One of the world's largest broadcasting companies in America offered to broadcast Baba's first speech and message to the world through its worldwide branches [radio network]. A well-known doctor and scientist published a statement in the newspaper with photos, that it was physically impossible for a human being to keep silence for seven long years and then speak, stating his arguments on scientific research and expressing grave doubts that Baba would be able to speak and so on.
All eagerly awaited the fateful event and occasion on July 13 ... and then came the crash. Baba, who had promised to return from China where he had been on some very important work, sent a cable from there, coldly stating that he had postponed speaking for spiritual reasons, until his next birthday in February 1933.
You can well imagine the feelings and disappointments that this caused to those in America, to one and all, his own ardent devotees, admirers and lovers, as well as to others in general. To those who had grave doubts and did not believe in these [spiritual] things, this was a good bone of contention to write anything in his absence and at his back. Those who loved and followed Baba were put in a somewhat [delicate if not dangerous situation, and yet a situation they had to face responsibly] — to give explanations to all sorts of silly questions with which they were overwhelmed in a country like America — not to speak of [dealing with] their own disappointments.
Baba knew all this better than anyone else, yet he did it on purpose, and enjoyed it! For, as he explains, he wanted this opposition and delicate situation which he deemed essential for his great work, and hence created and courted it cheerfully, much to the embarrassment of all!
He said, "The more the bow string is drawn back, the greater the force for the arrow to fly farther, and this is exactly like that. The greater the opposition, the greater the force to my work; and for the welfare of humanity, as all my work is, I don't mind in the least."
So would he speak to us all, and so he did it all. And quietly and calmly he proceeded from China to Europe where he wanted to go to arrange things for the future.
En route, he [stopped off] in India. No one knew of his coming till a day prior to his arrival in Bombay, where he called only his intimate mandali to explain things to them.