He did not explain his birth or origins; he never even gave his own name.
When the mysterious, nameless young man first appeared in Shirdi, he was dressed like an athlete and had long hair flowing all the way down his back. For three years he spent almost all his time, day and night, sitting motionless under a Neem tree practicing meditation. He didn’t mind heat or cold, and went several days without even drinking water or eating anything. People called him a madman and some children threw stones at him.
The village chief, named Mahalsapati Chimanji Nagare, was also the priest of the village’s temple to its Gramadevata (village deity), Khandoba. A woman named Bayajabai (sometimes spelled Bayijabai) occasionally asked if the boy was okay, and gradually she started bringing water and food to him. He began treating her as his mother. Then, one day Khandoba Devata possessed Mahalsapati and through him said: “There is a holy spirit here” and pointed toward the boy under the Neem tree. After that, Mahalsapati as well as two other spiritually inclined villagers, named Appa Jogle and Kashinatha, began visiting the boy regularly. These four - Bayajabai, Mahalsapati, Appa Jogle, and Kashinatha - are the only ones with whom he interacted at all during these three years, and even this was minimal. They began to venerate him as a holy man.
The boy pointed towards the Neem tree and asked them to dig into its roots. The three villagers began digging, and soon uncovered a stone slab on which were oil lamps miraculously glowing as if burning, though there was no oil! They also found a wooden table, on which was a vessel in the shape of a cow’s mouth.
The boy said, “This is the sacred place where my Guruji did Tapas.” He told them instead of venerating him, to instead venerate the Neem tree and never harm it.
Then he left Shirdi for one year. During this year he worked as a weaver and met with many saints and fakirs. This year was 1857, during the great Indian Rebellion, and he joined the army of the famous Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi and fought with them.
Then he returned to Shirdi and went back to living under his Neem tree. Upon his return, Mahalsapati took to calling him Sai, a Persian word meaning a spiritual mendicant but also used to refer to the Supreme Being; this word was mostly used by Muslims but evidently Mahalsapati found it fitting. Eventually the villagers took to calling him Sai Baba (Baba meaning “father” and being a common name for male sagely figures). This is the only name he was ever known by; no one ever had any idea what name his unknown parents (birth or adopted) might have given him.
Shortly after Sai Baba’s return to Shirdi he engaged in a wrestling match with a wrestler named Mohiddin Tamboli. Sai Baba lost and was forced to submit. He seemed to take this defeat very seriously; after it he cut off his long hair, shaved his head and stopped dressing like an athlete, and completely and permanently changed his outfit. From then on he only ever wore a one-piece knee-length kafni robe and a cloth cap, which was typical Sufi clothing. Because of this, he looked like a Muslim fakir to most people.
For another four to five years Sai Baba lived under the Neem tree, meditating for long hours. Even when not meditating, his manner was withdrawn and uncommunicative. He often went on long wanderings in the jungle around the village.
Finally some villagers persuaded Sai Baba to take up residence in an old abandoned mosque on one edge of the village, beside a flowing stream named Lendi. Sai Baba moved into the empty mosque and gave it the name Dvarakamai, a distinctly Hindu name. Therein he lit and maintained a Dhuni, the sacred fire of Hindu Sadhus - though notably some Sufi orders also follow this practice.
Each day he would come into the village and beg for alms to survive, making his rounds with his begging bowl door to door, in the ancient tradition of Hindu Sannyasins. All his life he remained poor, dressing in torn clothes and so on, even when people offered him finer things. He began spending more and more time singing spiritual songs, and dancing. He practiced both Hindu and Muslim ceremonies, and participated in all religious festivals held in Shirdi. He did not engage in regular prayers like an observant Muslim, but he occasionally recited the Al-Fatiha, mainly when other Muslims were chanting it at festival times. He enjoyed listening to mawlid and qawwali accompanied by the tabla and sarangi.
