A Farewell Interview

The author of Adventure of Faith recalled the time when her stay at the Dera was coming to an end:

Finally my time in the Dera ran out and I was granted a farewell interview with the Master, who received me with his usual kindness. I sat facing him at his writing table and he looked at me silently for a while. Finally, I asked him for some guidelines for my work for Sant Mat in Germany. He referred me to his representative there and then said, “Give satsang, help the people.” He also spoke of the need to integrate the writings of Christian mystics into the literature of Sant Mat, and said that I should write down how I came to the path of the Masters. He also asked me whether I would return to my monastery, and I answered that I was not sure what I should do there, but that I would go first to see my mother in Munich. “Yes,” the Master said, “we should look after our parents.” These words of the Master were to be a pointer for the future, when I actually would have to nurse my mother.

We also spoke about the fact that, after twenty-five years of living in the ‘desert’, I would now be returning to the world and, on top of that, to the centre of a big city. The Master looked at me lovingly and said, “Don’t be afraid. Do your work with a detached mind and don’t get involved in things, but keep your mind above them.” Then I said that I did not know whether and when I would be able to come to the Dera again. Hinting at his visit to Germany, planned for 1975, but without telling me about it, the Master said, “If you cannot come to me, I shall come to you.”