Despite all Baba's attempts, he refused to let Baba contact him in person. Once, when Baidul tried to persuade him to come with him to Baba, Jara Shah declared, "The Saheb-e-Zaman is coming, his time is near ... I will draw my sword and help him to annihilate the unworthy!"1
Traveling on to Moradabad, Baba contacted a great salik-type pilgrim of the mental planes called Maulana Shamsuddin Ulema . The aged saint was believed to be at least 120 years old and was likewise much revered. Ulema had been a scholar of Arabic and Persian and was cared for by the family of a government official. When Baba went to contact him, he was resting. When they awakened him, Ulema looked at Baba's face and exclaimed with the deepest of emotions, speaking in Persian: "In the darkness of the night I see the light of God!"2
The trials and tribulations of Baba's journey to contact these masts are indescribable. Baba was on the move day and night. To travel by bullock cart, when rain suddenly came pouring down and cold winds began blowing, was extremely uncomfortable. At one place the group had to trudge twelve miles through slushy roads. But Baba's joy was effervescent when communing with masts, and to him these physical privations were as nothing! As Age reminds us, "It was no easy matter to go long distances day and night without proper food or drinking water, especially during wartime when, due to military troop movements, it was extremely difficult to get accommodation on trains. But God Himself was in search of His true lovers! Although often hidden, these masts are His real devotees and that is why He journeyed thousands of miles to give them his personal contact — at great personal inconvenience and suffering on his part!"
Throughout this present journey, Baba and the mandali traveled mostly at night and would invariably sleep on the railway platform itself, or in some dingy third-rate dharamshala. But besides these hardships in traveling, the restriction to one meal a day, which the mandali had been observing since the 1st of January, was maintained throughout the journey (until 15 February).
Baba was completely absorbed and occupied in his mast work, utterly unmindful and completely disregarding the physical needs of his apparently frail body, which was continually being severely strained. Thus, Baba's personal example for 24 hours a day was a stimulus to Kaka, Baidul and Gustadji — and as they later reported, it literally made them forget about their own physical needs of nourishment and sleep.
Footnotes
- 1.Saheb-e-Zaman means the head of the spiritual hierarchy. In Arabic, Saheb means God; zaman means the heavens, or the age.
- 2."Dar zulmat-e-shab nur-e-Khuda mi binam!"