De Simple Silence.

Contents 1 A Spiritual Love Story 2 Cables Laid Long Ago 3 The Happy Wanderer 4 A Spiritual Light Show 5 The Real Relationship 6 God Sat Down With Me For Coffee 7 Invisibles Hands On The Wheel=

[modifier] A Spiritual Love Story

Debbie Nordeen

Oh, thank you, darlin’. Well, I was the cousin Kent Rogers was referring to. But more on that later.

I, too, as a child, loved Jesus. I grew up in a loving family, the eldest of four sisters. Two of my sisters are also Baba-lovers. I remember that when I was confirmed in the Lutheran Church when I was twelve years old, and I had to say I would be faithful to the Lutheran Church, something inside of me went, « What ? Be faithful to the Church ? What about God ? God should be first ! »

When I was a senior in high school in 1969, I did a humanities project on reincarnation, just so I could learn more about it. The more I read about reincarnation, the more I would think, « This is the truth ! » Finally I had to quit the Youth for Christ singing group, even though I loved so much to sing, because what they taught was not my own experience of the truth.

These new ideas were most profound for me. I also read Our Town, a play in which a young woman died and came back to see her own ordinary life for one day, and she saw how beautiful ordinary everyday life is. It made a huge impact on me as well. But above all, I always loved God.

Over the years my cousin Kent Rogers and I would often talk about spirituality. We both read Siddhartha and Autobiography of a Yogi, and we spent hours discussing these deeper things. Kent was actually my second cousin, but we were born twelve days apart, and we were very connected.

My own quest went on for years. I studied for a while at Unity Church and later with the Christian Scientists. I liked many of the ideas in Christian Science, except I felt as if something was missing ; it seemed to be all about the impersonal aspect of God. So even while I was studying those aspects of Christianity, I would sometimes go to a meeting with some yogi or guru. But they seemed somehow fake to me — to be wearing orange robes and saying mantras. There was still something missing for me. So I just went on, living and singing, and looking for God. I wasn’t fulfilled. I hadn’t come home yet.

I was living in Montana when Kent wrote to tell me he was going to India to look for a guru or an ashram, to dedicate himself to that and see what it was like. Within a short time, in February or March of 1976, I received a letter from him. He had stumbled upon Amartithi, and within three days he felt that Meher Baba was who he said he was. He told me he’d thought that either he was going crazy, or this was it. Initially he’d been very disturbed by the whole thing. He told me he was sitting at dinner one evening and said to someone sitting next to him, « You know, Jesus said to beware of false prophets. »

« Yes, » answered his neighbor, « but he didn’t mean that we shouldn’t recognize him when he does come again. »

That made a very great impact on Kent. Later he told me another story that happened during those three days of Amartithi. He had gone up to the Samadhi, and he was hiding behind it trying to light a marijuana joint. He kept trying, but it would not light. It happened three times.

Then he paused to reflect. « Oh, yeah, » he said to himself. « Meher Baba said, ‘Don’t do drugs.’ I think I heard that. » He stood there for another minute or two, then had another thought : « I’m getting a message from Baba not to smoke this. Maybe I should throw it away. »

Kent looked around for a trash can thinking, « But what am I going to do with this ? It’s so hard to find a trash can here. »

He wandered all over upper Meherabad and could not find a trash receptacle. Finally he walked back down the hill toward where the Pilgrim Center now stands — over the railroad tracks, down the path and across the road. Then, right across the road he saw a white stone platform, and in the middle was a short, round cement container. « Hey, it looks like they burn stuff in there, he said to himself « I’ll just throw it in here. » So he did, and forgot all about it.

In the meantime, Kent had a number of profound inner experiences that convinced him that Meher Baba must be God. In fact, he decided that rather than continuing with his journeys in India, he would stay in Meherabad. Then, shortly after Amartithi came the twelfth of February, and someone said to him, « Come on, let’s go to the Dhuni. »

« What’s a Dhuni ? » he asked.

« Oh, it’s a fire ceremony. On the twelfth of each month there’s a Dhuni, and people symbolically put into the fire what they want to give up. It’s a little like Lent. Only you’d better be serious about giving it up, because you will. »

Kent walked with his friend, and when they arrived at the site of the Dhuni ceremony, he stood in amazement. « Oh, my God ! That’s the ‘trash can’ where I threw the marijuana. » Kent never smoked pot again. But colorful things like that happened often to Kent. He lived a very full life up until he passed away in 1986.

It was shortly after his experience at the Dhuni that I received Kent’s letter telling me about his experiences. And in the letter he said to me, « I found God, and I found him for you, too. »

« Ha ! Well, that’s nice, » I thought, « but who wants somebody to find God for you ? » Plus, he had written some things that seemed so foreign to me that I started crying. I called my mother right away. « Kent’s gone crazy ; we’re going to have to put him in a mental institution when he comes back. He thinks he’s found God ! »

Kent had also sent me several books. I looked at one called Godman. Well, the book was crazy, too. It said this Meher Baba character told everyone, « Okay, we’re going to stay in this hotel. » Then he’d change his mind and tell everyone, « No, we’re not going to stay in this place. » Or, « I’m going to build this hospital. » Then, « Now I’m going to tear it down. »

Of course, at the time it was impossible for me to have an inkling of understanding Baba’s ways of working. « What kind of a person has duped Kent ? » I wondered. But when I started looking at the pictures in Godman, I thought, « Oh, what a beautiful face. What an amazing face ! » Then I’d catch myself, « Wait, no, no, no, that’s crazy. »

Kent was gone for almost two years. He went to every Baba Center in India, then traveled down to Australia and New Zealand. That’s another whole story. But in the meantime he kept sending me books, and I would read them, curious but unconvinced.

I moved to New York where a singer might actually make a living. I’d been there several months when, one day, I got a phone call. Kent Rogers was back. He came to see me right away, and I knew he was going to try to convince me that Meher Baba was God. « There’s a Meher Baba meeting, and I want to take you there, » he told me.

« Well[... ] okay. » I agreed to go, but I made sure I didn’t sound very interested. We went to the meeting and, much to my surprise, I enjoyed it. It was held in Greenwich Village and I met some zany characters, so I felt right at home. Some time later I went to another meeting, a concert of original music composed by several Baba-lovers, and I was very touched by what I heard.

As a person who sings and who loves music, I found that my heart opened. The music simply bypassed my mind, and I was deeply affected by it. Jane Brown — she was Jane Viscardi at the time — was singing a song that Raphael Rudd had composed, and it went through all the names of the Avatars. Then Margaret Bernstein played her flute.

« Oh, » I thought, « if these Baba-lovers can write such beautiful music that sounds so heartfelt, maybe there is something to Baba. » That was my first inkling of an opening to the idea that Baba might actually be who he said he was.

Then Kent went to the Meher Center at Myrtle Beach. He wrote me from there : « Hey, if you come down to Myrtle Beach, I’ll pay your way, because there’s somebody here you ought to meet. »

« Wow, a free trip to Myrtle Beach ! » I thought. « All right ! »

Kent wanted me to meet someone named Adi K. Irani, one of Baba’s mandali. « Well, they’re not going to convince me of anything, but heck, it’s a free trip to Myrtle Beach. »

So I flew to Myrtle Beach. Kent picked me up and, on the way to the Center, said to me, « You have to believe in Baba in three days or I’ll never speak to you again. »

Here was the guy who had told me, « I’ve found God and I’ve found him for you, too. » I couldn’t believe it ! But that was his personality. In the long run it was good, because if I hadn’t gone through that experience, I might later have been equally as zealous and tried to do the same thing to every single person I met. Thanks to Kent, I have never tried to force my experience of Baba on anyone. Besides, it’s all in Baba’s hands, not ours.

« Well, forget it ; I’ll never speak to Kent again. Fine. » That was my thought. Yet I had an incredible visit there. I even told Adi K. Irani about Kent’s threat ; I thought he would defend me.

« He’s a reasonable old man, » I told myself, « so he’ll surely at least tell me what a silly thing that was for Kent to say to me. »

Instead, Adi laughed and said, « Oh, Baba has many children, and some are very, very mischievous. » That certainly wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

But I loved Adi — he was so nice — and I liked his talk. After the talk Bob Brown led some music. He knew I was a singer from New York, so of course he gave me a part.

« I’d like you to sing this little echo to this song, » he offered.

The song went, « You are born to love the living God. » And my part was, « Meher Baba, Meher Baba. » It was just to sing Baba’s name.

« Oh, okay, I’ll do that. » So I sang Baba’s name in the program.

In the meantime, I was liking everybody I met. And even then I had an inkling about my future. I recall thinking, I might never become a Baba lover, but I like these Baba people. I think I’ll marry a Baba lover. » I actually thought that. It was a foreshadowing.

After three days, I still didn’t believe in Baba. Kent did speak to me while taking me to the airport, but our conversation was kind of strained.

I went back to my life in New York, but I kept hearing in my mind the refrain that I had sung in the program. « Meher Baba, Meher Baba, » kept echoing in the back of my head. I had bought two records when I was there — one of Bob Brown’s and one of Jim Meyer’s — and I played them over and over again. So Baba, through music, awakened my heart.

Finally I decided that if I really wanted to find out if Baba was God, I had to go to India myself.

As coincidence would have it, I got a really lucrative gig in My Fair Lady, so suddenly the money to go was not a concern. At the same time, it seemed that I would turn the radio to my favorite classical station at just the moment they were advertising Air India. No matter when I’d turn it on, instead of classical music, this little sing-songy ad for Air India would play, over and over.

« Okay, okay, Baba ! » By that time I was talking to Baba, but I was still not admitting he was God. « Okay, Baba, I’ll go to India. » It seemed that as soon as I had the inclination to go, everything fell into place, like an automatic door opening from one step to the next.

Then I started having a recurring dream. I would go to sleep, and in my dream I’d see Baba gesturing to me with a smile on his face : « Wake up, wake up, wake up. » Somehow, it seemed to be a play on his well-known statement, « I have come not to teach, but to awaken. » In my dream I would say impatiently to him, « All right, all right, I’ll wake up. But will you please let me go back to sleep now ? »

I left for India in November of 1979, right before my 28^th birthday. In Meherazad I met the mandali, and my experience was so beautiful. But still I wondered, « Is he really God ? I have to know. »

I spent the second or third day in India with Bhau Kalchuri’s daughter, Sheela. She took me shopping, and afterwards she, her mother, and I sat together talking about Baba.