It soon became known that travelers passing through Shirdi village could stay in the old mosque with Sai Baba and he would receive them as welcome guests. He began cooking and sharing food with his guests. To his visitors he also began sharing spiritual teachings, often in a cryptic manner using many paradoxical parables, symbols, and allegories, and drawing words and figures from both Hindu traditions and Islam. When a guest was departing, he gave them some sacred ash from his Dhuni. More and more travelers began reporting that they experienced healings from this ash, and/or that it protected them from bad fortune. Thus not only travelers, but sick people from Shirdi village began visiting him for healings, and he soon became the village healer.
Sai Baba also tended a garden outside Dvarakamai, beside the Lendi stream; this garden came to be called Lendi Baug or “Lendi Garden” after the stream.
As for his spiritual teachings:
- He often said “Allah Malik” (God is King) and “Sabka Malik Ek” (One God governs all). He used “Allah” and “Ishwar” as synonyms.
- He advised perfect loyalty and faith in the power and blessings of Allah Malik.
- He taught a moral code of: loving every living being without any discrimination, forgiveness, helping others, generous and munificent charity without extravagance, contentment regardless of the situation, finding happiness in sharing with others, inner peace, cultivating faith and patience for the results of one’s Karma, and devotion to the Supreme Being and the Guru.
- “Do not be obsessed by egotism, imagining that you are the cause of action; everything is due to the Supreme Being.”
- He taught that it is important to surrender to the true Satguru or Murshid, who, having trod the path to Divine Consciousness, will lead the disciple through the jungle of spiritual training. He said that true devotees always meditate upon the Satguru with love and surrender themselves completely to him.
- He had great empathy for the poor and sick.
- “Whatever creature comes to you, human or otherwise, treat it with consideration… Unless there is some relationship or connection, nobody goes anywhere. If any creature comes to you for help, do not discourteously drive them away, but receive them well and treat them with due respect. Shri Hari will certainly be pleased if you give water to the thirsty, bread to the hungry, clothes to the naked, and your verandah to strangers for sitting and resting. If anybody wants any money from you and you are not inclined to give, do not give, but do not bark at him like a dog."
- “The Supreme Being is not so far away. He is not in the heavens above, nor in hell below. He is always near you.”
- He taught the importance of realization of the self. “When you see with your inner eye, then you realize that you are the Supreme Being and not different from Him.” “See the Divine in the human being.”
- He emphasized the unity of all humankind. “There is a wall of separation between oneself and others and between you and me. Destroy this wall!”
- “You need not go anywhere in search of Me. Barring your name and form, there exists in you, as well as in all beings, a sense of Being or Consciousness of Existence. That is ‘Me’. Knowing this, you see Me inside yourself, and in all beings. If you practice this, you will realize all-pervasiveness and thus be as one with Me.”
- He taught that the universe was without beginning or end, saying, “What is new in the world? Nothing. What is old in the world? Nothing. Everything has always been and will always be.”
- He advised people to lead an ordinary life. “What is our duty? To behave properly. That is enough.”
- He taught all his visitors that they should practice the unbroken remembrance of the Divine Name. This is both a Hindu and a Muslim practice, but he referred to it by the Muslim term dhikr. The names of Krishna and Rama were especially sacred to him.
- He criticized love towards perishable things, and also atheism. He emphasized the importance of performing one’s duties without attachment to earthly matters.
- To Hindu visitors he recommended reading the Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita, and Yoga Vashishtha, and to Muslim visitors he recommended reading the Quran.
- He demonstrated substantial knowledge of the Puranas, the Bhagavad Gita, and various branches of Hindu thought. He explained the meaning of these Hindu sources in the spirit of Advaita Vedanta, with a strong emphasis on the Bhakti Marga. He often talked about various Hindu Devatas and quoted from Hindu texts from memory, occasionally commenting on passages from the Bhagavad Gita, the Isha Upanishad, and others.
- With Muslim visitors he talked of Allah and the Quran. He quoted Persian Sufi verses more often than from the Quran itself. He often said, “Let us be content with what we have, and submit our will to Allah,” and said that he too was but a devotee of Allah, “a humble fakir with two arms and two legs.” “To the Supreme Being be the praise,” he said; “I am only the slave of the Supreme.”
