Just before the End
We are grateful to Catherine McCluney for this beautiful report.
Having had the great good fortune to sit at Master’s Holy Feet during the last few weeks of His life here on this plane, I’d like to share whatever these poor words can convey of the joy, the Love He was bathed in in those days.
Arriving in late July, I was stunned by His radiant vitality, His buoyancy, His youthfulness. I have never seen Master look so overwhelmingly beautiful – so hearty, and young. I kept being struck with how young He looked. And at darshans every evening we would all be awe-struck with the incredible Beauty of Him. The following notes hope to be a little of what He said verbally. His eyes said so much more …
20 July
No one could say anything. Master said,
Well, if you’re just going to sit there mute and dumb, you may as well stay in your rooms! Now I want each one of you to say something, maybe just a statement – I want to know the trend of your minds!
So He asked each of us in turn and we said,
I want to love You;
I want to become One with You -
to which He asked,
Physically or spiritually?
– Spiritually.
– Well, for that you must rise above the body, and the astral and causal bodies. You must be at that same level to become One with somebody. So rise into the nameless, formless state.
I want to surrender everything to You, but I can’t even keep the commandments.
Master asked,
How can you surrender if you don’t keep the commandments? You cannot! If you love me, keep my commandments. Once my Master asked at a large Satsang gathering, ‘Who can give me his mind?’ One man stood up. ‘Do you have control of your mind?’ my Master asked. – ‘No.’ – ‘Well then, how can you give it?’ – So first make it your own. You follow what I am saying? If I say, ‘Stand up!’, stand up. ‘Sit down!’ sit down. (looking so powerful) ‘Close your eyes and rise above’ (He demonstrated) – do it! First obey the commandments; that is the first step. Do you agree with what I say – all of you? All right, then …
One man said,
You say learning to concentrate takes time …
Master replied,
Rome was not built in a day. Time factor is necessary. You plant a tree for the fruit it bears, but you don’t get the fruit at once. You plant a seed, water it, protect it from cold and searing heat, is it not? You also give it manure … it will then grow into a sound tree and in time bear much fruit. If you don’t protect it, give it water and manure, then? And once you have planted it, wait – don’t be digging it up to see how it is doing every few days!
There was a question about Guru Nanak, to which Master replied how Nanak had walked all over India and many other countries. Someone said,
You have travelled the length and breadth the world too.
Master laughed and said,
No, there is one thing I regret: I could not get a direct flight to Africa. You have to go through Rome.
– Well, we can charter a plane for You.
If God will it, it may be. And the Malaysian peninsula, and …
– We want to know when You are coming so we can prepare in the West, too!
Again He laughed,
Well, it is all God’s will. I am in the evening of my life, but if He wants this work from me I will go. I am ready to go right now … In World War II, I read a cable at office from one general: ‘Barring all events, I am coming.’ Barring all events,
Master chuckled;
I only say, God willing …
22 July
Someone asked Master what was the greatest obstacle on the Path, and He replied,
The want of a ruling passion. You have a ruling passion for something, all your steps go in that direction.
When asked how to develop that ruling passion for Him, He said,
Constant sweet remembrance. When you have Love for someone, you are always thinking of him, how to please him. As you think, so you become. So constant sweet remembrance is what is wanted.
And later on He volunteered,
The most heinous crime is to think you are the body. You are soul, conscious entity. You are the controller of the body.
26 July
The first day of the Celebration, the Sant Samagam, we were all sitting in front of the big dais meditating, waiting for Master to come out. Suddenly He came down in front and stood there, right in our midst. He laughed and said,
You’re all going on ok?
and made a gesture to go strong.
He gave us meditation instructions, looking at us so sweetly, almost longingly, asking us with His eyes to please come Home. So after an hour or so it began to rain, and someone said the Westerners must all go inside. Well, my heart broke – I thought we would miss Satsang. And I really wanted to hide in the crowd and stay there, but I thought I would try to obey and if it was too bad I could always be disobedient then. So I reluctantly joined the line of Westerners marching off toward Mrs Bimla’s, and as we got nearer to the old Manav Kendra exhibition room there were sevadars lining the way! and it dawned on me that they were taking us to Master! And there He was, King of Kings, on a huge low dais with maybe twenty holy men whom He’d invited from Kumbha MeIa. It was so cosmic! He was so lovely! Even His beard was sparkling … And though this was all in Hindi, as were most of the four days of the Celebration, Master sustained and fed us with His indescribable glance of Grace.
