing

Vivekananda to test him as much as he needed and accept him only when he is certain. It is onlythe ignorant, self-styled gurus that demand salutation, obedience, surrender and unwavering

faith in them as conditions to realise. Without having learnt from experience that the Guru is

worthy of such, it is mere hypocrisy to do so. That is why, Sai Baba used to put it cryptically,

―All the dealings here are in cash and never in credit.‖ Note the pun on ‗credit‘.

It is also important to note that Sai Baba who was actually aware of his own inadequacy atthe outset of the episode, did not timidly cover before the learning of his three companions.

They spelt out loftly words of Vedanta and ego-satisfying trends of self-effort. He bowed his

head only where He found realisation. In today‘s market of spiritual trade, faith is an advance

payment demanded upon us in return for goods, the value of which we can learn onlyafterwards. On the other hand, with a genuine Master experience comes first and faith based on

it follows as a matter of course as spontaneous gratitude, and acknowledgement. In the life ofSai Baba too, most of his devotees were won over by him through experience. In this context, it

may be useful for me to mention my own encounter with a genuine Guru. I visited him in thedense forest of Chintapalli (Andhra Pradesh) and formally bowed him. Pat came the

interrogation, ―What do you know of me that you should take trouble of coming all the way and

bowing to me. Do you want me to suppose that you have recognised my worth at a glance. Ifthat were the case, I would have to bow to you and there is nothing more for you to seek.‖

―Is it not proper for a young man like me to bow before holy ones like you?‖ I asked.

―Are you sure that I am a holy man? Am I to take on your word that you are a genuineseeker of holiness? Do you wish to bribe me with your salutation? If you bowed to me

without knowing what I am, does not it mean that you take me for a fool who can be pleased

by such show?‖ he said. ―Then, what am I expected to do?‖ I asked totally knocked down and baffled.

―That is right. It is where you have to begin learning,‖ he said ―You can plainly say that

you are in search of the meaning and purpose of life and you wish to know what I hadlearnt. You must be fearless to challenge whatever I have got to say and closely observe

what I am. Only when you find that I am worthy, you may acknowledge it by bowing.‖

Immediately I bowed him.

―Explain yourself.‖ he again demanded. ―I have learnt something now and so I bowed.‖ I said ―and no one has told me so before.‖

―Sir‖ I submitted, ―when I started on my quest I met some sannyasis. In my innocenceand anxiety I sat down in front of them for an informal talk. One after the other, they told



me that if I am not humble enough, that is, if I am too proud and arrogant of my own

intelligence, I can hope to gain nothing, anything from them….‖

Even before I completed my statement, the Master thundered ―Let them knock down the

pride if they can. Else you have nothing to do with them.‖ To try to submit earlier is show of

humility and farce. Be brave. Nothing can happen against God‘s will. The realisation is only forthe courageous and courage is the true spirit of all other such truths or nothing, as a total

surrender or no surrender at all. Till then it can only be existing of individuals, sharingknowledge and experience. The readiness to share the spirit of equality is the spirit of love. He

who does not know that all creatures are equal in the eyes of God is unfit to be a teacher.

As I heard what he said about formal salutation, I was reminded of what Dr. Loven saysabout Maso-Chishi character, ―They are too ready and willing to co-operate with the

psychotherapist. But it is a cover of their inner resistance and hostility.‖ The final statement ofthis teacher reminded me of the fact that Bhagawan Ramana Maharshi addressed everyone of

his devotees and even other creatures with the utmost reverence. Sai Baba too dealt with

everyone in perfect sense of equality, but without a show of formal courtesy. It was this incident

that reminded me of this detail in Sai Baba‘s account of his own encounter with his Guru. The parallelism was clear; both these Masters met seekers in dense woods. This teacher too greeted

me by first inviting me to eat. Both the teachers looked like common people and neither has putup show. There was nothing queer or impressive about their dress and manner. This reminds me

another minor incident. I saw the greatest of the Avadhootas I have ever met at Poondy, avillage near Tiruvannamalai. One day some devotee removed the torn, soiled clothes from the

Master‘s body and dressed him in beautiful silk, profusely garlanded him. I noticed that the

Master was looking at his new dress in strange manner, muttering something to Himself with afancy twinkle in his eye. I asked him what he thought of it all. ―A monkey show or a c attleshow. What else would a monkey do if a beautiful garland is given to it?‖ he replied. I was

shocked to note how a genuine Master would feel about all the fuss which credulous peoplemake up them. The Master meant that people were trying to put him up on show as if he were a

monkey performing impossible tricks or four footed creature on sale. In the next statement he

implied that a genuine Master is like a beautiful garland, but the ignorant folk do not know howto use it properly and instead like the ignorant monkeys they treat them in the queerest fashion

without deriving anything worthwhile, in the process. At once the teaming-armies of many self-

styled gurus I saw in the past flashed in my memory. With what greatful joy they coat all thisfuss and how childish of them is of the story of blind leading the blind, confusion versus

confounded, ‗a tale told by idiots of sound and fury signifying nothing‘. ―Indeed‖ I thought, Sai

Baba was right when he said true teachers are few and far between. Similarly the Avadhoota of

Kalahasti too banged me at our first meeting, ―Rogue why do you bow to me?‖―You are great Master and so I bowed‖ I said.

―What is the great about me?‖ he asked. ―You have realised the self.‖ I replied.



―What if? Do you congratulate a man for keeping himself clean? It may be repugnant if heis other wise. But it is quite natural to keep. Realisation is ultimately keeping one‘s heart totally

clean and there is nothing to congratulate such a one or to praise him. It is just like that.‖ he

said.

What abyss of difference between the true and false teachers. Perhaps it is to corroborate

every letter of his account of his own discipleship that Sai Baba inspired me to visit so manyMasters true and false. In one of his queer reminiscence Sai Baba tells us that he once served a

Fakir. The latter was one day invited to a feast in the village, and he took young Baba to that

home. He ate to his fulfil and told Sai Baba to carry delicious food home. By the time Sai Baba

reached home, the Fakir too was there and sat for another bout of eating. At the end of thenarration Sai Baba frankly says that such a one cannot be a true Fakir and that true Fakirs are

rare. The teaching is clear. One can serve and help anyone and serve with loving reverence thatis due to any creature of God. But one should not bow down before everyone in false humility

and show of faith.

So far we have noted the hall-mark of a real Master. In the way he deals with those whocome to him, one thing remains to be considered. While three of his companions failed to

recognise the love of the wood-cutter in the dense forest, how could Sai Baba do so; how did he prepare himself that he was accepted by the Guru, for while the problem of identifying and

contacting a real Guru is one side of the question, the problem of being a worthy recipient of hisgrace is another. For either of this, Sai Baba has indicated a way. He made the devotee Kusa

Bhau study the Gurucharitra (an account of two great real Masters Sripada Sreevallabha and

Sri Narasimha Saraswathi) one hundred and eight times and visit Gangapur as often as possibleThe rest of the time He kept Kusa Bhau in his own presence and made him study the holy texts.Let us remember how he encouraged Dasganu Maharaj to compose and sing the lives of great

saints and to visit them. The study of lives and teachings of real Masters, visiting the places ofsuch holy men and association with a real living Mahatma, who could win our surrender, are the

infallible means. In one of the accounts of his previous existence, He mentioned that he along

with a few of his present devotees moved with a real Master. Nowhere has he mentioned that he prayed to this God or that; observed any rituals. We find him more than a conscientious worker,

who treated all his fellow creatures with all the reverence due to a creature of God whatever

may be their individual merits or de-merits. Such an honest living coupled with service of realMasters is what had prepared him for the final meeting. Even after Kusa Bhau had contacted

him, he found it necessary to make the latter study Gurucharitra and such other holy texts as

Jnaneswari and Dasabhoda, for it is obvious that precisely his lack of preparation is what had

misled him in service of his earlier guru Datta Maharaj. The study of Gurucharitra and othertexts is firstly intended to impress on his heart what he look for from a Guru. Secondly it

enables him to know what a real guru is like. Thirdly it teaches him what a disciple should beand this constitutes the preparation. All the other texts He has recommended to his devotees



contained the qualities of those who have genuine realisation, like the ways of Jnan

(enlightened), Bhaktha (the faithful) and the Stitha Prajna (one who has established in wisdom)in the Bhagavadgeetha. This enabled him to recognise the real Master when he encountered

one. Trying to live upto their teaching in our daily life is the preparation. Wherever and

whenever we fail to apply them to certain so-called minor and unimportant aspects of our life,

the teaching of the Master helps us to do so. But the chief function of the study of lives of realGurus is to strengthen in us the longing to contact such a one. These gurus, as we have already

observed, are the agents of God, expressions of his mercy, for mankind. They too, on their part,would hunger for devotees who are capable of receiving their grace and teaching. For ultimately

that is the will of God which functions through them. When our yearning to contact them grows

strong enough, the cosmic harmony itself helps us to contact a real guru who is most suited to

our peculiar spiritual make-up. How quickly such a contact proves fruitful depends on the depthof one‘s preparation. The best thing for a seeker, therefore, is to first study the lives and

teaching of a number of real gurus. Gradually, in course of time, our heart chooses one of themas the Master akin to his own loving. When that happens we should go on devoutly studying his

life and teaching and trying our best to mould our life accordingly. Apart from this, a daily

devout study of Sri Gurucharitra and Sri Guru Geetha alone with heart-felt prayer for spiritual

guidance is found to have led several souls to their appropriate teacher. In this process, nothingis left to chance. We have no need to depend upon our own limited powers of understanding

and judgement in choosing our Guru. The very Self in us would, in an unquestionable manner,direct us to him. It also provides a way to avoid of trial and error, waste of time and energy, and

perhaps money and the risks of misdirection by false gurus. It is always safer to confine oneselfto acknowledge real Masters of earlier times of Sri Gurucharitra. As such if we try to study the

lives and teachings of living Mahatmas, in most cases it is possible that their devotees, in their

exaggerated zeal, present their master in the most golden of colours and often vie with eachother in doing so. During the last two decades, I have seen many of them subsequently backingout every statement of theirs and getting thoroughly disillusioned about their former masters. In

some cases, the price they had to pay was too high and some of them have become rank-sceptics who have lost all faith in spiritual wisdom. If, indeed, these living masters are genuine

and are suited to our spiritual nature, the study of Sri Gurucharitra and Sri Gurugeethaautomatically leads us to them. This does not however mean that all those to whom we are notled are false gurus. Whether they are so or not, is none of our business. It is enough if we can

take care of our own business. But, as nowadays this has become a craze and fad, a few

suggestions may not be out of place.

