Sailor was ordered to return to Poona to look after his elderly mother, and to move back to Meherabad after five months. Sailor left that same evening.
That night, Baba arranged the books in rows and stacked them in specific piles, forbidding anyone to touch them. Age speculated that Baba was soaking the volumes in the wine of his love, pouring the required measure for every child into each book. The following day, Baba personally handed a set of books to each student, thereby giving an inner push to their minds toward knowledge and their hearts toward loving God.
Later that morning, the topic of literature arose when Dastur asked Baba who his favorite authors were, especially poets. Baba related that his favorite writers were:
Hafiz in Persian, and [William] Shakespeare, [John] Milton and [Percy Bysshe] Shelley in English. Shakespeare is presently reincarnated in India; he is now a Brahmin taking a leading part in politics, but one of the most sincere, selfless workers for the country. His thought force of the past has now been transformed into action. He was a genius and all the controversies over whether he was the original author of his works are meaningless. He wrote all the plays — no one else. It was entirely the result of his giant intellect. There is not a whiff of the spiritual in all his dramas and poetry, yet he was a genius. The writer Kalidas would rightly be called India's Shakespeare.1
Milton was spiritually advanced, but did not attain beyond the second plane in the subtle world. He could see heaven and hell and that was how he was able to write Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained . His books about heaven and hell depict the result of his personally seeing them.
Shelley, though not spiritually advanced, was a thorough gentleman, a lover of God and nature.2 But Hafiz not only excelled in spiritual writings, for he was Perfect, but also in poetic meters and style, better than Firdausi or Shaikh Saadi. Shams-e-Tabriz and Jalal al-Din Rumi, too, were God-realized, though Omar Khayyam was not.
The following morning, the discussion was resumed in the mandali's quarters, during which Baba commented on some famous historical figures:
Shivaji was the greatest warrior of them all, even greater than Napoleon. Napoleon, though brave and clever, was proud, greedy, and vicious. Shivaji was brave, but less clever than Napoleon; yet Shivaji was not proud or greedy.
Footnotes
- 1.Kalidas, born during the 5th century AD, was an Indian dramatist and poet. He is considered the greatest figure in classical Sanskrit literature.
- 2.About Shelley, a year later on 3 September 1928, Chanji recorded that Baba stated, "[Among English poets], only Wordsworth and Shelley were in the line [on the Path]." And to Paul Brunton, in 1930, Baba said, "[Francis] Bacon never crossed the gross plane; Wordsworth and Shelley were enjoying the first two spiritual planes; Pythagoras was a yogi of the fourth plane."(Paul Brunton, "Talks in the Orient," [44–4], PB Philosophic Foundation)