WAYFARING IN SPAIN

 
After a month at Porto Fino, Baba sailed for India, but within two months he was enroute again to Europe. During this trip most of his attention was concentrated upon Spain, where he visited Avila, the birthplace of St. Theresa and St. John of the Cross. During the twenty-four hours spent there the group fasted with Baba as an expression of love for the great souls who had made the town renowned. No one was permitted to touch Baba during this period, so swift was the spiritual current with which he was then charged.

In Spain, as in all the countries he visits, Baba wished to contact the masses. In Madrid, where he went from Avila, he and the group tramped the streets all day until their aching feet rebelled. Baba chose particularly to stand in the central square Puerta Del Sol among the crowds. Sometimes as they walked through the thoroughfare — despite the fact that Baba wore European clothes and a Spanish beret which concealed his long hair and made him look quite normal — people would turn and stare at him as if drawn by something beyond their conscious mind. This, Baba explained to the group, was due to the powerful nature of the internal work he was then performing. Instinctively, the crowd must have felt it, because at other times he would attract no special attention.

When we realize that this tour was made shortly before the outbreak of the Spanish war, it seems probable that the Master was stirring up the karmic forces in the unconscious of the Spanish people, which, with them as with all nations, must be expiated through suffering before the beneficial effects of redemption can be experienced.

One afternoon they climbed a high hill opposite Madrid. Here they sat around Baba beneath the shade of a large olive tree, while he spoke to them of the future and of the part they would play in his coming world-work. On this beautiful sunlit hill, as they sat circled about the Master, time seemed to roll away; the scene might have been in Palestine with Jesus, or in Brindaban with Krishna, or in the race's childhood, before man had learned to record for posterity the manifestation of Godhood in human form.

The world all about them, so intent in its pursuit of false values, seemed unreal and dreamlike. Only this moment out of time, in the presence of one who dwells continually in eternity, was real — had meaning. Always, in fact, the rest of the phenomenal universe seems lost — and well lost — when one is in Baba's transcendent presence.

The day they arrived in Barcelona a special delegate from Madrid was being greeted by the city officials. Baba was delighted to be among the vast throngs of people who gathered to watch the great procession of all the notables of the district. This circumstance, which marked the seal of the new federal state, was highly important politically, and provided essential stage-setting for the subsequent upheaval in the Spanish government.

This was but one of the many 'coincidences' which high-lighted their journeys through Europe with Baba. Frequently, at the moment of his arrival in a place, a parade or an important festival would be in full swing, giving him additional opportunity to achieve his magnetic contact-work with the masses. When man has lost his spiritual contact with the Impersonal God — as in this present day — then the Personal Aspect must not only take human form but use human contacts to re-charge the spiritual consciousness of mankind.