This letter from Eruch to his family at Akbar Press on Sunday, December 10th (1960), aptly sums up Baba’s condition:
Beloved Baba’s health is not at all good. He has terrible pain all over his body, but he does not tell us what it all is. From all outward appearances he looks as if in terrible pain, and he makes us feel that he is much interested in being disinterested. He has totally given up taking any interest in anything whatsoever. It seems that he has not only stopped speaking by observing the SILENCE, but has now apparently stopped hearing, seeing, feeling, eating and drinking, sleeping and breathing! He does not even move about in the compound.
In short, he is not taking any exercise or walking and, therefore, his appetite for food and water is at present 100% nil. He has brought everything to a standstill as far as he is directly concerned physically. We, of course, are ignorant of what is truly going on within him. There might be a volcano fully active!
He appears to be absorbed in something very serious and, along with his unique silence, he has obviously silenced all activities immediately around him. He does not want to hear anything and he does not want to see anything, nor take part in the sort of conversation we usually hold while we sit near him …
The atmosphere around Meherazad is charged with a kind of intense “stillness” – not inactivity (far from it!) but a sort of HUSH personified.
Beloved Baba has wished me to make quite clear, to whomsoever I write, that in the future he will not pay any attention to any correspondence, nor see anyone whom he on his own has not called. And, even if he were to go to Poona or elsewhere in 1961, he will continue to be in seclusion until such time that his silence is broken.
In short, he wants his loved ones to remain completely resigned to his Will and continue to learn to seek his pleasure rather than their own! Beloved Baba, it would seem, in his own imperceptible way is now compressing into the hearts of his loved ones the spirit of complete surrender to his will …
Our compassionate Beloved seems to have taken us into his hands to help us carry out his wish. And the weapon which he seems to use to this end is this present atmosphere, as aforesaid. He has withdrawn himself to such an extent that we, and all others elsewhere, feel utterly helpless. And when this helplessness reaches its peak the only recourse is to just surrender to his Will – without the least expectation of any return or reward.
– Eruch
Mani added in her Family Letter of December 1960:
Guessing the import of Baba’s work in all periods of seclusion, and knowing the gravity of this one, this phase of all activity appearing outwardly to be at a standstill would seem to signify the tremendous rate of accomplishment of his inner work – just as anything revolving at great speed appears to the onlooker to be stationary.
Lord Meher, Original Publication, Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 17, pp. 5811 – 5812.