From that time on we have entered the world of sorrows. But as I have said, he himself has helped me tremendously during my life; I have not had the sorrows and pains that others have had. When leaving, he asked each one of us to go, one by one, to him to say good-bye. He gave us permission for darshan. He said. "I want three things from you. Please obey these three things. They are: don't smoke; don't lie; don't drink. Don't forget these three things." We accepted these things from the bottom of our hearts. That hour when we had to depart was really very sorrowful. We will never forget that either. But he himself has said that, "I am always with you." In our own experience, also, I have found this to be true. His own sayings would destroy the sorrows, the pains of the heart. Thank God I can still remember those days when we had a really great spiritual master who was God in human form. We had him then and we still have him now. That in itself is a great spiritual blessing.

I remember when they designated the Prem Ashram for those who wanted to spend day and night in thinking of God. They chose those children who wanted, through their own volition to do so. Each of them had a separate room. As late at night as each child was able, wanted and had the love to do so, he was to sit and think of God and, in thinking of Baba, should keep that inner peace. Moreover, it was not necessary for them to continue studies because Baba himself said that love has such a high place that it is much better than any amount of studying — studies guide one towards the world while love guides one toward God. Indeed, this is a great thing to know. Hafiz also says: "Wash away all the leaves of your book if you are our classmate, for the lesson of love you cannot write in books." The same thing that Baba says you can find in the books of the saints and the prophets. But Baba has made everything clear now in a way that was not so clear in the other holy men's books. They would speak in veiled terms, but now Baba has spoken very openly. Baba has made known all the secrets of God and of Love. Anybody who is really after union with God and is a true seeker and wants love, if they study Baba's works they really get something.

Even now, as I'm getting old, when I think of those periods when Baba really wanted to give a taste of Divine Love to the children, we would see that all by itself an inner peace would be created within us. For example, this would happen when Baba would ask the Zoroastrians to repeat Zoroaster's name. But we would reach that inner joy and peace by repeating Baba's name. There were many times when our classmates would become unconscious, because of Baba's Love, in such a way that they did not know themselves anymore. In me, the same joy and peace would appear, also, though not to the extent that he would make me lose my normal consciousness. Another example is that Ladri Bhagavan had been affected so much that whenever they would ask him to eat he would say, "Do you want me to eat Baba?" So we can say that for him it was a real and true experience (or perhaps maybe his inner eye was seeing) and that in everybody you can find Baba. But not all of us were lucky to have such love, except for that inner peace that we would find within ourselves. For the rest of us, it is a very rare thing in life.

But, of course, Baba was with us after we left the ashram. He also would help us. His purpose was to make us not be bound by this world so that we may be able to approach God. That is why, whenever we were not thinking of him, Baba would make life very difficult for us. For awhile when we had come back to Iran, I was very greedy after worldly things. I would try very hard; after awhile, although I had started with nothing, I had three tractors. It would make me very happy, I felt very important. But little did I know that Baba does not approve of that. At last he did something so that I had to forego it all.

Although I myself am a mechanic and I would fix other people's tractors so they would work well, my own tractor was always out of order. Whenever I would fix one thing, something else would go wrong.