No genuine spiritual Master tries to high-light any particular religious tradition at the

expense of others. The wise know that truth is invaluable wherever it is found and untruth

deserves to be totally neglected wherever it is. They also know that no race, community orreligion has ever been left unprovided by the merciful Lord of true guidance; and also that all

true guidance is almost identical in all the religious traditions. Hence there can be no preferenceSo too, they do not identify themselves with any nation or caste and their teaching defies any



such labelling. Nothing that is divine in creation has any denomination, the sky, the earth, the

air and water, fire and food and all else. How then can truth have any such denomination? If atall they make any distinction, they recognise only two classes of people: those who seek

righteous living and those who do not. They have no illusions that by meddling with the

different and private affairs of those who have no need for spiritual wisdom, can of any use

either to them or to anyone. They also know that the seekers of wisdom can pursue their questunder any conditions. Where there is a will there is a way. They know that truth needs no

advertisement. Those who want only truth, are not carried away by propaganda. Their onlystandard of judgement is personal experience. At the same time, no amount of advertisement

can raise untruth to the world of truth and it benefits none except in terms of monetary gain.

The wise ones also scrupulously avoid regimentation of their devotees. They know the horror of

mixing the already existing confusion and chaos caused by the many organisations and they donot want to add to it. Those, who are thirsty cannot help but go in search of potable water, and

those who hunger and thirst for wisdom go all out in such a way and never rest till they find. Inconsequence they avoid all kinds of unnecessary ritualism that only confuses the main issue and

hides the truth. The devotee who is awakened by the spiritual impact of the guru, of his own

accord, may improvise some form of spiritual discipline that suits his own need. It is only such

that the masters approve of. The kind of regimentation that is now being perpetrated by several―spiritual‖ organisations and is being encouraged by their ‗gurus‘ is ultimately an expression of

a paid sense of position, a fear of losing one‘s devotees to another ‗guru‘ or organisation. Thereal art of living consists in one‘s ability to mix with others, whereas this regimentation builds

nothing but spiritual pride, i.e., holier-than-thou attitude in the members of the organisationTheir sense of rivalry and competition with the volunteers of other organisations, is a mark of

their failure to live naturally. Ultimately religious life is a matter of noting what ultimately

matters in life and living accordingly, dispensing all other vanities and illusions, of which beyond doubt, the effects of regimentation are the worst. Even if those organizations make aneffort to love and to serve the needy, it boils down to a show of goodiness, which all true

feelings show like. Instead of where it belongs, i.e., normal day to day life of everyone as anindividual, they make it a show and put it in a museum, so to say. Such service never wins the

proper response from the recipients. They look upon it only as utility, as a thing to be used, with

no love and affection. At best, it is a comfort and luxury. While the true art of living in them byspiritual wisdom consists in utterly natural and simple living, organised discipline is the very

reverse of it. The latter may have certain immediate advantages in achieving some targets and

then introducing a method in madness. But true wisdom consists in curing the fundamentalmadness, which, modern culture and civilisation have infused in us. The principle of

―regimentation‖ again leads to the ugly denomination, of proselytization, each group trying to

seduce and lure the members of the other groups to itself. When we turn to the real Masters of

present times like Swami Samarth of Akkalkot, Sai Baba of Shirdi and Tajuddin Baba andothers, we do not find them encouraging such herding-instinct among their followers. A large

number of devotees of Sai Baba were also devoted to others and none of the great Gurus evertold them to confine themselves to one. Freedom is a God given gift to man and to use it with



due discrimination and insight in the way of spiritual perfection is the highest privilege He has

granted us. Let us remember that no real guru went on making claims to his own teaching. Buttoday we see many organisations trying to make people feel prestigious of belonging to their

group and thereby making spiritual quest a cheap fad. God or the Spirit is only on display in

public show rooms. Either it is everywhere or nowhere, even like the air we breath. Therefore

no Guru goes on dinning that one spiritual path is superior to any other, for true spirituality begins with the annihilation of such false concepts as superior or inferior. Each path is as

valuable to the one who is suited to it. It is only the commercial organisations that vie with eachother and out-strip the others. Similarly it is important to remember that no true Master ever laid

any campaign for or against anything in tradition. They just did not care for any tradition. If

what they do and say in their wisdom incidentally agrees with any tradition, they do not mind it

The real Master knows that no two individuals are alike, and deals with each individually,setting right any attitude of his that is necessary. They know that if proper standards of

judgement and discrimination are inculcated, men would be capable of taking care of the rest.

Mention must be made of claims to instant realisation and short-cuts to perfection. As we

have seen earlier, where there is true love and true love for wisdom, it never occurs to any one

as to how long this should go on with and how far they have to go for it. Love and burningdesire for anything makes a man unmindful of the effort he has to put in for it. It naturally

follows that any one who seeks a short cut or an easier path does not actually need the finalresult. He only craves for the recognition, which he imagines to bring him and unless the

craving for recognition dies, even the shortest of the spiritual paths – if there be such a path atall – would prove to be the longest and hardest. Unless the craving for recognition dies, no man

can ever be spiritual. It is the nature of the spirit to be subtle and imperceptible. The whole of

nature, that one finds, teaches us the same and God Himself in all his glory, never begsrecognition of anybody. It is we who want him, so that our miserable existence may end and wecould live in peace and contentment.

A word must be said of miracles. Mankind has a weakness for forecasting and naturally

flock to those who are famed for their mysterious knowledge of the past and the future. A true

seeker should remember that Lord Krishna, the Buddha, the Christ, Prophet Mohammed andmore recently none of the great real Masters mentioned so far, ever indulged in such non-sense

Not that, such things do not exist. I only mean that they are totally irrevelant to the business of

our life. If some one tells us that such and a such wish of ours could be fulfilled in about sixmonths, we have to think whether he is only telling what would any way happen or he is

making such a thing happen. Many people seem to suppose that the latter is the case. If that

were so, why can‘t he make it happen much sooner? More absurd are the other miracles like

materialisation. No such has ever produced whatever we claim spontaneously on the spot of themoment. You are told to accept whatever he materialises and he can materialise only that and

nothing else. Such obviously are the cases of mysterious transference, if at all. But morecommonly it is the sleight of the hand and the credulity of the masters that does the trick. True



miracles are of different order. No such ever happens without bringing a new realisation to the

man. Thus we see that of the myriad of miracles that happened through Sai Baba of Shirdi, wereof such as to make people aware that one universal consciousness manifests itself in all the

forms in nature. They impressed the imperative need to treat every creature as one-self and to

love them accordingly. Or, to put it differently, that all creation is divine and whatever we do to

the least of His creatures is what we ultimately do to Him. Can there be anything like torturingthe child without tormenting its mother. God is the all unknown mother, father and teacher in

one. The real teacher too is all these. If Sai Baba fulfills the wishes of most of his devotees,there is a subtle wisdom behind that act. He thereby puts every creature that is so benefited

under an obligation to learn what he wishes to teach. If they fail to learn, it is only a matter of

time that they will be forced to do so. He said, ― Maya sustains him who forgets Me.‖ and ―I will

never allow mankind to fall or to go away from me.‖ There is nothing theatrical about the realMaster and He is never a show-boy. On the other hand, those who closely lived with Him report

that the real Master is always totally engrossed in the incessant experience of self and is almostoblivious of the world around, like a child at play. They thus respond momentarily to the call of

the devotee and the next moment they are the Self again. The show-boy guru is one who tries to

look like this real teacher or the other, in his dress, appearance, gestures and all else. Some of

them are more varied in their madness. They try to look like different Mahatmas at differenttimes, don the garbs and outer symbols of different religions at different moments. It is always

untruth that tries to look like truth. Truth does not look like anything else, and perhaps not evenlike itself. Therefore it is so difficult to discover it, but so easy to cover it up.

Fortunately those who have proper preparation for meeting the real Guru have nothing to

fear from this. Such a one, like the wise customer, is not carried away by all this fuss and show

He counts and measures the goods, assesses them and only then pays the price. Above all, sucha one does not have to hang around these spiritual liquor-shops. When he is ready, he wouldreceive a cordial invitation and he cannot resist the call of love. Spiritual governance of the

universe has its own mysterious ways of communication. It is always a communication fromheart to the heart, from spirit to spirit and there is no mistake anywhere.



III

SAI BABA AND SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE

When we look at the saying of Sai Baba in Chapter 14 of Sai Baba the Master , we are

astonished to note his promise and protection to his devotees even from his tomb, and the many

Leelas narrated in the other chapters corroborate them. But regarding the other sayings of Baba,

we at first feel that he does not specify any form of spiritual Sadhana systematically, (becausewe are accustomed to them, as Baba seems to have thought, through his discipleship); that man

needs some occult practices like breath-control, chanting of mantra, asanas, meditation etcwhich alone constitute the essentials of path to perfection. But as we see, Baba‘s Guru enjoined

no such to him. As in all things in nature, in Sadhana too the most important ones appear likethe least important and viceversa. The successful use of any of the above techniques depends

ultimately on the seemingly unimportant aspects. But a close study of classics on specifictechniques of Yoga reveal that Yama and Niyama, the control of the mind and senses, are the

first steps on which everything else depends. That is why the Bhagavadgeeta clearly states thatthe treasure of positive attitudes, which it designates as Satva Guna and Daivee Sampada, are

the sine-qua-non for the success of all spiritual endeavour. Buddha‘s eight fold thought of amiddle way also emphasises the same. ―The Sermon on the Mount‖ which Christ expounded to

his chosen disciples refers to the same scheme of values and it is this which Baba tooemphasises in his sayings. Once we are stabilised in these aspects, any form of Sadhana we

implement is sure to bear fruit.

Besides the above mentioned techniques of Yoga demand training under the guidance ofone who attained perfection along that path. It is only by one‘s good fortune that one can

contact such a one, and therefore, as we study the experiences of seekers treading the various paths, we find a majority of them equally dissatisfied, and still on the look-out for the missing

link. The element of mystery that is associated with these paths holds out for novices thestrange fascination. When we study Patanjali‘s Yoga Sutras for instance, we first see the

technique outlined followed the breath-taking lease of all the spiritual powers that these practices are said to awaken in us. But as we draw towards the close, we find it clearly stated

that the fruitfulness of these yogic practices ultimately depends on the grace of Eswara, the

Lord of the universe. We are back to Sai Baba‘s call ― Allah Malik ‖. Out of these Sutras one

stands out permanently in the view of a Sai devotee: it says that the form of a perfect Master is

very useful object of meditation. Here we are reminded of what Sai Baba did with his own Guruquite spontaneously. When we study Hatayoga Pradeepika, towards the end of the text it is saidthat all the promised fruits of that Yoga can be obtained through the blessings of a perfect

Master. The last scene in the account of Sai Baba‘s discipleship flashes in our mind.

