The whole of Nature had taken upon itself a new decoration. A rain of divine bliss had begun to fall everywhere. Ordinary human eyes were not enough to grasp the full significance of the event. The divine beauty that exhibited itself was wonderful to behold. The very atmosphere had filled itself with a fragrance divine.
Thousands of people came to Shri Nathji. He would speak for hours on end each day as if possessed with an untiring strength. He delivered fifty six public lectures for the duration of his stay in the city. Intellectuals, scholars, lawyers and judges were astonished.
Shri Nathji’s words reached out differently to different kinds of people. He would handle the learned in one way and the illiterate and poor in another; he would speak differently to the women and the children, and yet in another way to the villagers who came to him.
Flowers and coconuts filled the house of Shri Sohni, as well over a lakh of people came for Shri Nathji’s darshan there. The hours of waking stretched into the darkness of the night.
One day Shri Nathji said:
This divine bliss that I speak of – am I the only one experiencing it?
At this, the people spoke as if in one voice:
No! All of us are experiencing this unusual and beautiful sensation!
Shri Nathji stayed in Akola for thirteen days. Each day brought a spiritual revelation more powerful than the one preceding it. In Shri Nathji’s words:
The hearts that were separate from God, mingled into Him like the coal that falls into fire and becomes fire!
Yato vaacho nivartante apraapya mansaa saahaa
The Hindu scriptures had said this of God: He whom words cannot reach, whom thought cannot comprehend – He is That!
In Akola, however, He had unveiled His Glory before all. The words and thoughts of his devotees reached Him. It was as if man had been given a complete understanding of God.
Shri Nathji gave the following example:
A man who had seen the ocean was asked to describe its extent. The man spread his hands outwards in a gesture than seemed to indicate that the ocean was bigger than everything else in the immediate vicinity.
Similarly the divine bliss that the devotees of Akola felt was an indication of that everlasting happiness that rested in salvation, and which was another form of God. This was the Divine Touch that Shri Nathji had brought to Akola.
Many lawyers and judges would arrive at Shri Nathji’s door early in the morning and wait for long periods of time to secure his darshan.
And Shri Nathji would say:
It matters little if they have to wait for a while to solve the spiritual litigations of life! Their clients must wait for long hours outside their offices in turn. A genuine waiting must surely bear fruit. Their souls must be pure in order to lie in wait for spiritual truths which are invisible to many!
The judges and lawyers who came for Shri Nathji’s darshan were overwhelmed by the force of his intellectual logic as much as by the radiance of his divine personality. Everyone experienced the presence of God in Shri Nathji.