How did Sai Baba's views on fasting contrast with more ascetic spiritual traditions?

Sai Baba's teachings on food stood in stark contrast to many ascetic traditions that promote fasting and physical penance as a means of spiritual purification. While those traditions see deprivation as a path to enlightenment, Baba taught that this approach was ineffective. As stated in Chapter 32, he believed that a hungry stomach and weak senses had no capacity for spirituality. His philosophy was pragmatic: 'first tie bread to the waist' and then contemplate God. He dismissed the idea that God could be found while hungry, a notion he said 'doesn't happen even in imagination.' Unlike traditions that value renunciation through fasting, Baba emphasized that 'moderate eating is truly comfortable' and necessary for devotion, positioning nourishment not as a worldly distraction but as a prerequisite for spiritual practice.