Baba smiled and gestured, "Yes, I have heard of some of them."
"How do you explain it?" Brunton asked.
Baba replied, "If they are honest, then they are simply deluded. If they are dishonest, then they are deceiving others and they will have to suffer for that. Do not worry about it. All these men are unconsciously helping to do my work. I know who I am. When the time comes for me to fulfill my mission, the world will also know who I am."
Brunton was invited to stay with the men at the ashram in Nasik. Brunton had written to Baba from Calcutta, "I am looking forward in the near future to receiving spiritual enlightenment at your hands; I need it if I am to go back to the West with any message for their materialistic minds." During his weeklong stay, however, Baba usually kept aloof from him. Although Brunton questioned the Master every day, Baba was cool in his reception and their meetings were deliberately brief in contrast to the lengthy interviews Baba had granted him at Meherabad. Brunton was given Chanji's and Ramjoo's diaries to read; but he was, on the whole, unimpressed and doubted Meher Baba's claim of divinity.
As Age reminds us, however, "The Avatar works in mysterious ways. Those who oppose him also work for him."
Meher Baba had a secret motive in aggravating Brunton, causing him eventually to pen attacks against him. The fact was that, just as Baba had wished Colonel Irani to oppose him in India, he wished an influential person from the West to oppose him in Europe and America. Baba chose Brunton for this role, as he had certain work to accomplish through Brunton's antagonistic attacks and criticisms. Three years later, Paul Brunton was to publish a popular book titled A Search in Secret India which, although critical of Meher Baba, drew many Europeans and Americans to become interested in him.1
In an uneasy mood, Brunton left Nasik on Sunday, 8 February 1931, traveling to the saint Ramana Maharshi's ashram in South India before returning to London.
Of all the gurus he met, Brunton was most impressed with Ramana Maharshi. When Brunton asked Ramana Maharshi if he had ever heard of Meher Baba, the saint replied that he had. Brunton asked if he had anything further to add to Meher Baba's claim to be an Avatar, and Ramana Maharshi replied, "What have I to say? This is a question that seekers after Truth need not consider. People who are in the lower rungs of the ladder waste their energies over all such questions."
Footnotes
- 1.A Search in Secret India has been reprinted more than 20 times and translated into many languages. Brunton wrote more than a dozen books. He is credited with being "the first person to write accounts of what he learned in the East from a Western perspective; his works had a major influence on the spread of Eastern mysticism to the West. Taking pains to express his thoughts in layperson's terms, Brunton was able to present what he learned from the Orient and from ancient tradition as a living wisdom. Paul Brunton's writings sum up his view that meditation and the inward quest are not exclusively for monks and hermits, but will also support those living normal, active lives in the Western world." (Godwin, Cash and Smith, Paul Brunton: Essential Readings [Thoth Publications, 1990]).