'Stay with God'." Four years later when Francis arrived at Meherabad for his present stay with Baba he presented Baba with the book he had written for Him.

It is a work of epic proportion and lyric intensity — those two qualities that make a book a great book. It is divided into five books.

Book 1 — Meher Baba (the occurrence of Reality in illusion), is a condensed biography of Baba and its opening lines immediately identify Him with all the known Avatars of the past. His birth this time, His meeting with the Perfect Masters Babajan and Upasni Maharaj and His consequent knowledge of Himself as Avatar; His training of His first disciples (which also includes His journeys in India and to the West), His work with the Masts or God-mad — "the children of God who have given up the toys of guns and rackets . . . and have come out into the open spaces of spirit — the wide plains and the mountain passes of consciousness". His Seclusion and New Life and the '55 Sahavas are treated in separate sections, ending with a paen of praise to the One for Whom all ships ever set out . . . for Whom all camps and settlements are made and struck and the march resumed . . . for Whom all songs are poured . . . for Whom the reckless-of-life ones throw away their lives."

Book II — The love Song of John Kerry (illusion singing to Reality) is one of those curious and rare things which pain and joy are so intermingled and perfectly balanced that the reader's individual "self" is subdued or laid aside, and all he knows is an unnamable quietness lit by a new and purer form of longing.

Book III — God's Speaking (the question which Reality asked itself and the beginning of illusion and its end) is nothing less than a condensed exposition of the principal theme of Baba's own book, God Speaks, related, through the use of concrete images, to the lives of individual men and women. (What a courage to attempt such a thing! And with what signal success has it been carried out.) One is made to feel one's own part in the evolutionary, and one's participation in the reincarnational processes, and also the certainty (by God's grace) of involutionary experience.

Book IV — The Steps to His Feet (abandoning illusion for Reality) the requirement for the aspirant of "unlearning" and surrenderance is set out simply and clearly.