« What was it like when Baba dropped the body ? » I asked Sheela.

For hours they relived those days, sharing with me in a very personal way what it was like for each of them at the time when Baba left his physical body. It was a very emotional experience, and both of them were crying.

Then I started crying — and crying, and crying. I could not stop. I was feeling what they felt : losing Baba was losing the closest one they had ever known, the one they loved more than anything, including life itself. At the time I believed I was just being empathetic, but now I know that Baba was drawing me closer.

That night as I was falling asleep, I saw Baba before me. He was the medium young Baba, with a long white sadra and long flowing hair. He stretched his arms wide open, welcoming me. I was lying in my bed, of course, but I felt as if I were standing. He came up to me and embraced me. And as he did, I felt an electric sensation, like being shocked with high voltage from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, but it was very beautiful. It kept happening, continuing for many seconds.

I didn’t know if I was dreaming or if I was awake, but I said, « Oh, Baba, I don’t know what that was, but it wasn’t a dream. » It didn’t feel like a dream ; it felt so real. But then I awakened, or at least realized, « Here I am in the Sablok Hotel. » Still, I was filled with so much love that I knew I had received Baba’s darshan. From that point, I was Baba’s.

I was in India for three months that first visit. The entire trip was a coming home, knowing that Baba was my personal Savior. He was the Jesus I had loved as a child.

He was the song that I sing, and the Beloved of every beautiful love song. I had a fantastic trip. I was sick with hepatitis for a time, but discovered from that how a person learns, or unwinds the lifetimes of separation through those illnesses that are seemingly difficult.

It showed me that those challenges are really Baba’s prasad — his gift to you. My relationship with Baba deepened so much through that illness. And there is another chapter about illness, even more profound, later in my life with Baba.

During that first trip I met Peter Nordeen...

It was during the first three or four days that I was in India, the same time that I was having Baba’s darshan inside me. In those days we didn’t all get to stay out at Meherabad regularly, so I was staying in town.

I finally got to the Samadhi after my second day there. I remember that it was evening, and that there were a few people there. A few lanterns extended out from the Samadhi dimly lighting the area where we had arti prayers and singing.

At one point I noticed someone walking into the soft light from the surrounding darkness. Later I found out it was Peter, but at the time, I looked at him and wondered, « Who is that ? »

It was one of these moments when you see someone you know, or would like to know — a recognition.

Peter : So since then you’ve been singing that song.

Debbie : Oh, yes, I love to sing about our love story : Some enchanted evening you may see a stranger across a crowded[... ] Tomb.

Soon after that I saw Peter at play practice. We were in two plays together, and the first was for Mehera’s birthday. Alan Wagner, a resident of Meherabad, came up to me my third day there. I had no idea who he was, but he had a handlebar mustache, a beret on his head and a turtleneck — so he looked just like a director.

He had heard that I was a singer who had just finished a tour with a Broadway play. So without even hearing me, he walked up and said to me with great drama, « You are my Zuleika ! »

« What’s a Zuleika ? » I stepped back a little surprised.

« It’s the leading role in our play for Mehera’s birthday ! » It was called Jusuf and Zuleika, a beautiful love story from the Koran to honor Meher Baba and Mehera. And Peter was cast as one of the buffoons.

Peter : I was basically typecast in that play. I was still waiting to get my romantic lead...

Debbie : I felt very familiar with Peter, but it wasn’t a girlfriend/ boyfriend relationship. It was just that I admired him, and I liked his smile.

He told me about the work he did in Meherabad. I remember telling my roommates, « I don’t know if I’ll ever get married, but if I ever do, I’d like it to be someone just like Peter Nordeen. But of course, I couldn’t marry him because he’s a resident at Meherabad. »

I forgot all about saying that — I don’t remember it at all — but one of my roommates later told me what I’d said. And who was my other roommate but Christine Miljour ! These kinds of « coincidental » interconnections are not uncommon around Meher Baba.

While I had hepatitis, I remember hearing Peter’s voice outside my room one day ; he had come to ask how I was. And the day I left India, Peter was so sweet ; he helped me with my bags and saw me to the bus. So we had a connection.

But three years passed and I lost touch with Peter — until the summer of 1982. I was through with men for as long as I lived, as far I was concerned. But then I overheard Peter Nordeen’s name from someone in the New York Meher Baba group : « Peter Nordeen is staying out in New Jersey, and he’ll probably come in for the Baba meeting. »

As soon as I heard his name this time, a light went off in my head. « Oh, now, that’s a guy. Something in me just wishes I could give him a hug and kiss him for seven seconds ! » I don’t know what made me think that.

Sure enough, he came to the meeting. As soon as I saw him, it was as if fireworks were going off inside me. This time I was seeing him with completely different eyes, and it wasn’t as a friend anymore.

While he had been in India, he was just a friend. I found out later that Peter had had pneumonia right after I’d had hepatitis, and he was put in the same place I had stayed to recuperate — even in the same bed. He had weird pneumonia kinds of dreams, and somehow I was in some of them, foreshadowing his life to come.

We had a great time at the meeting that night, and we all went out for ice cream afterwards. Peter said he was going to bring his sister into the city since she would be coming to the area to visit. « Oh, well I’ll be glad to show you around, » I volunteered.

I thought he’d bought the ice cream that night, so I wrote him a note to thank him. We’d had the ice cream on July 15, and the note was written on July 16, 1982. One year later, on July 16, 1983, we were married.

Peter : And it was all a misunderstanding, because Bob Payne bought the ice cream.

Debbie : But I still married Peter. There was something inside me that was so drawn to Peter that I knew he was the one. It was just like that. I’m not sure that he knew it at the time. But he came to know it ; Baba showed him that we were meant to be together. Internally we both knew.

But in the meantime, a lot of little things happened. I saw him the ice cream night and the day his sister came in. We spent the day together with eight other people. So right away Peter and I were having a communal life together. But he was heading off for Michigan, and I said, « Call me. »

Peter : And I thought that was just something that New Yorkers say.

Debbie : Even so, he did call me, and oh, already my heart was starting to flutter. He mentioned that he and his brother were going to Myrtle Beach. And all of a sudden I realized, « Oh, I’ve been planning a trip to Myrtle Beach too ! »

I made some quick arrangements and took a Greyhound bus from New York City to Myrtle Beach so I could be there at the same time Peter was there. Now remember, I had seen him only the day of the ice cream and the day his sister came with all those people to visit New York City, and now I was seeing him for three days in Myrtle Beach.

But that’s when we fell in love. Each day we would go to the beach together, and we would be together all day. It was so much fun. But Peter’s not the romantic type ; he hadn’t had a girlfriend in years, and he was a perfect gentleman. And after all, he was committed as a resident at Meherabad in India — a by-the-book resident at that.

We were swimming together, splashing in the waves and laughing, and I thought, « Well, tomorrow I’m leaving and he’s leaving. If I don’t take this opportunity now, I’ll never have it again. I’d better go for that seven seconds now ! »

So there we were, swimming in the Ocean of Love, and I couldn’t help myself ; I had to give him a little kiss. I don’t think it was even a seven second one — maybe three seconds — but a little kiss on the lips.

He was wide-eyed. « Why did you do that ? »

« Baba told me to ! » I answered creatively.

He just stood there like a deer in the headlights.

The next day I left first, and he said, « I’ll see you in New York. » He was coming to New York for two days on his way out of the country.

It was a fast courtship. He came to New York City, and I was drunk with love. We had another great day together. We stayed at a friend’s place. Everything was honorable — after all, he was a resident. But then I started feeling as if I were going to die. I’d finally met the perfect person and he was going to India the next day. I was so sad.

We went to the airport. It was wonderful, and he gave me a last kiss goodbye. As he got on the airplane, he was smiling and waving, and I could tell that he was saying something, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Later he told me he was saying, « I love you. »

But I didn’t know he had said that. I stood in the airport bathroom crying while in the background, the MUSAK was playing, « Leaving, on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again. » I was sobbing and sobbing, wondering, « When will I ever see him again ? »

« Think of me when you are in the Samadhi, » I had told Peter, and I waited impatiently to hear from him. It took at least ten days for mail to get to the States, so I sent Peter a telegram. I did my best to write it in code, since I knew he was a resident ; I didn’t want to say too much in case others saw the telegram before it got to him.

« Have drowned in the Ocean of Love. What an Avatar ! » was my cryptic message. I knew he’d know what I meant. But by the time the telegram arrived in India, it said, « Ocean drowned. What’s an Avatar ? » Eruch read it ; everyone in the office read it ; they all read it ! Of course, I didn’t know this. But surely the mandali got their first clues right then as to what was going on between us. And of course, letters continued flying back and forth.

I was devastated ; I was in love, but I couldn’t fathom how we would see each other again. Peter was sending me loving letters, but I was always living on the edge financially trying to make it in the music business in New York City. One day I was weeping for Peter, when I ran into an old friend with whom I’d been in a show.

« I’m in love with someone, » I told him through the tears running down my face.

« Well, great ! » he said, wondering what the tears were about.

« But he lives in India ! »

« Well, go to India, » he said simply.

« How can I go to India ? » I sobbed.

But then the thought came to me, « Well, maybe I can go to India ! » I had never even conceived that it might be possible.

« For one day I’m going to stop crying about not seeing Peter, and I’m going to plan, at least pretend in my mind, that I’m going to India. »

The very next day I got a phone call from someone I hardly knew, a Baba person who knew I was a singer, and he said, « Would you be interested in doing a New Year’s Eve celebration at an upscale hotel in India, the Bombay Centaur Hotel ? »

« YES ! » I cried.

In the weeks before that I had been working part-time in a doctor’s office. Each day I’d type up the schedule, and at the bottom I would write a thought for the day, usually something like, « Love will find a way, » or « With love, all things are possible. » So these sentiments came true, and my chance finally came. I immediately knew that the Bombay job was mine, and that Baba wanted me to go. I found out later that quite a few young women singers had applied for the job, but when the person at the hotel saw my photo in the press kit, he looked at it and said, « That’s the one. » Baba did it.

