Previously Posted
| Chapter No. | Part No. | Content of the Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| NA | NA | Introduction (Preface, Foreword, A Devotee Speaks and A Thought) |
| Chapter 1 | Part 1 | In Moments of Ecstasy |
| Chapter 1 | Part 2 | In Moments of Ecstasy |
21
The Slippers of Sai’s Feet If I were the slippers of the feet of yours, O’ Baba How fortunate would have I been! The slippers made from the skin of my body, Would have provided comfort to your feet, Protected them from pebbles, thorns and stones lying scattered on the path, And my coming into the world would have adequately been justified If my body could not serve you, while living on earth, Mattered little, if my skin had served you and provided you relief My soul in heavens would have smiled on its good fortune Lying on the steps of Dwarkamai the whole night The slippers would have been gazing at you, Your sleeping with Mahalsapati and Tatya, Your cutting jokes and your jesting with them And I would have kept on watching, what all you did the whole night, While going for begging, I would have provided splendour to your feet Kept on assessing the depth of heart of those devotees Who became blessed and immortal for all times to come By putting one or two chapatis in your ‘Jholi’ Kept on watching day after day, your deeds, Your leelas in the Dwarkamai for Sixty long years, Cutting jokes with your devotees, Sharing of food brought in bhiksha With devotees alongwith dogs, cats, crows and birds, And watched the hand raised for cutting the neck of the goat By Kaka Saheb Dixit at your command And carried the feeling of jealousy on his self surrender Would have been the spectator all incidents Which have formed part of Shri Sai Satcharitra As also those which have remained unknown and unsung And of which the spectators were illiterate villagers only May be these slippers had found a place in the museum at Shirdi And on which innumerable devotees of yours Would have yearned to place their heads on today.
22
The food of my hungry soul (आत्मा) is you, my Sai. The satisfaction of my thirst for knowledge is you: O’ my Baba! You are in me and I am in you. In fact, you are the be – all and end of – all of my desires, my aspirations, my urges and my achievements. Neither may I see all that is happening around me nor should I endeavour to understand it. Wherever I see and whatever I understand – in all that I may find your presence alone, my Baba.
23
Sai while leaving your mortal coil on October 15, 1918, you had exclaimed: “I do not now enjoy living in the Masjid. Take me to Butiwada where I shall live happily”. So saying you closed your eyes. As per your wishes, Butiwada was chosen to be your abode. The years upto 1980, that is for 62 years, you seem to have spent comfortably in your new abode with your Samadhi having adequate natural light and air and not many devotees to disturb your peace but suddenly after 1983, there has been a spurt in the number of your devotees, not only in the country but all over the globe. And today, you seem to be most sought after God on earth. People are flocking for your darshan from all over the world. Hasn’t your peace been disturbed? And now you may be finding it inconvenient to stay in Butiwada.
Related: Scribblings of A Shirdi Sai Devotee
24
That day Baba said: “Who says that Sai has changed with the times? Even today, I am the same Fakir who went with a begging bowl from house to house and donned a torn kafni. The one who is being presented today sitting on a gold throne wearing valuable clothes is merely my idol. I am the same old Fakir sitting within the Samadhi – what I was yesterday, the same am I today and the same I shall remain ever after. Those devotees of mine, who love me from the core of their heart, worship me in that very image only. Yes, keeping in view the needs of time, I do listen to the call of everyone; their demands too I fulfill, but those devotees of mine shall be able to reach their Sai only when they recognize my true image. Participating in the game being played by them, I enjoy myself heartily in the same manner as I did while cajoling with my devotees in my life time.
25
“The grace of Sai is raining incessantly day and night, Sai looks not to who deserves and who not”.