4th August
Someone said they had the desire to smoke cigarettes. Master said,
You are big and strong. Don’t be subject to it. It is below your dignity. – How much do you smoke now?
– I don't smoke at all, Master, I just have the desire.
Oh, desire. That is only from thoughts. Don’t think about it. You haven’t made a firm decision, that is the problem. You are wishy-washy. Make up your mind; you are a fit man, I think. So thoughts are very potent, very potent I tell you. The whole atmosphere is coloured by them.
5 August
Upstairs in Master’s bedroom, the train roared by. Master had to stop in mid-sentence, it was so loud. Then He laughed and said,
People coming and going, coming and going.
Someone said he got angry with the flies, as they bothered him when he meditated. Master laughed and said,
Poor fellows … have you prepared some nest for them? Some place for them to go? They have no place, you see. When the honeybees disturb the house, people take a big lump of sugar outside and all the bees go there. So have pity on them – they are our younger brothers in the family of God.
All the while laughing so sweetly.
Master told about an opium eater who was detailed to Him as an orderly when He was on the firing lines in 1921. He told the man to leave off, but the fellow said he could not. So Master made him promise to take opium only from Him, and every day Master would give the man his allowance of opium, gradually cutting it down by mixing it with something – He couldn’t think of the English word for it. So once when Master was away, he would not take the opium from anybody. Even the doctors were pressing him to take for some medical reason, but he would not.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way,
Master said,
So make up your minds to think only of God. Have no evil thought for anybody, and hear no evil about anybody. Believe only what you see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears. Cast out all evil thoughts, and all are friendly.
He told about the man who vowed to kill Him, that he came up to Him on a dark path several times, but he could do nothing.
Because I had no evil thought. Later I met him in town, and he confessed he had taken a vow to kill me. I invited him to my home and served him food, and he began to cry.
I wanted to kill You, and still You are serving me like anything.
He was changed, you see.
Someone asked if it was all right to pray for good health.
Yes, but you must obey the laws of nature. It is no good praying and taking more poison. But the best prayer, I think, is
Oh God, send us that which You think is in our best interest.
We wish for things, and when we get them we repent. … Once someone said to Lord Vishnu,
You must be very busy creating and sustaining all the various heavens and hells.
– Oh, no,
replied Lord Vishnu,
People make their own heavens and hells – I have nothing to do.
So think good thoughts always and the Kingdom of Heaven will come on earth. Weed out – it is said that even God does not care to help the man who will not change himself. So God helps those who help themselves. And every minute spent in meditation will help you.
7 August
Once back in … 1916 or 17, I was laid up with fever. They gave me leave for three months, then for six months, and then until death! Such high fever I had. They thought I had TB, you know. But I never died; I recovered fully. So while I was ill, I had no duty – I would lie there and enjoy.
And He showed us how He looked when He rose above the body. One man said,
But Master, You weren’t even initiated then!
And Master tilted His head to one side and laughed like a small child with a wonderful secret.
But I had background,
He said softly.
8 August
Tonight we were again speechless at His splendour, and He asked us,
Do you know the story of Akbar and Birbal?
and told us a very long and wonderful story, the gist of which was that one should remain quiet when he meets a foolish man.1
So that is why you are all quiet?
Master said so sweetly, so humbly.
Somebody please say something so it will not be like that!
Still no one could say anything, and after joking with us a bit, Master began to talk about absorbing into the eyes of the Master.
*****
When I left on 9th August, Master was still so radiant, so jolly, so fresh. If He allowed His body to suffer at the end, it was by His own choice. He knows what’s best, and He is always in complete control. Though He had been ill off and on, it was not Master but only His body that was ill. Sometimes He would come out for darshan looking a little tired, a little worn, and within minutes be glowing, wreathing us all in His indescribable buoyancy.
And I would often think to myself, why is Master giving us so much – why is He so very happy? It was really as if He couldn’t contain His happiness, and it overflowed, infecting all of us.
And I thank God that we didn’t know, for we’d have lived in such dread of the future we could never have enjoyed those precious moments. … What a perfect example Master gave us, of living only in the present!
So don’t let us dwell on the pain or the sadness, but rather on the joy of His work completed on this plane, and the knowledge that He’s closer to us now than ever before. May our every thought, word and deed be the fulfilment of His work, by keeping His commandments implicitly and growing into His will and pleasure. Then we too will leave this world joyfully, our work done, and go back into His lap forever.
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Footnote: 1) For the complete story, see Sat Sandesh / October 1973, ‘With the Incarnation of Love.’