(April 1963) In the afternoon, before Baba entered the hall, he received several Andhra devotees, and also a sadhu who came for his darshan. The sadhu hailed from Mount Abu and had spent fifteen years in penance in the mountains. He had a long beard and his hair hung on his shoulders. He told Baba that he had long wished to have his darshan. Baba replied, “I reside in your heart.”
There are many hypocritical saints with long matted hair and their bodies besmeared with ashes. Tukaram says: “Let their dead conscience be burnt; it is no sin to thrash them!”
Tukaram, though he was Love Incarnate, could not tolerate false saints. Ninety-nine percent of all so-called saints know nothing about the path! In North India, such bogus saints abound. Out of the one percent of genuine saints, there are only five Perfect Masters who bring me down to this Earth. The present five Perfect Masters will come into prominence after I drop my body. (1) A staunch atheist is better than a hypocritical saint! God is not to be found in the skies, or in the Himalayas, or in the hills of Mount Abu. He resides in everyone’s heart.
Once your heart is clean, I will shine in it. But it is not so easy to clean one’s heart. It is like diving deep into a sea of fire. Only one out of thousands of the Mard-e-Khuda (true lovers of God) has such courage, for he has become like dust at the feet of a Perfect Master. Only he has the right to ask to see God. To love God is very difficult. The easiest way is to hold on to my daaman. Throw all your burden of sanskaras at my feet. I am the Ocean and can absorb your entire burden. In fact, there is no such thing as [sanskaric or karmic] burden; it is all imagination.
(1) Meher Baba seldom mentioned the current five Perfect Masters on Earth (in the 1960s, he noted three were Hindu and two were Muslim), and later made it clear to the mandali that the five living Perfect Masters would not be in the limelight for at least one hundred years after he, the Avatar, dropped his body. It may be wise to conclude, therefore, that if anyone claims to be a Perfect Master within this span of time (1969 through 2069), he should be looked upon with considerable suspicion. In 1954, Meher Baba stated that as many as seventy-seven false Avatars or Messiahs would arise during his advent, which may imply that many will arise after he dropped the body in 1969, which has been observed to be the tragic case in both the East and West.
This statement may also refer to Meher Baba’s five Masters, who perfected him. For example, Sai Baba of Shirdi has become world famous and now has a temple erected in his name in Florida. Sai Baba has become the most widely known Perfect Master on Earth, having several books written about him not only in India and Pakistan, but also in Europe and North and South America. An Urdu biography of Tajuddin Baba is published in Pakistan. The Sadgurus Upasni Maharaj and Narayan Maharaj are also known to various Vedantic sects in Europe and America.
Lord Meher, Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 18, p. 6115.