Baba! Innumerable devotees of yours give you bath daily. They clean you with towels, put sandal paste on your forehead, dress you up with expensive pretty looking clothes, put garlands of expensive flowers around your neck; wave ‘Aartis’ with as large a number of ‘Deepaks’ as possible; sing songs in sweet melodious tones on the musical instruments, and offer varieties of eatables to you as ‘Prasad’. In this ever increasing crowd of your devotees, if there be a bhakta who is unable to do so due to his advancing age and only worships your idol in the inner chambers of his heart, will it not be acceptable to you? Shall you feel that his bhakti is lacking in some measure? Baba! Many a time due to my inability to perform your puja in the laid down manner, I feel extremely unhappy. At times, I feel that I am drifting away from the path of your bhakti. But when I return to myself, my heart tells me that there is no need left for you to indulge in these rituals. Whatever rituals we perform are merely to satisfy our own urge. You are far away from all this. In your life-time too, you had stated that for your worship no external paraphernalia is needed, you live in ‘Bhakti’ alone. I do hope that such like thoughts aren’t the creation of my imagination alone, and an effort to deceive myself. Baba, do show me the true path of your bhakti. I am your child!
26
Sai! You have no beginning, no end Bodies come and go What is today shall perish tomorrow But it is the Sai Tatva which is eternal And shall remain so eternally You are Sai, you are God, Ghanshyam (Lord Krishna) is you, Ram is you All is born out of you and shall merge in you Only names keep on changing Parmatma is one Whether call it Nirankar, Or Anal-haque or Omkaar
27
Baba! I have spent all my life in asking for something or the other from you. But what could I do? Who else to look to? When the child feels hungry or it needs something else, it looks to its mother only. If I too have done so, what wrong have I committed? Now, however, I feel exhausted in continuing to beg. What should I do? Why have you bestowed such a nature on me? But now it seems of no consequence as the time left at my disposal is not much and the birds have eaten away the crops. May be it is my incorrect way of thinking. How could it be so that this child of yours who has surrendered to you heart and soul, might not have been able to proceed towards the attainment of the goal of his life? Surely and certainly, I have moved ahead towards the goal but perhaps I am forgetting that to reach the destination requires several births. It is impossible that your assurances remain unfulfilled.
28
O’ Sai! I have seen you not with these physical eyes, but every particle of my existence has experienced your nearness. O’ Baba, you are indeed a boon to the man of today who is fed up, in some way or other, with his own affluence, his modernity, his high flying life style, the sky touching buildings to live and the splendour of his living and on the other hand is troubled by his own hollow (खोखली) showy life, hi-fi living, affected sweetness of speech and with all that which seems splendid to look at but which cannot satisfy the urge of his soul and goads him on to constantly seek for something else. In this search of man, you alone are his need particularly because you provide him whatever he asks for. Where else would he find such a magnanimous God? You give wealth to the one who asks for it and peace of mind to the one who seeks it having become fed up with his own untrue living.
29
Baba I am yours, shall remain yours and would merge in you alone. In no state – standing or walk, sleeping or awake, eating or drinking, never may I forget doing obeisance at your holy feet. When I give up the sheathe of body, your name alone may be on my lips and your figure be inscribed in my head and heart and I be merged in you. There be left no trace of myself other than in you.
30
Baba! When you are infinite and your grace is infinite, how ignorant are we – your devotees, who keep on binding you in limitations. Sometimes we say that in a particular temple, your idol installed therein is extremely powerful since it gives whatever one asks for. Often we say that Sai is the ocean of compassion but every moment we are engaged in filling our own vessels with your grace. At times we say that Sai occupying the pedestal in a particular devotional gathering looked fantastic, as if your grandeur has been limited to a particular gathering. Why do we not understand that the one who is infinite, limitless, indivisible, second to none and beyond all bounds, why does he need boundaries set by us? Let us give it a thought and constantly try to extricate our own selves from these bounds. We shall then discover how vast is our own ‘Aatma’ and the distance between ourselves and our Sai ceases to exist.
In the next post, we shall read more in moments of ecstacy.
© Author – Late Shri. Suresh Chandra Gupta – Explicit Rights To Publish To Shirdi Sai Baba Books.com (Member of SaiYugNetwork.com)
Love you Deva! Jai Sai Samarth!
Really beautiful expression of Bhakti