I WAS ONLY TESTING YOU

 
In 1956 Meher Baba sent me again to visit saints and masters with the following message. Meher Baba says you are His beloved child and He wants you to remember Him and love Him.

I went to many masters and each one accepted the message reverentially and with deep love, except one who claimed himself to be a Perfect Master. When I visited him in Bombay and gave him the message, he angrily retorted, "I am not His child. How dare you bring such a message!" and then continued to rave and rant against Baba for quite some time.

I heard him out patiently and listened to him abusing Baba, but despite being a short-tempered man, I kept my cool. At one point he said to me, "If Baba were to come to me, I will make Him stand on His head and let His legs dangle in the air, and He dares to call me His beloved child!"

In between his abuses I kept interjecting Baba's greatness and compassion. He then started to narrate incidents of how spiritual masters came to him and paid their respects and Baba, he said, had the temerity to call him 'His child!' He reeled out the names of a number of them whom I indicated I had come to know over a period of time and this volunteered statement of mine both surprised him and angered him considerably.

Soon it was time for me to leave, so I turned to him and said, "Do you see how big and strong I am. For nearly two hours you have been abusing Meher Baba, and if in retaliation I were to pounce on you and hold you by the neck, you would squeak like a chicken. But I don't see you as you are. I see my Baba speaking through you, and through you He is giving me a glimpse of His other facet, for He is Infinite and He is everything."

When he heard this, he looked astounded, then said, "Well done, my child. I was only testing you."

I thanked him and left.