DIVINE DETACHMENT

 
Just as Baba is unaffected by the evil in the world which expresses itself in lustful thoughts or actions, so is he unperturbed by it when it takes the form of slander against himself. He knows that all spiritual work is strengthened by opposition. "The fun of the game lies in meeting resistance — facing and transcending it."

Baba's attitude toward the spoken or written defamations directed against him is one of bored indifference. "I consider all who are not God-realized as mad and pay no attention to what they do or say about me or my work, favorable or otherwise," he once told us when we were discussing a book which had just been published, in which the author had displayed his negative projection against Baba.

"People who speak ill of me should not be condemned. They, too, are unconsciously serving my work, because they often think of me." From Baba's detached viewpoint this resistance intensifies the spiritual current of his work.

That Baba is an enigma which puzzles the rational mind is a fact substantiated by all of his closest associates. It is not, therefore, surprising that those who judge others in terms of their limited perceptions should project upon Baba their own limitations. All of us who are close to the Master have confessed our inability to understand many of his methods. But it seems wholly immature to condemn what one does not understand. The ill-founded criticisms which have sometimes been levelled against Baba serve as boomerangs against the critics. In the words of Frank LaFarge, the celebrated painter: "No man judges a work of art. It judges him."

It is Baba's function to stir up the unconscious forces in man — dark as well as light — and if for a time the negative forces seem to predominate in an individual, he will inevitably project them upon the Master. Some people — particularly his own countrymen — are outraged because he does not fit their preconceived pattern of a Master. They forget that a Master does not follow patterns: he breaks them.