The classics on the various occults of spiritual disciplines mentioned above warn theseeker against the dabbling with those techniques without the proper guidance of an

accomplished Master. Except for those who are lucky enough to stumble on such a teacher, for



all others the choice is an expression of their craving for power and fame, however reluctantly

they might profess contrary. Thus it is this weakness and accompanying over-enthusiasm thatcauses any harm, for it induces him to ignore the details of the necessary conditions and the

limits of practice. Above all, their motivation is wrong. Those who run after these practices

ignoring the prior condition that an accomplished Master‘s guidance is necessary, miss the

whole point of it. Even if such people were to contact such a Master, it is not likely that theywill be accepted by him, simply for this reason. That probably is the reason why God‘s creation

is so contrived that only those who deserve can meet them. Whether everyone of us is such ornot is too difficult a question to be solved by oneself. The problem is that we are not genuinely

interested in the Truth, which is central to all spiritual quest. It will therefore be a matter of

great wonder if these are not captivated by the tall claims of false teachers. Psychology tells us

that all our psychological functions are almost totally influenced by the subconscious drives,fixations and that one needs an expert psycho-analyst to analyse them for him. Even then the

patient affords the maximum resistance at precisely those points, which he will have to accept.This shows how slippery our deliberate conscious choices could be and more so, with regard to

the life of one‘s Sadhana. We have a classic instance of this even in the case of Sai Baba. All

through the long period of service of the Guru, he hoped that he would receive some Mantra

from him. But the wise Guru knew better and gave what he deemed his best for the disciple andnot what the disciple craved for. The two dimensions of the whole problem stare us in the face;

the choice of mode of Sadhana, and the choice of the appropriate guru. How can we afford to besure that our choice is right? Who is to testify it and how reliable is that testimony and the

credentials of the one who testifies? Is life so cheap that we can hope for the best and choose to proceed on trial and error? Without a single known factor such and such may never lead us

anywhere except into the den of false teachers.

The picture, fortunately, is not so gloomy for man, if we care to recognise it. ―God isomnipresent and therefore He dwells in the hearts of all of us‖ – so proclaim all the Hindu

scriptures. ―Everyone has the Buddha‘s nature‖ say the Buddhist scriptures. ―The Kingdom ofHeaven is within you and whoever knoweth himself shall find‖ says an Egyptian text on

Christ‘s sayings. ―Whichever direction you turn, there you will find the countenance of Allah‖

says the Koran, and ―We are closer to you than even your jugular vein‖ says Allah. By allcounts that supreme Lord is All Wise and All Merciful. If we too depend on him, and on his

guidance through his messengers, the real Masters, it is not possible that we err. If that were

possible, spiritual perfection can hardly be what it claims to be. So the proper journey startswith Sai Baba‘s watch-word ― Allah Malik ‖. If we can impress the full significance of this truth

on our hearts, all the noble qualities enjoined by all the world‘s scriptures follow as a matter of

course. Without such a basis, one cannot cultivate them, nor graft them. All the statements

about these qualities are but interpretations of the different aspects of this one inner-truth. Theyare like sign-posts for us to check up whether we neglected the cultivation of this basic attitude

in any aspect of our life. However positively the various results might promise that God is evernearest to us, except a few gifted ones, we feel him as being far away. The intermediary step is



the real teacher and contact with him brings an indubitable validation of this truth. It is in this

sense that Jesus Christ said that whoever had seen him has seen God. Again it is in this sensethat the Hindu scriptures acclaim the Supreme Teacher as the Lord himself, for by definition a

real Master is He who has realized that nothing belongs to him, and indeed he has no individual

self. Striving with our best to impress our hearts with the full significance of ― Allah Malik ‖ is

the first step, and contacting a real teacher that suits us is the second turning point. The study ofSri Guru Charitra appeals to the divine within us and when we learn to study it in the proper

spirit, unmistakable guidance comes to us and at one stroke cuts down the two horns of ourquestion that has perplexed us; the choice of the form of Sadhana and the choice of the

appropriate guru. What helps us in acquiring proper spirit in which to study Sri Guru Charitra

is the depth to which we have impressed the spirit of ― Allah Malik ‖ on the one hand, and the

extent to which we could carry the spirit over to every detail of our life, that is, the extent towhich we can cultivate the noble qualities to which the sayings of Sai Baba point out, on the

other. Similarly, it is the experience of number of devotees that such study of the lives of SriManikya Prabhu, Sri Swami Samarth of Akkalkot and of Sai Baba – all the Mahatmas were

acknowledged as the complete Avatars of Dattatreya — equally help us. It is significant that

none in this long chain of spiritual Masters has initiated anyone with Mantra, nor have they

enjoined any of the occult, yogic disciplines. The message is unequivocal. One technique parexcellence is the loving remembrance of any of these Gurus, who naturally captivated our heart.

After glorifying the broad out-lines of this Sadhana of devotion to the Guru, let us

consider the question of working out the implications of ― Allah Malik ‖ into the other aspects ofour life.

The most important thing is that we should reflect deeply and ascertain what actuallymatters in our real life. In consequence, all the illusions, fancies and fantasies, retreat like mistsin sun-shine. The saying of Baba helps us most at this point, ―Giving up all desires, centre your

mind on God who is omnipresent and you will reach the goal‖. At first sight , to try tocommence our mental discipline by consideration and practice of this saying, seems to be

putting the cart before the horse. It looks quite frightening and almost like kill-joy. For on the

other hand, we are also told, ―Work, utter the Lord‘s name and study sacred books‖. While being called upon to constantly work, we are told not to desire for anything; not to wish for

anything, and not to pray for anything. Another of His saying puts this fact more succinctly,

―One should be content to remain as God has made him‖. Anotehr of his saying is, ―Do notaccept any one‘s service gratis. This should be our principle‖. On this account we are not even

allowed any remission in our diligence. ―Whatever you agree to do, do it thoroughly. Or else,

do not acce pt undertaking.‖ When we do not wish for anything, it would stop mattering to us

whether our effort succeeds or fails. What does it matter then, if we do not do our best? Do allthese sayings signify that one has to live without any joy, like a bondslave? Whatever little is

left to us by these sayings seems to be taken away while Sai Baba tells us that we should learnto be like the clouds, the sun and the earth, for he said to a man who was over-crazy about the



death of his child. If we could live like this at all, then perhaps we do not need the help of Sai

Baba at all. If we look on it from different angle, the picture isn‘t so bleak at all. We shouldrather start by considering what is that we really want – what really matters.

In our normal life, all of us crave for a sense of security. But what is security? Or rather,

what can give us security? Money? How much of it is needed to make us feel secure? Wecannot really know. In practical life we say that beyond a certain limit, it only makes a man

more insecure. Protecting our material possessions will be our first concern, and the veryattempt is fraught with personal danger. We can neither throw it away nor keep a watch over it.

Does this represent security? We hope we can guarantee its protection if we have much more of

it and so goes the endless chain. Instead of keeping money in our service, we discover that we

have started serving it. Both fame and power are also the same type. The higher the man goes inthese aspects of life, the more risky and insecure he becomes. Now what is it that we want?

Superficial however, despite this consideration, it looks as though if we have more money, wecan enjoy more comforts and pleasure. But if we think deeply everyone of the comforts exacts

from us much insight and care. Why do you seem to enjoy pastimes? The world itself clearly

reveals; we pass time more easily. What do we mean by that? When we resort to any pastime,

time passes much more quickly, and without our notice. In times of waiting, anxiety or gloomseems to pass much more slowly. From this we must realise that life is a burden to us, because

time, as we experience it, means our lifetime. Then, do we wish to die? No. Are we fond of life?Yes. If so, why do we wish it to pass much more quickly and without our notice? On the one

hand, we are afraid of death. On the other, we are afraid of life. In such a context, what do we precisely mean by security?

We may say that we are not so much worried about our security, but that of our children.Let us think, can we really do anything about it? We are feeding them, giving them medicalattention, and to some extent educating them. And at a particular age they would have to face

the same problem over again. Therefore the future is ultimately not in our hands. We have torealistically think of doing our best to equip them to be self-reliant. Any other security that we

may provide them is sure to inhibit their self-reliance and cultivate dependence, and dependence

on that only which increase their insecurity and becomes a security problem. When we try to provide them some security in terms of financial power, we unwillingly impel them to crave for

all those things which are more status-symbols and vanities. This ultimately amounts to living

unrealistically, trying to impress everyone around them, while being untrue to their own basicneeds and impulses. We have ensured nothing but slavery, a false living for them. Is this what

we mean by security? Evidently, unless we precisely know what can grant us security, we

cannot hope to ensure it for them. Now, in the face of the above questions, what is the threat

against which we want security? Is it life or death? Unable to resolve this question we try toforget it, drown it by indulging in pastimes. Under the cloud and confrontation of this

irresolvable dilemma, life seems to be too much of burdens and we seek to make it passquickly. Luckily, we are not sensible enough that the clock of life is ticking to its end and we



are just passing on the buck from the present to the future, thus postponing. How long can we

do so? When the hour of death strikes, we will no longer postpone it and the dreadful hour will be thrust down on our throats. In fact, we cannot provide ourselves with any security, for the

threat is more psychological than real. What material thing can ever protect us from

psychological fears?

Basically the threat is an expression of our basic fear. This fear has two sides to it.

Fundamentally it is fear that we cannot protect ourselves. It is realistic to do whatever we canabout it, and then realise that unless we create security for ourselves by possessing too much,

there is actually no object of threat to our life at all. There are three sources of death: (1)

violence ; (2) insanity which may lead us to fatal crimes or suicide ; (3) fatal disease. Keeping

our body and mind as healthy and strong as we can, is all that we need today. But we know thatwe cannot do enough. This thought is again a product of our fear. So unless this fear is

eliminated our problem has no solution.

Why are we afraid of death? Have we ever known that it is painful? No. Is it because we

think we cease to exist? That should instead make us doubly happy, for we will not be there any

longer to suffer. Are we afraid of hell? How do we know that there is such thing? If we say we believe what religions have said, it naturally follows that we should live in such a way that we

can escape it. The problem is that we cannot sufficiently believe in the reality of hell as to livein such a way. Then why people die at all? None of these answers has succeeded in removing

the fear of death in us. We are afraid because we do not know. We do not know because wehave never experienced. Fear is, obviously, our spontaneous response of what we do not know.

