During this period, Minta Toledano, like her sister Delia, was facing personal difficulties in England. On 20 November 1939, Baba finally replied to her letters:
If I want my Shalimar to write to me, then I must keep her a long time waiting for a letter in return! By ignoring her last two letters, I received from her a third — the one I was waiting for — full of complaints at the "silence, indifference and callousness of her Beloved" — who did not care that she was miserable, lonely and unhappy. And so, not knowing what to do or where to turn in her despair, she vented her impatience, anger, resentment and annoyance on the One who was the cause of it all!
Darling Shalimar, through every line run those deep pangs of suffering caused through separation. Everyone feels at one time or another what you now experience ... Remember, darkness must precede the dawn, and be glad you are not outside of these experiences — these changes of heat and cold, light and darkness, response and indifference. The real and only tragedy of human life is when the individual is irresponsive and untouched by life's experiences. What had your favorite Hafiz to say:
Be patient, O heart and grieve not, for in the end
After evening cometh the morn, and after night the dawn.
I can in the space of a moment give you the experience of that union you so crave, but that is not my way.
Baba then quoted the couplets from Hafiz, sent to Delia previously, about pilgrims on this path finding only the "thorn of grief."
There is no escape. Whether you live physically near the Beloved, as I wanted you to do, or you live away, as you have chosen to do, struggle and crisis there will always be and choice . One day you will realize I offered you everything from the very first. You could have stayed near your Beloved; you could have gazed on your Beloved; you could have consoled and comforted your Beloved in his moments of weariness and fatigue, as you so often did; you could have been gay, cheerful and happy with your Beloved; you could have loved, worked for and obeyed him, living near him — or loved, worked for and obeyed him from afar; but none of these things did my lover choose.