When Shri Nathji was at Dehra Dun, in the late 1930’s, he came to know that Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, the famed scholar and intellectual of the country, who was the founder of the Benares Hindu University, was in Dehra Dun, and was ailing.
Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya had been admitted to a Nursing Home there. Shri Nathji, who had great love for him, immediately went to the Nursing Home to meet him. When word was sent to Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya that Shri Nathji had come to the Nursing Home to enquire after his welfare, he immediately asked the hospital staff to bring Shri Nathji to his room.
Shri Malviya was very sick at the time, and doctors had forbidden him to step out of bed. The moment Shri Nathji entered his room, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya took one look at Shri Nathji’s dazzlingly beautiful personality and was so beside himself with joy that he could not contain himself. With a surge of unexpected energy, he raised his diminutive body and stood up on his bed, exclaiming loudly in Hindi:
Aahaa! Aahaa! Aisee moorti kahaan banti hai, kahaan banti hai!
Karorron janmon ke apne punya udai hon,
Aur karorron janmon ke maataa pitaa ke punya udai hon,
Tab aisee moorti banti hai!
“Aha! Aha! Where in the world can one find an image like yours!
It is only the fulfilment of the karmas of millions of births of one’s own self
And the fulfilment of the karmas of millions of births of one’s parents,
That can produce such a beautiful personality.
Upon hearing this, Shri Nathji said with his characteristic humility and love:
Panditji, perhaps you are looking at your own face in a mirror.”
“Panditji, kaheen apnaa hee mukh to darpan men naheen dekh rahe!
Shri Nathji spoke to Pandit Madan Malviya for a short while. Shri Nathji’s divine voice and words filled Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya’s heart with untold bliss, and for a while he was taken to another plane of existence. Shri Nathji then recited a beautiful verse he had composed:
Jo ghaafil vasl men hokar talaashe vasl men daurre,
Bhalaa hadd uski doori ki, yaa andaazaa ho hijraan kaa
The ignorant man who is in union and is running after union–
How can one fathom his distance, or the extent of his separation!”
In simple words this meant:
“How can one fathom the extent of separation
Of the one who is in Union (with God)
And who is running in search of Union!
The very desire for Union, Shri Nathji used to say, brings separation. Give it up, and thou art united! Water is running everywhere–in search of water!
Shri Nathji said: “Instead of seeking God elsewhere one had merely to find Him within oneself. The effacement of one’s ego–the false pride of one’s ‘I’– brought one face to face with God.”
Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, who was a great poet and author himself, was so impressed by Shri Nathji’s verse, that he asked Shri Nathji to repeat it again so that he could note it down in his diary. As Shri Nathji left, he touched Shri Nathji’s feet, and invited Shri Nathji to come to Benares Hindu University whenever he could.
Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya read Shri Nathji’s Urdu and Persian masterpiece, “Payaame Muhabbat”–“A Message of Love” and was convinced the book was divinely inspired.
The Urdu Verse that Shri Nathji had recited before Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya was also written in Payaame Muhabbat.