After trying the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for about fifteen minutes, Eruch was exhausted and collapsed on the floor. Bhau continued it for several minutes and then Francis did in an attempt to revive Baba. Pendu was holding Baba's left wrist, trying to feel his pulse. The pulse kept coming and going, he said, but then the rate fell to nothing. Padri held Baba's tongue with forceps.
At about 12:40 P.M., Adi and Dr. Ginde arrived, followed by Ginde's car, and then shortly by Dr. Brieseman and Don with the oxygen cylinder. Goher rushed out to hurry them. "Come on, come on!" she shouted. Inside she began shaking Ginde, imploring him, "Do something, Doctor, do something!"
Dr. Brieseman gave a cardiac massage and then checked Baba's heart with a stethoscope and passed it on to Don who, after examining Baba, gave it to Ginde. Ginde checked Baba's eye reflexes with his flashlight, and then the three doctors stood together quietly conversing among themselves.
All those present began to weep. Adi had somehow controlled his tears when he entered the room, and he pleaded, "Please do not weep, all of you. Please, keep quiet." But on seeing Mehera's stunned grief, he too could not contain his own grief and went outside to compose himself.
Eruch asked Dr. Brieseman to administer oxygen to Baba, which he did. Goher asked if she could give an intracardiac injection, and Dr. Ginde administered it, but it was too late. Baba was beyond all human help. He had crossed over.
"The Beloved was no longer the shore of the Ocean, but returned to be the ever-present Ocean Itself," said Age. "Completing his Universal work the Ancient One entered the hearts of his lovers. He gave up his cloak of concealment and left behind tears in his memory." Age wept again.
After it was determined that Baba had truly dropped the body, Dr. Brieseman left, and Dr. Ginde and the men mandali assembled in Francis' room.1 The question of informing those concerned throughout the world was discussed, and finally Adi, Eruch and Francis prepared this telegram:
Avatar Meher Baba dropped his physical body at 12 noon 31st January at Meherazad to live eternally in the hearts of all his lovers. Beloved Baba's body will be interred at Meherabad on 1st February at 10:00 A.M. in the tomb he had ordered to be built long ago.
Footnotes
- 1.On his return home, Dr. Brieseman told his wife that he felt Meher Baba's disciples would be experiencing what Jesus Christ's disciples had 2,000 years before. Dr. Brieseman, a Christian missionary, had never met Baba while Baba was physically present (although Don had told Brieseman about Baba). Brieseman later wrote an article for the Salvation Army newsletter War Cry, titled "I Saw God Die," in which he described what he had witnessed of Baba's passing and related it to how the disciples of Christ must have felt when Jesus "died" on the Cross. His wife Joan often heard her husband say with regard to surgical matters, "I did not know what to do, but my hands were directed [by God]."