Masters

Who is Shirdi Sai Baba?

Whose marble statue is that in the temple?

Bas told me that visitors keep asking questions about the marble statue that has such a prominent place in the middle of the altar. He explains it to them that it is Shirdi Sai Baba, an Indian saint who died in 1918. A verbal explanation alone cannot provide that much clarity; it may be the statue of a saint, but what is his significance in the temple, and why do we cover him in a ceremonial cloth and hold a ritual for him every Thursday? Bas requested me to write something on this, because of my close involvement in ensuring that that statue is there now.

To introduce myself first: my name is Koen van Velzen, and I am Bas’ brother. The mid-1980s was when we, as a family, had first heard about Sri Sathya Sai Baba, a saint from South India (1926-2011). A man of short stature with a lot of curly hair and a heart full of love. Our parents went to South India, and we followed later, with some hesitation. Sri Sathya Sai Baba told us he was the reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi, who lived in the State of Maharashtra from about 1836 to 1918. From what little I knew of Shirdi Sai Baba, he was an extremely unpredictable man, who, if need be, set his followers straight with a beating. That did not really invite me to delve into him.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s ashram was overwhelmingly large and crowded, and direct contact with Sai Baba was almost impossible to get; you could not count on getting a conversation with him. What I did not know then, and what became clear to me only around 2021, is that these Great Masters are not alone. The Avatars and enlightened Masters are all interconnected and work as one pure consciousness.

In 1996, Bas (and the rest of the family shortly after) got to know Swami Gopala Krishna (1952-2020). We experienced in him the same love and light that we had felt in Sri Sathya Sai Baba. No wonder, because it was the same flow –Sri Sathya Sai Baba as the sun and Gopal Baba as one of the rays. Through him, our longing for personal contact, personal conversations finally got fulfilled. Only about this can we fill books and this has been done; you can buy these books in the temple. It was a time full of miracles, transformation and materialisations of objects from nowhere.

Now, besides being a bulb grower, our father was also a sculptor. There are several bronze sculptures by him in Onderdijk and the surrounding areas. So, it is not surprising that after several wanderings, I became a sculptor myself, but mainly in stone. In 1997, I had made a sculpture of the Indian hero Arjuna from the epic poem the Mahabharata. Bas had shown a picture of it to Swami Gopala Krishna, who responded by saying that I should make a marble statue of Shirdi Sai Baba, 1 metre high.

There was panic in the tent. It is nice when you can sculpt a fantasy puppet as a novice sculptor, but a similar portrait of a saint, in marble no less, that is an entirely different matter. I knew I was definitely not ready for that. I did not have enough experience in sculpting, design, anatomy, fabric expression, and folding, in expression… I decided to work on myself as a sculptor before starting this project. I was an apprentice to a restoration sculptor, and I learnt to carve statues, ornaments and reliefs for churches, castles and other monuments. It also involved working on my inner growth as a human being.

When I got my first computer in 2003, I thought of putting it to good use. This called for a spiritual project, I thought. All this time, Swami Gopala Krishna’s commission for the marble statue had not been forgotten. But then, who exactly was this Shirdi Sai Baba?

The most important book about him is the Sri Sai Satcharitra. It has been said that you would be blessed by him with a dream or vision if you read this book in seven days. Perhaps I should do that in preparation? But that was actually a very meagre preparation for such a vision. And that little red book is not that thick. So I decided to translate that book on my new computer. The only problem was that I did not have the book myself. But I asked my parents if they could bring it from India. However, they came back with a completely different book, which contained even more stories.

Meanwhile, the original book could also be found online, and I decided to put both books together in my translation. That also turned out to be not so easy, because there were a lot of ambiguities and Indian words in it, and because, as with Tolstoy, some characters had as many as six different names. To make it even more confusing, all the men’s names ended in Saheb.

The book finally got a first edition in 2004 and a second, revised edition in 2012: Seven Days of Shirdi Sai. It has become a thick pill. You can buy it at the temple. After finishing that work, I began to feel ready to start sculpting, too. To me, Shirdi Sai Baba had changed from an unpredictable and inimitable person into a loving teacher, who was focused, in every way, only on the welfare of his devotees. Where the miracle stories first led to alienation and bewilderment, they now became for me a sign of his great power of protection and closeness. By now, I was also no longer an apprentice sculptor, and I felt I could bring this project to fruition.

We bought a block of marble and decided to use the beautiful statue that had been worshipped in the temple all these years as a model. It would be too much to tell here now how the sculpting went, but you can read about it on sculptureblog.co.uk. The statue was given its place in the temple and was consecrated and given life by Swami Gopala Krishna in person in 2014.

Shirdi Sai Baba is a very important Master from the Dattatreya lineage. An avatar (incarnation) of Shiva, but also a very simple man, he lived his entire life in a dilapidated mosque, and had no possessions and begged his food from a few houses every day. But there are also stories about him appearing in far-off places, saving followers, putting out fires, healing the sick and solving big problems. That he knew people from the very first meeting and knew details about them that they themselves had already forgotten. No one knew whether he was Muslim or Hindu, where he came from and who had been his teacher. Later, other saints declared that he was the greatest of all who came to earth to lead humanity on the right path back to the light.

All these Masters are connected. There is also a clear line running from the Masters long before him to Shirdi Sai, Sathya Sai, Gopal Baba, Mohanji and many other Masters you may not yet know. The ground current of this lineage of Dattatreya is love for human beings and that these Masters elevate followers to higher consciousness even without them noticing. They accelerate their karma, solve obstacles, set examples and do not need anything for themselves. They are happy if you take the message and apply it in your own life. Wealth comes and goes, fame comes and goes, but it does not affect them; it has no value to them. For them, intense inner happiness is the true wealth, and money is nothing but bondage.

Meanwhile, in India, Shirdi Sai is one of the most famous saints, and his temples are everywhere. Since Shirdi Sai Baba is such an important Master, he is also honoured in our temple with a sanctum. On Thursdays, his image is washed and draped with a ceremonial cloth. He is robed because it is not an image, but a living presence of the Master himself, and if you manage to open up to it enough, you can experience it. A strong power emanates from the image ever since the initiation. It is Consciousness expressing itself here through this picture. A picture helps you remember what your friend or loved one looks like, and so the picture helps you meditate on the energy of Shirdi Sai Baba. But there is also the presence of this same energy to give you a response. This inner contact helps you tune into pure intention and higher energy. I invite you to try making contact with this, and if you want to know more, the book ‘Seven Days of Shirdi Sai’ is a good way to get to know him more personally.

Koen van Velzen