Now that we cannot know what is death, would it solve our problem if we can avert death

permanently. Clearly speaking it does not, because all through our life, we have been trying to pass time, we have been escaping from life, and the pastimes, hobbies, gossip, sleep, in fact, allthat we do to escape loneliness is proof of our fear of life. Logically speaking if we are afraid of

death, it should be in that we are very often alive. But in fact it is not so. We want to live or dieWhy are we afraid of life? If we are really fond of life, everything that makes us escape the

passage of our living time should be a hindrance and nuisance. On the other hand, the time of

our life is such and we cannot bear it. By life we mean, not life itself, but all those things, whichenable us to escape it. Escape can never be pleasure because it is unrealistic and all things that

give us pleasure in our normal life are precisely such, except of course the appeasement of

hunger and sex. They are only urges and their satisfaction releases the tension and weexperience it as pleasure. But none of the other things are such natural impulses except in the

sense that it is natural for man to seek escape from life. The marvellous fact is that none of the

other living creatures seem to have this problem. Life cannot logically mean the means of

escape from it. The very fact that we love the latter shows that we do not love the former. Butthe irony of life is that we cannot permanently escape life. One who mistakenly thinks he can is

the one who drains his life in alcohol and drugs. Even that is not a fact. Everytime a man drinks,he does not remain happy and contented. Now he is angry, now he weeps, whatever moods



confront him in real life confront him there too and even the drug-addicts confess that every trip

is not invariably pleasurable. It depends upon several factors and these factors are in himself.The question has not been solved that way. Back to our question. Unless we over-come the fear

of life, we cannot cease to run for means of escape from it. Every means of escape from life,

i.e., every form of pastime, cannot help us for long. We need a change. In order to have all the

varied forms of pastimes, we need so many things and ultimately money. The quest on wealthdepends upon opportunities, and opportunities do not always come up. It is not always that our

effort clicks. All this sweat and toil we face in this process might eat away the figment of pleasure that we derive at the other end. Besides, such an incessant greed does not end at that. It

distorts our whole personality and stature and the warmth of human life in this becomes more

valuable than human relationship. One cannot hope to hoard. Utter loneliness and inner sense of

isolation is the price we have to pay in our slavery to money. There can be no sharing. Evenwhat we pass it on to the next generation, it is more like shaking off the burden from our hands

in the sense of responsibility and never an expression of warm love. In the pursuit of money weare forced to deprive our children of all the warmth of our association. Then can we say that we

love them enough simply because we hold for them? We are aware, though dimly, that in

transferring a big bank balance to them, we transfer our anxiety. That it is not genuine warmth

or love that prompted us is shown by the fact that most of the people who do so, in their old agefeel that they have been cheated in life and that their children are not grateful enough for what

they did. It may be true that they are not grateful enough. Or else can they be? When we havedenied them human warmth and tried to pass on the buck instead. Unknowingly we have

considered them a burden to be taken off our hands, to be bought off their needs with money. Itis in the fitness of things that they should feel that we are a burden to them and we are only fit

to be bought off our needs with a little money. What right have we to complain? Even when we

have done that, nothing has changed in our life. We have to live without a basic problem. Weare afraid of life and we are afraid of death. All that we do in our life, besides eating and sex, isof a desperate effort to realise contentment and peace. The absence of these two is what we term

fear. It is these two which, for all practical purposes, one can take to be synonymous andhenceforth call contentment is what we meant by security. Our life experience proves that

worldly security without contentment is no security at all. It is only another form of slavery and

imprisonment. The pleasure which pastimes seem to afford us is the nearest approximation tocontentment which we can have in our daily life and therein lies their charm, their hold on us.

During those moments we forget all sense of insecurity and our cares for our children and their

future. Obviously, these are the things from which we sought an escape. But this did not satisfyus because they make us more dependant on the means of getting them, and they are not lasting.

By contentment we mean contentment which does not stale or fade or satiate us. The lives of

millions of people all the world over are as many tales of desperate search for that attainment.

But we hardly see anyone who has achieved, whatever less he might have achieved in life. Doesit mean that such a thing does not exist at all, that it is a fragment of our imagination? Dare we

believe so? If we could, the problem, is solved. No more search. One who has dropped offcraving for contentment has conquered fear. It is only the other face to it. Such a one does not



need pastimes at all, because as we have noted earlier, man resorts to them as next best thing

available to him, the only way out of his unappeased hunger for contentment. We dare not believe that such a thing as contentment does not exist.

Here we have a hope held out by nature. And from thence we derive the incurable hope

that we have on arriving at contentment, that sets us in search of a way. In deep dreamless sleepwe enjoy peace and contentment. In that state there is no threat; security is no problem and

hence there is nothing that we need. There is no need even for pastimes. When we feel sleepyeven the best of pastimes loses its charm for us. Whence does it come? Our waking experience

shows us that every experience reaches us through the senses and the mind. But in deep sleep

all these six gates to our inner self are completely closed, and the peace we get in sleep

obviously could not have come through any of them. As far as we know, there are no othergates through which it could come. The only alternative is that it has not come at all. It simply

has been there, within us.

Where and how then could it go? How could it vanish during hours of wakefulness?

Something which has been there all the time cannot go or vanish. If it does, we should be able

to discover how or whence it returns the next time when we sleep. The wise ones have given usan answer. Man is like a trough of water. We are the trough. Man is the water and bottom which

has always been there, is the peace. When the water is still, the bottom is perceived as such, butwhen it is agitated it escapes our notice. It has not gone anywhere. We simply are not able to

notice it. In wakefulness the mind is like the agitated water. It hides the peace which is in usfrom our attention. The problem of our life is that the peace which we know for certain, which

exists and is available, escapes us when we are awake. Any yearning for peace or contentment

is to have peace of deep sleep even when we are awake. The peace of our sleep has not comethrough any possessions, acquisitions or pastimes. Logically we cannot hope to get throughthese in wakefulness too. The solution lies in learning to still the mind when we are awake. That

is the art of meditation. And indeed, Hindu mystics have aptly called it Jagrat Shushupthi. Thatis the natural state of a perfect Master. People marvelled how a narrow wooden plank, four and

half cubits long and a cubit wide, which was suspended from the roof of the mosque with the

help of four thin worn out pieces of cloth, could bear the weight of Baba‘s body. Babaexplained that only those who can sleep with their eyes wide open, can sleep like that. So too,

we have the instance of Sri Swami Samarth of Akkalkot, who while on one hand deeply asleep

and snoring, was also ever alert on that to every passing thought of his nearby devotees. All thereal Masters I met also were capable of responding with the fullest awareness when they were

apparently in deep sleep. Indeed, we can take this as one of the major standards of recognising

such a one. The Bhagavadgeetha testifies that a yogi is ever awake even in that state, which is

deep slumber to all other creatures. This implies the possibility of the peace of deep sleep beingachieved even in the waked state.



In fact, all the great mystics say a rudiment of consciousness subsists even in deep sleep

to all of us. Because it is only rudimentary, only we are not conscious that we are conscious indeep sleep. The whole question of perfection can be said to revolve about the attainment of

consciousness that we are conscious. Those who attained this perfect consciousness in sleep are

those who have attained the state of waking sleep even in wakefulness. They remain perfectly

conscious even in death and hence it is no death to them. It is not even sleep. In all cases thisrudimentary consciousness in deep sleep is a bit more active in dream, but it fluctuates from

time to time. For that reason, we some times remember our dreams and some times we do not.The strangest thing is that the case is much the same even in our waking, for most of the time

we are conscious; but we are conscious of our consciousness only to a mild degree. This fact is

what causes to slip from heights of our spiritual understanding into day to day life. In spiritual

practice our mind wanders from our practice like any moving material object. This found usunconscious of consciousness for a certain moment and direction on which depends when we

are going to recognize that our mind has strayed from our practice and resume it. So too thecycling process. A spiritual process has initial momentum and direction which determines how

long we will be able to keep it up before we stray from it. All spiritual practice consists in

strengthening the initial momentum of spiritual practice on the one hand and reducing the

momentum of the phenomenon of straying. Buddhism calls the former, ―practice of attention orawareness i.e., mindfulness‖ and the latter the practice of ―the eightfold path‖. Theistic spiritual

disciplines like Sufism, Christianity, Mysticism describe this as a practice of the presence ornearness of God. These traditions described the latter phenomenon as the sin and the

machinations of the devil. However all mystical schools admit that this practice is very effectivewith the subtle help and the powerful protection of a real Master like Sai Baba.

The seemingly unsolvable problem of fear of death and fear of life no longer exists. Butthe question arises, how long we can remain in the state of meditation during the day? If we tryto do so, can we attend to our worldly life? Initially this problem will be real. But as we go on

practising meditation regularly during chosen hours, as we grow more and more familiar with itit starts persisting even in the midst of our worldly activities. Subjectively we experience it as a

kind of profound peace that stocks us all through the day. This phase of development can be

beautifully explained with an analogy. When a person is still learning to balance himself on a bicycle, that is in the initial stages, if some one talks to him either he has to get down to avoid

the loss of balance and a fall, or if he concentrates more on his balance, he will not be able to

attend to what we are saying. But with practice, when he has mastered the state of balance, hecan go on talking and thinking even while keeping up his balance. The phenomena can be

psychologically explained.

Just as there persists a rudiment of consciousness in our normal sleep, a rudiment ofunconsciousness or sleep persists in our relative waking too. It is under its influence that we

carry on most of our instinctive habitual and routine actions. The rudiment of unconsciousnessgives way when we are faced with even a problem. When we make our choice less, under the



influence of our set emotional attitudes, we are acting under the influence of the rudimentary

semi-consciousness, dream state that also persists in our waking. The dream state permits of better awareness than sleep, but it does not permit of further insight or analysis. Therefore in

our waking state when we try to reshape our whole attitude to life in the light of a teaching like

― Allah Malik ‖ by analysing our basic attitude to life, to pastimes and only then the real

conscious phase of our waking consciousness is at work. From this we learn that most of us arereally awake in its fullest sense. The Sanskrit word ‗Viveka‘ literally means this clear state of

wakefulness, in the light of which the rudimentary but much more dominant dreamconsciousness and the rudimentary sleeping state vanish like mists and we are to that extent

liberated from the stranglehold of set-patterns of thinking, feeling and action.

