Wazira – the Silent

“Can you show me any advanced soul here?” the professor asked. “There are many, but they always try to hide themselves,” I told him.

I was just thinking of various spiritually advanced persons who lived at the Dera when Bhai Wazira passed in front of the room where we were sitting. I called him in. The professor stood up and shook hands with him and offered him a seat by his side on the sofa, but the Bhai shyly sat down on the floor and waited for a question or an order. I left them to gaze at one another for some moments. As neither could understand the language of the other, a conversation between them was out of the question.

After a few minutes, Bhai asked for permission to leave. After his departure I told the professor that this man belonged to an untouchable class, was very poor, had no property and had been living at the Dera since his boyhood. After his initiation, he gave full time to meditation and made good spiritual progress inside, reaching the stage where he could see the Master in everything – animate or inanimate. He would embrace a tree and exclaim, “Master, my beloved Master,” or would take a dog in his lap and say, “My Master is in it.” For hours he would go on rubbing the back of a bull with great love, constantly repeating, “My Master, are you pleased with me?” Sometimes he would take dust from the ground over which the Master had passed and would rub it on his face and head, saying, “It is a great cleanser.”

One day he fell down at the feet of the Great Master, crying, “My Guru is God, the Creator of all.” The Master had heard of his conduct. He made him stand up and asked in a stern tone, “What is all this I hear about you?”

“Are you not the Creator Lord? Are you not the life of all?” Bhai Wazira asked.

The Great Master said, “It is not proper to give out secrets. You shall suffer for it.”

“I only proclaim the truth,” said Bhai.

“Who told you to do that?” the Great Master asked him.

“You,” said Bhai.

“All right, I take back my permission,” said the Great Master. And instantly everything was taken back. The door was shut against Bhai Wazira. The Lord’s grace was withdrawn. The fountain of love and devotion dried up. He could not sit in meditation for a single moment. His zeal and enthusiasm were gone. The shock at the loss of spiritual wealth is much greater than at the loss of material wealth. Bhai could not bear it and wept for days and nights. The Great Master refused to see him. Apart from the cessation of the inner audience, he was denied the outer audience also. This went on for a full month, at the end of which Bhai was reduced to a mere skeleton due to lack of food and sleep. Then a number of old satsangis interceded on his behalf and he was brought before the Great Master. The Great Master smiled and said, “Well, how are you now, my son?”

Bhai put his hands to his ears (a sign of remorse) and said, “My Lord, I have learned the lesson. Now forgive me.”

The Great Master told him, “Never forget it. Now go.”

“Bhai was given back what he had lost,” I said, finishing the story, “and since then he talks very little. A calm serenity covers his face and he is now called Wazira – the Silent.”
_{Call of the Great Master}