What can I suggest? Is it not now your turn to offer me what you have to give? Your will as well as your heart. Your faith, I know, is absolute and nothing can shake it; but your ego wants satisfaction, and does not want to be crushed. This stands in the way of selfless love, the only love that will satisfy your Beloved or give you eternal happiness. Yet know, darling Shalimar, nothing of yourself is real or lasting, save that part of it which is me.
The express image of the word Divine am I
The mirror of all regal loveliness am I
Without me in this world, naught of itself exists
Search where you will — you surely find all
— all is I.1
Three days before (on 17 November), Baba had sent this message to Will and Mary Backett in England:
"Keep writing as you do now and don't worry. I am with you always and am ever watchful over my own flock."
In November 1939, Baba directed Kaka and Eruch to travel through the south of India in search of advanced masts to bring to Bangalore. They were instructed to do whatever necessary to please the masts and thus coax them to come away with them, except disclosing that Meher Baba had sent them. Eruch and Kaka had left on the night of 12 November, accompanied by Jal Kerawalla, and they were gone for eleven days. It was monsoon season and they had to travel through many flooded areas. Although they contacted several advanced masts, they failed to persuade even one to come back to Bangalore.
In view of their failure and, as Baba remarked, "in order to start the war or make peace," he decided to go and contact these masts himself. Meanwhile Baba had been dictating his will. Before leaving Bangalore, Baba, for the first time, signed his Last Will and Testament on 25 November. The various men and women mandali were named as beneficiaries and the properties at Meherabad, Mandla and now Byramangala were apportioned as he wished.
Early the next morning, Sunday, 26 November, Baba left Bangalore by train toward the south of India, traveling third class. He was accompanied by Eruch, Gustadji, Kaka, Jal Kerawalla and the boy Krishna.2 Baba had tea ordered at the next station, and, in a pleasant mood, remarked to Jal,
"Traveling with me is full of both joy and hardships. Joy in the sense that you have the privilege of my company and are able to enjoy the benefits of my satsang , explanations, et cetera. Hardship in the sense that there is plenty of work to be done and I am a hard taskmaster when it comes to locating and contacting the different masts."
Footnotes
- 1.All couplets in the letters to Delia and Minta are from Hafiz. Although there is no attribute given, they appear to have been taken from Selections from the Rubaiyat and Odes of Hafiz the Great Mystic and Lyric Poet of Persia (edited by Persia Society of London, 1920).
- 2.Margaret and Falu had missed the trip to Mysore in October, so while Baba was away, Pendu drove them and a few of the mandali to Mysore in the Blue Bus for a brief visit.