Baba added, "You have been with me for years and you still do not understand that there is no why or wherefore regarding my work. Even if Feram asked you, you should have replied that it was Baba's wish. You have made a serious mistake, which I have had to correct. Do not do it again. Let this be a lesson to others."
Baba embraced Buasaheb and Vishnu, and then called Feram, taunting him, "It would have been better had you died that day you ate the castor oil seeds. You would have been saved from all the evil sanskaras you have now contracted, in whatever mild form, by asking for an explanation from me.
Now these sanskaras will remain with you for lives on end — till doomsday! So I say, had you died that day, it would have been much better."
Baba concluded, "Write against me if you like! Go on; I will be happy."
Feram pleaded, "But I did not want Dastur's work and I do not want it now. He told me it was your work."
Baba replied, "I don't care if you do it. Even if the whole world writes against me, how could it ever affect me? I am what I am! My only advice is that you follow the dictates of your heart."
Only then did Feram come to know of Dastur's hostile propaganda against Baba. He stopped helping Dastur and repented for his gullibility.
Despite Dastur's recent demeanor of remorse in Bombay, once he began his attacks against Baba, he did not cease. In fact, Baba actually financed the work. So long as Dastur was in Nasik, he continued to draw his monthly stipend from Baba. Even after Dastur left Nasik and found himself in dire straits, he did not hesitate to cable Baba for money, and Baba would comply.
K. J. Dastur not only carried out his propaganda campaign through The Meher Message in India, but in correspondence to foreign countries as well. His opposition created misunderstandings and was a hindrance to Stokes, Malcolm and others, who were trying to raise funds for Baba's work at Harmon and Hancock. It was later discovered that it was Dastur who influenced the journalist Paul Brunton against Baba. But, as Age noted, Dastur's limited ideas and conceptions were like a clay pot that has not been properly "baked" in the Master's kiln.
Dastur's opposition, however, was not a deterrent. On the contrary, it strengthened Meher Baba's work. In an editorial in the final issue of The Meher Message (October 1931), Dastur stated that he now considered Meher Baba to be a charlatan.1 He wrote: "In April of this year [1931] I came to the conclusion that Meher Baba was not real, and all his talk of manifesting himself as an Avatar was bunkum."
Some idea of the absurdity of Dastur's allegations against Baba can be had from this excerpt of one of his letters to a follower:
It seems to me that, on the strength of Baba's magnetic personality and possession of certain psychic powers, he has been posing as a Sadguru or an Avatar.
Footnotes
- 1.From the January 1932 issue, the name of The Meher Message was changed to The Mystic Review.