On the morning of the 28th of August, (1939) during the usual talks with the men mandali, Baba abruptly started asking each one in the room, “Where is God? … Where is God?”
All replied spontaneously. Jehangir Wankadia, a scholar of Eastern philosophy, and who had come with Adi Sr. from Meherabad on the 23rd, said, “Everywhere.”
Nilu pointed to his chest and said, “In the heart!”
Vishnu said, “In the soul!”
One expressed his inability to give the proper answer, saying, “It is the eternal question.”
Finally, Baba asked Donkin, who replied, “In Baba! Baba is God.”
For a moment all were taken aback. Donkin’s answer was so simple, so natural. Baba then spelled out, explaining:
If you take me as your Master and believe me perfect and one with the Infinite, if you believe this in all faith, then Don’s is the only correct and logical answer.
God is where you are not! By you is meant your false “I,” your illusory life as Kaka, Adi, Eruch, Baidul. Where you are, God is not! To think yourself separate from God is all imagination. Your false ego makes you think you are such and such and leads you to believe that God can never reside within you! When your false ego disappears and your “I” goes, God comes!
Referring to the group’s various answers, Baba further explained:
To say God is everywhere is a generality and nothing new. Pundits and priests the world over say that, and Vedanta is full of this explanation. To merely say it is of no use. You must seek God everywhere, find God everywhere, feel God everywhere and experience God everywhere.
To say that God is in the heart, is again only part of the truth. If God is everywhere, as you all know and say, then why should you confine Him within the limits of your cardiovascular system? Why can’t He be in your head, your finger, your toe? Why should you try to see Him in one particular part and not in another?
It is a common mistake and characteristic human weakness to raise the eyes to the skies and try to view the Highest and most Beloved and revered up above, somewhere in the heavens. Or, when sought in the body, to find Him only in the parts men like best: that is, in the heart or the eye, as if He did not exist equally elsewhere in other parts – in the back or bones, in the nails or flesh. Is God in the rose and not in the thorn? Or in flowers and not in dirt?
This weakness of seeing God in things you like and shuddering at the idea of His existence in things you don’t like or abhor must be overcome. It is only when you rise above all these ideas of good and bad and recognize, see and feel flowers and dirt alike, and find God equally in all, that you could be said to have known and learned something real. Otherwise, it is all parrot-like, a false conception, an illusion.
Lord Meher, Bhau Kalchuri, Original Publication, Vol. 7, pp. 248 – 2449.