3.2 - Baba’s Earlier Years at Shirdi

In his earliest days, even up to 1890, Baba had a youthful love of art and music. At nights he often went to the Takia, the resting place for visiting Muslims. There, with his very sweet and appealing voice, He sang songs mostly of Kabir or songs in Persian or Arabic, which the local people could not understand. He tied tinkles to his ankles and danced in joy while he was singing his songs with engrossed devotion. Baba’s attachment was to Allah, or Hari, that is to a Personal God. But the impersonal Nirakara, whom the mystics including Kabir sang in their songs, had also seized his heart. Later in his older age, He mentioned several times, Sakara must necessarily have a strong appeal to youth as it has to the mass of mankind and he never lost sight of the Sakara or Personal God in his worship and songs. Generally speaking his worship was mostly mental and not through external forms. He seldom performed the five Namazes, never bending on the knees and rising, as most Muslims do. He was a skillful man in concentration and he had reached the perfection of Manolaya on the Atman, the merger of the self in the Self. That is why he could say, “Maim Allah Hum. I am God.” His worship never took him away from his social contacts with his thought and activity was service, absolutely selfless service.