connotation - one very reminiscent of the lines in which Kabir describes a Perfect Master:

It was the fifth night of Shri Meher Baba's first visit to America. Everyone in the big stone house above the Croton River, near Harmon, New York to which he had come as our guest, had retired, and the visitors living in the overflow houses above and across the river had sometime ago departed to seek their nightly rest.

One needed nightly rest, after the strenuous pace of a day with Baba, for this radiant being from India, whom we had expected to spend most of the time in cloistered contemplation, had proved a veritable dynamo of intense activity, into which we, as his hosts, and the friends who had come to live with us during his visit, had naturally been drawn.

Instead of seeing a few people each day, as we had been led to anticipate, he was granting interviews from early morning until late at night. Visitors from all over the United States and Canada poured through the house. Letters, telegrams, cables, telephone calls sped to and from all parts of the world. Our hospitality was being continually augmented -- more houses for additional guests who arrived from distant points and needed shelter -- more and more food for those who accepted the invitation always extended to every visitor to stay for lunch or dinner -- meals for twenty, twenty-five, thirty people, prepared on a wood stove that sometimes functioned and sometimes balked.

He was silent -- this serene young Parsee -- but not even a cyclone could have been more active, or, in a way, more devastating. For men and women who, by all accepted standards could have been described as perfectly poised, well-balanced people -- men and women who, in fact, were among the leaders of their various professions -- college professors, business men, singers, actors, musicians, came from their five or ten minute interviews with this speechless being from India so exalted that they wanted nothing, for the moment, so much as to be left alone with their experiences. Fortunately, we had many rooms, a number of terraced balconies, extensive grounds.

I happened, luckily, to be on my way up to Baba's room at the very moment Princess Matchabelli emerged from her interview. If I had not been, she might have fallen down the stairs. I led her to my wife's room, and called Jean to care for her -- Norina Matchabelli, our old friend, who, not many weeks before, had scoffed at our interest in an Eastern Master, her parting shot at Jean having been, "Well, maybe I will meet your Master -- maybe I, too, will weep when he comes!"

She had called Jean, three days after Baba's arrival, to say, "The strangest thing has been happening to me. From the moment that Shri Meher Baba's boat arrived in New York, I have been weeping continuously! You must arrange for me to see him!"

And so we had -- and, from the moment of that meeting, over a period of ten years of tests and trials and vicissitudes, Norina Matchabelli's faith in Shri Meher Baba, and her devotion to him, have not wavered.

Then there was the professor of philosophy -- recognized authority on Spinoza, organizer of a tremendously vital youth movement -- who came down to the living room towards noon one day looking somewhat bewildered, and said, in response to my invitation to luncheon, which was shortly to be served, "Would you mind very much if I didn't join you? I have just had a very profound experience, and I would rather be alone. I know you will understand."