1. The account that follows summarizes the full and rich narrative in ComD 1: ff. 367-69. On the meaning of the “coach” and other details, see LM (Mownavani), vol. 2, p. 633; the episode is related in less detail in LM (Manifestation), vol. 3, p. 860.

2. ComD 1: f. 369 alludes to the recording of the lecture thus: “The details of Baba’s discourse on the three aspects of existence viz Body Life & the mind are narrated in Chanji’s lecture-notes.” This corroborates the supposition that this lecture (and no doubt the Tiffin Lectures that follow) are based on notes that Chanji recorded in his diary. For more on this point, see the next endnote.

3. Unfortunately Chanji’s Diaries, which have reliably provided the source material for the Tiffin Lectures until this juncture, break off at the end of the lecture of 7th October 1926; though doubtless diary sources for the remaining Tiffin Lectures at one time existed, they cannot now be found. The lack of diary sources poses special problems for this particular lecture, which is riddled with thorny problems of interpretation. For a fuller discussion of the topic of “subtle physiology” with which this present passage is concerned, see Appendix 4, pp. 000-000.

4. This sentence has been interpolated by the editors to introduce the esoteric content of this lecture that follows. The bottom half of TTL/FF p. 119 and TTL p. 119, which constitute the immediate source of the four-item indented list below and Figure 23 that follows it, appears as “Fragments from the Spiritual Speeches of His Divine Majesty Sadguru Meher Baba. (17) On Sadguru’s Powers,” Meher Message, vol. 2, no. 2 (February 1930), p. 20.

5. Other references or occurrences of “plumb” as a slang term for “navel” in the general usage of the time, in India or elsewhere, have eluded the best research efforts of the editors. There can be no doubt, however, that the text intends this part of the anatomy as its meaning. For in TTL/FF p. 119 and TLD/FF: 16-10-26, p. 1 (respectively) the word “plumb” (in quotation marks) is glossed by a handwritten dutī and bimb duṭī, that is, “navel” and “disk-shaped navel.” Further, in the portion of the lecture of 28th November 1926 when Baba recapitulates some of his comments on “the spiritual significance of the parts of the human body,” he associates the “world” with the “Central circle in the abdomen (nave[l]) . . .” (TTL/FF p. 140 and TTL p. 140).

6. TTL/FF p. 119 reads: “Yogis, and such others are in ‘Prana Loka’ (prāṇ lok), and more advance [sic] in ‘Prana Loka’ (astral plane), i.e. they are in the ‘Upper half of the body . . .” (TTL p. 119 reads identically except that the lacuna has not been filled.) This repetition of “Prana Loka” seems to be an obvious error. Happily, TLD/FF: 16-10-26, p. 1 corrects it: “Yogis and such others are in ‘Prana Loka’ and more advanced in ‘Mana Loka’ (astral plane) . . .” Why “astral plane” serves as a gloss in this sentence for “Mana Loka” rather than “Prana Loka” defies easy explanation. In Infinite Intelligence Baba used “astral” as another term for “subtle,” which in that book meant the entire six planes of the inner world. Apparently the word carries another, more restricted meaning here.

7. The final pages of “Sadguru and the Light of Intelligence” in Infinite Intelligence (pp. 450-51) describe this same cyclic movement as the Sadguru journeys down into creation-consciousness and back again to the state of Realization.