There was the fateful day when Kapila prepared brinjals for Shri Nathji. Priya Nath observed that they reeked of kerosene oil. He was aghast when he saw a Postman Cooking Oil tin filled with kerosene. It occurred to him that perhaps Kapila had mistakenly put kerosene into the brinjals rather than the cooking oil.
In panic, he rushed to Shri Nathji’s bedroom, but he was too late. Shri Nathji had eaten the brinjals. Although Shri Nathji had noticed the smell, he was much too polite to refuse anything that a devotee had prepared for him with such devotion.
Although Kapila admitted that he had been using the Postman oil tin to store the kerosene in, yet it was unthinkable that he could have made the mistake of putting the kerosene oil meant for the stove, into the brinjals, howsoever perturbed his state of mind may have been. Yet some tragic mistake had been made, albeit unwittingly. The powers of evil that always kept at the heels of Shri Nathji had made one more powerful assault on him. These powers could act through the hands of even the greatest of devotees upon earth, such was their strength.
And the inevitable happened. Shri Nathji fell seriously ill. He could not digest even a morsel of food that Kapila made for him. His digestive powers seemed to be completely impaired. Though Dr. Goyal, and Dr. Jwala Prasad of Mussoorie prescribed all the medicines at their disposal, nothing would help.
Priya Nath could never forget those stormy windy nights with cloudbursts, thunder and lightning, and stray dogs howling outside. It was one of the worst periods in his life, watching helplessly, while Shri Nathji suffered.
Shri Nathji would stay awake in the nights with horrible feelings of suffocation in his chest, and restlessness in the entire body.
To make matters worse there was Shri Nathji’s total blindness. Priya Nath would hold him by the hand and make him walk in the sixty-foot covered verandah of Savitri Nivas.
Priya Nath thereafter began cooking food for Shri Nathji himself. He could not trust Kapila to cook for Shri Nathji, because the devotee’s mind was in a disturbed state. Priya Nath would eat if Shri Nathji ate or else he would not eat at all. He would even wash the dishes himself lest someone else not clean them properly.
One day Kapila simply disappeared from the scene, when one of his sons who was known for his frivolous tendencies, suddenly appeared on the scene and made Kapila run away with him in a state of panic, on a false pretext.
Priya Nath had seen this happen many times amongst devotees. Whenever Shri Nathji’s Divine Grace was going out towards them in a large measure they would always fall a prey to “maayaa” and “moh”– the illusions and the temptations of the world, and would leave their Master in the lurch and run away.