Thus we see that the process of deeply impressing the fullest significance of Baba‘steachings through the study of his life, the reflection of his teaching and analysis of the kind I

have sampled here together constitute this process of strength and enlarging this state of clearconsciousness in-making. We have seen how, through practice, to learn to attend to our daily

tasks and yet keep up the state of meditation all through wakefulness. It was to help this process

in his devotees that Baba always demonstrated his identity with all the creatures, humans and

otherwise, that they contact all through the day and also that he was continuously aware ofevery thought that passed through the mind of everyone of them. In the light of these

experiences they are forced to live in clear consciousness of the waking state. He further bringsthis process in them by showing that he was aware of everything that happened even in their

dream states. This is in fact the real Master‘s way of working of his devotees, freeing them fromout of the set ways of their thinking, feeling and action. Thus at every stage the devotee of such

a real Master is confronted with ever new dimensions of his own self, and of nature around him

The fake masters who are not capable of this, pretend to work on their followers by just talkingthe nonsensical gibberish in the name of shaking them out of their habitual selves.

Masters like Ramana Maharshi seek to teach us this clear consciousness in makingthrough self-enquiry. In practice, however, most of us feel that every time we try to attend to

self-enquiry we have to choose between our daily activities and spiritual practice. But in the

method employed by Sai Baba of Shirdi we are forced to return to clear consciousness by everymiraculous experience we get from him almost hourly and daily. It is in a unique way that even

in our normal lives we are made to realise it.

It will now be possible to understand why we are afraid of life and death. As we said, we

are afraid of what we do not understand, what we do not know. Even with regard to such

pleasurable experience as sex, to which all of us are irresistably drawn, there persists a

mysterious fear of orgasmistic pleasure. This fear manifests itself either in prematureejaculation or delayed ejaculation, or ejaculation which is weak and not fully satisfying. The

reason is that at the moment of orgasm, the ego is over-whelmed by the Id or the pleasure principle and subjectively we experience a temporary loss of ego-consciousness, which our ego



dreads. The therapy consists in helping a person out of this fear through its release and

familiarisation. We can see the parallel between orgasmistic experience of the temporary loss ofthe ego consciousness in flood of pleasurable experiences and the mystic rapture that result

from realising the fullest significance of ― Allah Malik ‖. The presence of erotic sculpture in

places of worship i.e., Hindu temples, reveals the recognition of this quest parallel between

these two aspects of life. It is only during these two states man realises the organic unity withall life and with all existence.

Coming back to our central theme, we are afraid of life because we do not know what life

is, that is, we do not know what we are. All pastimes and such other modes of escape are really

escapes from our true self. The clear state of consciousness, which we call waking sleep is our

fundamental nature, the bottom of the true. In our daily life nothing is the foundation of the manand the intellect, a psychological process. As we have noted earlier, it corresponds to the

rudimentary dream state, which persists in our waking. Because we learn of the perennial presence of peace as our true self in the hours of sleep, during wakefulness we intimate or

unconsciously remember that peace is a definite possibility. But the rudimentary dream

consciousness of the waking state cannot comprehend it, because it constitutes, so to say, the

ejection of the whisper called the mind which hides it. Only when the former is transcended is peace realised. This is what the mystics have described as the death of our former self and to the

world as we now experience it and birth in spirit. Common ring of man kind lives in a state ofrelative death or total awareness of the related, whereas those who have tasted awakening of

clear consciousness with the help of a real Master, dedicate our life to the spirit. It is in thissense that Christ says to a disciple who wanted to bury his dead kinsman before responding to

his call, ―Let dead bury the dead‖. Again it is in this sense that Lord Krishna says in the

Bhagavadgeetha that the whole army of Arjuna‘s opponents in the Mahabharata war werealready killed by him, and the latter only is to act as an instrument in discharging his function.

Rudimentary dream state which persists in waking is what functions in the process ofknowing in our normal wakefulness, but this has to get dissolved in realising the clear

consciousness of waking. Ego-consciousness is the total picture of the rudimentary dream state

in waking. Hence the ego dreads its own dissolution. It is for this reason that those who dabblein spirituality prefer to crowd around false teachers to keep them busily occupied with the

functions of rudimentary dream consciousness in waking in the name of teaching them. They

dare not test the credentials of their ‗teacher‘ for if they do so, it logically means that theyshould be ready to face the dissolution of their ego-consciousness. They wander from guru to

guru, or what is worse, can be hanging on to the false, loquacious teacher, who holds them in

slavery by merely baffling their normal consciousness through complicated manipulations of

the same with the help of his bizarre teaching. Basically the teacher himself is afraid of such arealisation but rationalises his escape from it by trying to prove that every other real Master has

erred at some stage or the other and desperately tries to have people crowding around him. Sucha one has never served a real teacher as Sai Baba has served his own. Therefore they feel it an



affront to their own image to acknowledge that their realisation is the fruit of another real

teacher‘s grace. The idea of proclaiming themselves as born devotees of man-kind and Avatarsof the age provides them with convenient venue of escape. They rationalise their escape and

stand in need of constantly being assured of it, apart from their claim of teeming crowds of

‗disciples‘. This kind of spiritual narcissism is striking by its total absence on the real teacher or

the Avatar. That they are not Avatars by any stretch of our imagination is shown by the fact thatreal teachers like Bhagawan Ramana Maharshi have emphatically stated that the state of

realization of a perfect Master and that of an Avatar are identical; if anything the real Master isin higher state in the sense he is not conditioned even by the exigencies of divine to worldly

mission. He represents God as he is in himself by his own Maya or the power of cosmic

illusion, so as to fulfil his divine mission to mankind. It can be seen from the Bhagavadgeetha

that no perfect sage like Suka ever bothered to visit the greatest Avatar, Lord Krishna. To thedevotees and to the rest of the mankind he might be ―divine‖ and ―mysterious‖, but to Suka

there is only the self. Nothing comes and nothing goes, there is nothing mysterious about it. It isnatural. Not knowing this, the false teachers encash the popular fascination in the concept of

Avatar and seek to impress upon them that the Avatar of the age is superior to Sadguru. Some

of those who believe this, quote the relevant statement of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, which

apparently seems to support their pet view. The fact is the Paramahamsa in his characteristicobtrusive manner was revealing that he was such an Avatar but either directly or indirectly to

draw millions of people to the path spiritual. People mistake his statement because they thinkthat only ten Avatars that are commonly known are the only ones acknowledged by our ancient

sages. If we to look at the various Puranas the number of Avatars is differently mentioned as 10,18, 21 of whom Lord Dattatreya, i.e., God-cum-Real Teacher is one. In fact, the Puranas say

that the Pravirbham or avatar are infinite in spirit. The enlightened one knows the truth that the

whole existence is one perpetual Avatar of the Lord and the rest is divine people and that the perpetual Avatar is his own self.

Through this intuition of the possibility of peace our normal self also knows that it is notits true nature. But it does not know what our true nature is. This awareness, that it is not our

true nature, matters itself in our desperate and incessant search for peace. It is ignorance of our

true nature, that is, our ignorance of what we really are, and it is the same self-ignorance ofwhat life is in our common wakefulness, is the essence of fear of life and death. It needs a lot of

preparation and familiarisation for it. To accept the fact of this familiarization is what we have

called the preparation.

Now what is it that we need in life? Security? We have seen that it is only a reflection, a

concept of the ego, that is, the rudiment of dream state in wakefulness and hence it can never

objectively be realised. In the worldly sense, when the bottom of the trough is realised, there isno more fear, no insecurity and therefore no need of striving for security. Security is what IS

peace and contentment, God or the self. It is for this reason that most of the Hindu idols of God-head invariably have gesture of ―fearlessness‖ (or freedom from fear); or else they have those



symbols, which represents the preparation for attainment of that state, like the rosary or the

scripture or trident which represent the Yogic path.

Now that we realised that nothing gives us security except the realisation, the only thing

which we need to wish for is that and nothing else. This is what Sai Baba meant, when he said,

―Giving up all desires, centre your mind on God, Then you will surely reach the goal‖. Notwishing for things is not so gloomy, for in wishing for things of the world we forget only the

source of security and run for the source of insecurity, toil and disillusionment. All the othersayings of Baba we have mentioned at the beginning of the chapter represent the preparation.

As we noted in the first chapter, the appreciation of the full significance of ― Allah Malik ‖ gives

us courage and freedom and the wisdom to look upon all of our life experiences, are the means

of the Supreme Master in preparing our soul for the final experience. All efforts and the workwill no longer be motivated by desire for fruits of action. We will learn to look upon it as a

means of strengthening our efforts to keep up clear consciousness in midst of activity. By ―UtterLord‘s name‖ the second phrase in one of these sayings, Sai Baba meant that He is the ―Work‖

We should strive to impress upon our hearts the full significance of ― Allah Malik ‖ whenever we

can. This phrase represents the theory and the earlier word ―Work‖ represents the practice. The

third part of the statement is preparation at the psychological level. Such a one neither hopes nordespairs, neither wishes for anything nor does he reject; he lives life as a game, as an end in

itself and it is the game that keeps us in the highest state of alertness. Both victory and defeatare false. The thing that matters is our alertness and activity. It is in this spirit that God is said to

create, spontaneously like play. It is important to note that Lord Krishna sets himself up as amodel for Karma Yogic playing his activity for work. But it is not such, in the sense, it is not

motivated by desire for anything.

In the light of this discussion, it is easy to see that when Ba ba said ―Be content to remainas God has made you‖, and ―What God gives lasts and the man gives never‖ have a double

meaning. Desiring something in the hope of security either from worldly necessity or from the psychological thing is constant effort to be something different from what God has made us

The ego-consciousness through such analysis as we have illustrated and through the teaching of

the real Master, learns not to wish for anything, we are learning to be what God has made us.Play is no play when we are not able to play our best. It is in this sense that Sai Baba said,

―Whatever you undertake to do, do it thoroughly. Or else, do not undertake.‖



IV

SADHANA OUTSIDE HOURS OF MEDITATION - 1

That a part of the preparation which is out-lined in the previous chapter clears our

worldly life of activity of all adventitious hopes, fears, longings and frustrations. The field of

life is cleared of the weeds, leaving the plants in the crop free to draw upon all the attention we

are capable of by way of living as the play. We have also hinted at the new attitude thatdevelops in us towards our work in consequence of this clearing. Baba, the real Master, has not

left it at that. Our activity or work is not to remain a mere implementation or practice of whatwe have learnt. It is but for a much more activity and positive content in the form of discovery

of realisation and this shall occupy the present chapter.

