A devotee came to Shri Nathji and said:
Sir, you are the very living image of beauty! Your clothes are beautiful, your body is beautiful, your words are beautiful, your mind and soul are beautiful.
Shri Nathji replied: Perhaps you are looking at yourself in a mirror. As for me:
“Jamaale hamnasheen dar man asar kard
Vagarna man hamaa khaakam ke hastam
It is the light of the Eternal Friend that illumines my existence,
Otherwise I am nothing but the dust from which I was taken!”
Shri Nathji’s humility had become legend. He was truly Ghulam Rue Zameen – the Servant of the Earth.
The highest of mountain peaks rest upon the lowest of lands,” he used to say. He would never think of himself as greater than anyone else.
Look at that ant, he would say, even that ant is greater than me, for I can see it, though I cannot see myself.
I have within me two weaknesses, he said, one is that I cannot bear to see the sufferings of others, and the other is that I cannot look upon the faults of others.
Shri Nathji would say in Persian:
“Cheeze ke gahe bakaar na aayad maayem
Vaan nakhl kazo baar na aayad maayem
Kardem hisaabo beshe khud sanjeeden
Aan zarraa ke dar shumaar na aayad maayem”
I am that thing which is of no use to anyone,
I am that tree which never bears fruit;
I sat in silence one day and tried to gauge my own worth,
And I discovered that I was that atom, the very existence of which could be discounted.
These were the words of the Avatar–Shri Nathji. Indeed, the Lord of Creation could afford to be as proud or as humble as he chose to be.
The news of Shri Nathji’s avatarhood had spread everywhere. Many saw the Divine Form in him. Many worshipped him as Krishna, many as Rama, many as Lord Shankar, and many as the Kalki Avatar, or the Nishkalank Avatar, who was to appear at the end of the present age of Kaliyuga.
When Shri Nathji was just a youth at Lahore, even before Gangabai Bhutt had met him, he was worshipped as the Kalki Avatar by many. The devotees at Lahore had composed this Arti on him which they would sing after his sermons were over: