Priya Nath wrote to Shri Nathji to come to America and enlighten the people there about real spirituality. Shri Nathji agreed to come, even though he was in a difficult situation in London at the time. Mateshwari was ill and receiving treatment as an out-patient at the Royal Free Hospital there. Pran Nath’s health had also taken a turn for the worse. Shri Nathji had shifted from 22, Fairhazel Gardens to another rented place at 149, Fellows Road. Here he had hurt himself in the bathtub, and injured his right arm, which had begun to have intense pain in it. He had also lost a lot of weight and looked pale and thin, with his clothes hanging loosely on him.
However Shri Nathji did not tell Priya Nath of the conditions in London because he did not wish to upset the plans that Priya Nath had made for him in America. Priya Nath had arranged for numerous lectures in various churches and organisations in the Boston area and told numerous Americans about Shri Nathji, so that they were all eagerly waiting to meet him.
It was thus that Shri Nathji boarded a Pan American plane from London to Boston in America. The date was June 3, 1964.
On the flight, as Shri Nathji went across the Atlantic Ocean, a fellow passenger asked Shri Nathji: Are you from India?
My body is from India, Shri Nathji said, but my heart belongs to the whole world!
The plane landed at Logan Airport in Boston, and Shri Nathji stepped on to the soil of America. The Greatest Being on earth had arrived in the greatest nation on earth.
In God we trust, was the insignia carried by the American dollar. Perhaps it was this that had brought God to them. The name of God on currency notes and coins in America was what impressed Shri Nathji most. It was a beautiful combination of materialism and spiritualism.
Inside the customs lounge, where visitors were not allowed and no porters were available, Shri Nathji was confronted with the difficult task of raising his large blue suitcase from the ground.
Immediately, his fellow-passenger came forward and lifted Shri Nathji’s suitcase. Shri Nathji thanked him and embraced him in a gesture of love. He had carried the burden of Shri Nathji’s suitcase on earth, and Shri Nathji would have to carry the burden of his soul across the waters of the bhavsaagar. The man gave him his card. He was a well-known industrialist of America.
It was this aspect of humility in Americans that Shri Nathji liked the most. No seth or businessman in India would have carried a stranger’s suitcase himself.
Shri Nathji’s association with America was an old one. When he was a child, his maternal uncle had left the shores of India and set sail for America. He had later settled down in that country and died there after establishing a scholarship fund for the poor students of India. The terms of the scholarship were strange: any student who was given funds to study with, would later have to give an equivalent amount to another deserving student, and thus the chain would continue. It was a promulgation of goodness.
Shri Nathji’s maternal uncle had decided to settle down in America after a significant experience he had had there. He was going for a walk in a garden when he slipped and sprained his ankle. A well-dressed, rich American couple was passing by and saw him in pain. They immediately stopped and came to him. They took off his shoe and attended to his foot and later took him to their home for proper medical aid. This incident so impressed Shri Nathji’s uncle that he decided to make America his home. He wrote a letter to Shri Babaji Maharaj relating the above incident and said, Can you imagine a rich man in India stopping to attend to the hurt of a poor man in the street? I cannot return from a country like this, where such people exist!”
Shri Nathji’s light divine, which had been turned off in London, was turned on in America again. His voice appeared to ring out once again from the skies:
Gar che zamaane na bavad guzashto daure rasool
Vali zahoore valaayat dareen zamaanaye maast
The age of the saints and prophets is past,
It is time now for my manifestation in the world!
As Priya Nath saw Shri Nathji amongst the passengers who were coming out of the airport, a cold chill ran through his body. He was seeing Shri Nathji after nine months. This was not the Shri Nathji he had left behind at London. Shri Nathji was looking thin and weak. He was wearing a scarlet red turban. His body appeared weak and emaciated, and his achkan hung loosely over his shoulders. The chooridars were ill fitting and loose.
Shri Nathji’s pink complexion had become dark. It appeared as if He had taken upon himself the sins of England. Priya Nath’s happiness at seeing Shri Nathji was clouded by the state of Shri Nathji’s health. It was apparent that he had suffered terribly at London. And it was in such a shattered state of health that Shri Nathji had arrived in America.
From the airport, Shri Nathji was driven in a car by Priya Nath and some others to the house of Professor Euston Smith of M.I.T., where Shri Nathji was to stay for a few days.
Dr. Smith had offered the hospitality of his home to Shri Nathji without any prior acquaintance. He was an internationally known professor of philosophy and religion who specialised in Eastern thought. He taught Religion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also known as M.I.T. He was the first man in America to welcome God to his house. Dr. Smith had left the keys of his home to Priya Nath and was away for three days, during which time Priya Nath and Shri Nathji lived in his home in his absence.
It was then that Shri Nathji told Priya Nath of the difficult moments he had faced in London, and of the acute pain in his right arm. He showed the arm to him. Pus was oozing out of a wound in the elbow. Priya Nath was frightened. How could he subject Shri Nathji to such a rigorous routine of lectures in America when Shri Nathji was in so much pain and had become so weak?
When Priya Nath suggested showing the arm to a doctor, Shri Nathji stopped him and said that it would become all right by itself. This was the first time that the wound in the arm had become suppurating ever since the operation in 1943. Priya Nath was terribly confused for a while, but then he fell at the feet of Shri Nathji and asked him to cure himself at once.