The Bhagavadgeetha says that of thousands of people who turn to the spirit of God, manydo so in the hope that they will be through from their problems of life, like the disease and

poverty. Some others turn to God in the hope of fulfillment of their worldly wishes. A fewernumber of them wish to know what all is about and that only a minute fraction seek

enlightenment. It even says that out of thousands of seekers, only one strives for perfection andout of thousands of such, only one succeeds. This is what Christ meant when he said, ―Many are

called but a few are chosen‖. Sai Baba has pointed this truth beautifully in the parable of themango tree in full bloom. The depth and full implication of these statements can be realised if

we too remember that all the fake gurus and God-men belong to the first two categories – ofthose who crave for freedom from sorrow and those who pray for fulfillment of their material

wishes. How can such teachers lead us anywhere?

If we look around us with wide open eyes, we find this grim truth. In all its tragedy andirony the foster body of seekers around us together have missed them many, but after their

initial effervescence of over-zealous-faith in some teacher or form of Sadhana have gotdisspirited. Some of them have repeatedly tried their luck with different teachers and forms of

Sadhana. Many of them present their poor figures no longer for any dynamism, but makeanother effort. Whether there is hell beyond death or not, we do not know. But in these poor

specimens we can be sure that just as there could be a kingdom of hell on earth. For that

whatever spiritual jargon they were fed, has made them determine that worldly life cannot

bestow fulfillment. They cannot return to it whole-heartedly. But their repeated failures and

frustrations in their spiritual endeavours have made them wonder whether there is any way tosuch a thing at all. They cannot give it up nor do they have the dynamism and faith necessary to put up a fight for it. They may succeed in playing the roles of devotees. Their failures with

every teacher and his teaching makes them find an error in each of them. They have nothing to

offer, but the majority are too honest to do that. They silently suffer. The problem which these

people face is that they have not found anyone capable of helping them out, any real teacherwho, like Sai Baba, can assure them of his constant presence by their side; whose presence, like

his, could wipe out all fears and anxieties. From their example, we ought to know how



dangerous a spiritual adventure could be if it is not started with the contact of the real teacher.

If, instead of casting their lot in the wood winds as they did, and instead of rushing too hastilyto the spiritual trade-mark gurus, they had made a modest beginning with the study of Sri

GuruCharitra and Guru Geetha, their zeal and energies would have been conserved for them

for the proper occasion. It would have been a sort of ever-increasing dynamism and zeal. From

this, it is easy to understand, why the Christ has so repeatedly warned against false prophets andfalse teachers. Indian mystics – sage Bharthruhari Adi Sankaracharya – did not spare them. The

poignance of the crime of such false teachers is brought out by an old Indian story. Sri Ramawas about to take all his people with him in a divine aeroplane, a sickly dog with lice and ticks

all over, also wanted him to be taken along. Noticing that it was a strange creature that could

speak like a human being, he questioned it about the cause of his present plight. He stated that

in its previous life it was a false teacher that deceived large number of innocent people by hisfalse teachings. In consequence, he stated, all those misdirected disciples were taking vengeance

on him in this life in the form of lice and ticks.

As we have stated, the real teacher can furnish a positive dynamic content of realisation

almost in every incident of his disciple‘s life. For the common man, the mere weeding out from

the field of life is not enough. The crop has to be watered, manured and cared for daily and evenhourly. Straying cattle and wandering birds have to be repeatedly driven away. When does we

interpret this analogy in terms of our Sadhana in daily life!

Sadhana or spiritual discipline is the regular means of attaining the lasting contentment.Contentment is real only when it could permeate the other aspects and moments of our life. This

becomes possible only when the whole of one‘s life is transformed into Sadhana, i.e., when

Sadhana is not limited to the hours of formal meditation or deep reflection. Novices on thespiritual path fail to realise this. They arduously try to meditate during fixed hours, but losesight of it in the hours of their mundane life. The impact of formal meditation may continue to

underline the rest of their worldly life in the form of subtle peace, but equally well, the impactof the worldly incidents will also continue and reach hours of meditation. Therefore true

meditation is possible only through true understanding of things within and without, and their

relationships. By implication, life outside the hours of meditation, in their case, is based onerroneous understanding. Even their efforts to impress upon their hearts, the full significance of

― Allah Malik ‖ and ―Giving up all desires‖ is bound to be limited by their present, limited

average spiritual capacities. Therefore the major portion of their daily life to that extent, provesto be the negative counterpart of meditation and, in the common life of the worldly man, it

predominates. The consequent accumulated mass of false understanding is bound to counteract

the process of meditation, as a means of escaping such a plight, several seekers do the mistake

of trying to prolong the formal meditation. In their excessive zeal, they may even venture to prolong it althrough the day, taking time off their worldly life whenever possible. This is more

commonly done by those who renounce worldly life too early before they are ripe. Soon it becomes a matter of compulsion, which is bound to be counter productive, instead of giving a



matter of spontaneous joy. Eventually most of them stop meditation altogether either

prematurely or for different spells of time, or they may resort to mechanical chanting of divinename throughout the day. For most people even that becomes mechanical and they come to feel

nothing divine about those names, that they are mere names.

We have said that real and sustained meditation can result only from correctunderstanding of things, creature and their relations. By understanding, we do not mean a

momentary compulsion of recognition that may last for a few months only when it is stable ifwe achieve it. But this does not happen at a time. First flashes of understanding have to come to

us more frequently and with greater intensity and through familiarization which gradually

settles down into a stable state. Very few can bring this about by their own efforts. It is here that

the real teacher has a positive role, to play. The Chapters in Sai Baba the Master which describeHim as all Gods, saints, creatures and things along with the chapter on his omniscience, show

how in countless ways he has opened the flood-gates of new insight and understanding to hisdevotees even during the stray moments of their common living. They were forced to recognise

that He was in all the creatures, that He was ever with them, fully aware of what they do and

think. In a matchless way, He continues to do so even after His Mahasamadhi. These

experiences, this realisation of his omniscience in all things, which we called the positivecontent earlier. A false guru, out of his subtle jealousy, and self-justification may try to brush

this aside as cheap miracle-mongering. The straight rejoinder to such one is, ―Let him do it if hecan‖ If this allegation be true, then God indeed is the worst of miracle mongers. In such a case,

it is better to follow such a miracle monger than follow the monger-miracle, i.e., the man whocan miraculously present the truth as falsehood and his own falsehood as truth. It should be

remembered that Sai Baba never claimed all those ‗miracles‘ for himself. He always lived and

referred to himself as a poor begging Fakir and some times even as a humble slave of hisdevotees. He behaved as though he was too small a man even to criticise the truly false gurus.Further it should be remembered that he was revered as the Kohinoor among the saints by most

of his contemporaries. But He on his part was humble enough to acknowledge the greatness ofother great Mahatmas like Tukaram, Baba Tajuddin and Guru Siddharudha. We hardly hear any

of these self-styled teachers approving of any other teacher except, if at all, patronizingly or

condescendingly. They do not even remember the watch-words of Christ, ―Judge not lest thou be judged‖. But on our part, in our own interests and for the love of God, we have to judge the

teacher as Christ said, ―Judge the tree by its fruit.‖ If there is anything else that can substitute

the mysterious way in which Sai Baba fed his devotees with this positive content in the eventsof day to day life, then we can dispense with him. To say that we can provide our own positive

content may be possible in only one way, that is, by the devout study of his life and teaching.

Any other way is only like what the three companions of Sai Baba did in the dense forest.

When we so study the life of Baba even today, we soon find that the events of our life are

controlled and purposeful. When we are constantly reminded of Him, the memories of HisLeelas sustain us during the intervals between similar experiences of our own. The subtle



Master He is, with perfect economy, He overwhelms us with such experiences at unexpected

moments. A little thought will enable us to know that such random and surprising action on hisside is much more effective than similar experiences coming to us every moment. The latter

course would unhinge our minds. It will be like forcing the bud open before it is mature, more

like thrusting too much food down one‘s throat than he could swallow to take. We have already

noted the case of the beedi vendor.

The Master plays hide and seek with us, so to say, he manifests his working when weleast expect it, and generally when we need it the most, but are too confused to pray for it.

Sometimes He does so when we ask for it. At other times He keeps us waiting for it. Again as

we wait for one type of manifestation, he manifests it in a different corner of our life, and in

manner different from our expectation. Later in retrospect we find that his working is wisest. Itis this kind of divine working which the Jews and Christians described God as the Loving God.

It is silly to ask whether Sai Baba is God or not. We have never seen God so that we can decideit. It is much wiser to decide our own fate. A thirsty man looks for a tumbler of water, but does

not bother to know all about its source.

Through constant study of his life, we like to associate everything and creature that seewith Him; everything reminds us of Him; may be as his form or as his name. Without any effort

on our part we learn to live in very frequent awareness of him. All the hours outside formalmeditation thus get transformed into Sadhana. Sadhana becomes the way. The most wonderful

part of it is that even those of us who just resort to him for the fulfilment of their wishes or theremoval of their suffering, are slowly led into this way by the study of his life. Judge the tree by

its fruit; we see that Sai Baba is alone among the real teachers who adopted such a way. It

sounds funny and ridiculous, if any teacher implies that he is better, without doing better. Therewas the classic case of Jawahar Ali, who claimed that Sai Baba was his disciple. In after times,there are others who claimed a higher state than this Sadguru and some who claimed that they

are He. Again we have to judge the tree by its fruit. Only those who study his life canunderstand and follow his teachings, ―You are in me and I am in you. Go on contemplating this

You will come to experience it‖. Only such can understand the less known saying of Jesus,

―Whereever there are two, they are not without God, and where there is one alone, I say I amwith him. Raise soon and there thou shalt find. Cleave the wood and there I am. Let not him

who seeks. Cease until he finds, and when he finds, he shall be acknowledged, he shall reach

the kingdom and having reached kingdom he shall rest‖. The Christ too won the hearts of hisdisciples by enabling them to know that he knew them much better than we are known of him.

The episode of Sai Baba‘s sevnenty two hours of death and revival tallies in toto from the

raising of Jesus Christ on the third day after crucification. No wonder, that my learned brother

Paul Rebs writes: ―Sai Baba the Master amply proves, spirit is more alive than matter… It isimpossible for me and to anyone to comprehend Jesus‘s life without reading Sai Baba the

Master … surely Shirdi Sai is the greatest of great‖.



