My visit to Shirdi Saibaba Temple in north India

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Hello friends, as I had said earlier, I will be going on a pilgrimage to north India, with my family. The first was ‘Shirdi Saibaba Temple’. This is located at Shirdi, Maharashtra, India and it attracts millions of devotees of all religions, castes and creed who come to pay homage to Shri Sai Baba. The temple is a beautiful shrine that was built over the Samadhi of Shri Sai Baba. There is a story about SAI BABA. It says, long time ago, at the beginning of eighteenth century a young bearded man with sparkling eyes took shelter in a mosque, in Shirdi Village. Nobody knew from where this stranger had come who hardly spoke a word and stayed there. Gradually the curious villagers started offering food to the man, but he never asked anything from them. Sometimes he shared his food with the animals. His simple language of expression and his special power of solving the problems of poor needy and destitute soon made this less known fakir, known as Shri Sai Baba. As the days passed, devotees started streaming into Shirdi in ever growing numbers. The village was fast becoming a centre of pilgrimage. As gifts and presentations flowed in, the pomp and ceremony of Sai worship were evolving. Everyday Sai Baba would be a pauper having distributed all among the needy and the poor. People also realized that this "Baba" was no ordinary person but a person with extraordinary godly powers. Such powers are not known or present in normal human beings. Baba preached his principle of love and faith in humanity to all his disciples. He always felt anguished over the fact that all those who came to him were more for their own personal problems and not for attaining the ultimate goal of reaching God which he felt could be attained only by true servicing of humanity. Sai baba strongly believed in uniformity of religion and he never distinguished anyone on the basis of caste, creed or religion. He always made it a point not to return empty handed those who had come to him in their hour of need and grief. He performed miracles to alleviate the suffering of poor people. On one occasion he restored the eyes of a blind elderly and in another occasion he lighted a lantern with water when there was no oil to burn it. As all good things have to end ultimately "Baba" also left his body on his own will on 15th Oct. 1918, leaving his millions of believers and followers crying. His body was laid in the Samadhi Mandir called "Booty", which he had asked his disciple to built before his death. This Omnipresent and Omniscient Sri Sai Baba who left his mortal body in 1918, is the living spiritual force that is drawing people from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, into his fold, today. Sri Sai Baba lived, acted and behaved as only a "God descended on Earth" can. He came to serve mankind, to free them from the clutches of fear. Amazingly, there are a phenomenally large number of Instances in which Sai Baba has been literally physically appearing before his devotees, even decades after his passing out of the physical body. Sai Baba is constantly and simultaneously proving that he is alive in spirit and responds to our sincere prayers. Baba assured his devotees by his saying "I am at Shirdi and everywhere. Whatever you do, wherever you may be, ever bear this in mind, that I am always aware of everything". Sai Baba does not belong to any single tradition but to all mankind on the path of goodness, love and understanding We travelled from Hyderabad to Nagarsol by train, from Nagasol to Shirdi by hired taxi. We first moved to Shirdi Sai Sasthan. There was too much rush as it was weekend. After waiting for 7 hours in a queue we could get accommodation in a 6 bedded room for just 350 rupees for 48 hours. We could get breakfast for just three rupees, vegetarian food in day time and night for 10 rupees (5 for children), tea, coffee for just one rupee. There are tons of hotels in this city but very costly, for 2 bedded room 1500 was minimum charge for 24 hours, breakfast was 50 rupees, tea coffee 5--- 10 rupees. JUST COMPARE We visited the temple the next morning after bath etc. every day 50, 000+ visitors visit the place, there was big queue, so we purchased VIP tickets and reach near the statue in about one hour. I got the greatest joy of my life, when my twin grandsons were laid at His feet for few seconds. My son has faith; he got them as blessings from Sai Baba. Tears came out from his eyes in emotion. Have you any similar story to share? Hope the details I gave about this place will be helpful to visitors from India and abroad. NOTE – I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT ‘SATYA SAI BABA’You can see a video of worship here---- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3388136045302108037# Professor