The following day, after being secluded in the Sadhak Ashram for sixteen days, Gopal Swamy and Manekar both saw a brilliant light. In the beginning of his search, Manekar had gone to Mahatma Gandhi's ashram seeking Truth, and from there he had come to Meherabad. But nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He now knew that the object of his life was only obeying Meher Baba.
On 19 December, Baba directed Gustadji and his brother Sohrab to stay in two temporary rooms which had been built near his underground cabin. Gustadji had been living alone on the verandah of the Jhopdi at lower Meherabad, looking after the garden there. His duty was now given to Masaji.
One night Baba made these comments to the mandali concerning the process of death:
You eat food and to keep yourselves healthy and fit you pass out the residue as excrement. But do you ever shed tears for the waste you eliminate? Do you ever think about it or feel regret over it? Not at all. Then if someone dear dies, why do you weep for that discarded body which is like food to the soul?
You preserve and protect your body to feed your soul. The body is the medium for the soul's progress. When your excrement is eliminated, you eat fresh food. Similarly, with the disposal of the old body, you take a new body. So why worry and weep over that which is the law of nature and cannot be altered?
Sadgurus and the Avatar consider human death to be absolutely unimportant. They do not feel bad about anyone's death. For them, the whole universe is a very, very small thing — a small point.
The human body can be compared to the fibers on the outer shell of a coconut. Hundreds of such hairs fall off, but the coconut water remains safe inside. Similarly, thousands of human bodies may fall, but the soul is immortal; it never dies. It is always living and eternal.
December 20 was the forty-first day of Baba's prolonged fast. He was taken up the hill in the hand-drawn rickshaw, and there he retired into the underground crypt-cabin in seclusion. Baba had been going up the hill most evenings and giving discourses to the boys, before retiring in his Jhopdi at lower Meherabad at about 10:00 or 10:30 P.M. after arti.