Peter : In the meantime there was a particular photograph of Baba at Bindra House in Poona — Eruch’s mother’s house. It had been taken in 1927 and was one of the only pictures they had at the time, so it was greatly valued. Baba had said that he would always be in that photograph, and that he would always be available for darshan through it.

I had gone to the picture as I was leaving India, and I went back to it when I returned. By that time I was spinning, shaking my head, « Oh, God, what have I gotten myself into ? » I couldn’t see how it would ever be possible that I could be with this woman.

So as I stood before the picture, I placed my dilemma at Baba’s feet. My experience at the time is too much to describe, but suffice it to say that Baba let me know he would see to every detail, and it was not my concern.

As she had requested, I did think of Debbie when I was in the Samadhi. The only thing I could do was a daily exercise, and that exercise was, « Baba, let your will be done. Whatever your will is, I accept it. Let your will be done. » There was nothing else I could do. In those days it was not acceptable for Meherabad residents to get married. There were much more important things going on there than our personal lives.

Anyway, on October 19 I was sitting in the Samadhi doing my usual daily meditation, and I felt Baba say, « She’s coming. »

« What ? » It was that casual inner conversation you have with Baba.

« She’s coming. » And I perceived him to hold up two fingers. « Two. »

« What ? When ? In two years ? » I asked.

« Two months. »

Exactly two months to the day, on December 19, Debbie arrived in Meherabad.

Debbie : I had written Peter to surprise him and let him know that I was coming, but in the meantime he had written to me to say, I know you’re coming in December. » And our letters crossed. It just showed how we both knew very strongly everything was Baba’s doing.

I got to India and we saw each other for one day ; then I had to complete my obligation singing at the hotel. Now, The Bombay Times had run an advertisement with a picture of me. But one shoulder was somewhat exposed — something which is not done in India — and I think there was a feather in my hair. I was holding a microphone, and under the photograph was written « Delectable Debbie. »

Pendu, one of the Meherazad mandali I had met on my first trip, was thrilled to find this in the paper. He remembered me and showed the ad to everyone. The mandali are always happy when a Baba lover is doing something fun.

Of course, nobody knew about Peter and me yet. It was our secret. Months later, when they found out that one of their young men residents was going to leave India to marry « Delectable Debbie, » it did not bode well at first. But it was all Baba’s game, and I don’t regret one moment of it, because it all worked out the way Baba would have it.

Peter was 99% sure that this relationship was what Baba wanted, but he said to himself and to Baba, « I know if Mehera says something about us, then it is definitely 100% your will. » Since no one knew about us, this would be a confirmation from Baba.

When I came back after my programs in Bombay, Mehera was chatting with me in her sweet way. « Not married yet ? » she queried.

« No, Mehera, » I answered.

« A pretty girl like you not married ? No one has asked you ? »

« No, no one’s asked me. » Of course I was thinking, « Well, I’m in love with somebody, but I’m not saying anything. »

Then, somehow Bhauji — Bhau Kalchuri, the author of Baba’s biography — caught wind of what was going on with Peter and me. Both of us have a connection with Bhau, and he called us in.

Peter : Bhau sensed that something was up. One day he asked me about it, and of course, I had to tell him the truth — the whole thing, including my experience with Baba’s photograph in Poona — all the details.

« Now, you come have dinner with me one night, » he said. « You both come. » So we had dinner with Bhau in the Trust office one night. That was January 18^th.

Debbie : I didn’t know quite what was happening that night. Bhau was telling all these stories about Divine Love, and he seemed to be talking about sacrifice and putting down human love. He is such a storyteller anyhow, and I didn’t know what to think. Then he took us into a back room and sat us both down. I just had to do my best to be with what was going on.

Peter : He looked at Debbie and asked, « Do you love him ? »

« Yes, » she answered.

Then he looked at me. « Do you love her ? »

« Yes. »

Then he said to her, « Do you want to get married ? »

She started getting excited. « Yes ! » she laughed.

He looked at me. « You would get married ? »

I looked at her, then looked at him. « Yes. »

« Hmm. » He paused, seeming to think. « Hmmmm. Now, you always have this financial problem. So suppose you have to go back to the West and stay a little bit longer this time and try to earn some money. And suppose while you are there, you might get married. And I would do my best to help you come back. »

It was a very great gift. Essentially, Bhau engaged us.

Debbie : In the rickshaw going back to Meherabad I was so happy. I was engaged ! But, Peter never actually asked me to marry him. And he had still not told me that in his mind, if Mehera said something, he would know 100% that our marriage was Baba’s wish.

Nine days later Mehera called me over to her porch. This time I was alone with her. It was three days before Amartithi and a huge crowd was there, so it was clearly in her mind to speak privately with me. Of course, it was Baba. Mehera was so pure, and her intuitive connection with him was perfectly clear. « Still has no one asked you to marry him ? » She had such a sweet, open way of being interested in people.

« Well, actually[... ] well, no one’s really asked me to marry him, but well, I’m[... ] I’m engaged ! »

« You asked him ? » she asked, a little surprised, but still clearly happy for me.

« No... »

« He didn’t ask you ? » She appeared to be trying to grasp what I was saying.

« No, well... »

I didn’t want to tell her that it had happened with Bhauji. I didn’t know what I should say since Peter was on staff. But she asked me directly who it was, so I leaned over and told her, very quietly, « It’s Peter Nordeen. »

« Ah, hmmm, Peter Nordeen, » she said in her sweet, gentle way. She looked delighted. « Very good. He can fix anything ! » Then she said some more very nice things about Peter, adding that he loved Baba very much, and that Baba loved him. She offered some other advice and asked a few questions.

« We’d kind of like to live here, » I ventured.

« Well, you could live here. Where would you live ? »

« I don’t know.[... ] »

« I know someone I could ask, » she answered, entering into my excitement with me. « Maybe we could find you a place where he could build you a house, and every day he would go to Meherabad, and you would pack him a lunch.[... ] » She was so sweet. « I’ll look into it. »

« But Mehera, » I said, lowering my voice again, « we haven’t told anyone yet. »

« Oh, » she whispered, « your secret is safe with me. » Then she added, « Many girls have come and liked Peter — and pretty ones, too — but he hasn’t looked at any. Must be sanskaras. «

Now we both felt that we had Baba’s total blessing ; we had Bhauji’s blessing and Mehera’s as well. Telling Mehera was like telling a best girlfriend ; it was intimate and natural. She was excited and I was excited ; it was our secret.

In telling this story, I know that when my life became connected to Peter’s, my relationship with Baba deepened. Being with Peter was Baba’s way of drawing me closer to him.

I returned to the United States, and Peter followed a few months later. We were married on July 16. We knew we had to live in the States because we had to earn money to live, but always it was in the back of our minds to return to India. I had felt, walking down Meherabad hill one day shortly after Peter and I became engaged, that Meher Baba wanted me to live in India. And the only way that he was ever going to get me — a show-girl from New York City (well, actually, a music teacher from the corn fields of Illinois) — to live in India, was to marry me to Peter Nordeen.

It was the only way in this lifetime that I was going to end up living there. It wasn’t that I wanted to live there, although later I did, but by linking me with this soul Peter, Baba had me live the life he wanted me to live.

In 1983 we wrote that we were coming to India to visit, and Mani, Meher Baba’s sister who was then the Chairman of the Trust, wrote back, saying she was so glad we were coming as visitors since it would never be possible for us to be residents as a married couple.

When we received that letter, we were devastated. But in retrospect, I could see that Mani was doing exactly what her role demanded, and what Baba wanted her to do. Because all that did was to strengthen and deepen Peter’s and my love for Baba and for each other, and to increase our longing to be in India all the more. It was part of Baba’s game.

We actually weren’t able to return to India until the end of 1984. As soon as we arrived, Peter started working on the grounds again. Not much later the Pilgrim Center needed an additional receptionist, so I began working there. We continued this routine of working as staff, but staying as pilgrims, through the rest of our visit, and continued that arrangement when we returned the following year.

The next time we went to India, an old friend of Peter’s, a trustee, approached the Board, saying, « Peter and Debbie are working every day ; could we possibly give them staff quarters while they are here ? » Mani approved, and that was our in !

By the following year we had saved enough to be able to maintain ourselves for a longer period, and we again approached Mani with our request to return as residents. This time her answer was, « I have no objections ; you may come and live as residents. » We were overjoyed !

When we finally moved to India in 1987, we lived in the Trust office compound in Ahmednagar, the town which lies between Meherabad (the site of Meher Baba’s tomb-shrine) and Meherazad (Meher Baba’s residence during the latter part of his life.) I began working at the Trust office and of all things, actually got to work directly with Mani sometimes. It was a highlight of my life. Mani was an unparalleled mentor for me. She lived the « divine art » which Baba describes as « the ability to always look cheerful, as it helps others. »

Mani told me one time, « We used to say, ‘Sure, Debbie can sing — she’s a songbird — but what can she do ? »’ meaning, what can she do that is helpful. Then she shook her head and said, « We had no idea. » Pointing to Baba’s picture behind her, she added, « But Baba knew. » That was her way of saying, « I didn’t know, but Baba knew. » So we were all playing our own parts.

Even Eruch approached us when we were finally residents in India and said, « You know, Peter, when you went away to get married, I thought, ‘Aahww, Debbie is taking our Peter away,’ and we were so sad that you were leaving. But I have to tell you this, so I can die in peace : If I had any ill thoughts, I apologize. »

In other words, his reaction was on his conscience. This is the model that the mandali set for us ; they are so vigilant about what is inside them — even if they have one little thought, just a thought ! He certainly had never said one word to Peter indicating disapproval — nothing. He only said, « Be an example ; live the life and be an example to all of what it can be like to be married in Baba. »

We had been living in India for two and a half or three years. In January, 1990, about six months after Mehera passed away, I experienced my first symptoms. I thought I just had that living-in-India cold and cough that never goes away. I stopped eating chapatis — these wonderful Indian tortillas — and lost fifteen pounds. I was actually delighted : « Oh, you just stop eating chapatis and you lose weight ! » But I was very ill and I didn’t know it.

Finally, I couldn’t work any more. I went in for an x-ray and they thought I had tuberculosis. I began treatments for tuberculosis and, of course, I was devastated enough to think that I had TB !

