Joshua David Stone - The Ascended Masters Light the Way: Beacons of Ascension

Sathya Sai Baba is widely known across the world today as the extraordinary avatar he is, but not very many people know about his past life as Shirdi Sai Baba when his spiritual powers and love were as extraordinary as they are in his current incarnation. The present-day Sathya Sai Baba has said that in his past life as Shirdi Sai Baba he was an avatar who embodied the Shiva energy; in this present life he is embodying the Shiva and Shakti (father and mother) energies; in his next incarnation, which will complete the triple avatarship, he will embody just the Shakti energy.

In reading about the life of Shirdi Sai Baba, you will experience the awesome power of a master who is one with the Eternal Self. After experiencing that, I dont think any persons understanding of life can ever again be the same. Hold on to your seatbelts, for you are about to experience the awesome love and power of Shirdi Sai Baba.

Sai Baba first appeared in the small town of Shirdi in India in 1872 as a boy of sixteen. The people in the town considered him a fakir, a Moslem holy man with no worldly cares or attachments. After wandering for a short time, he decided to spend the rest of his life in the small town of Shirdi.

Early on, a holy man passed through the town and said about Shirdi Sai Baba, Watch that young fakir. Hes a jewel on a dunghill. Little did the holy man or the people of Shirdi know what a jewel he was! Shirdi Sai Baba was to spend the next forty-six years, until his death in 1918, in this town, and as his renown grew, more and more people from all over India flocked to see this avatar.

As a very young boy he had left home to follow a Moslem fakir who became his guru. When that fakir died he had joined a Hindu guru whom he called Venkusa. It was in about 1900 that Sai Babas fame began to spread throughout India. There are some wonderful stories about the events in this saints life.

One time some visitors to Sai Baba had to catch a night train back to Bombay, but there was a raging thunderstorm. Sai Baba looked up at the sky and said, Hey, enough of that! Stop it now! My children have to go back. The storm stopped.

On another occasion a husband and wife had gone to see Shirdi Sai Baba, but while there, the wife came down with cholera. The doctors in the town said the case was hopeless and that she would die. Shirdi Sai Baba gave her some virbhuti (sacred ash) to eat. Within thirty minutes she was doing better, and in a short time she was completely healed.

Another time a Hindu devotee was standing outside of Shirdi Sai Babas mosque but wouldnt go in because he worshiped only Rama. He told his friends he would not bow down before Shirdi Sai Baba for this reason. All of a sudden, he went rushing inside and prostrated himself before Shirdi Sai Baba. When asked why he had changed his mind, he said that hed seen Sai Baba standing there in the form of Sri Rama.

The interesting thing about Shirdi Sai Baba was that Moslems, Hindus, and persons of all other religions revered him and considered him their guru. That was unheard of at the time. Shirdi Sai Baba performed Moslem practices and Hindu practices, so no one knew which religion he identified with. Shirdi Sai Baba once referred to himself as a reincarnation of Kabir, the poet-saint of the fifteenth century who also embraced both Moslem and Hindu disciples. He convinced everyone that he was fully identified with whichever particular diety a given person warshiped.