Part of the Task
“Death came with a dagger to kill Dada; but I struggled with him and brought him down. Now, Dada is safe.” “Death attempted to snatch Dada Saheb away; but I did not let him,” thus said Sai Baba at Shirdi. Dada Saheb was the name used by Baba to represent Sri G. S. Khaparde, who was for some years living at Shirdi, devotedly serving his own best interests by serving Baba.
Sathya Sai Baba declared on Gurupoornima day, when he quickly shook off the symptoms of paralysis which He had donned, “This body will never be affected by illness; the suffering that you saw was too much for a devotee, so I had to save him by Myself undergoing it.” He wrote to a bhakta [devotee], “This is just My usual leela [divine play], My nature; it is part of the task for which I have come—Sishtarakshana.”
Even while in the “previous sarira” (as Baba refers to the Shirdi Avatar), Baba was, as is now usual and natural with Him, taking upon Himself the illness of devotees. “I will not allow Nandaram to die now,” He declared when that bhakta who was a grocer at Shirdi had a mortal fever.
When plague was raging at Shirdi, young Balwant, the son of Sri Khaparde, had an attack of fever that put the boy’s mother in a great fright. But what was her great surprise when Baba lifted His elbow and showed her a big boil in the pit of the arm, a boil which Balwant had been destined to get, but which changing his destiny, Baba had received on Himself!
Sathya Sai Baba also said that the person whose cerebral thrombosis and heart-attacks He recently took over would not be aware of His grace, because he would be moving about normally. “You are searching from among the devotees some one who had a recent stroke of paralysis of the left side and asking me whether it is this person or that! But you forget that the person from whom I have taken this over is unidentifiable because he has had no illness at all. I have saved him from it,” Sathya Sai Baba said.
Yes, Balwant had no boil; [Shirdi] Baba had taken it over! He escaped with slight fever; that was enough, by Baba’s grace, to satisfy the Law of karma [action], so far as Balwant was concerned. We can understand this point better by studying the working of Baba’s grace as exemplified in His previous appearance. Dr. C. Pillai was suffering great pain from an attack of guinea worms, and he asked Kaka Saheb to approach Baba and pray that He may transfer the pain to the Doctor’s ten future births. Kaka Saheb asked Baba to shower His grace on Pillai. Baba said, “Tell him not to worry. I can reduce the period into one birth, why, even ten days.”
Sathya Sai Baba also has assured very often that His anugraha [power of grace] can overcome the evil influence of all the nine grahas [planets]. Once Shirdi Baba was found wearing two kafnis [robes], one over the other, for a few days. When asked, He said that He had assumed the fever that was intended for Tatya Patil, the son of the woman who was feeding Him, and who always called Baba as `Mama’.
It is only in the context of these incidents, of the leelas of the previous sarira and in this sarira, that one can properly understand the profound significance of the divinely manifested miracle of our Baba on the 5th July last, the eventful Gurupoornima day. May we be all worthy of the Shiva-Shakti who walks as Sathya Sai among us, showering grace on all.
~M. S. Dikshit
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, August 1963