But none of the medication worked, so I was sent to a hospital in Poona for more thorough tests. A year after Mehera passed away, I was in the same hospital and even in the same CAT scan machine that she had been in. I always say that they slit my throat and pierced my heart in one day. That is, they did a biopsy through my throat on this mass in my chest. There was so much fluid in my lungs and around my heart that they had to tap both my heart and lungs. And they did it under local anesthesia ! The doctor was a great surgeon.

Only later did we find out that I had Hodgkin’s Disease. Yet, the whole time it was almost as if I were laughing with joy. I never knew I was that strong. Only briefly were there tears.

« I’m such a happy person, » I said. « How could I have cancer ? » I hadn’t realized that there were deeper scars beneath the surface of my apparent happiness that needed healing.

Cancer was the medium Baba used for this healing. Thus, the sickness became the cure. Baba gave me more strength than I could have imagined, and the result was a complete surrender to him.

I was physically weak, but I knew that my strength was Baba. It was the first time in my life that I could say, « What is there to worry about ? Okay, so I might die ! Is that the worst thing that could happen ? No, I would be with Baba. »

All of a sudden, for the first time in my life, I started not to worry about anything.

The night or so before that happened, I was listening to some Bob and Jane Brown tapes in my hospital room, and I knew how much Baba loved me. As I listened to songs like « I’m Yours » and « I’m the Father of Your Song, » I felt Baba so close to me. I became aware of all of those walls of separation that so many of us have, from past lives or wherever they’re from — that defensiveness. And I felt that Baba was helping mine to fall down.

I didn’t have to be the strong one any more ; I didn’t have to be the oldest daughter who knew how to fix everything. Although I still have those skills, I now use them out of joy, not out of compulsion. And Baba showed me that he loved me more than I could ever love myself. I started to have a very real, deep, internal relationship with Baba.

That was the big awakening for me. I realized that this illness was Baba’s gift ; it was not a punishment ; I didn’t think that I had thought or done something bad and was now being punished, as some people think about illness.

Rather, I realized this was Baba’s way of giving me his sahavas — closeness, or company of the Master. He showed me in every way that he was with me through the whole experience. And the mandali showered their love and attention on me. I had to leave the Trust compound on a stretcher in a taxi — it would have been an ambulance in the United States — which was a pretty dramatic way for a resident to leave.

Mani called me when I was in the hospital in Poona and said, « Don’t worry about anything. The results will be glorious ! »

Of course, that could have meant that I might die, and I could have been happy with that, but I took it at the time to mean that I was going to be totally well.

We were able to get the last flight out of India before the monsoon hit and before the Bombay airport closed for three days. I went immediately into a hospital in Illinois and was put in cardiac intensive care.

Within the first two days that the airport in Bombay was closed, I had returned to the West, been diagnosed, and started on chemotherapy. That’s how fast Baba can work when he wants to get something done.

That was the end of one chapter of my life, but the beginning of a totally new, beautiful chapter, even though it was months of chemo and radiation, because Baba showed me in every way that he was with me and with Peter.

I started chemo at the end of June ; barely two weeks later we were at my mother’s house where we kept silence on Baba’s Silence Day, July 10. That’s when my hair started falling out. I reached up to scratch my head, and a whole handful of hair came out in my hand. I looked at Peter in the beautiful silence, and it was just like Baba’s signature, saying, « You’re mine, you’re mine. »

My thought was, « Okay, so here’s my hair, Baba, » as if offering it to him. It was almost fun ; I’d keep combing it to see how much would come out. The whole time, it was kind of like another honeymoon with Baba. There was one in the very beginning, then one while falling in love with Peter, then the deepest honeymoon during this illness, because it was about Baba and me — we were in it together.

Throughout the months of chemotherapy, I engaged more deeply in my inner work. I went to a class for people who were seriously ill where we worked with the book You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay.

We also learned how to do what the leader called, « contacting your inner guide for imagination and visualization purposes for health. » It was the first time I had ever really started to regularly dialogue with Baba on the inside. He would tell me all sorts of things ; most were similar to things I had read, such as, « I love you more than you can ever imagine, » and « What is there ever to worry about ? »

But he was talking to me directly, saying « I » and « you. » I wasn’t audibly hearing his voice, yet time after time he gave me the awareness through different situations that he was with me.

One of the last really big examples came when my blood counts were not quite high enough for me to have my last chemo — they have to be high enough for the body to withstand the treatment. So I couldn’t have it, and I couldn’t have it, and my doctor wanted me to have it to complete the whole protocol and do the best I could possibly do. Finally he called and said, « Okay, your blood counts are high enough and you can have your last chemo on January 31^st. »

The nurses filled the room with balloons, and they were in there with me, and loving me as they gave me that final treatment. Of course, January 31 is the « eternal date » of Amartithi, the anniversary of the day Baba dropped his body. So it was clearly another way that he was showing me that he was with me in the entire process.

Peter and I had no health insurance, and my treatment cost thousands and thousands of dollars. But we found that because we had no home, we had only one suitcase and some savings, we qualified for Illinois public aid if we bought a house within seven days and thus reduced our savings to six hundred dollars in cash.

So Peter bought us a tiny house near my mother, who was Baba’s angel to me. Time and time again, little miracles occurred ; Baba took care of every detail. Then, a couple of weeks after my radiation ended, a letter came from public aid, saying : « We’re sorry, but the program you have been on has been discontinued. We will no longer be able to cover any medical expenses after this. »

I had it for the whole time I needed it. Now I am happy to talk with anyone who is going through a serious illness and share about how Baba can help them. Illness is not a punishment ; it is an opportunity to get closer to Baba and to know how much he loves you.

Baba is our constant companion. He doesn’t take away our « suffering. » Look at how much he suffered. But he goes with us hand in hand through anything we have to go through in life. And all the time he is drawing us closer to him to show us that we are his, and there really is nothing to worry about.

He loves us more than we could ever love ourselves. And that’s what I learned through this whole thing. My life and Peter’s continue to be a process of surrendering more and more into that acceptance of Baba’s will. It’s all that matters. It’s that poise to know that, no matter what, it’s what Baba wants. Our job is to be happy.

Postscript from Peter :

The story is never over. Baba keeps bringing things around in such an amazing way. Remember the priest in our town, Father Pernaski ? He was really a friend of ours and it had been while I was practicing for midnight mass with him that I first heard Meher Baba’s name. Father Pernaski had a real connection to God.

I recall one day as a teen when I went over to his place just to say hello. I happened to look on his bookshelf and received quite a shock. « What the heck is that ? That’s my Sparks of the Truth there, my Baba book ! »

Remember, my dad would take our books and show them to people around town. My dad had given him that book, and there it was on his bookshelf. I don’t think he read much, but I know that he learned a little bit about Baba by at least scanning the pages. He cared and he was concerned.

Father Pernaski was aware that I had spent some time keeping silence and that I would also occasionally fast, so he knew that I was a weird person ; this was not typical. But the Catholic tradition also had those « weird » people, and they would go to monasteries. So he tried to get me to join a monastery and told me about the Carthusian Monastery in Kentucky where they keep silence.

He also showed me that within the context of the Catholic Church, there was a rare mystical path, and I could follow it if I wanted to. Of course, I didn’t go to a monastery ; how could I explain to him that Meher Baba was the object of every religion ?

Years later, during the time that I lived in India, Father Pernaski would send me

100 around Christmas time. And sometimes he would say « for the poor of India, » or something like that. I would usually give it to Mani as a donation to the Trust.

She would write one of her nice personalized receipts to him, and send him a Baba card, and write, « Thank you, Father Pernaski. »

But then sometimes she would tell me, « Keep it for your projects at Meherabad. » So that was a nice thing.

Then, after Debbie finished her radiation, we went to upper Michigan. Father Pernaski had died the year before. While we were up there, we thought we might go look at his cabin on the lake. I used to work on it occasionally, and our thought was that a group of us together might buy it, or at least we’d inquire about it. Then we went back to Illinois. One day shortly after our return, Debbie was lamenting in the kitchen, « Oh, I want to go back to India. How can we ever get back ? »

All I could say was, « Well, we don’t have the money.[... ] »

« How much do we need ? » she asked.

I calculated. « Just to go to India, we would need three thousand dollars. »

« Well, » she concluded, « if Baba wants us to go to India, he’ll just have to make it possible. »

A few days later, a big envelope from some lawyers came in the mail. The letter read, « On behalf of Father Pernaski’s estate[... ]. »

« Wow, » I thought, « what a quick response to that inquiry about the cabin. But gee, we just wanted information. No need to get lawyers involved yet. »

But as we read through the materials — I had a stack I was looking at, and Debbie had another — she suddenly gasped.

« You are one of Father Pernaski’s beneficiaries. He left some money to you ! »

« WHAT ? » I couldn’t believe it.

We read through the list of people. He hadn’t left money to anyone else in town. He did leave something to a couple of nieces and nephews, « provided they attend my funeral. And they should not be informed of this before my funeral. » That was the type of character he was.

But « To Peter Nordeen of India, I leave 3000. » Amazing. The exact amount. That’s how we got back to India after Debbie’s illness. If Baba wants you to be able to do something, he will make it possible.

I had a dream occasionally as a kid, a recurring dream, with a few variations. Of course, since dream experiences are somewhat abstract and personal, they are a little difficult to describe, but this was a very awake kind of dream.

In the dream I would find myself not in my body, but floating in waves of a void. It was very, very quiet, absolutely silent — and I was going somewhere.

First, I would see a room with figures moving in the quiet. Then the figures would stop moving, and there would be absolute stillness. But no matter what variations there were in the dream, I would always see one particular being, usually sitting in a chair.

It was a man with a mustache, and he would turn to his left and look at me, smiling. When I looked at him, his gaze would be too intense to bear, and I would wake up.

I had this dream from the time I was seven years old, once or twice a year, until I was fourteen, around 1968 or 1969. Each time there were figures in the room, then quiet, then the one figure. I didn’t know who he was, but this person with the gaze could see right through me, and I couldn’t bear it — that’s what I felt.

And his smile was not an ordinary smile, as someone casually smiling from an average worldly experience ; it was far beyond that. Only after my first trip to India, to Meherazad, did I realize that the one in my dream had been Meher Baba.

