“Give a black dog, some…in front of the Lakshmi temple.”

Om Sathguru Sri Seshadri Swamigal Thiruvadikkae

Sri Sai Baba of Shirdi

“Give a black dog, some…in front of the Lakshmi temple.”

Bala Ganpat Shimpi suffered much from a malignant type of malaria. He tried all sorts of medicines, but in vain. The fever did not abate a jot and so, he ran to Shirdi and fell at Baba’s feet. Baba gave him a strange recipe.

“Give a black dog some morsels of rice mixed with curd in front of the Lakshmi temple!”

Bala did not know how to execute this recipe but no sooner he went home, then, he found rice and curd. After mixing them together, he brought the mixture near the Lakshmi temple, when he found a black dog waving its tail. He placed the curd and rice before the dog. The dog ate it and, wondrously, Bala got rid of his malaria!

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“Guru is all the Gods,” – Shirdi Sri Sai Baba

Om Sathguru Sri Seshadri Swamigal Thiruvadikkae

The Chandogyopanishad lays down that a spiritual aspirant must approach a self- realized Guru in a proper manner. Even when the need to seek a perfect master (Sathpurushas – SathGuru) is accepted, it is no easy matter to recognize whom, among the galaxy of religious personalities, is indeed the perfect one. For, as in all other matters, the fakes who claim realization, which they do not have, are legion.

A typical saint of the Guru – tradition, Sri Sai Baba of Shirdi says,

“Guru is all the Gods,”

and addressing those who wished to be accepted as his chelas, he said,

“It is not the Guru that makes himself your Guru. It is you who must regard him as your Guru, i.e. place faith in him and meditate on him.”

To those who had accepted Him as the object of their contemplation, He said,

“Sai Baba does not mean this body of five and a half feet. He who thinks that Sai Baba is at Shirdi only has not seen Sai Baba at all.”

It may even be said that for most people, the devout study of the life and teaching of a saint is more useful than the immediate presence of a saint. For human nature being what it is, even though a seeker stays with a sage, he comes to focus his attention on the physical frame of the sage than on His state of realization, which is the essence of it all. This is the reason why devotional reading of holy biographies came to enjoin as a form of spiritual endeavour in itself.

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