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seemed to participate in both forms of religious life with extreme ease. Such ease came perhaps from
being established in the spiritual life and having faith in a God whom he believed belonged to all
beings equally irrespective of caste, creed or religion.
In this context it might be important to note that Sai Baba has been described both as a perfect Sufi
or Muslim mystic and as a parama bhagavata. It should be recalled that part of the historical context
of Sai Baba’s life at Shirdi included the resurgence of the powerful Bhakti movement in Maharashtra.
There was the development of the cult of the deity Vitthala in and around Pandharpur. This movement
centered on the belief that the path to God was through intense devotion. In this tradition of thinking
there were many Bhakti saints in Maharashtra, e.g. Jnanadev, Namdev, Eknath and Tukaram. Sai
Baba’s awareness of, and close acquaintance with this Hindu bhakti tradition in Maharashtra seems
evident from his references to the works of various saints associated with that movement. For
instance he recommended the works of Eknath to devotees. However the book by Marianne Warren
published in 1999 [3] seeks to argue that Baba had considerable knowledge of Islamic theology. She
supports this with reference to her translation of the Saibaba Manuscripts which record discourses
that he gave on Islamic history and thought to his devotee Abdulla. On this basis she argues that
though towards the second half of his life Sai Baba had certainly transcended sectarian religious
differences he emerged out of the oral Sufi mystic tradition of the Deccan. However the questions of
the Hindu or the Muslim, the Bhakti or the Sufi origins of Sai Baba become insignificant when one
considers the substance of what he imparted to his devotees.
Sai Baba did not believe in imparting any formal upadesa or instruction. Hence he left no direct
discourse or writings. There are merely short lectures to small groups of devotees that were collected
by his biographers. His method of conveying his teachings was through analogies, similes and
parables, or through the creation of didactic incidents which would enact and illustrate his message.
His main teaching seemed to reconstruct the vedantic idea of oneness of all beings by encouraging
his devotees to demolish the walls of separation between men and between men and other creatures.
His treatment of dogs, goats etc. as creatures who deserved the same love as men is well known
through his leelas or stories recounted by devotees. His basic message seemed to be that God is one
and the ruler of all beings. To attain self realization is to know oneself as part of that oneness. To this
end God’s grace and the grace of the Guru is an essential pre-requisite. Thus in the Shri Sai Satcharita
there is a story which recounts the details of Sai Baba’s discourse to a rich gentleman about the
qualifications for self realization or Brahma gyana. These were as follows: mumukshu or intense
desire to be free; virakti or non attachment with the things of this world and the next; antarmukha or
introversion turning the gaze of one’s senses inward rather than outwards and looking to one’s inner
self; catharsis or eliminating all base ideas and emotions; right conduct or a life of truth, celibacy,
penance and insight prefering shreyas to preyas or the good to the pleasant; control of the mind and
the senses; purification of the mind or performance of the duties of one’s station in a disinterested
manner, destruction of the ego, non attachment etc; the necessity of a guru; and lastly God’s grace
which is the most essential thing. To attain such grace devotion to God and to the guru is important.
However the most important instruction is to see God in all beings. In this context the centrality of
love for all living creatures was an important part of Sai Baba’s teachings.
The annihilation of the sense of individual ego seemed to Baba a critical cause of ignorance and
bondage to the cycle of birth and rebirth. It seems to my mind that Sai Baba’s stress on the surrender
of individual agency to the guru came from the need to discipline man’s huge sense of himself as the
doer and agent. Sai Baba’s insistence on the devotee having faith in the guru and complete surrender
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