Excerpts about the writing of
YOU ALONE EXIST
From LORD MEHER
Original Lord Meher text in Hindi © Bhau Kalchuri
English translation of Lord Meher © Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Trust
Page 5932 TREASURE OF KNOWLEDGE 
Meanwhile, Francis Brabazon was preoccupied with polishing the English of these two and other discourses to be included in a new collection which Baba entitled, The Everything and The Nothing. Mani and Rano were typing them. Bhau was translating some of the discourses into Hindi. One day, Baba handed him the manuscript and gestured, "I want you to translate this into Hindi and make it interesting [for the Hindi speaking people]."
Bhau said, "If it is interesting in English, naturally it will be interesting in Hindi."
Baba replied, "That I don't know. I want you to make it interesting and the language should be simple."
Bhau thought over what Baba had said. It occurred to him to put the whole book in dialogue form, and he completed one discourse in this style. He read it to Baba, who was pleased and complimented him, "Yes, this is what I meant."
Baba also suggested songs should be included, and mentioned there should be a prayer, too. Bhau remembered that back in 1959 Baba had given him a special couplet in Hindi: He found the couplet, made it the first couplet of the ghazal, and composed eleven more to go with it.
The next evening when he went for watch, Baba asked, "Did you compose the prayer?" and hearing that he had, Baba asked Bhau to read it to him. Baba was pleased, but stated the prayer should be longer. Baba was in a very good mood that day and, drumming his thighs with his fists in rhythm to the lines, he began composing new couplets, which Bhau wrote down. Sitting on his bed, Baba dictated seventeen more couplets, and thus, the poetic prayer Tumi Tau Ho (God, You Alone Exist) came into being. In a later period, Meher Baba stated that one day this prayer would be recited by people in their homes throughout the world.
After settling in Guruprasad in March, Baba asked his nephew Sheroo to sing the prayer "God, You Alone Exist" (Tumi Tau Ho) dictated mainly by Baba, but with some lines from Bhau, and it was called "Bhau's Prayer." Since Sheroo could not read Hindi, the couplets were given to Mani and Eruch to arrange in sequence, and they wrote out the entire prayer-poem in English. At this time, Bhau was preoccupied upstairs in his room translating and rewriting The Everything and The Nothing into Hindi, while others were present with Baba and the visitors. Bhau did not know that Baba asked Sheroo to sing this prayer every day, and Baba did not inform anyone that he himself had composed it. Those present were under the false impression it was Bhau's prayer alone. Sheroo sang the prayer very sweetly in Hindi.
Meanwhile, unbeknown to Bhau, Baba's oldest nephew, Sheroo, was daily singing the prayer "God, You Alone Exist" before Baba. In a few of the lines which Baba had dictated for the prayer, it said: "You are insects, you are dogs, cats, asses, pigs, snakes," and other creatures, some of them disagreeable.
Baba would retire at 3:00 P.M., and at that time, Bhau would come downstairs from his room to attend to Baba. One afternoon, Deshmukh and Bal Natu began laughing at him, saying they did not like the words of the prayer he had composed. "Which prayer?" he asked, puzzled, and they told him.
"What sort of prayer is this?" they taunted. "Could you not have chosen better examples than 'mosquitoes,' 'bugs' and 'gnats' when describing God's sublime attributes?" They did not know that Baba himself had composed these lines, and Bhau said nothing in reply.
Disturbed when he met with Baba, Bhau asked whether he should change the prayer and use other words, explaining that people were laughing at it, mocking the choice of words. "Don't change a single word," Baba replied. "It is all right. You have no idea, no idea about the importance of this prayer. In the future, this prayer will be sung in homes throughout the world."
Oh Meher,
God Incarnate,
You Alone Exist!
