By the grace of Sai Baba, I had the privilege of going through the manuscript of the new book MAY I ANSWER. The questions asked under 22 broad themes centre around the Sadguru Shri Sai Baba. The enquiries appear to be very spontaneous and natural coming from people who are a part of the ever-increasing Sai following. The answers given by Shri C.B. Satpathy have been equally spontaneous and natural. A very ardent devotee of Shri Shirdi Sai Baba, Shri Satpathy has been working unceasingly for last 18 years, trying to bring Sai teachings to the people with utmost clarity and simplicity.
The answers on various topics have been given with as much scientific and rational explanation as possible keeping in view the thought processes of the new generation of young people in different parts of the world. In this process, however, emotive contents have not been neglected. I think that such a natural style of answering is possible only from an Ankit Santan (chosen child) of Sai Baba. It is as if the Sadguru (Perfect Master), Shri Shirdi Sai Baba is responding to questions from devotees and persons with a spiritual quest.
I have thoroughly enjoyed going through the manuscript and felt spiritual exhilaration. I hope the readers of the publication will be blessed by Shri Sai Baba to follow the spiritual path shown by Him.
The spread of the name and fame of Shri Sai Baba of Shirdi within the last two decades is a phenomenon by itself. From 1999 onwards a number of websites were created in the name of Baba, the world over. One of the main sites was created by Shri Mukund Raj, a prominent Sai devotee from Chicago, U.S. I visited Chicago to inaugurate the Sai Utsav-2000 in the month of November. There was a large conglomeration of Sai devotees and others, more than two thousand in number, including hundreds of families from U.S., Canada, UK and some other Latin American countries. By the grace of Baba, I addressed the huge gathering of Sai devotees from various countries and followers of other paths and religions on the life and preachings of Baba for three days. This event created an effective world forum of Sai devotees to share their thoughts on Shri Sai Baba of Shirdi and other related matters. It was later followed by similar Sai Utsav events at Sydney, Australia during winter in 2001 and at Johannesburg and Nairobi in Africa during winter of 2003.
Following these world Sai conferences I started receiving a large number of questions regarding Sai Baba of Shirdi through the websites, not only from His devotees but also from people with a religious bent of mind. They were too numerous to answer but nevertheless I tried to satisfy the devotees considering it to be a job done in the service of Baba. Some of the questions were limited to the specific thoughts of a devotee but a majority of them were generic in nature. Given this situation, it was felt necessary to bring out a publication in the form of a compendium of these questions and answers.
Messages circulated on various occasions between 2004 and 2009 through different magazines and websites are also compiled herewith.
This book has been substantially amended and updated with lots of new questions that the devotees have asked and my answers thereof. The name and fame of Shri Shirdi Sai Baba has expanded immensely during the last decade. More than a thousand temples have come up in His name in India and abroad. Shri Shirdi Sai Baba has become a household name in India. The devotees' urge to know more and more about the Master is clearly discernable from the never-ending series of questions they put through different mediums. I hope that my answers to their queries will benefit them.
By this time, an ardent Sai devotee named Shri Ravi Mehra had shifted to U.S.A. from Noida on a job. Ravi used to visit me frequently when he was in India and suggested that we should bring this out as an in-house publication. An in house publication captioned "May I answer" was published in the year 2001 A.D.
I thank Mukund Raj and Ravi Mehra for the immense help they have rendered to me in publication of this book. I thank Ms Shipra Shukla for assisting me painstakingly in the compilation and correction of the manuscript. My special thanks to Shri A. R. Nanda, IAS (Retd), an ardent Sai devotee, for manuscript corrections and writing a foreword to this book. At the end I thank Shri S. K. Ghai of Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd. for the publication of this book.
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