On obeying Baba

On the way to India, Clarice Adams had been pondering the inevitable question Baba asked his lovers, “Will you obey me?” She thought: “Would I jump out of the plane window if Baba told me? Would I run around naked?”

She was carrying a book of Hafiz’s couplets and opened the book to this quotation:

Knowing Love’s Ocean is a shoreless sea,
what help is there?
Abandon life and founder!

Then she read another couplet of Hafiz:

When you give your heart to Love, you make the moment lucky.
No need of auguries to perform good deeds.

She thought: “Yes, I will obey Baba.”

Now, at Ashiana, came the question: “Will you obey me?” Baba asked.

“Yes,” said Clarice.

“Will you go back to Melbourne and kill your three children?”

Clarice began weeping. She didn’t have a handkerchief, so she began wiping her eyes on her sleeve. After a moment, she felt “a lovely, comforting warmth from Baba, as if I was being rocked like a baby.”

Baba said, “I wouldn’t ask you to do that. I had to show you that you cannot obey me.”

Baba then remarked, “There is no value in trying to follow Baba unless it is what you want to do, and are willing to obey him. It does not matter at all if you do not want to – far better to live an ordinary life, forget about following Baba, and see God in others and in everyday life. But if it is your real desire to love Baba and serve him, how would you do it? It is very difficult to do, and difficult to explain. I cannot ask, how will I love my wife? I do or I do not. Can you hear that noise (a loud banging outside)?”

They said yes. “Well, if you loved me, you would not hear it while you are with me!” Baba concluded.

…  Baba stated, “Divine love is the real love, but you cannot do that, so thinking of me continually is the next best. That, too, you cannot do.

“If you naturally say my name just while you are working or quiet as often as you can spontaneously, that is good. But perhaps you cannot do that either, so do this: repeat Baba’s name aloud every day for not less than half an hour, and not more than one hour. Now, there is no love in that – no value at all in repetition – but in this case, it will bring love, it will establish the link with me, because I am telling you to do it.

“But if you don’t even want to do that, do not do it. It doesn’t matter. Do what you want to do but try to remember that I am in everyone, in every man, woman and child. Be happy, live naturally, but serve me in others as much as you can.”

–Date and place: 7 Feb 1956;  Bombay
Lord Meher (First Ed), p4903
www.lordmeher.org (Revised 2014), p3942

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