THE GOD-MAN The Life, Journeys and Work of Meher Baba with an ...

22 THE GOD-MANwas to go naked one evening to a tennis court where Europeans were playing, and to behave like amadman. As a consequence he was sent to a lunatic asylum, where he seems to have lived forseventeen years, and even there people constantly called for his blessing. In the last year of his lifethe titular chief of Kampti, near N agpur, paid him a visit. The chief was aware that Tajuddin Babawas a Sadguru, so he persuaded him to leave the asylum and to stay as a guest at his palace inNagpur, where he would not be troubled. Tajuddin accepted the invitation, and passed the remainingmonths of his life in the palace. As usual with such men, he is reputed to have performed a numberof miracles, one of which was to make a dead man alive. He died on 17 August 1925, at the age ofsixty - four. At his funeral thirty thousand people were said to have been present.FOURTH SPIRITUAL MASTERFrom Nagpur Meher returned to Poona. After some weeks, in December, he again left in companywith the same friend to call upon the famous Hazrat Sai Baba, of Shirdi, of whom something shouldbe said. He can be traced only from his arrival at Shirdi, a village in the district of Ahmednagar inthe Deccan, in the 'seventies of last century where he led the life of an itinerant monk. He begged notonly for food but also for oil, for in the mosque he kept a lamp burning. When calm he was as gentleas a lamb, but when roused was liable to be exceedingly fierce. He seldom left the villagethroughout his life, and would sit with his disciples on the ground, smoking a pipe called a chellum,passing it around. When people came to him he would demand money if they appeared to possessany, and give it away to the poor standing near. Thousands of his devotees were Hindus, and, thoughhe was a Muslim, they performed the ceremony of arti 1 in his honour. His greatest and most famousdisciple was Upasni Maharaj, who was a Hindu. It was on 16 October 1918, that he died, at thesupposed age of sixty-four. A stone slab in the mosque used to serve him as a pillow. One day in thatyear it was accidentally broken to pieces. Sai Baba, seeing the pieces, said that the breaking of theslab meant that it was to be the last day of his life: and it proved to be so. He appointed no successor.1 Arti is an act of devotion in which the devotees stand facing the Master: one of them holds a metaltray on which there are flowers, ember sticks, and camphor which is ignited: the tray is wavedbefore the Master, while the devotees chant a hymn in his praise.