He also predicted that the last five months of His seclusion were crucial and that He might drop the body. At the end of November, 1956, He told those close to Him that the last month of His seclusion would hold greater and more concentrated suffering for Himself in which a number of His close ones would share.

Only a few days after saying this, on the late afternoon of December 2nd, on His return from Poona, Baba's car, with Eruch Jessawala at the wheel, suddenly and inexplicably went out of control, dashed against a stone culvert, and landed in a ditch on the other side. Baba suffered facial injuries (as in His auto accident here in 1952), injuries to His tongue and chin, and a hip injury. Three of His mandali, Eruch, Pendu and Vishnu, were seriously hurt and Dr. Nilu died without regaining consciousness. The "tragedy " the Master had predicted had come to pass.

It is inevitable that many have asked, as they did after His 1952 accident, "Why does the Master suffer, when He could make use of the Divine Powers at His command, and avoid it?" It might be enlightening to quote Baba's answer to a similar question. Someone asked, at Cannes, France, in 1937, "Why does a Master fall ill and make use of medicines?" Baba replied:

"The West differs from the East in its ideal of Perfection. The West believes Perfection to signify the possession and use of psychic powers. A yogi can do all kinds of 'jugglery' by using psychic powers; he can abstain from food, go without sleep, leave the body at will, or stop breathing, etc.

"Spiritually considered, a simple human good man who works in the world selflessly for others is much better and stands higher than many yogis with all their powers of performing miracles, which are nothing but jugglery without any spiritual importance at all; because whatever a yogi does is for his own individual self, and hence he is not selfless: He overcomes one illusion by creating another illusion, which differs fundamentally from the teaching and work of a Perfect Master.

"A Perfect Master, who has to take upon Himself the burdens of the world to absorb them, must necessarily have physical reactions and consequently must suffer physically like an ordinary, human being.

"Krishna, Mohamed and Jesus were Spiritually Perfect. By submitting themselves to the law of action and reaction, they established that