Until the end of December, I will be helping the companions in physical amenities and training for begging, the langoti life, et cetera. I wish the companions to help each other, remind each other and encourage each other for the strict following of the conditions. Because after January 1, all help and all training will cease. The help that I was giving from October 16 until today, in correcting conscious or unconscious mistakes due to Old Life habits, will no longer be exercised.
Companions must faithfully, honestly and truthfully understand once and for all that, although they might differ in helpfulness, utility and likableness, they do not differ in the least in obedience to the conditions. Because, in the New Life, only the conditions and my and my companions' oaths are of real importance to me.
On 5 November, Sadashiv sent a telegram that he and Babadas had secured bungalows in Benares. Because of this good news, the companions were rewarded with a special lunch and shrikhand [a sweetened yogurt dish] in the evening, which Nilu relished. Ghani cracked, "It is love semi-solidified!"
In the afternoon Baba stated, "Eat as much as you can and whatever you can get until December 31. After January 1, who can tell what life will be like? You may get one meal all day, two meals a day, even plenty to eat — or you may not get anything for days together!
"But the point to be emphasized is that just as you all find yourselves in a happy and cheerful mood after the nice lunch and prospect of shrikhand in the evening, in the same manner, you ought to keep happy and cheerful even without meals in the New Life after January 1. If you succeed in this, then you will be keeping the spirit of the conditions 100 percent."
Finding Baba in a conversational mood, Eruch, Adi, Nilu and Ghani induced him to explain more about the New Life, resulting in the following dialogue of questions and answers:
One of the men asked, "The will to do and fulfill the conditions wholeheartedly is with us all. No one can deny this, but we would like to know what constitutes 100 percent fulfillment of conditions in your eyes."
"There are four chief points to be attended to in the conditions," Baba replied. "Not to touch money; not to touch women; to carry out all orders — good, bad, extraordinary — instantaneously, without the least hesitation; and to remain cheerful under the most trying circumstances.
"The first two conditions regarding money and women, you will not have many occasions to be troubled with, since I shall be with you most of the time.