V

SADHANA OUTSIDE HOURS OF MEDITATION - 2

We have said that an understanding of the problem of life and the solution to it is the first

major step in the transformation of all life into sadhana. This understanding can be made more

vivid by a study of similar analysis of the problem offered by Perfect ones like the Buddha and

Bhagawan Ramana Maharshi. This can be further supplemented by diligent study of the Bhagawadgita. The consequent clearer understanding of our problem further strengthens the

motivation for sustained sadhana.

Then it is of great study the lives of perfect ones. They are the assurance and promise ofthe outcome of sadhana. Young Venkatraman was galvanized into an ardent seeker after divine

wisdom after the study of the ‗Periapuranam‘. By studying the lives of several Mahatmas ofdifferent religions, we understand the dynamics of spiritual endeavour along different paths and

the relationship between them. Eventually our heart will be able to choose one of them as ourexample. This prepares us for the third step i.e., contacting a perfect sage in flesh and blood. A

study of Sri Guru Geeta will enable us to tune ourselves to him when we meet him.

The next major step is contacting a living sage. This can be done in two ways. A seekercan ardently pray for divine guidance in this matter and study Sri Gurugeeta, Sri Gurucharitra

and the life of the saint that had attracted us most during our earlier study. Instances of suchefforts being very effective can be seen in the lives of Sri Sai Baba of Shirdi and Sri Swamy

Samarth of Akkalkot. Or the seeker can go on seeing as many Mahatmas as he could, takingtime to understand them. This of course involves a danger of being enticed by false shows of

enlightenment and miraculous powers by several self-styled, less developed seekers.

The previous study, reflection and a clear understanding of the problem of life and itssolution should help one to recognise the genuine mahatma. It is essential that we do not easily

surrender our power of understanding in the name of ‗Surrendering to the Guru‘. A true Guruconquers our heart and he spurns a too mean surrender and irrational emotionalism whereas a

false one persuades us to do so. We should remember two great statements here. Sai Baba of

Shirdi said ―A true fakir (saint) is rare‖. The Bhagawadgita says that out of thousands of people

one would be drawn Godward. Out of thousands of such, a few persevere in sadhana and,

ultimately very few realize the self. There is no danger of our losing the grace of a true Guru byour caution. For the really Perfect one would measure up to our doubt and quell it. Only, on ourside the yearning for Enlightenment should be genuine. One sure sign of this is that it does not

make us proud of ourselves than a dying man would be for his desperate struggle to survive.

When the real Guru is contacted, the impact of the meeting is unmistakable. Let us notetwo instances.



Inspite of their recurring errors, how the devotees of Sai were constantly made aware of

Sai Baba‘s perfection can best be seen in Mrs. Manager‘s account in ― Devotees’ experiences ofSai Baba‖, Part I Section IV.

―One‘s first impression of Sai Baba was derived from his eyes. There was such power

and penetration in his glance that none could continue to look at his eyes. One felt that Sai Babawas reading him, or her, through and through. Soon one lowered one‘s eyes and bowed down,

one felt that he (Sai) was not only in one‘s heart but in every atom of one‘s body. A few wordsa gesture, would reveal to one that Sai Baba knew all about the past, present and even future

and about everything else. There was nothing else to do for one except to submit trustfully and

to surrender oneself to him. And there he was to look after every minute detail, and guide one

safe through every turn and vicissitude of life. He was the Antaryamin, call him god orSatpurusha (One who is in the Absolute state of Being) in Sahaja Sthiti (the original state) or

what you like. But the overpowering personality was there, and in his presence no fears, noquestionings had any place and one registered oneself and that was the only course, the safest

and the best course.‖

―One noticeable difference between Sri Sai Baba and other saints struck me. I havemoved with other notable saints also. I have seen them in high samadhi or trance condition

entirely forgetting their body, and in its course effacing the narrow notion of the self, confinedto the body; and I have seen them latter getting conscious of their surroundings, knowing what

is in our hearts and replying to us. But with Sri Sai Baba there was their peculiar feature. Hehad not to go into trance to achieve any thing, or to reach any higher position or knowledge, He

was every moment exercising a double consciousness, one actively utilizing the ego called ‗Sri

Sai Baba‘ and dealing with other egos in temporal or spiritual affairs, and the other – entirelysuperseding all egos and resting in the position of the Universal Soul or Ego : he wasexercising and manifesting all the powers and features incidental to both the states of

consciousness. Other saints would forget their body and surroundings and then return to it. ButSri Sai Baba was always in and outside the material world. Others seemed to take pains and by

effort to trace the contents of other‘s minds and read their past history. But with Sri Sai Baba

this was not a matter of effort. He was in the all-knowing state always.‖

―It is not merely his power that endeared him to his devotees. His loving care combined

with those powers made Shirdi a veritable Paradise to the devotee, who went there. Directly wewent there, we felt safe, that nothing could harm us. When I went and sat in his presence, I

always forget my pain – nay the body itself with all mundane concerns and anxieties.‖

―His accessibility to all and at all hours practically was a remarkable feature of his ‗ Mydarbar ‘ (royal assembly) is always open, he used to say, ‗at all hours‘. He had nothing to fear

from scrutiny, and nothing shameful to conceal. All his actions were open and above board.‖



―Another distinguishing feature of his life was freedom from care and anxiety. He had no

interests to serve or protect, no institution to seek support for or maintain, no acquisitions tosafeguard, no private property to feel anxious about‖.

―That the influence of a Mahatma‘s presence is unmistakable and cannot be a subjective

fancy of the devotee, is borne out by the fact that was sceptic is made aware of it. Paul Bruntonan English journalist who visited Maharshi was quite a sceptic. He describes his experience on

his first visit to Maharshi in his book, A Search in India thus :

―It is an ancient theory of mine that one can take the inventory of a man‘s soul from his

eyes. But before those of the Maharishee I hesitate, puzzled and baffled……….‖

―There is something in this man which holds my attention as steel filings are held by a

magnet. I cannot turn my gaze away from him. My initial bewilderment, my perplexity at beingtotally ignored, slowly fade away as this strange fascination begins to grip me more firmly. But

it is not till the second hour of the uncommon scene that I become aware of a silent, resistless

change which is taking place within my mind. One by one, the questions which I have prepared

in the train with such meticulous accuracy drop away. For it does not now seem to matterwhether they are asked or not, and it does not seem to matter whether I solve the problems

which have hitherto troubled me. I know only that a steady river of quietness seems to beflowing near me, that a great peace is penetrating the inner reaches of my being, and that my

thought – tortured brain is beginning to arrive at some rest.‖

―How small seem those questions which I have asked myself with such frequency! How

petty grows the panorama of the lost years! I perceive with sudden clarity that the intellectcreates its own problems and then makes itself miserable trying to solve them. This is indeed anovel concept to enter the mind of one who has hitherto placed such high value upon intellect.‖

―I surrender myself to the steadily deepening sense of restfulness until two hours have

passed. The passage of time now provokes no irritation, because I feel that the chains of

mindmade problems are being broken and thrown away. And then, little by little, a newquestion takes the field of consciousness.‖

―Does this man, the Maharishi, emanate the perfume of spiritual peace as the floweremanates fragrance from its petals?‖

―I begin to wonder whether, by some radio-activity of the soul, some unknown telepathic

process, the stillness which invades the troubled waters of my own soul really comes from himYet he remains completely impassive, completely unaware of my very existence, it seems.

……….‖



―This is a mysterious property in this man which differentiates him from all others I have

met. I feel, somehow, that he does not belong to us, the human race, so much as he belongs to Nature, to the solitary peak which rises abruptly behind the hermitage, to the rough tract of

jungle which stretches away into distant forests, and to the impenetrable sky which fills all

space! ……‖

It may be useful to note a few outstanding features that are common to realised sages :

1. They are not self conscious of their own perfection. They do not claim anything. At bestthey are amused by the reverence shown to them. They are perfectly open to all, never

reaching out for a devotee or shunning him. They are not attached to any single religious

tradition to the exclusion of others and, reveal a spontaneous understanding of every path

of sadhana. They clarify our understanding and never thrust their views on us. Needlessto say, they do not criticise any religion or any other spiritual leader.

2. They reveal an effortless and spontaneous life of virtue and never reject any seeker for

his failings. They never try to bind the seeker in allegiance to themselves nor do they

seek to extract any work or service from anyone, either for themselves or for their

institutions. For they do not identify themselves with any Institution that might havegrown around them. They do not induce or prompt anyone to advertise them.

3. Their tranquility is innate and is never perturbed by any cravings, not even for money or

recognition. They attach little importance to any formal show of peity by the visitors.They do not get conditioned by the service rendered to them. They are their own masters

and their own servants.

4. They do not exhibit their miraculous powers. Any such happen spontaneously andinvariably they serve to awaken the seeker to the omni-present spirit. They never merely

show off their power. They hardly write anything by themselves or assume the attitude ofspiritual teachers out to salvage humanity from the mire of ignorance. They are amused

and never appalled by the play of Maya on the seekers.

The contact with a perfect Mahatma enlivens all our understanding gained through our

previous study and reflection. In their presence we gain a taste of realisation spontaneously and

realise that our life has gained a new dimension through the contact. The tensions that havehitherto entangled us in our spiritual progress are released. Our life acquires a new value and

significance to us by the contact. Our understanding of the problem of life and the solution to it

becomes spontaneous and effortless.

The whole of our life gets tuned to them even when we are away physically and our

mundane concerns beyond the necessities of life drop to the level of mere moral responsibility,without any emotional overtones.



All this may or may not dawn on our experience on the first or on any single visit to the

Mahatma. This should not be anticipated or even conjured by our efforts in the presence of aholy one. It is only meant to be an aid to recognise it. When it happens or otherwise.

Contact with a Mahatma is not a matter of experience which is localised or confined to

certain moments. It is a continuous process which will never cease. It may be clouded, now andthen, by the preponderance of our habitual reactions to other things and events. The moment we

apply the insight we have gained into the nature of things to the immediate situation ourhabitual reactions clear off like clouds, leaving the sky-like clarity and attunement to the

Mahatma intact. Through practice one learns to be aware of it even amidst the discharge of

one‘s responsibilities even as a faithful servant looks upon his duties as an expression of his

devotion in his master. The responsibilities thereby gain a new sanctity and significance to ourSadhana. Thus the spiritual master becomes a living glimpse or symbol of all that one had learnt

about the secret of life and sadhana. Real sadhana starts with such a contact with the Guru andall that preceeds it is a mere preparation. The closer and more constant such an attunement to

him becomes, the more effortless and spontaneous the sadhana becomes, the more thoroughly

does one realise that the Guru is the Truth, the Way and the Life. That is the true significance of

the ―Buddhist Vow‖ - ― Buddham Sharanam Gacchami‖ and the Hindu concept of self -surrender . The Guru is realized more and more clearly to be the embodiment of one‘s goal

which is one‘s real self, the imperturbable rock bottom of oneself. The Guru within is the Guruwithout-nay, the seeker has his being within the Guru.

