So Pendu and Chhagan wrapped a cloth around a stick, soaked it in kerosene and lit it. When they thrust the torch toward the cobra, it began hissing, spitting its venom, and trying to curl further into the corner, but the roof tile soon became so hot the snake fell down. Pendu and Chhagan struck it with a staff, breaking a vertebra. Chhagan then crushed its head. The cobra had landed so close to him that Chhagan afterward fainted (even though he was an expert snake-killer). Despite all this commotion, Pleader did not leave his room nor did he break his silence, obeying the Master to the letter.
News was received at this time that a British freelance journalist named Paul Brunton, 32, was coming from England for Baba's darshan and to interview him.1 Brunton's parents were Jewish and he developed an interest in meditation, mysticism and Theosophy at a young age. He published articles for The Occult Review , through which he likely came in contact with Meredith Starr. He spent two years as a regular visitor to the library of the Secretary of State for India.
Brunton also began a correspondence with K. J. Dastur, who wrote "tremendously enthusiastic letters about his guru," Brunton related, "so much so that I was tempted to go out and investigate the matter for myself."2 Brunton was working as the publicity advisor to three large corporations, but he gave up his occupation to travel throughout India, Egypt, and Asia, investigating the ideas and practices of yogis, sadhus and holy men, and personally living in their retreats, hermitages and ashrams.
Even before meeting Baba, Brunton wrote a laudatory article for the August 1930 issue of The Meher Message titled "The West Needs Meher Baba."3
Nevertheless, Baba had no desire to see Brunton, as he was in seclusion, and remarked to the mandali, "See how maya obstructs my work! I did not wish to see anyone and now my work is being impeded."
Baba instructed Vishnu to write to Adi Sr. in Nasik, informing him to go to Bombay and meet Brunton at the dock, lodge him in a hotel for the night at his own expense, and bring him to Meherabad with Jalbhai. He also instructed Adi that Brunton should bring plenty of fruit with him because no fresh food except milk was available at Meherabad.
Footnotes
- 1.Paul Brunton's given name was Hermann Hirsch. He changed it to Raphael Hurst and was still using that name in 1930.
- 2.The London Forum (The Occult Review), August 1934, "My Tour Among the Yogis," by Paul Brunton, p. 109.
- 3.According to his diaries and the skeptical tone of his description of his meetings with Baba, as related in A Search in Secret India, Brunton never accepted Baba as a real Master. ("Meher Baba, though a good man and one living an ascetic life," he wrote, "is unfortunately suffering from colossal delusions about his own greatness.") Therefore, Brunton's article in The Meher Message was most likely heavily edited by Dastur before publication.