I grew up in upper Michigan, not far from Lake Superior. I was the second of eleven children in a Catholic family, and my two brothers next to me in age and I were altar boys. My experience of Jesus was very personal. I would wonder, « If Christ were alive, what would he be like ? » And I thought he would be very natural.

I remember one year when we were practicing for mass with Father Pernaski, the priest. It was either for Christmas or Easter when I was fourteen. All of the altar boys were together, and a friend of mine, Dave Miljour, was saying to one of the other altar boys, « Yes, my mother just got these books from my Aunt Anne in Pennsylvania. They’re about Meher Baba. »

« What ? Who ? He’s a mayor ? » our friend asked.

« No, Meher Baba, » answered Dave. « He’s the Christ of this age, the Messiah, the God-Man. »

Another guy in the group reacted, « What ? You Miljours are all nuts ! You’ll believe anything ! »

But as for me, I heard Baba’s name, and it had an impact on me. This is my memory of how I first heard Baba’s name — practicing for midnight mass in the basement of the church. Eventually, all of my brothers and sisters came to love Baba — it’s really a story of the whole family. And the Miljours are basically all Baba-lovers, too.

Dave lived in India for a couple of years, and his mother, Christine, used to go to India every winter. Even Father Pernaski gets involved in the story !

I was about sixteen when Pete Townshend of the Who had an article in Rolling Stone. He talked about Meher Baba in the article, and Baba’s picture was on the front cover. There was quite a flurry of interest in the article, and a number of my friends read it.

In the meantime, Dave’s older brother, Mike, had been reading some of those books that their Aunt Anne had sent his mother. The books were called The Discourses and God Speaks, and as far as Mike was concerned, there was no question : Baba was God.

Occasionally we would talk, and I remember a particular conversation we had one time outside by a fire. It was 1971, and Mike was explaining to us what Baba had said about creation, the theme of life, the purpose of everything.

Another friend who was standing there muttered, « Well, I just can’t understand it. »

But I recall answering, « No, wait ; it makes perfect sense ! » For me, it was clearly the truth.

In my senior year of high school I gradually got more and more interested in eastern mysticism. One day I went into the school library, into a back room. I don’t know why ; I just walked into the back room, picked up a bound volume of National Geographic from the year 1913, opened it up, and there were about twenty to thirty pages of pictures of fakirs from India, penitents, swamis, and all kinds of people. I was drawn to it like a magnet, to all that I could find about spirituality. I read Autobiography of a Yogi and was interested in everything mystical, but somehow my focus would always come back to Meher Baba.

I started telling all of our friends about Meher Baba, and some of us started going to Baba meetings in Marquette — hitchhiking through upper Michigan at night in winter. It was often something like 30 below zero, but to us it was an adventure.

The meetings were about the book God Speaks. Many of the people attending were not necessarily Baba-lovers — I remember one was a Yogananda follower — but these people were interested in spiritual cosmology. And, of course, nobody in contemporary time has put together the theme of creation and its purpose as succinctly as Baba in God Speaks.

Despite my interest in Baba, I was a teenager, and I got involved with all the wildness of teenagers. My friends and I were taking drugs at the time, although I will say that we thought of them as beneficial, for the purpose of mind-expansion.

Around the middle of my senior year, we received some Meher Baba literature, in which Baba was quoted as saying, « Don’t take drugs. » I realized immediately that I had to stop.

Yet just before I did, my friend Howard came over one evening. I had been trying to convince him for about six months to try LSD, and he had finally decided he was going to do it that night.

Howard was a rather nervous person, however, and he had what we called a « transpersonal experience. » He flipped out on the LSD ; he was really « gone. » He had been reading Nietzsche and going through « nothing matters, » and « what is the meaning of it all, » and « it’s all pointless. » So instead of getting closer to God, he was getting closer to nothingness. And I kept thinking, « Well, gee, this has never happened before. »

Later that evening, another guy, Ralph, happened to come by. Ralph had refused to take drugs all along.

« Heh, looks like he’s having a great time over there ! » Ralph said, shaking his head as he saw what Howard was going through in the bedroom. « Well, I just came by to tell you that somebody’s speaking up at Northern Michigan University about alternatives to psychedelic drug use, and I thought maybe you would be interested. »

« Sure, sure, I’ll go up, » I answered with a mix of enthusiasm and concern, « but Howard over here, he’s kind of[... ] we’ll have to shovel him into the car. » And we literally had to carry him. I had never seen anybody in a state like that. But we all piled into the car ; my brothers Dave and Art and three friends came along too.

The speaker was Allan Cohen, one of the three guys that Baba had delegated to speak against drug use in America. He’s a very good speaker, and he told about one experience after another, periodically dropping in a little about Meher Baba.

Allan had a very tactful way of speaking and of fielding questions. Some people stood up and insisted that psychedelics were the way, and Allan would carefully explain why they were not.

And there was Howard, who had just gone through this freak-out on acid. It was probably the best therapy possible for him to be coming down from the trip while hearing about Meher Baba. Allan didn’t exactly speak of Baba’s divinity, but simply said that his consciousness was « beyond. »

The talk by Allan brought to mind the whole history of how we all came to know of Meher Baba, and it had to do with Christine Miljour’s sister, the Aunt Anne who had sent the books by Baba.

Anne knew Richard Alpert, who later became Ram Dass, and when he came back from India after being with Neem Karoli Baba, he told Anne about Meher Baba. She told us later that Neem Karoli Baba had said to Richard Alpert, « Meher Baba is your real Master. »

She said that Baba told him, « You can come and meet me if you stop taking drugs. » But that is not what unfolded.

In any case, Richard Alpert had first heard of Meher Baba through Rick Chapman and Allan Cohen. They and Robert Dreyfuss were friends at Harvard at the time. They were all investigating LSD, and were a part of that early mind-expansion -through-a-pill crowd.

Rick and Robert both went to India and were two of the very few Westerners that Meher Baba saw during his deep seclusion. They both immediately dedicated their lives to him, and that was it.

Robert came back with the message, « All drugs are harmful mentally, spiritually, and physically. »

Thus Robert Dreyfuss, Rick Chapman, and Allan Cohen became Baba’s messengers to the West regarding the harmfulness drugs. Timothy Leary, at the other extreme end, refused to believe what Baba said. But these men were the link, via Richard Alpert and Anne, to our awareness of Baba.

It now became my goal in life to get to the Meher Baba Center in Myrtle Beach. I gathered all the information I could about Baba, going from library to library. We decided that after graduation Art and I and a couple of others would go to the Center. We bought an old Volkswagen and spent most of our time fixing it up, but when the owner didn’t come through with the title, we decided we would hitchhike come June.

In the meantime, my father, an ex-marine and staunch Catholic, was adamantly against what he called « this Hindu garbage. » And he knew it had something to do with « those Miljours. »

And, although my mother could see that there was something positive about Baba, she was concerned about « false prophets. » I knew a showdown was coming and that eventually I was going to have to face it. Finally it happened.

I came into the kitchen one day and my father was holding a copy of a pamphlet, « Compassionate Father, » that Rick Chapman had put together with a beautiful photograph of Baba on the front. He threw the pamphlet on the table and looked at me.

« Who the hell is that ? »

« That’s Meher Baba, » I answered, determined to be straightforward and calm.

« And what is he supposed to be ? » he challenged.

« He’s God in human form, the Christ of this age. »

He almost went through the roof. « Jesus Christ ! Now I’ve heard everything ! » he shouted. « You think God’s gonna look like that if he comes back ? With long hair and a mustache ? »

If you think back to the culture of those times, that was his concern.

But he did not change my intent. Right after graduation we hitchhiked to Myrtle Beach, traveling in two groups. We left five days early to make sure we’d get there in time for our reservations. Since we arrived two days early, we stayed the first night on the beach downtown, huddled under a blanket. The next night we decided we needed to get up to North Myrtle Beach where the Center is, and at least sleep nearby.

At that time the Meher Center was still very much out in the woods, and there were long stretches of pine forest between Myrtle Beach and the Center. Someone told us, nodding north, « up there, you’ll see a gate somewhere. » We took a bus as far as it would go, then walked with our packs the five or six miles the rest of the way to the Center. It was evening and it was very quiet in the pine woods. By the time we got there it was almost dark.

We had reservations for the next day, so we didn’t want to go in. We were very serious about following directions exactly. So we slept outside the gate on the side of the road. We didn’t know that wasn’t supposed to be safe — shoot, it was warm ! It was like heaven.

We were from the north, and we didn’t have chiggers, snakes, and poison ivy up there. We were used to sleeping out in the woods anywhere. The only thing we had to watch out for up there was freezing ! But we slept great. A few people looked at us as they came or went from the Center, but we weren’t concerned at all.

The next morning we got up, waited until exactly the right time they had told us to arrive, and then, filled with anticipation, we walked in. Just walking in the gate, we could feel it[... ] we could feel Baba’s atmosphere.

We went up to the Gateway to check in. « Oh, you’re a Nordeen ? There’s a Nordeen over at Kitty’s house right now. »

Art and Jim had arrived early in the morning, and they had just gone right in. Here we had tried to do things so correctly, and they had gone straight in to Kitty’s and Elizabeth’s, and now they were having breakfast with them !

Our stay was indescribable, beyond what any of us had imagined. We had three days at the Center, and it was great, just fantastic[... ] fantastic. It was Baba’s atmosphere of love. That’s what it was.

When we got back, my father made it clear to me that I should not discuss Baba with any of my brothers or sisters. He was so adamantly against Baba that he would steal our literature and go around town with it, saying, « Look at this stuff my kids are into ! Look at this ! Do you know what he says ? Look at this face. He says he’s God ! Can you believe this ? Goddammit, I can’t believe it ! »

In this way, Baba became hot gossip, big talk in a small town. Everybody wanted to see the literature, so we had firsthand experience of how Baba works through his opposition. We said very little. But we were always missing this or that Baba book or brochure, and my father would have taken it. He would keep some, he would pass some around. And we didn’t have to say anything to the siblings either, because they could see that there was such a change in us.

I remember my youngest sister at the time was only two years old. She used to come around the corner and peek and laugh and run ; they were just picking up on Baba’s love.

