(continued from previous episode)
Two more years slipped by and then the telegram came “Leave all and come to me.”
At once the young man left his home and went straight to Baba.
“This time, I won’t send you back”, Baba reassured him. “Now you should stay here with me. Forget your wife, forget your children, forget your house, forget your job, forget everything and just relax for three days. And then I will give you instructions.”
After three days, Baba called him and said, “your wife is dead. Your children are dead. You have no house, you have no job.” After a meaningful pause, Baba went on to say ”But even though your wife and children are dead to you they are alive for me, for I have accepted you and your responsibility toward them has come to rest with me. And therefore I appoint you a caretaker. It is your job now to take care of these people – your wife and children – on my behalf, knowing that they belong to me and not you. And I know that you will discharge this responsibility well, as I would want you to. And all the while, keep it in the back of your mind that, whenever I send you a telegram ordering you to leave all and come to me, you should be prepared to drop even this new responsibility of caretaker and come at once.”
The young man accepted Baba’s instructions willingly and cheerfully, and he returned to his home in Delhi. Many more years passed by, and gradually he came to realize what true renunciation is.
Real renunciation means to be in the world but not of it, to renounce the self and its desires, even in the midst of worldly life.
“Attend faithfully to your worldly duties, but keep always at the back of your mind that all this is Baba’s.”- Meher Baba
— “Meher Baba’s New Life”, Bhau Kalchuri, p 689