In explanation, Baba said:
Although my seclusion ended today, all the restrictions imposed for my seclusion continue to be in force. I say after seclusion there will be a very short period of exclusion and that some specific work that I am doing now will end on 25 June. Thereafter, I will decide about the great event that is to take place. The manner in which I will permit my lovers to have my darshan will be quite different. There will not be any mass darshan program. Once I start giving darshan, it will continue daily for a fixed time every day. I say that the days are approaching when there will be a "different Baba" during the days of my darshan. It will be like my manifestation.
In conclusion, although Baba came out of seclusion on 21 May 1968 and stepped into exclusion, there was no change in the restrictions imposed during the seclusion.
Baba remarked: "This period of exclusion is the threshold leading to 'inclusion' — the time when all will be included in my darshan."
On 21 May, according to his wish, Eruch read out the names of the departed ones as he had done in Meherazad in November, and recited the same one-line prayer Baba had dictated at that time, "O God, grant these departed lovers of mine their just rewards in proportion to their love, service, faith and honesty."
Baba's work in seclusion did not stop after the seclusion ended; it went on until the end of July 1968. Baba looked so tired after working that the mandali would entreat him to be less neglectful of his health, to go slower by working fewer hours.
In response, he explained: "That would mean once again prolonging the work and postponing the date of its conclusion. If now I allow that to happen, it will indefinitely postpone the result and set it on a different course."
Consequently, Baba continued his work for five weeks — from 21 May to 27 June 1968 — working half an hour daily. For more than a month, during the latter days of Baba's stay in Guruprasad, he would call Bal Natu and Nana Kher to his room for half an hour at about 7:00 P.M. every evening to listen to them recite the Marathi poems of Professor A. N. Deshpande, head of the Department of Marathi at Nagpur University. Nana Kher had told Deshpande a year or so earlier about Baba, and although Deshpande had not met Baba, he was extremely drawn to him after reading Baba's books. Deshpande had corresponded with Baba and had sent him a copy of his poetry booklet Nave Manache (New Mind) Shlok (Shlokas for a Modern Age), which Baba was now having read to him.1 The work contained many references to Meher Baba.
Footnotes
- 1.Four months later, when a new edition of the booklet was received at Meherazad, Baba signed a copy and had it returned to Deshpande.