THE GOD-MAN The Life, Journeys and Work of Meher Baba with an ...

THE FINAL DECLARATION 231here with me in this way. In India, they have traditions. As I told you before, yogis and saints are supposedto be in silent meditation. You could not make effective contact with them. Remember always that I amyour Master, but that I am also your friend; that I am one with you, and one of you. Therefore you can becompletely natural with me, and tell me frankly whatever is in your mind."When I am with sadhus, no one is more serious than 1. When I am with children, I play marbles withthem. I am in all, and one with all. That is why I can adapt myself to all kinds of people, and meet themwhere they are."Immediately after luncheon he went away, and an excursion was taken to the Happy Valley atAhmednagar. On the way a visit was paid to the American Congregational Church Mission where ahundred women and girls were employed working sisal. First started in the city when it was a famine area,the workshop had been maintained since, though during the partition troubles they had very greatdifficulties. Most of their products went to the United States. The place was bright and cheerful. I foundthat their best workers earned no more than forty-four rupees a month, part-time.Outside the Ahmednagar fort, which is an extensive area, surrounded by a high wall and moat, there is amounted cannon, not far from the drawbridge, which bears a tablet stating in English that at that spotArthur Wellesley, when in command of military operations in the Deccan, had breakfast before capturingthe fort in 1803. Today people regard the spot as a shrine, and worship there in memory of his deliverance.They break coconuts and pour the milk over the cannon. There were garlands and flowers quite recentlyhung on the gun. This made me think of what Plato said in The Republic about images, that those who usethem are not really thinking about them at all, but about the originals which they resemble, the realsubjects being invisible except to the eye of the mind. For it could not be thought that the ignorant peasantswere worshipping the actual cannon, any more than the worshippers of images in the temples wereworshipping idols, though they had the appearance of it. They were worshipping an unknown. All thesame, idols are dangerous, and of course there are other idols than physical images. It is said in one of theUpanishads: 'The Brahman is not what one thinks with the mind, but, as they say, is that whereby there is amentation or concept: know that That alone is Brahman, not what men worship here.'We inspected the Fort, where Jawaharlal Nehru and eleven of his