Dave Miljour realized that he, too, wanted to go to the Center, so the next trip was in winter. Dave and I hitchhiked there with only twenty dollars, and it was so cold. We lived on what we had brought plus whatever people had left in the communal food area at the Center. We spent five or six days there, and I got back home with thirty cents in my pocket. Somehow Baba had provided whatever we needed.

Dave was now being drawn more and more to Baba. He was an introverted intellectual when he was a kid. He knew the names of all the dinosaurs, for example, and he was always one of the top five in his class.

But as Baba came into our lives, we all went through our little metamorphoses. Dave was gradually becoming an extroverted social being who was fed up with his experience of childhood and school ; he felt we were missing the purpose of everything. As one of the top students in his class, he gave a really amazing speech for Commencement. It shook the rafters — completely surprised everyone. He felt compelled to let everyone know that we were all chasing false dreams, that we should seek the truth and love instead. The school administration almost didn’t give him his diploma, but of course, he didn’t care about that anyhow.

My father told me that if I was going to continue with this « Hindu garbage, » I was going to have to leave the house. He didn’t want me influencing the others. He didn’t actually kick me out. He was simply trying to pressure me, thinking that this was a fad and I would give it up. But instead, I thought, « We need to have a place where we can just be with Baba. »

During high school some of us had worked as lumberjacks, and Art and I had saved a few hundred dollars. One of our old shop teachers had some property down by the river, but it needed work. There was no building on it, and we had to build a road on it and cut the timber. We got it for a good price and scavenged some lumber from the old Catholic church that had been torn down. We scrounged up other building materials, whatever we could get. Gradually, over the course of a year, we were able to save and gather enough, and we finally finished our cabin.

In the meantime, I had turned eighteen, and in order to help straighten me out, my father got me a job in the mines where he worked. A job in the mine was a coveted thing because there were excellent benefits. I worked for six months underground, but I wanted to go to the Center again, so I quit the job.

My poor father was again furious. « What ? You quit that job with the good benefits ? »

I suppose I could still be there with those good benefits, but my real goal was to get to India. The next year we realized that we could sell the house we had built — our cabin on the river — and make enough money to go. We sold it for twelve thousand dollars ; the down payment was a few thousand bucks, and we started planning our trip.

To prepare, I kept silence for about forty days, just to see what it was like. I could really see that it was a great meditation ; it helped me focus mentally and made me aware of how much talking could be filled with empty words and lack of communication. It showed me how communication could be much more succinct. In the silence, I would write what needed to be expressed instead of filling the air with useless sounds.

Of all of our friends and family, I left for India first, in December of 1974. Art came the next month. The flights in those days were something. Air India was almost empty to London. Then it hopped from London to Paris, Paris to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Rome, then some place else, up and down, up and down, picking up people and piling them on. By the time we got to Bombay, it was like riding on an Indian bus. I don’t even know how many hours it took.

I met Adi the night I arrived in Ahmednagar. The next day I rode out on a bicycle to Meherabad, where I met Padri and saw Mohammed, the God-intoxicated mast. Then I went up the hill and had my first experience at Baba’s tomb.

There I met Mansari, who lived up beyond the Samadhi. The next day I went to Meherazad and met all of the other mandali. Maybe there were one or two other Westerners there. Those were the days when the mandali outnumbered the pilgrims. What a time it was !

Eruch at the time was fifty-eight ; Mani was fifty-five. They were still young and in good shape. Eruch was not yet treating veryone with kid gloves ; he was still the fiery Eruch for a few more years.

Eruch is a rare person who is adaptable and changes according to the need, and he is observant. He realized that these young Western pilgrims were not strong, so he had to be very delicate with them. « My Indian lovers, » Baba had once said, « are like the plants in the fields and the trees here. But these Western people — remember, they are like potted plants, and they need special care. »

So Eruch had to baby them. When I first went, the mandali would ask so many questions : « How are you doing ? Where do you come from ? Tell me about your family. How did you get here ? »

They were so kind and encouraging, and these young foreigners were such an unusual phenomenon to them. Those were amazing times.

I went there that year, then the year after that, and every year until 1979, when I went there to live. Then I spent as much time as I could with Padri, the man who served as the Superintendent of the Meherabad property. The work I did at the time was « waterworks, » which consisted of digging wells and running pipelines and pumps — doing little maintenance jobs.

Padri was in charge of everything, but I learned much more from him than maintenance. Through his occasional explanation and by his constant example, one could not help but become imbued with the way of the Master. He was one of the few mandali at Meherabad at the time, building up the place for the masses that were to come later, years after he was gone.

Nana Kher was also there. He had taken care of his mother until she died just about the time Baba dropped his body. Then Nana went to live at Meherabad. His job of taking care of Baba’s Samadhi happened naturally in the perfect timing of things. He died just a few years ago. Nana Kher was unique, very childlike, a gentle person, and very intelligent. He always felt like an old friend, a remnant from a pure and gentle age gone by.

Amartithi, the anniversary of Baba dropping his physical body, was celebrated very differently in those days. There were not many thousands of people coming as there are today, but just a few thousand. Most of the people who came to Amartithi in the early 1970’s had met Baba, and many of them had very profound and unique experiences. You would spend your days wandering from one person to another, hearing their stories. It was just fantastic. The atmosphere was tremendous, and it would last three days.

Eruch would stay up for the entire three day period, just talking with people about his experiences with Baba. That was a time that was very special — very, very special.

In 1976, just before Amartithi, one of these Western spiritual seekers who hitchhiked around India showed up. Apparently he was going to travel all over India and visit various gurus and holy places. But somehow he decided to start alphabetically — with Avatar, or Ahmednagar, I’m not sure — but he went to Meherabad first.

He was there for only a few days when he realized that Baba was why he had come to India. This seeker’s name was Kent Rogers, who can be seen speaking of his experience in the film « The Godman. »

I remember one comment he made to me while he was in Meherabad : « Oh, there’s something about you that reminds me of a cousin of mine... » And that’s my segue to into Debbie’s part of the story.

[modifier] Cables Laid Long Ago

Winnie

I live in Asheville, North Carolina, and I’m retired after being a psychotherapist for twenty years. Now I spend my time in several artistic pursuits : clay, collage, gardening, creative writing, and singing in a woman’s chorus. And I’m one of the planners in the Baba group here. I do the meeting schedule and the newsletter, and I talk to people about Baba. It’s a good life — no, a great life !

Elizabeth Patterson, who established the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, used to talk about Baba « laying the cables underground and under the ocean, » meaning that Baba established connections between his lovers long before they even knew of him.

I felt that, for me, Baba laid the cables way back when my parents were young adults. They got married in 1934, the year that Elizabeth first set eyes on the property that would later become the Meher Center. And when my parents got married, they spent their honeymoon in Myrtle Beach. They stayed at the Ocean Forest Hotel which was about a half mile south of the Center property. That hotel no longer exits ; it was torn down to build a Hilton or something. But there was that early connection with Myrtle Beach.

There was also the Chapel Hill connection. My mother, my father, and my step-father all went to school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in the late twenties and early thirties. Later our family moved north, but my mother always wanted to return to Chapel Hill, so in 1961 we finally moved back. And that is where I first heard about Meher Baba.

And then there was the connection with Marshall Hay, who told me about Baba. After my parents divorced and my mother married my stepfather, we moved to Plainfield, New Jersey. Although Marshall and I didn’t know each other then, it turned out that he lived there at the same time, and his mother and my step father’s dad were friends. So Marshall and I had a connection that went way back. It’s interesting how it all comes together.

Marshall was going to school in Chapel Hill in the 1960’s. I had married by that time and was also living there. Marshall, my husband and I, were all part of the underground counterculture scene back then, so we knew each other pretty well. Marshall’s parents had moved to Myrtle Beach, where he went during college break in the summer of 1966. That year, in September, he came back to Chapel Hill talking about this Meher Baba person.

At that time in my life, I felt as if I had a cosmic fatigue — that’s what I called it. You know that musical, « Stop the World, I Want to Get Off » ? Well, my perspective was that stopping the world was not enough. For me it was, « Stop the universe, I want out ! »

So Marshall started telling me that there is a way off of that wheel of births and deaths, births and deaths. There is a goal — an end — that is attainable, and Meher Baba said we could actually experience union with God !

My reaction was, « Far out ! » This was one of my initial attractions to Baba, because I hated my life and was very, very depressed. As I listened to Marshall talk about Baba, I would say, « Yeah, yeah, you’re right, you’re right. » And then I would go home and talk to my now ex-husband, and he would say, « Oh, Meher Baba is just for a bunch of neurotics who can’t take care of themselves. » And I would say to him, also, « Yeah, yeah, you’re right, you’re right. »

I didn’t have much of a mind of my own. I was easily swayed ; whatever way the wind blew, there I was. And, being part of the sixties scene, I wasn’t ready to stop doing drugs yet, which certainly didn’t help. When Marshall told me about Baba saying not to do drugs, I said to him, « Well, what does he know ? He’s never dropped acid ! » So this ambivalence went back and forth for a long time.

Then, in the spring of 1967, Marshall was instrumental in bringing Rick Chapman to Chapel Hill. Rick had just returned from India where he’d been on a Fulbright Scholarship. He had just met Meher Baba, and he was one of the few Westerners who met Baba while he was in that deep, deep seclusion before he dropped his body. Baba had given him — as well as Allan Y. Cohen and Robert Dreyfuss, two other guys from Harvard — orders to « help the youth of America to stop doing drugs. » So Marshall brought Rick to Chapel Hill.

The night before the talk, I attended a rock’n’roll and light show which was the first of its kind in North Carolina. We weren’t with Baba yet, and we smoked some marijuana and went to the show. Rick was going to be there to announce his talk the next day, and I was anticipating meeting him. At that point I was interested enough in Baba to attend the talk — until I met Rick.

At the intermission Rick got up on the stage and made his announcement. He said that he’d just gotten back from India where he had met Avatar Meher Baba ; then added, « If you think you’re high, Meher Baba is the highest of the high. »

This totally turned me off. I looked at Rick and noticed how short his hair was, which was not cool — although he did have an enormous moustache, I must say, to his credit. He was mustachioed ! But he had short hair, a buttoned-down shirt, nice slacks and Bass Weejuns — the garb of the straight people.

