Dr. Deshmukh knew the President of India, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, whom he had first told about Baba in the mid-1930s. Radhakrishnan had tried to meet Baba in Mysore in 1936, but Baba had been in seclusion at that time. Manohar and Mona Sakhare arrived in Poona from Delhi and informed Baba that they had recently met the President and given him a copy of Stay With God and other literature. Radhakrishnan had been very pleased to hear about the East-West Gathering and more about Baba, and expressed a desire to meet him soon.
In response, Baba stated, "The President will come some day. Everyone will come one day. Even saints, real or false, will come. They have no alternative but to come to me."
At Francis and Bhau's encouragement, Deshmukh had composed a kirtan in English, and Baba asked him to recite it.
Afterwards, Baba declared in a humorous vein, "There has never before been anything of this sort in history!"
He asked Jim Mistry to sing with Deshmukh (neither of whom had singing voices). Jim had never sung in his life, and he began trembling nervously. But he made an attempt, and their "duet" sent the audience into peals of laughter. Baba derived much amusement from their song, but he stopped it abruptly, joking that it gave him "heart palpitations" when he heard it!
Then, Baba remarked:
For one who gets Self-Realization, everything illusory vanishes, yet I have kept my sense of humor, and hence I can bear the Universal suffering!
The Beyond State is attained when one gets real knowledge. It cannot be gained with the mind. You see everything with your eyes, but you cannot see your own eyes unless you place a mirror in front of you. Similarly, place the mirror of real knowledge before you, and you will then see your Real Self.
On the path, perfect honesty and selfless service are needed. If you have even a single thought of self, your service is not selfless. A poet [Saib Asmi of Pakistan] has said:
"First renounce this world, then the next,
then God, and lastly renunciation itself!"
Patwardhan came to sing before Baba that day, and asked, "What is that action which is I -less? What is not motivated by the thought of I ?"
Baba replied:
In all actions there is I , but the action motivated by love for the Beloved in complete surrender to him has no I in it. It is egoless ego. In true love, the lover wants to seek the happiness of the Beloved without any thought of self. He then feels that he loves all.