Baba informed Pilla, Alu and Dhun that he would permit them a stay in Meherabad turn by turn for one day. Dhun was only nine years old but she boldly spoke up, saying, "You have let Gaimai Auntie stay here with you. Why not me?" Gaimai pinched her to keep quiet, which Dhun unabashedly reported to Baba. To console her, Baba allowed Dhun to stay for eight days.
During that week, as the time approached for her departure, Dhun kept begging Baba to extend her stay by one day more, to which he agreed. That day, a boil appeared on her foot, and Nilu said he would need to incise it.
Baba told Dhun, "Now tomorrow Nilu will have to cut off your foot."
Dhun got frightened and said she wanted to go home. As soon as she was back at Akbar Press, the boil went away by itself. Later she realized how Baba had tricked her into leaving Meherabad.
On Tuesday, 19 September 1938, one of the Western women questioned, "Why do we suffer?" Baba dictated this reply:
Why should we be born? To take birth means to suffer. When suffering leads to real eternal happiness we should not attach importance to this suffering. It is to eliminate suffering that suffering has to be. Most of this suffering is unnecessary and self-inflicted. Ninety-nine percent of the world's suffering is self-inflicted. Yet, they ask, "Why must we suffer?" Great suffering means great liberation.
What is ignorance if not suffering? War is no special suffering. Don't people suffer all the time? It is universal suffering which leads to war. People suffer because they are not satisfied; they want more and more. Ignorance gives rise to greed and vanity. If you were to want nothing, would you then suffer? But you do want. If you did not want anything you would not suffer even in the jaws of a lion! Even without war everyone suffers physically.
Mental suffering is worse than physical suffering. What the people of the world with limited vision think of suffering is only physical. They draw pictures of a bomb-stricken person, nose off, arm off, leg off, et cetera. Sometimes physical suffering tends to ease mental suffering. The world's idea of suffering and of happiness is entirely limited.
Happiness — you have no idea of that real happiness — is worth all the physical and mental suffering of the universe! Then all suffering becomes as if it were not. It was due to ignorance. Ignorance makes you jump at the sight of a cockroach; real happiness does not make you feel the teeth of a tiger in your body!