Meeting My Master

When I first spoke of Sant Mat to my parents, they were dismayed, thinking I would lose strength with little or no animal protein in my diet. I was unwilling to antagonize them for I felt that if patience and restraint were exercised, they would be so persuaded of the sincerity of my convictions as to realize that no harm could come to me.

In the meantime, the Colonel had arranged for me to spend a part of the Christmas holidays at Beas with Mrs Johnson, an American disciple living at the Dera. Before this, however, I was destined to meet my dearest Master for the first time when he visited the Colonel’s house in New Delhi, to which city our office and my family had moved for the cold weather season. No words of mine can describe my eager anticipation on that clear sunny October afternoon at the office. The Colonel had gone ahead to meet his guest and later he telephoned to say that the Master wished me to come to him. Riding to the house on my bicycle, I felt as though I were flying on air down the Secretariat slope. This, I thought, is how it feels, this rapturous ecstasy of return to meet the Master from whom your soul has been separated for perhaps as many as eight million, four hundred thousand different species of life.

At last I arrived and there he was, impeccably dressed, an upright stately figure with a long snow-white beard and high turban and a countenance of quiet dignity, smiling into my eyes and holding out his hand, with a deep “Hello” of greeting. While he shook my hand and I murmured a conventional reply, my mind felt as though it was metaphorically bowing at his feet. It is strange how we contain ourselves at such a time when our inner selves leap and dance for all the world like an exultant puppy greeting a much loved master after a long separation.
_{Flora Wood, In Search of the Way}