This burning has both pain and joy within it. It keeps the lover harassed and miserable; yet the lover cannot live without it, though he suffers terribly! How can this wonderful pain ever be explained to the world?"
Baba went on an eleven-day fast beginning Friday, 21 April 1939. He drank only a cup of milkless tea in the morning, and a glass of orange juice in the evening.
He had told the women that once he began fasting, "Many big events will take place all over the world."
During this fast, Baba was merged in mast work. On the 17th Kaka and Jalbhai had brought a high mast from Ellichpur named Gulabsha . When Kaka and Jalbhai first contacted the mast in Ellichpur and were trying to persuade him to come with them to see Baba, the mast told those surrounding him in the street, "There is one [Baba] who wants to paint me with the colors of divinity, but I don't want that. He has caught me, but I don't want to go ... He wants to send me to the great homeland [God], but I don't want to go there."
When Gulabsha first met Baba, he exclaimed, "He is God Himself!" And pointing to Kaka, he complained, "You have tricked me!" Baba sat on a mattress on the floor and motioned to Gulabsha to sit beside him. The mast said to Kaka, "I am not fit to sit beside him. How could I sit before the Emperor?"
When Chhagan brought Khala Masi , a high mastani from Seoni on 31 March, the old woman instantly recognized Baba's greatness and asked, "Won't you let me have even a few drops from the Ocean of divinity that you are?"
Baba again contacted Magar Shah in Jabalpur and, in a village ten miles away, another mast named Dada Thanthan Pal. Soon after this, he contacted a very high mast in Mandla named Dhaniram Maharaj (who was also known as Lohewala Baba ). Baba also went to Allahabad for a day during this period to find and contact other masts. "The Ocean was in search of those drops who knew the Song and were singing their hearts out!" Age reflected. "Its painful melody compelled its Composer to find them."
Regarding masts, Baba once revealed to the mandali:
They feel so happy with me, because they see Baba and know who Baba truly is — a thing which you, with your gross eyes, cannot see. They see me with quite a different eye, and this special inner eye sees my divine form.