That day, Baba told the group, "It is so easy for you to love those whom you already love, but to love those whom you hate, that is something! By loving I mean not merely being kind. Does anyone of you think it is possible to love those whom you don't like? It will happen."
The topic turned to sleep and Elizabeth asked Baba, "Where do we go when we go to sleep?"
"Everywhere!" he replied. "You are always everywhere, even now. Though fully conscious, you are not conscious that you are everywhere, because the mind always has the natural tendency of losing its identity. Is that clear?"
Elizabeth asked, "Then what makes us wake up?"
"Impressions — they prick you and you get up. They cry out, 'Spend us!' The mind always wants to go; so in sleep you always 'go back' and when you wake up you feel fresh. But again, after waking, the mind wants to lose its identity."
"What are dreams?" she asked.
"Dreams are subconscious experiences which are always linked with your gross experience of the past. Sometimes, in your dreams, you see persons you never saw in this life. This link is from the past. It is all based on illusion and imagination."
Elizabeth said, "Then how was it that when I was twelve years old I dreamt of you three different times in succession, and when I first met you I recognized you as the one I had known in the dream? Was that an illusion?"
"What I mean," replied Baba, "is everything except your being infinite, is illusion. I am very ancient. Very, very old and always young."
Norina then asked, "What is imagination?"
"Imagination is what you want to be and are not!" Baba replied.
At one point, Baba translated a few couplets of the Perfect Master Kabir: "One cannot start running at full speed; one must gather momentum and gradually increase the speed.
"If one is to be stained with a spiritual color, one must be stained gradually. The color takes time to penetrate for it to become deep and rich — it must be applied gradually.
"The mind which has been sleeping the sleep of ignorance for ages can only gradually be awakened to Knowledge."
At the beginning of January 1937, Baba had begun a 40-day fast. By 22 January, he made some changes in his schedule. He now began taking food and liquids only between 10:00 A.M. and 2:00 P.M. daily.