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

THE METHOD 433disciples with the choice between following him and giving him up. He does this on the most unlooked foroccasions and always with great force. All Masters are difficult with their intimate followers, elusive,distracting, and contradictory, and get up to all sorts of tricks to drive away those whom they love. There isnothing that a Master will not do to put a disciple to the severest test, disturbing his relations with him to theuttermost, so that if possible he may be detached.This is not to say the disciple is to be submerged in the Master, for there is no surrender of individuality:it is the end of separateness. The will of the disciple is given up that he may receive it again. To give it up isthe test - not even to be ready, but to do it. That is why Baba demands explicit obedience. There is noquestioning an order, right or wrong it has to be done. Certainly if the order be questioned Baba will listen,he may even withdraw an order; but no one who has been so foolish as to put himself in such a position,however justified he may think himself to be, has ever failed to regret it. Having given implicit obedience thedisciple becomes through painful experience as his Master. For the end of discipleship is to be a disciple nomore, but a Master. Those who desert a Master lose their discipleship in the wrong way. They cut themselvesoff when they should jump more deeply in. They refuse equality.The most constant complaint made against Baba, is that he is continually changing his plans.He makes promises and does not keep them; he gives instructions and contradicts them; and what heproposes is not carried out. Many such facts are recorded earlier in this book, and I must examine them.(2)Note in the first place that this promise-breaking is contrary to his practice in everyday affairs, which, as Ihave said, is scrupulous in its attention to precise detail, and he never neglects to keep commitments. That,however, is in mundane matters, always treated as very important, but in the great things, in spiritual matters,in his activities as a Master, he is unpredictable. He says one thing and does another. Time after time hedeclares that he will speak, and does not. He says he will drop his body, and does not. Why does he act thus?We can offer a variety of explanations, the most simple of which is in the words that 'the spirit blowethwhither it listeth'. Baba acts according to vision or intuition. In terms of ordinary life it is hard to accept anyexplanation at all. His own comment is 'It is said of me that I am most slippery'. Thus the strict routine andorder in his life is continually interrupted,