Baba was feverish all that night. During darshan the next day, Sunday, 8 May, a bank manager named Wagh, a kindhearted person, came with a number of questions. Baba told him:
God is not to be argued about. Mere arguing will take you nowhere. In love, arguments and discussions have no place. Let the argumentative attitude slacken and be more and more open-minded. Don't be dogmatic.
Then, in the course of life, if you fortunately get an opportunity to meet the Divine Beloved — a God-realized Master — the heart rejoices. The love-filled heart longs to dedicate one's life to the Beloved. It says, "Let the Beloved's will be foremost."
It is always the mind that doubts. Mind says: "Is he the Beloved worth loving? Will I be right in sacrificing for this Beloved?"
Heart replies: "Why argue? Take a plunge in the Beloved's divinity. Place your life at his feet. Surrender."
Mind remonstrates: "What about my capability to judge and argue? Why should I plunge? Am I blind? Why should I follow the dictates of the heart? Am I good for nothing?"
In this way, the struggle goes on between the mind and the heart.
Later a visitor requested that Baba give him his blessings. Baba replied:
It is very easy for me to give blessings. It is very difficult for me to give love. It is very, very rare for me to bestow grace. Why? It is very easy for me to give blessings, because you are eager to receive them. The necessary receptivity is already there. But it is not so with love, because no one really wants to receive it as it should be received. The "warmth" of love is so unbearable that one who receives it has his whole being "blistered" and "blasted!" If you withstand this, your heart becomes clean. Then it is filled with love.
The one who receives my love is completely ruined in the eyes of the world. To receive love, you have to lose everything — even your own self! You have to give up all desires to such an extent that you become dead to yourself and the world. Then you are eligible to receive love. Rarely has one the longing to receive love. I am the Ocean of love. I am ready to give love to such a one, but where is the one to receive it? No one is ready, as he should always be, to receive love.
As for my grace, I bestow it when I get the whim to do so. Grace means grace, and it is perfectly independent of merits and demerits. When grace descends, instantaneously you become what you ever are — God. But this is very rare.
On the 11th, when Baba visited Maisaheb Patwardhan's bungalow, a woman of the family asked Baba for the same thing — his blessings.
To her Baba explained, "No sooner you came for my darshan then you have my blessings, for darshan itself is a blessing."
Zal Aidoon, a friend of Jalbhai's, was one of
the Poona lovers who had permission to spend the entire day at
Guruprasad.
Once, when Baba was sitting with the mandali and close
lovers, Baba asked, "How do I look?"
All except Zal said he looked splendid. Zal,
being a simple, guileless person, said, "Baba, to me you look
old."
"Do I really seem old?" Baba (who was
66) asked with an astonished expression. "Just think twice before
answering. Then give me your opinion."
Zal considered a moment and said, "Yes,
Baba, you do look old!"
Baba asked him to leave the hall, think the
matter over carefully and then come back and answer him. On his return,
Zal innocently repeated the same thing. Baba sent him out, and on his
return to the hall, he again said that Baba looked old. But when for the
third time he was told to leave the hall, after "deep"
thinking he came back and replied, "Baba, you look young!"