Till this process matures, one has to take care not to allow his real contact with the Guru

and its significance to be lost sight of through familiarity that arises from prolonged contact. He

would do well to bring it into bold relief by going back to one‘s own life and return to it againwith such reawakened sense of its significance.

During one‘s stay far away from the Guru it is useful to resort to a study of the booksmentioned earlier, whenever one‘s attitude to his Guru starts being mechanical, a mere matter of

habit. On the one hand such study re-awakens the seeker‘s mind to the value of his guru. But

the study itself gives a depth of understanding of the books of wisdom. The seeker realises thathis contact with the Guru has deepened his capacity to appreciate the profoundity of these books

and that the latter reflects upon and broadens his ability to imbibe the living wisdom of the

Guru. It‘s no mere coincidence that a sage like Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi was asked by adevotee, ―Sir, you tell us, that association with a sage, is of inestimable value to our spiritual

life. But most of us, fettered by our moral responsibilities to our families, cannot afford to have

it except occasionally. What Satsanga can we have then?‖. The sage replied, ―Sat is the Omni-

present reality and sanga means our attunement to it. You can have it wherever you are‖. Afteran moments‘ silence he again said, ―Even the study of the lives and teachings of a sage can

secure for you this attunement. Even that could be spiritual association with the wise one.‖ SaiBaba of Shirdi often enjoined the devout study of Sri Guru Charitra. When his devotee Anna



Saheb Dabholkar persuaded him to extend his consent for the composition of an account of his

life Sai Baba assured him that his work would serve a similar purpose to his devotees. TheBible derives its value chiefly from the Gospels. Sage Vedavyasa considers that the Bhagawata

is of greater value to the seeker after Liberation than his other Puranas. What distinguishes The

Bhagawata is the account of perfect sages that it contains. The direction given by the

Chandogyopanishad that a seeker after Liberation, having prepared himself, should approach asage who is perfectly realised and also well versed in the scriptures is thus fully corroborated by

the verities of spiritual life.



APPENDIX - I

A DOUBT AND AN ANSWER

The tenor and the drift of my writing so far have probably raised a few questions in the

reader‘s mind, which it is my duty to consider. I have depicted Sai Baba as the Guru parexcellence. Do I mean that all other Gurus are second-rate? Not in the least. If I have any faithin Baba‘s saying, ―All that you see taken together is I‖, I cannot afford to say so. By saying that

He is the greatest, I only meant that I am convinced that His is the most effective way for themost common of men. I have given my reasons and they agree with what many real Masters

said of Him. I myself have seen several real teachers, but I found that not in all cases they workon their devotees in such an obvious fashion as Sai Baba does. And I found many of these falter

in consequence.

If someone has already been accepted as a disciple by some other guru and if such a one

feels that his guru is of lesser order, is he to leave off that guru and turn to Sai Baba? Thisquestion can be considered with another. If someone has accepted a guru, but in the light of ourdiscussion, proves to be a fake guru, is it right for the disciple to leave him off and turn to Sai

Baba?

In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to discuss a few preliminaries. Whatactually is implied in acceptance of someone as one‘s own guru? For certain, it simply cannot

mean a religious formality. The guru-disciple relationship is strongest of all bonds. Even the parent-child relationship or husband-wife relationship or even the bonds of friendship come

only the next to it. Even the God-man relationship can be said to be of the next rank with, for asfar as the devotee is concerned the God is still far away from him, and even if the truth is

otherwise, it needs a real Master to make him aware of it. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa hasdescribed the guru as the priest who alone can effect the marriage sacrament between God and

man. Sri Swami Samarth of Akkalkot said that the bond between Him and his devotee is atleastseven times stronger than that between the father and the child. From this fact derives the

magnitude of ill-will and inhumanity perpetrated by the fake guru. To be a false guru is as sinfuland improper as for a father to cheat his own son. Nay, it is atleast seven times more than that.

If someone who is not himself enlightened, takes upon himself the role of a guru, our scripturessay that he has committed a blunder. But if his disciple is too strongly attached to him, the study

of Sai Baba Charitra will do him a lot of good, for Sai Baba who is in all, starts operatingthrough his own guru‘s form. That is the assurance implied in Baba‘s saying, ―Stick to your

own guru with an unabated faith, whatever the means of other gurus and however little themerits of your own‖. Even otherwise if the disciple‘s faith is genuine, the guidance will still

reach him, for it is the Lord who ultimately guides every yearning soul to Himself. ―Take a potsherd and treat it as your guru. You will see whether you will reach the goal or not.‖ While

the instances of Sai Baba demonstrating his identity with all gurus corroborate my former



argument, the instance of the Avadhoota who learnt wisdom from the twenty four gurus in

Bhagavatha testifies to the truth of Sai Baba‘s latter statement. In a slightly different context SriSwami Samarth of Akkalkot blessed the devotee who has unfortunately resorted to a totally

unworthy guru earlier.

Now we consider what actually is implied in accepting someone as guru. Ideally, SaiBaba‘s account of his own meeting with his guru high-lights the most important aspect of it. All

the love and devotion which Sai Baba felt for the Master is the content of such acceptance. Hisother statements like, ―If you make me the sole object of your thoughts and aims, you will attain

Paramathma, the supreme goal‖. ―Look at me with undivided attention; so will I look at you.

This is the only truth that Guru has taught me‖. ―If one wishes Me only always, listens to talk

about Me and perpetually repeats Sai Sai with heart over flowing (with devotion) and is devotedto Me alone, he will reach God; he need not fear or worry for his body and soul‖ and also ―If

one meditates on me, repeats my name, sings my deeds and is thus transformed into Me, hisKarma is destroyed‖. I will stay by his side always‖ – elaborate the same point. Until one is able

to do so with one‘s guru, he can really be said to have become a disciple. If accidentally any one

is ‗accepted‘ as guru as a mere formality, he has not really done so. There is nothing wrong if

such a one turns to Baba. It is easy to say that if an adolescent girl in a fanciful momentimagines some young man as her husband, it does not amount to marriage. Neither she has

accepted all the responsibilities of it, nor the other has accepted his part of it. If someone hasresorted to a fake guru and realised it subsequently, there is no point in trying to stick to him

alone in the hope that it amount to Sai Baba‘s instruction that one should stick to one‘s ownguru. Because once he realised that the guru is fake, it will no longer be possible for him to look

upon him as a real one. Every application of the idea would imply it is his own negation. The

instance in Sri Swami Samartha‘s life mentioned earlier bears this out. We can be assured ofone thing. Any seeker, whoever is his guru, and whatever the merits of that guru, is sure to be benefited by the study of Sai Baba‘s life, Sri Guru Charitra and Sri Guru Geetha. For most of

whom who have accepted a guru, who does not work as Sai Baba does, are likely to waver intheir faith, which defeats the very relationship. Sai Baba, the Emperor among the Sadgurus, is

sure to bless that man and set him right in whatever way it is appropriate to him. In Sri GuruCharitra, it is recounted how a disciple deserted his former guru and rushed to Sri NrisimhaSaraswathi, the second Avatar of Dattatreya. At first the latter takes the man to task for what he

did. But later, tells him to close his eyes and think of his former guru and blesses. It is the

Supreme Master‘s way of helping a man without violating his relationship with his own guruand only the Teachers of that order can do so. For those who are just about to enter the spiritual

path, it is worthwhile to remember Sai Baba‘s clear instruction, ―Never run for initiation to any

one‖. As per Himself, He never initiated anyone and no Real Teacher ever did so – Ramana

Maharshi, Akkalkota Swami, Tajuddin Baba, Bhagawan Nityananda and others. When someonespecifically pestered to initiate him with a Mantra, Baba said, ―I do not instruct through ear. Our

traditions are different‖. The reason can easily be guessed. One who has perfect realisation,feels himself identical with all that is, unless a sense of duality or ignorance is there that he is a



guru and the other is his disciple. He cannot logically do so. But He can say, ―All that you see

taken together is I‖. Again as per the higher standards of spiritual tradition, only the perfectlyenlightened ones are fit to be gurus. Such is the definition of the word ‗guru‘ as we can find it in

Sri Gurugeetha and when several of Sai Baba‘s tradition-bound devotees were feeling

disappointed that he did not favour them with Mantropadesa, several other gurus used to invite

them to accept initiation at their hands. When they asked Baba whether they should accept theoffer, He always said that they need not. In fact one devotee came to Shirdi with the specific

object. He wished that without his asking for it, the Master should initiate him of his ownaccord. Baba at once sent him to a local devotee for lunch. The man was feeling disappointed

Soon came a messenger from the mosque with the message, ―That man is unnecessarily anxious

to be initiated. His work was already done. Let him be rest assured.‖ Clearly, Baba means that

seeing him is in itself an initiation. That indeed was the only initiation which His Master evergave him. The matter is clinched by this statement of Baba, ―It is not the guru that makes

himself your guru. It is you who must regard him as such, i.e., place your entire faith in him.Take a potsherd and regard it as your guru and see if your goal or aim is reached or not‖.

To my mind, the great advantages of accepting Sai Baba as our Guru are :-

(1) We thereby accept the very Emperor of all Real Teachers.(2) We thereby accept the whole nature as our Guru, as did Avadhoota in the eleventh

chapter of Bhagavatha.(3) The mode of his working on us is the most re-assuring.

(4) He belongs to single religious tradition and at the same time belongs to all of them. Wethereby are doubly sure that in him we have a guru. He knows all the spiritual traditions

most intimately.

(5) He has been demonstrating his presence even decades after his Mahasamadhi and hasassured us that He will lead us right upto the goal. Even here, we have no need to take itas an assumption. There are many number of cases of people being guided by him across

lines.(6) He is the most complete Avatar of Dattatreya.

(7) In the study of his life, we have as powerful an instruction of guidance as Sri Gurucharitra.

Some people have questioned the propriety of resorting to a Sadguru, who no longer

exists in flesh and blood. This question perplexed me for a long time. The manner inwhich I got a reply through a loving guru that I am on the right track and that I need not

resort to other guru is recounted in detail in Sai Baba the Master .

sai baba and his teachings

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