I took one look at him and thought with disdain, « Well, he Probably flew the entire way to India. » This was my greatest put-down. « He didn’t even go hitchhiking across the desert to get there. This guy is too straight for me. He can’t tell me anything. I’m hip. »

So a little group of us decided that we would hiss and boo at Rick until he left the stage, which we did. Of course, he was going to leave the stage after his announcement anyway, but we were proud of ourselves, stoned as we were, thinking we were instrumental in his leaving. At that point I decided, « Well, I’m not going to that talk ! » And I didn’t.

But at Rick’s talk something happened, and many of our friends came to Baba. One of my best friends got very interested in Baba and started going to the Center in Myrtle Beach. I noticed that each time she came home, there was color in her face, her eyes were bright, and she wasn’t down.

In fact, there was something about her that was like[... ] light. I noticed that, but I still wasn’t of a mind to go see for myself. And, of course, I was still married to this guy who continued to devalue Baba and Baba people, and part of me listened to him a while longer.

Then I heard that Baba had sent a cable saying he had given darshan to Chapel Hill through Rick. And even though I was not yet ready to find out more about Meher Baba, I remember thinking, « Oh, no ! I missed it. »

Within six weeks my marriage ended. I left Chapel Hill and went to New York, where I spent about four months. All I did was stay stoned. It was a very dark time for me. I was living with a guy who I hardly knew, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. It was dreadful.

Sometimes friends would come up to visit, and one time Marshall came. He said to me, I know you’re going to come to Baba any day now ; I can just feel it. I can just see it. It’s right around the corner.[... ] » He would go on like that, trying in his own way to be encouraging.

« No, no, Marshall, » I would answer tolerantly. « No, no. »

Then one weekend I was visiting friends in Chapel Hill. I recall sitting in the living room, not knowing what to do with myself, concretely or ultimately. I felt I had already turned up every blind alley that there was in my life, and I kept getting nowhere. I was very confused — bewildered, angry and depressed. A friend of mine, a guy named Chris who had been to the Meher Center a number of times, said to me, « Well, why don’t we go to the Center ? We’ll just get away from everything for a few days. » He was at loose ends, too.

I didn’t know what else to do, so we went. It turned out that we were the only guests at the Center. Elizabeth Patterson greeted me and I recall her saying, « I’m so very glad you’re here. » There was something about the sincerity in her voice that made me feel completely welcome.

Elizabeth took me for a tour of the Center, and since Chris had been there before, it was just Elizabeth and me. She told me about how the Center was created and what Baba said about it when he was here — that it was his home in the West and that he never left. We got to the Barn, and as we walked in the door, I saw this beautiful photograph of Baba above the fireplace. I looked at that wonderful personage and I just started to cry.

« You’ve found your home, dear, haven’t you ? » Elizabeth said with great love, which made me cry even more. I cried on her shoulder for a long, long time. She just kept patting me and letting me cry.

I feel that this was the moment I came to Baba.

« You’ve found your home, dear, haven’t you ? » Elizabeth said with great love, which made me cry even more. I cried on her shoulder for a long, long time. She just kept patting me and letting me cry.

I feel that this was the moment I came to Baba.

As a little girl, about three or four years old, I had loved Jesus very much. I used to beg my mother to take me to church and I’d cry if she didn’t. I never went to the Sunday School nursery, but to the adult services. I sang the hymns and listened to the sermon, and when I said my prayers, I felt Jesus very close to me. As I got older, I lost that feeling of his presence. But that morning in the Barn with Meher Baba, that feeling came back, and it has never left.

Shortly thereafter I had a dream of Meher Baba. In the dream I was a little girl, walking down a dirt road holding hands with Jesus. As I looked up at him, I felt his love pouring down on me, completely enveloping and permeating me. Then I saw his face turn into Meher Baba’s, and I knew one hundred percent that they were the same. But it took a while for that knowing to become a reality in my life.

After that day in the barn, my life was completely changed. I stopped doing drugs on the spot. Chris and I decided it would be good for both of us to move to Myrtle Beach. I went up to New York, packed my stuff, and headed back down to find a place to live. But it was October of 1967, and everything in Myrtle Beach had shut down for the winter. That’s what would happen in those days. There were no jobs and no places to rent.

We were sitting in the Original Kitchen at the Center one day, looking at a map of the United States and asking ourselves where we should go and what we should do. All of a sudden it felt to me that the name « Denver » was jumping off the page in neon lights. I had started college in Denver, and had quit school to get married.

« Maybe we should go to Denver, » I said to Chris. And I thought, « I could finish school ; Kitty Davy is always encouraging that kind of thing. »

« Well, » Chris mused, « my parents live in Colorado Springs now, so that would be good. »

We moved to Denver and I immediately signed up for school, eventually finishing my degree in elementary education. Within a very short time Chris decided that Meher Baba wasn’t his path and we parted company. Since that time, he’s become a Baba lover, and we’ve talked about those days. We both feel that Baba used him to bring me to Baba, and also to Denver, where I spent the next 25 years.

So I was back in school, but I didn’t know anybody, and I felt very much alone in the world. Kitty and Elizabeth had told me to keep in touch with Rick Chapman (who I now thought was wonderful) and with Allan Cohen as well.

They had both given talks on Baba in the area. Rick’s parents lived in Denver, so he came often, and I would help set up talks for him. One by one, I started meeting people who were into Baba. Rick came to town around Baba’s birthday of 1968, and I decided to have a little party in my tiny one-room apartment. That became the first Baba meeting in Denver. Some of the core people still active today were members of the group that first night.

The overriding concern of our blossoming Baba group during the first year or so, was that Baba was about to come out of seclusion and invite all of his lovers to India. We were just on the edge of our seats with excitement. We kept feeling, « We’d better get our heads together fast, because[... ] we’re going to go meet God ! You can’t go meet God if you’re a mess ! » So we were all busy trying to get it together.

Baba postponed the end of his seclusion. Then he postponed it again. Finally, in the late fall of 1968, he ended his seclusion and invited us all to India. lt was to be the now-famous « 1969 Darshan. » I was thrilled. « Yay, I’m going to meet Meher Baba ! » I thought, and I paid my money to go. I was to be part of the Myrtle Beach group going for six days, beginning on April 24, 1969.

But then January 31^st came, and Baba dropped his body ! I remember getting the call from Myrtle Beach. Our group gathered and spent the afternoon together. It was a very peaceful, sweet time. But my thought had been, « Well, I was planning to go halfway around the world for six days to meet Meher Baba, and if he’s not going to be there, why should I go ? »

I wrote to Elizabeth, telling her I was now thinking of not going, and she wrote me back right away : « Baba knew full well what he was about to do when he issued you the invitation. And if you love him, you’ll honor his invitation. »

I was so touched. I had never thought of it in that way — that he had invited me. And that he would have any feelings if I wasn’t there — I had never imagined that. But Elizabeth’s words had a great impact on me, and I wrote back to tell her I was still going.

The trip to India was certainly the most profound experience of my life. Absolutely. The darshan was held at Guruprasad, in Poona, where Baba used to spend his summers. That first morning we were taken into a huge gathering place. There were about 250 of us sitting around on the floor. In the front was a low platform with Baba’s chair which held a large photograph of him garlanded with fresh flowers. The men mandali were on one side, and the women mandali were on the other side, both up near the platform. In the center was a microphone.

Eruch stood up and went to the microphone. A great hush fell over the room. « It’s 9 :00, » he said, « and you have all kept your appointment with God. »

At that moment I felt the room fill up with this incredible presence. I knew it was Baba, yet I didn’t recognize at all what I was experiencing. It felt like a thundering silence so profound it made my ears ring. It’s very hard to describe. It took my breath away. It was as if Baba had walked into the room and sat down in his chair. I see it that way now, though at the moment I just felt this very powerful, very physical experience.

Then some program went on. I have no idea what it was ; I remember nothing, absolutely nothing, from that moment until Eruch said, « And now you will all have your opportunity to come and pay your respects to Baba. » People began to get up and bow down at Baba’s chair.

« I’m not going up there and bow down to a chair ! » I said to myself, a little indignant. It seemed too strange. At the time, I didn’t understand. Even though I was feeling that incredible profoundness, I still didn’t comprehend what was occurring.

But then, I noticed something ; I saw it first in Fred Winterfeldt. As he stepped away from the chair, his face was absolutely radiant. There was such light coming from him. And joy. And a grin from ear to ear ! And tears were streaming down his face.

« Wow, » I gasped in amazement, « something is happening up there. » Then I began to notice more in the room, and I realized that something very intimate was happening during these meetings with Baba and each of his lovers up at the chair.

« Golly, I don’t want anyone watching me when I go up there, » was my next thought. Suddenly I felt self-conscious.

We weren’t sitting in rows, but were scattered haphazardly about the floor. People were just getting up and going to the chair in no particular order. Then suddenly I was on my feet.

I felt almost as if someone had tapped me on the shoulder and said, « It’s your turn now. »

As I stood up, everything disappeared. I saw nothing visually — through my eyes. There was just Baba’s chair, and Baba, and me. I put my head down, and I felt as though Baba was welcoming me back.

« Here I am again, Baba ; here I am, » seemed to come from within me. Even now, tears come as I recall it. It was just Baba and me. He was so present that I felt I knew where his hands were ; I knew where his knees were. I could feel him there. I couldn’t see him with my eyes, but I could see him with my heart.

I don’t know how long I was there. It might have been just a few seconds, but I felt I was with him in a timeless moment.

Then it was again almost as if someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, « Okay, time to go ; give someone else a turn. » I stood up to go, but I was not aware of my surroundings until I was all the way out on the veranda, quite a distance. I didn’t know how I’d gotten there, but there I was, and I had just had darshan with God.

For the first time in my life I felt like a whole, complete person. Until that time, I never felt okay unless I had a guy with me or I was taking some substance to try to feel better. My boyfriend Paul and I were both there and we sang at one of the programs. But from the point when I had that personal experience of Baba, I felt that I didn’t need to be holding Paul’s hand to be okay. I no longer needed to be with him all of the time. I felt fine just being me, which was a totally new experience.

It took several more years to feel that way on a regular basis, but Baba gave me a glimpse that it was possible, and I realized that he sometimes gives us experiences of what life can become with him. It was wonderful[... ] wonderful.

