"How many times have I told you to be in the world yet not of it? But the world has so much attraction for you that you even neglect my wishes. And we have so little time left together!"
Baba's rebuke brought tears to his gopis' eyes and the pain of disobedience to their hearts.
He then lovingly explained, "Don't worry now and keep happy. But do not repeat such mistakes. To have attraction for the world is like taking poison, and I save you from its pernicious effect by making you drink salt water [their tears]!"
Continuing, Baba related, "I have scolded the mandali in India so much that one of them, R [either Rustom or Raosaheb] once swallowed a glassful of poison. The doctors declared that he would die within five hours. I went and lambasted him to such an extreme that he became quite angry. After reviving him thus, I advised him to take a glassful of salt water. This made him vomit up the poison and he was saved from the jaws of death.
"I know everything. And knowing everything, I work according to my own ways. Really, nothing makes me pleased or sad. I knew R. was not going to die, yet played this game to save him from death. I am never concerned or affected by anything. I have a Universal mind and enjoy infinite, eternal bliss every moment. This bliss counterbalances all the suffering I have taken on myself. I am beyond everything and not attached to anything, so delight and sadness do not affect me as they do you."
That night they rode on gondolas. "It was divine, really divine," Margaret related. "Baba, Adi Jr., me and one other in one gondola; for an hour, drifting up and down, under the moonlight with the gondolier singing in Italian. It was one of the most beautiful nights of my life."
On 19 August, Baba repeated the same instruction, "to stay close," as they went off to see the Lido, a fashionable beach resort. Baba had ordered them not to swim there, but since the weather was quite hot, Quentin and Mabel requested Baba's permission to do so. He grudgingly gave it. They left Baba for nearly an hour and returned only to discover that he had left with Margaret and Delia.