Thus greed too means a type of love — money-love, name-and-fame-love, greatness-love. This is not the case with animals.
But a true hero longs intensely for the nectar of divine love and he is an exception. Such pure love is not found in the ordinary run of mankind. This love is not inborn; it is given and imparted by a Master.
Love is therefore one, but it is of several kinds. The lowest is attraction. It develops with progress in evolution and transforms into real love, which is like a stream flowing silent, serene, passionless, eternal, perfect and pure. Divine love is the highest of all, but it is not silent. It has terrible longing; it is not peaceful. The winds of evolution, reincarnation and involution blow the stream of attraction through the inanimate world, turning it into a river in the animal and human kingdom, and finally transforming it into an ocean of divine love upon Realization.
On Saturday, 1 January 1927, Baba received many New Year's greeting cards, including one from an American in Telluride, Colorado, named Joseph Nathan Oldenburg. Born in Illinois, Oldenburg, 54, was of Irish/German descent and at one time had been the pastor of a Catholic church. He wrote several letters to Baba from 1928 to 1931, although there is no record as to how he learned of him.1 Oldenburg may have been one of the first contacts from America.
Babu Cyclewalla wrote at this time, describing Babajan's recent ill health. She was very weak, he stated, and could not get up from her seat, even to answer nature's call. Baba remarked: "These old folks are very stiff."
A year and a half had passed since the Master began his silence. At a meeting at 2:00 P.M., he wrote this message: "I intend to stop writing from tomorrow. It is not definite when I will resume writing or speaking. I may start again after some days, some months or even some years. It all depends on Babajan."
Reports were read from the paper about recent Mohammedan efforts to convert as many Hindus as possible. Baba commented:
All this present communal humdrum in India is the result of the internal work of the present-day Perfect Masters, which the world does not understand. This work is invisible, but it will set the entire country at loggerheads in the near future. Although at present the atmosphere appears calm [despite the recent murder of a prominent Hindu], a time will come when, in a moment, things will take a very serious turn — even over the slightest cause — and then nothing will be able to check or control it.
Footnotes
- 1.Oldenburg's letter to Baba in April 1931 was sent from Holly, Colorado. In 1935, Oldenburg traveled to India, but there is no record of him having met Baba.