I CLUNG AT EACH AND EVERY THING

 
It was evening and Baba emerged out of the pandal (awning), got into His car and took leave of the sahavasees for the day. But suddenly the car slowed down and my name was called out by Sri Eruch. I went up to Baba — Baba gestured and Sri Eruch interpreted — "Amiya, have you sent Swami M. back to Mandla?" I nodded my head in assent. That moment Baba stretched out His hand from the car and gently touched my cheeks, a token of His love. Then the car slowly went up to the main road and sped away.

I do not know, nor can I explain what happened to me due to that touch. I felt a great ecstatic agony. I left lower Meherabad and headed towards a desolate place along the railway line that parts upper Meherabad from lower. The Sun had set. It was dark. The touch had not worn off — it now intensified on my being. Suddenly I experienced a strange thing. The trees, the grass, the earth, the stones, the rail-lines, everything seemed to be part of myself a real kin — in actuality! I clung at each and every thing as if trying to regain my total entity as all these things. But howsoever poignantly I grabbed at them, that very act made the feeling of oneness fraught with the feeling of hopeless separation.

I tried to retrieve my total existence of whose glimpse I had started experiencing but to no avail. In great agony now I began to roll on the darkened grounds sobbing. It was the weeping of a person who had just come to know that he is part of everything but he did not know how to recover the parts back. It was like a man whose hand was cut off and he waited and asked others that the hand be joined back to his shoulders. The agony was beyond expression. How close I was to actual Universal Entity and yet how far.

Oh, how to do away with the limited ego shell of mine. In great despair, I decided to commit suicide. I must get rid of this obstructive ego and become my actual self — that way! Just then I heard the whistle of a train. The light of the engine shone on the rails. I stood up determined to lay myself down on the rails. Baba had made me feel a glimpse of reality for a moment, but He was not granting me to become what I was. So the best thing would be to end the agony under the wheels of the oncoming train. As I was about to go up to the rail track, two persons appeared almost from nowhere.

"What are you doing here?" one sternly demanded.

His voice brought me back to my senses. "Nothing. I was taking a solitary stroll."

"No, you go down immediately to your pandal," he said sternly. Meanwhile the train passed by. When I looked to the other side of the rail track the two persons had gone away, but they had brought me back to normal thinking. Who were they? Were they sent by Baba?

What was I doing? Just one 'glimpse' and I was about to do away with my gross life. And two days back, I had shuddered to see the unconscious man and had decided not to ask for any spiritual experience. Shame overtook me. I now knew why Baba did not grant great experiences to unripe men like me. I thanked Him wholeheartedly for the lesson.