In the latter case, the most important and significant point is that definitely and emphatically the link between my physical body and all my external activities as carried on up to now will be dropped by April 1955, and there will take place an immeasurable change in the external relations between me and those who are closely connected with me. So that if I do not drop my physical body, I will yet, so to say, "die," for I will then become actually dead to the world up to the end of the modified period of time.
During the indefinite period of the modified time, I will completely stop one and all of my external activities as carried out and carried on by me in the course of the different phases of my physical life so far, including the present life of retirement among those who live with me permanently.
1. I will then, throughout this modified period of time, live a life of complete physical detachment from everything and everybody, except a few things, as will be absolutely necessary for my requirements of nature in the barest sense of living the life of a man alive. 2. I wish all my lovers to observe a fast and remain only on water (which can be taken any number of times during the fast) for 24 hours, from 8:00 P.M. on Saturday, 12 February, to 8:00 P.M. on Sunday, 13 February; and to devote all available time during the 24 hours in praying to God in the way each likes best to pray to Him. 3. Honesty is the keynote to Divinity. He who can love God honestly can lose himself in God, and find himself as God.
A highly advanced mast was brought from Kolhapur, with whom Baba worked for a few days.1 Adi Sr. was called to receive instructions on 7 February.
Meanwhile, according to the Zoroastrian calendar, Baba's 61st birthday was celebrated privately at Satara on 11 February. No outside lovers were called. (It was also celebrated again two weeks later, on the 25th.) And, according to Baba's instructions, all his lovers fasted and prayed from 8:00 P.M. on Saturday, 12 February 1955, for 24 hours.
During this period, one of the men would escort Baba back and forth between Grafton and Rosewood bungalows, holding an umbrella over his head. One morning in mid-February 1955, after Aloba had escorted Baba to Jal Villa, he spotted Harichand Kochar on the roadside. He had come from Dehra Dun. Aloba was surprised at his appearance and asked Kochar why he had come.
Footnotes
- 1.The mast's name is not recorded, but he is the same mast who had been brought to Mahabaleshwar for a day in April 1954.