The twentieth century had been one of the worst in the history of mankind. Two world wars had already taken place in which more people had died than at any other time in the history of the world. The atomic bomb had already been dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and causing untold misery to the survivors The weapons of destruction that the civilized western nations had developed could engulf the entire world in a conflagration. And yet the mad race for supremacy was going on with ever deadlier and deadlier weapons of mass destruction coming into existence.
Many had predicted that the world would come to an end in the twentieth century. This was the reason for the Advent of the Avatar upon earth in the form of Shri Nathji. He had come to mitigate the sorrows and sufferings of the world and also to ultimately save the world from the agony of self-destruction.
In the Geeta, Lord Krishna had spoken about death as inevitable. He had said to Arjuna that even if he and his relatives were not killed in battle they would still die inevitably as it was a law of Nature that all things that were born had to die.
There were many in the world who died in wars, pestilences and earthquakes, and their deaths were greatly distressing. But the fact was that even if they had not died in these disasters they would have died inevitably according to the inexorable law of Nature. They would have died of old age and disease, perhaps in an excruciatingly slow and painful manner.
Perhaps their death in disasters was less painful and even instantaneous. The Divine Will did not err. If it took the life of any person it did so after a careful calculation of his past, present and future. Those who complained of separation from their loved ones could console themselves with the fact that separation was yet another inevitable law of Nature. All things and all persons who were united in the world were destined to be separated from one another one day.
Then, again, in the realm of the soul there was no death. The body was an outer garment, which was cast off by the soul while it entered the spiritual realm in which there was no sorrow or suffering. Death was not a dreadful thing because it signalled the beginning of an existence in a realm where there was only peace and happiness, where all loved ones stood united once again.
Yet, for Shri Nathji, who was love personified, the coming events were to prove to be very painful because he could not bear to see the sorrows and sufferings of others. Shri Nathji himself had such a love for the humanity around him that he was loathe to part from people and would often quote the Persian Verse below:
Khud makun begaanagi baare choon meedaani
Ke charkh aashnaaya raa za yak deegar judaayi mi dihad
Seek not to separate from each other on thy own,
For the skies shall surely bring about a separation one day
Shri Nathji would also recite the Persian verse below:
Kushtagaane khanjare tasleem raa
Har zamaan az ghaib jaane deegar ast
For those who die by the Sword of His Will,
A new life comes, every moment, from a direction unknown
For the greater part of Shri Nathji’s stay at Lahore in early 1947, Shri Nathji continued to meet as many people as he could. His devotees had nothing before them except Shri Nathji. Whenever he visited a city, the city ceased to exist for the devotees, there was Shri Nathji and only Shri Nathji.
Shri Nathji was giving his darshan and blessings to as many people as he could so as to give them strength to bear the great tribulation that was about to come.