4.4 - Worship

In the case of Sai Baba, his perfect purity, asceticism, general benevolence, harmlessness, non attachment, and other virtues evoked the respect of the saints, Devadas, Janakidas, Ganagir, Anadhanath and Bidkar, who met him, and also of serious and noble minded men like Mahlsapathy and his friends Apppa Bhil and Tukaram Darji. His nature is well described as attached and happily roaming about fearlessly and as a help to those in suffering and misery. So Mahlsapathy and his friends regarded Baba as a saint, an Acharya or Guru Deva, long before he exhibited any siddhi power.

It was the incident, which turned water into oil that provoked worship, so far as the general mass was concerned. And the worship took the usual form of offering flowers, fruits and scents. Baba protested and tried to discourage these worshippers. He asked them to go to their customary objects of worship such as the images they had in their temples and homes. But they did not listen. They felt that he was a saint. The learned admitted Saints are God; God is a saint. The Villagers told him that Baba is a talking and walking God. The persistence of the mass idea that his siddhis were evidence of divine power, and therefore marked him out as a Guru Deva for worship. These facts could not be disputed or resisted.

Sri Upasani Baba put it in these words, ”I bow to Sainath, the SadGuru, who reveals his divine nature through numerous unheard of and inscrutable lilas, who is free from egotism and has attained Self- Realization”.

So, alike in the case of the highly learned pandit, Sri Upasani Baba, as in the case of the uneducated rustics, the ladies of Shirdi, the chamatkars or lilas are the first prompters to worship Sai Baba as a manifestation of divinity. That is how worship begins and grows.