Some biographers claim that his Muslim adoptive parents did not initiate him into Islam, which does not sound very convincing. There are suggestions that from childhood he studied with a Hindu guru, whose name was Venkusa. Being brought up in both the Islamic and Hindu environment, Shirdi Sai Baba was well aware of the religious traditions of both Islam and Hinduism.
Shirdi Sai Baba was well versed in the esoteric aspects of Islam and Hinduism, he also knew the philosophical teachings of Zoroastrianism. The most important foundation of his philosophical teaching was the idea of the unity of all religions. Shirdi Sai Baba preached that all religions lead to the same truth.
This idea may seem very obvious to modern people of the 21>st century, but in the 19>th century this approach was quite revolutionary. Among his followers, first of all, were Muslims and Hindus, as well as representatives of Zoroastrianism and other religions.
At a young age, he came to the small town of Shirdi in western India, where he lived almost all his life. That is why they began to call him Shirdi Sai Baba. Shirdi Sai Baba left his body on October 15, 1918.
At the end of his life, he predicted that in eight years he would be reincarnated in southern India as Sathya Sai Baba, which happened in 1926. We know that Shirdi Sai Baba only predicted his next incarnation and did not mention anything about who he would incarnate in through life.
Thus, Shirdi Sai Baba predicted his incarnation in the 20>th century as Sathya Sai Baba and did not say anything about his incarnation in the 21>st century as Prema Sai Baba.
There is no need to give all the details of the amazing life of Sathya Sai Baba, as many books and articles have been written about this, with a detailed description of his biography, philosophical teachings, and miracles. We will only analyze those events that are relevant to his predictions about the next incarnation as Prema Sai Baba.
Sathya Sai Baba was born on November 23, 1926, in southern India on the banks of the Chitravati River, in the small village of Puttaparthi. His parents belonged to the Hindu religion.
The Sai Boy proclaimed himself the next incarnation of Sai Baba at the age of thirteen on May 23, 1940. A little bit later, he left his parents' house and moved to an abandoned temple of Krishna and began his activity as a spiritual mentor.