Excerpt from Befitting a Fortunate Slave: Meher Baba’s Eruch Chapter: “Leaving the World”

ALTHOUGH ERUCH DID NOT COME TO BABA because he was interested in spiritual advancement, nonetheless, all his preconceived ideas of what it meant to leave the world were being shattered one by one once he joined Baba. As a young man who by nature was an observer, Eruch didn’t know what to make of it all. Everything that he had grown up believing was right and good and “Godly” seemed to have been turned on its head.

After just a few months of our joining Baba, the first of the Blue Bus tours began and soon some excuse or the other was there to send us away. Baba looked at my little brother and said, “Poor Meherwan is missing school. He should have a good education.” Then He would tell us to settle down in some town large enough to have a good school for Meherwan to attend. My brother must have attended half a dozen different schools this way. But after some time there would be another thought, another excuse. Baba would say, “You are all away from Me, I want you to come be with Me,” and again we would pack up, and my mother and sisters and little brother would join the ashram in a different locality.

My God, I thought we’d left the world and everything. But the difference was that we were carrying out His behests. Now we were doing it for Him. Not because our father wanted it, or we wanted it, but just because He wanted it. That is all. Yet, the passing thought was there, that after having left the world, we were again being asked to establish another world. But the oppressiveness was gone, because leaving the world means to live a life in obedience to His pleasure; leaving the world is within oneself. Whether He puts you in the world and makes you an engineer, or makes you a boss, what is important, and all that matters, is that you are there because He wants you to be there. So if you have that imprinted on your mind, then you have already left the world.