A field account of synchronicity and sacred power at the tomb of the saint Shirdi Sai Baba

Shirdi Sai Baba’s ‘gurusthan’, the neem tree adjacent to his mahasamadhi tomb and the site he buried his austerity power for future generations to access.

At 3:00 AM precisely—that liminal hour when night releases its grip but dawn has not yet declared itself—Mataji and Dr. Nityanandaji approached the gates of what devotees call the samadhi samsthan, the great tomb where the finite form of Shirdi Sai Baba had been surrendered to infinity ninety-seven years prior.

The pilgrimage had been planned with the methodical precision of life long devotees. The previous day, through channels both bureaucratic and divine, they had secured permission to witness the Kaakad Aarathi—that most sacred of pre-dawn devotions when the veil between worlds grows gossamer-thin and the presence of the departed saint manifests with startling clarity during worship of waving lights and holy water.

Their documentation bore official seals, stamps that carried the weight of temporal authority. Yet as they passed through the side gate under the scrutiny of the guard’s flashlight, they understood they were crossing a threshold that no earthly permission could truly authorize.

The guard examined their papers with the solemnity of one checking passports at the border of a separate reality.

They made their way to the VIP entrance, thirty feet from the samadhi itself—a distance that in this charged atmosphere felt simultaneously intimate and infinite. An official, speaking in the hushed tones reserved for sacred spaces, instructed them to wait. “Thirty minutes,” he said, though time in such places follows different laws than those governing ordinary existence.

They seated themselves on a low curb along the main walkway, joining perhaps two dozen other devotees—all Indians, all united in the peculiar fellowship of those who rise before dawn to commune with the ineffable. Behind the samadhi shrine stood the famous neem tree, its branches reaching upward like the arms of a supplicant, its roots drinking from the same earth that held the saint’s mortal remains.

The silence was not merely the absence of sound but a presence unto itself—deep, flowing, alive with possibility.

From the corner of peripheral vision, movement: a security guard walking his appointed rounds, his footsteps marking time in the pre-dawn stillness. He moved with the measured pace of one whose duties have become meditation, each step a prayer in the cathedral of the night.

At the entrance to the neem tree area, he paused. The chain that normally blocked access to the circumambulation path hung locked across the gateway like a boundary between the mundane and the sacred. With deliberate care, the guard withdrew a key, unlocked the chain, and let it fall. What followed was a moment that defied rational explanation yet demanded careful documentation: the guard looked over his shoulder directly at their assembled group.

His gaze was neither casual nor accidental but carried the weight of invitation, as if he were a messenger delivering instructions from an unseen authority. Then he continued his rounds, disappearing into the labyrinth of shadows and stone.

Dr. Nityanandaji observed that despite witnessing this obvious invitation, none of the other devotees moved. They sat as if frozen in place, perhaps too conditioned by rules and protocols to recognize the moment when rules dissolve and grace intervenes.

He began the ancient practice of pradakshina—walking clockwise around the sacred tree while chanting mantras that had been whispered by countless devotees over countless dawns. Each step became a prayer, each breath a offering, each revolution around the tree a spiral journey deeper into mystery.And then the first treasure revealed itself.

Never had he seen such abundance left unclaimed. As he continued his circumambulation, chanting sacred syllables that seemed to resonate with the very stones beneath his feet, he began to collect each leaf with the reverence of touching the feet of the master. Each one was carefully preserved, each one a direct physical link to the unlimited austerity power of the saint who had once walked these very grounds.

When his pradakshina was complete, when the last mantra had dissolved into silence, he counted his treasures: eighteen leaves. Eighteen perfect specimens of grace made manifest in chlorophyll and divine intervention.

The number resonated in his consciousness like a bell struck at the moment of revelation. Eighteen. Ashtadasa. A number that in the sacred mathematics of the tradition carries profound significance.

But the full magnitude of the pattern would reveal itself only when he returned to Mataji’s side and shared his experience. Together, they reached into the small bag they carried—the bag containing the packets of Udi, sacred ash from the eternal fire that burns in the saint’s presence, ash that had been given to them the previous day by the trustees.

The trustee had reached into a large pile of prepared packets and handed them what appeared to be a random selection. “Take these back to America,” they had said with the casual generosity of those who serve as instruments of grace. Returning to their hotel, they had counted the packets given them. Eighteen. Immediately the number had struck them as meaningful and blessing. There are eighteen types of souls in the teachings of the ancient Indian tradition.

Eighteen packets of blessed ash from the ever-burning dhuni, the sacred fire that connects earth to heaven, temporal to eternal, seeker to sought. And now eighteen leaves that had grown on branches fed by roots that drew sustenance from the same hallowed ground where the saint’s body had been laid to rest, where four eternal flames burn on beneath the earth itself.

Dr. Nityanandaji carefully placed each leaf between the pages of a small notebook he carried, each page now sanctified by its precious cargo. When he shared the experience with Mataji, they both recognized immediately what Carl Jung would have called synchronicity but what devotees understand as lila—the divine play that reveals itself to those whose eyes have been opened to see beyond the apparent randomness of existence.

This was no coincidence, no statistical curiosity to be explained away by probability theory. This was Providence documenting itself through the most humble of messengers: fallen leaves and packets of ash, morning guards and unlocked gates, the precise choreography of grace operating through the willing participation of those who recognize the invitation when it comes.

As dawn finally arrived and the official gates opened for the Kaakad Aarathi, as they took their privileged positions just thirty feet from the tomb and watched the sacred rituals unfold, Mataji and Dr. Nityanandaji carried with them the knowledge that they had already received the deepest teaching the sacred samadhi had to offer.

They had learned that grace operates according to its own logic, that the universe speaks in symbols and synchronicities to those who have developed the grammar to read its messages.

They had witnessed the way the sacred penetrates the mundane through the willing participation of guards who unlock gates at precisely the right moment, trees that release their treasures for the worthy, and trustees who count out packets of ash with hands guided by invisible wisdom. In the end, they had come seeking darshan—the blessed sight of the divine—and had discovered that the divine had been seeing them all along, preparing gifts for their arrival, arranging the very elements of earth and air to deliver teachings that no scripture could contain and no rational mind could fully comprehend.

Such is the way of the saints: they teach through presence, communicate through silence, and shower blessings on those who have learned to recognize the sacred hiding in plain sight, disguised as fallen leaves and packets of ash, as unlocked gates and the mathematics of grace made manifest in the most ordinary moments of an extraordinary dawn.