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incident is significantly eloquent of Babajan's relationship with Saints referred to above.
After a spiritual sojourn of about 35 years in Poona, Hazrat Babajan left her mortal coil on 21st September, 1931, at the ripe old age of 125 years. Her funeral procession was a tremendous affair, never accorded to any dignitary or royalty in the annals of Poona. Her remains were laid at rest at the very spot underneath the neem tree where she sat and dispensed Divine Grace for such a long number of years, thus confirming the Sufi belief that:
Meditation may be described as the path which the individual cuts for himself, while trying to get beyond the limitations of the mind. If a man, who is caught up in the tangles of a thick forest, tries to get into the open spaces, his efforts to break through the encircling impediments will leave behind him the marks of his journey; and the onlooker will, by the study of these marks, be able to describe the paths which he traversed in his attempt to come out into the open. The movements of the man who comes out of the forest, are different in principle from the movements of a railway engine, which moves along the rails already laid for the course which it is to take. He is not following a readymade path; the path comes to be inscribed after he has traversed it. In the same way, the man who finds himself drawn into deep meditations is really grappling with the spiritual problems with which he is faced. He is not merely trying to adhere to a rigid line of movement, already existing in his mental make-up.
The development of meditation can nevertheless be anticipated, in outline, by those who have a direct insight into the peculiar contours of the mind of the individual; just in the same way as a person, who has thorough acquaintance with the details of the constitution of the solidified crust of the earth, may, in general, expect the outburst of a volcano in one region rather than another. 'When the surging powers in the bowels of the earth
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