MINOR INCARNATION

 
Baba once said that each Incarnation of Avatar is preceded by a minor incarnation which prepares the way for his Advent.

This time it was the warrior-king Shivaji in the seventeenth century who, with his sword, swept clean of an oppressive Mohammedan rule the land where Avatar was to take birth, and which would become the hub of the wheel of his world work. Shivaji's sweep extended from Daman and Karwar on the sea coast to Nagpur, with Poona, then a village, becoming his capital.

Incessant wars waged with mercenary armies had laid waste the countryside; the peasantry was hunted down, the women and children and the livestock carried off and the crops burnt. The peasants who escaped took to banditry. The commander of the last army to pass through Poona had had all its walls pulled down and the area ploughed over with a team of asses to show his contempt for the people. But Shivaji's steward Dadaji Kondadev came and ploughed it with a gold plough drawn by pure white oxen, and gradually the men came back out of the forests and hills, rebuilt their houses and sowed their crops again; and commerce and learning flourished and it became a great city.

His Guru was Ramdas, one of the five Perfect Masters at that time, and he deeply loved the poems of Tukaram, who was another of the Five. His feats and exploits became legendary and he is still loved and revered by the people in that area today.

It was within this Sweep that the five Men-God of our time took up their stations for the bringing down of God-Man into the world again.

Baba's disciples were astonished to hear that their Master had once been Shivaji, so he showed himself to them in Shivaji's likeness and they all were convinced.