- He condemned discrimination based on religion or caste, and disdained the rigid orthodox formalism that either Hinduism, Islam, or Christianity could fall into.
- One of his most simple, practical pieces of advice was, “Choose friends who will stick to you till the end, through thick and thin.”
- He said not to slander anyone. He advised, “If you cannot endure abuse from another, just say a simple word or two, or else leave,” rather than getting into a fight or retaliating in kind.
- “If you are wealthy, be humble. Plants bend when they bear fruit.”
- He referred to several saints as “my brothers”, especially the disciples of Swami Samartha of Akkalkot.
Until the year 1900, Sai Baba’s followers were still only a small group of Shirdi villagers and a few people from elsewhere.
But over the years, more and more people - Hindus and Muslims alike - wished to become Sai Baba’s disciples. He never took anyone as a formal disciple, and though people requested Diksha from him, he never gave Diksha to anyone. But many people became his disciples in an informal sense, choosing to spend a lot of time around him and practice his teachings. His best-known such disciples were Mahalsapati Chimanji Nagare, Bayajabai, Upasani Baba Maharaj of Sakori, Nana Saheb Chandorkar, Ganapath Rao Sahasrabuddhe, Tatya Kote Patil, Maija Mai Kote Patil, Haji Abdul Baba (a Muslim), Madhav Rao Deshpande (aka Shama), Govindrao Raghunath Dabholkar, Radhakrishna Mai, Kakasaheb Dixit, Hemadpant, Bhuti, Das Ganu, Lakshmi Bai, Nanavali, Sapatanekar, and B.V. Narashima Swamiji.
More and more people claimed that they witnessed Sai Baba perform miracles, such as levitation, bilocation, materialization of physical items, reading minds, removing his own intestines and putting them back in, and more - people told hundreds of such stories. Many people said that Sai Baba came to them in dreams and gave them advice.
Many of his Hindu devotees came to believe that he was an Avatar of Dattatreya. Some said that he gave them Darshan, taking on the forms of Rama or Krishna before their eyes and so on. Whenever anyone pressed Sai Baba on whether he was a Hindu or a Muslim, he refused to identify himself with either to the exclusion of the other.
Several major Hindu saints of the time revered Sai Baba, including Shri Bidkar Maharaj, Gangagiri Maharaj, Janakidas Maharaj, Sati Godavari Mataji, Anandanath of Yewala, Vasudevananda Saraswati (aka Tembye Swami), and a group of Shaiva Yogis known as the Nath-Panchayat. Shri Bidkar Maharaj met Sai Baba in 1873 and bestowed the title of Jagadguru upon him.
In 1910, Sai Baba’s fame began to spread in Mumbai, where rumors spread that he was a miracle-working saint; some even said he was an Avatar. Many people began coming from Mumbai to visit him. He even came to have enough devotees that they built a temple to him in a different town for those who could not make the journey all the way to Shirdi to see him in person.
In his later years, Parsis and Christians also started coming to visit him. Some prominent Parsis revered him, more than any other non-Zoroastrian, such as Nanabhoy Palkhivala, Farhaad Panthaky, and Homi Bhabha.
In August of 1918, Sai Baba announced that he would soon be leaving his mortal body. In late September he developed a high fever and stopped eating. He continued to meet visitors, and asked his disciples to recite sacred texts to him.
In his last days, he finally revealed the secret of his own origins: he said that he was born to a Hindu Brahmin couple (he did not specify exactly where or which community), but when he was five years old they gave him in adoption to a Sufi fakir.
He died on October 15th, on the day of Vijayadashami. He did not appoint any heir, and had no successor. His body was entombed in a Mahasamadhi shrine in Shirdi, which today is one of India’s most popular temples. The first caretaker of this shrine was his main Muslim disciple Abdul Baba. At first, many Muslims as well as Hindus visited this temple on pilgrimage. Since the 1980s, Muslims have greatly reduced visiting this temple and it is now mostly a Hindu place of pilgrimage, though visitors of all religions remain welcome.