Even such heroes don't obtain my grace. Out of millions, only a rare one gets this nazar, this grace. This Path is not for the weak and the faint-hearted! Where even the Mard-e-Khuda is unsuccessful [in gaining my grace], what to say of you people here? My nazar is always there on all of you, but it is an entirely different nazar, a different grace from the Grace which makes one realize the Self in a fraction of a second.
Explaining the meaning of surrender, Baba continued:
I do not mean the kind of surrender offered by a poor man who came to Meherabad years ago and said he wished to surrender everything to me. When I asked what the "everything" was, he replied: "Myself, my wife and four children!" I could not accept such "surrender"!
Then, when I was in Toka [in 1928], one sadhu in quest of the Truth wished for God-realization. I told him no suffering or sacrifice was too great for it, and advised him to sit under a tree without food or water. He sat there for ten days, but thereafter, one night he abruptly disappeared.
God can never be fooled by outward show of church [ceremonies], [ritualistic] prayers, kusti [sacred thread] and ringing of bells [in temples]. He is deaf to all that and is not fooled. Only love, true love, can move Him. Love is a gift from God to man, and Realization is only [gained] by the grace of the Perfect Master.
God is nearer to you than your own self, but you are not aware of it because of the seven veils. If one veil is removed, another is there to be removed, and so on it goes. Up to the fourth plane, the pilgrim on the Path is liable to succumb to worldly temptations. Only the nazar of a Perfect Master can save him because, at every step, the seeker on the Path meets with obstacles.
On the experience of God-realization, Baba said:
Man realizing God is like a drop of water swallowing the Ocean — no less! This is beyond your intellect. When, after the kiss from Babajan, I knew I was the Ocean, I did not want to come back to the ordinary "drop" consciousness from that blissful state where I alone was. But despite my resistance, the five Perfect Masters kept "pulling me down" to ordinary consciousness for my destined manifestation as the Avatar.
And, in the excruciating agony that I went through during this tussle, I used to knock my forehead on a stone on the floor of my room at home, during the nine months before Upasni Maharaj brought me down to normal consciousness. Much blood has flowed from my head onto that stone, which is still in the room as it was then [at Baba House in Poona], and which will be worshiped universally in years to come.1
Footnotes
- 1.Meher Baba's words have come true, as pilgrims from all over the world visit Baba House and bow down to the stone upon which he banged his forehead and shed blood during his "coming down" period, 1915–1922.