The interviews continued throughout the afternoon of 20 July 1956. At 4:00 P.M., Baba called Ella Winterfeldt in to ask how many were left. Ella had dreamt of Baba, and he told her, “Ella my dear, all the world is an illusion; it is a dream and only God is real.”
Baba called all those waiting in the other room — over 100 — and when they had assembled, he asked Ivy to repeat what he had just told Ella. She, however, did not have her tape recorder running, so she began from memory, but not too exactly apparently, for Baba interrupted her, gesturing, “You speak as if you were in a dream!”
After the laughter that followed, Baba himself narrated:
Baba told Ella that all this is nothing but a dream. Only God is real. And God is in everything, in you and in me. When Ella goes to sleep and sees the dream in her sleep, her body is on the bed. Yet she goes about, engrossed in the body; she enjoys a good dinner, eats well, feels happy. Then, sometimes she feels very sad, she suffers. Both pleasure and pain are there in the dream, yet the body is there on the bed. It does not go anywhere; it does not do anything; yet it enjoys.
Baba comes there in the dream while she is enjoying or while she is suffering an illusion, and Baba tells her, “Ella, don’t worry; this will all disappear. It is nothing but a dream.”
But she answers, “Baba, how is that? I suffer. How can I help it, Baba? I see you, I see others. Some are troubling me. Some are giving me pleasure. How can I believe it is nothing but a dream? How can it be so real?”
But as soon as she wakes up in the morning, she realizes that she saw only a dream, that Baba had come in her dream and explained that it was nothing but a dream, that she should not suffer, she should not weep. But she did not listen to Baba, so she starts weeping as she works, remembering the dream at night. Then Baba tells her: “Ella, that was a dream when you slept. But now I say this is another dream; while you are living and working, while you are sitting here near me, all that you see here, this New York City, and my lovers here, and Baba himself sitting here, it is nothing but illusion; it is a dream.”
Then Ella says: “Baba, this is too much! I cannot believe that because I see them, I hear them. I see you here, sitting near me, explaining to me.” Still, Baba insists, saying to Ella, it is nothing but a dream. Then after years, after Baba’s grace descends, Ella suddenly wakes up from this vacant dream, and what does she find? She finds only God is real and infinite. When she experiences that bliss, that infinite bliss, unlimited, continuous, then she realizes what Baba said was true.
-www.lordmeher.org, p3994
Jul, 1956; Â New York