That was chapter two. One other event was pivotal for me. In 1983 I was again in India. Just before I returned to the United States, a little group of us went to the Ajanta Caves near Aurangabad, about a half-day’s journey from the Pilgrim Center at Meherabad.

Many art history books mention the Ajanta Caves and include pictures of the ancient paintings on the walls. The caves were amazing, but they are surrounded by jungle and there were thousands of mosquitoes. We were constantly fighting them off.

Five days after I returned to the United States, I became very ill. A couple of months later the Center for Disease Control called me and asked where I had been every step of my trip to and in India. When I told them I had gone to Aurangabad, they told me there was an outbreak of Dengue Fever there and that it was transmitted by mosquitoes.

But I was already home from the hospital a long time before they arrived at that diagnosis. I had a very high fever and was in terrible pain — everywhere in my body. I went into the hospital because I was so sick I couldn’t even get out of bed to get a drink of water. I knew I was too sick to take care of myself. I had never been this sick in my life. I could do nothing.

Every time they took blood to try to figure out what was going on, my white blood count had dropped a few more points. It finally bottomed out very, very low. My doctor told me the normal range is 7 to 10, and mine dropped to 1.7. Because there was no diagnosis, everybody who came into my room had to wear a mask, gown, and latex gloves. The room was disinfected every day. No one quite knew what to do.

One morning it seemed that I was dying. My white blood count was at its lowest. My blood pressure had dropped to 80/40. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t stand. What was happening externally was that I was in isolation and was being tested for all kinds of diseases. I even had a spinal tap. The pain behind my eyes was so intense that I couldn’t even open them. I had pain in my joints. I couldn’t swallow anything, so I was being fed intravenously. And then there were the chills. It was bad !

But in my heart I was ecstatic. During that trip to India, Baba had poured so much love into me that I felt completely full — even bubbling over. And that feeling continued throughout my illness. I would lie in the bed with little tears falling from my eyes because, although my body was hurting, in my heart I felt that Baba was in every breath I was breathing, and in every cell of my body. I just knew ; I just knew. I was not worried, or unhappy or scared. I was actually in bliss !

People didn’t know quite what to think about me. One friend called me every day in the hospital. « What can I do ? Do you want some pictures of Baba ? You don’t have any pictures of Baba in your room. »

« Nah[... ]. I don’t need them. »

« Well, don’t you want to listen to these tapes of Adi’s talk when he was here ? » She kept trying to find things to help me feel better.

« Not really. » I was so content, absolutely content.

Except one night. I had terrible chills and one nurse threatened to take away my blankets if my temperature was not under 103 degrees. I was so scared that I was praying, « Baba, Baba, Baba, please let my temperature be below 103. »

When they took my temperature, it was 102.8, so I didn’t lose my blankets. The only things I wanted were the very bare necessities — « Another blanket, please, » or « Just a little more Benadryl[... ] » I had neurological symptoms as well, which included intense itching in my hands and feet. I wanted more Benadryl, but they wouldn’t give it to me because it hadn’t been quite four hours. The challenges were little things like that.

But that feeling of bliss was with me for several months after I got well. I remained in that state for some time. I was writing to one or another of the mandali every week, and I would sit down and start a letter, then begin to cry. I was overwhelmed with all this love, this sweet longing and bliss.

After a while I actually felt I was losing my balance, because all I wanted to do was be in that state, sitting at my dining room table, pen in hand, crying my eyes out in such a state of love.

Finally I wrote Eruch a letter and told him that I thought I was losing my balance, because I didn’t want to see my friends, I didn’t want to go to work, I didn’t want to do anything but be in that feeling of love for Baba. I think writing that letter must have been a way for me to bring those feelings before Baba in an intentional way, because after writing it, I began to start coming down to earth again.

Someone told me that Dengue Fever burns a lot out of you. And it really did. What I felt afterwards was that I now had something I’d never had before in my life.

Now, for the first time, I felt I could really love.

And that was a gift from Baba. So, Thank you, Baba.

[modifier] The Happy Wanderer

Gil

I was born in San Francisco in 1947. I’ve lived a happy life. I have two daughters, 17 and 20, and my sweetheart, my lovely wife, Chitra. If I have a role in life, it’s learning to roll which ever way God wants me to roll.

In 1968, I was living in Western Canada in a meditation center. Occasionally people would come through from California because of predictions of an earthquake in which California would soon be falling into the ocean.

« All these people who come up here are so ridiculous, » I would explain to my Canadian roommate. « They’re all from Southern California. Northern California people are cool ; they’d never think that. »

Of course, I was from San Francisco ; I had no tolerance for this foolishness about California disappearing. And this became the backdrop of my story.

Some time later I decided to move back to San Francisco. I hitchhiked down the coast from Vancouver at the very end of January, 1969, unaware that this point in time would soon become very significant in my life.

I got a ride most of the way through Oregon from these folks driving an old beat-up pickup truck. They were planning on driving all the way to South America, but their trip included passing through San Francisco, so we ended up spending two or three days together.

While we were riding, I started to tell them about this meditation that I was doing. I believed it to be the most immediate route to God-realization, which I expected to take maybe a few years.

From them I heard about Meher Baba. I remember their telling me that he said he was God, that he was silent, and that he had written something called The Discourses.

« Oh, another one of these nuts who thinks he’s Christ, » I thought. I really wasn’t interested in hearing their story. And they weren’t interested in hearing mine either, so after a few brief exchanges, we didn’t pursue the conversation any further.

But they also mentioned the psychic predictions about California falling into the ocean. For some reason, despite my past ridicule of this kind of thinking, I started getting nervous about it. In fact, this nervousness began just about the time they told me about Meher Baba.

Once I was back in San Francisco, Meher Baba’s name kept coming into my mind, over and over again, like a mantra. Honestly, I didn’t usually remember the names of people I knew, let alone someone I’d never met.

What’s this doing in my mind ? » I’d wonder, and I’d throw it out. But it would come right back.

Psychics had predicted the big earthquake for the month of April. So as the end of March came closer, and my nervousness increased, I decided I would leave San Francisco. I figured that if California was still there in May, I’d come back.

I had returned to San Francisco to rejoin a theater group, so I told my friends in the group that I was leaving. They just laughed and said, « Great, we’ll see you in May. »

Since I was into this theater thing, I decided I would go to New York City. There was a new play out called Hair, which was supposed to be alternative theater, and that was the only place it was playing. And I’d also always had this curiosity about seeing the South, so I decided I would hitchhike down through the South, then up to New York, see Hair, and then at the end of April, if San Francisco still existed, I’d come back.

I hitchhiked down to Southern California, spent three days with some friends in Hollywood, then caught a ride heading east. For some reason, at the moment I crossed the California line into Nevada, I knew that there wasn’t going to be an earthquake, San Francisco wasn’t going to fall into the ocean, and somehow all my fear had been something to get me to take this trip. And I knew I would come back.

I got a ride with a fellow in Needles, California, who was going to Lake Charles, Louisiana — as fast as he could. He couldn’t wait to get back to see his girlfriend. He had picked me up thinking I would help him drive, but I kept getting sleepy as we drove through the desert. It was so boring !

As we were going through Texas on Highway 10, there was nothing for mile after mile. At one point I looked down at the floor of the car, and there was a copy of an underground newspaper called The LA Free Press. I wasn’t especially into reading underground newspapers, but I figured it had to be less boring than the desert.

I looked through the entire paper, and found nothing of interest. But on page sixteen I saw an article entitled, « Meher Baba Finishes Work, » with a couple of pictures of him. I remember reading the title and thinking, « Oh, that’s the guy I heard about in Oregon. » I didn’t stop to read it, but thumbed through the rest of the paper. Nothing looked interesting, so I said to myself, « Well, what the heck, I’ll read about this guy. »

The article started out, « At 12 :15 in the afternoon, January 31^st, 1969, Meher Baba dropped his physical body to live in the hearts of his lovers everywhere. »

« Oh, he died, » I thought. « Oh, well, » and I went on reading. It told a little about his life, including the fact that he had said that he was the Avatar — the Christ. It also explained that before he had dropped his body, he had said that he would be coming out of a long seclusion and giving his darshan, or personal blessing, and that this darshan with people would be different, because this time he would be lying down.

The article went on to say that when he had said this, it did not seem to make sense, but after he dropped his physical body and was laid in his tomb, what he meant became clear.

As I continued to read, about half-way through the article, from beyond the realm of thought or logic, I was hit with the recognition that Meher Baba really IS God. I say « hit » because it was as if someone had hit me in the forehead with a shovel or baseball bat, in terms of the impact — not pain, but just the force of it. I even recall that my hand went up to my forehead. I was flooded with emotion as I thought, « Wow ! He’s been here ! And I missed him ! »

Over the past years, I had often thought, « This is the age when Christ will come back. I’ll meditate, become advanced, be of some use to him, and I can hang out with him. » So the recognition, « He’s been here, brought absolute ecstasy, and then, « I’ve missed him, » filled me with incredible agony.

Over the past years, I had often thought, « This is the age when Christ will come back. I’ll meditate, become advanced, be of some use to him, and I can hang out with him. » So the recognition, « He’s been here, brought absolute ecstasy, and then, « I’ve missed him, » filled me with incredible agony.

I sat there in this agonizingly blissful state for quite a while. Finally I regrouped a little, then read the rest of the article. It said that Meher Baba had set up his darshan between April 10 and June 10 of 1969, when he would personally meet in India with his lovers.

Then I realized, « If he is who he says he is, then he will have this meeting, even though he is no longer in a physical body. » Suddenly it seemed to me that this would be my last chance to meet him in person, whether I saw him physically or not !

My mind took off : « I’ll hitchhike up to New York, catch a ride on a freighter to Europe, then I’ll hitchhike through Europe, go overland through the Middle East, and get to India before June 10. » My thoughts were flying like this, when all of a sudden, the brakes went on — logic kicked in. « Wait a minute. You read an article in LA Free Press, and you’re off to India ? That’s crazy ! Read it again. »

The first time I’d read the article, it was as if Baba had lifted the corner of a veil or curtain, and let his light shine through. The second time, it was as if he had dropped the edge of that curtain, and I was veiled again ; I no longer recognized him.

When I finished reading it, I said to myself, « Well, so what ? Somebody says this stuff ; that doesn’t make him God. » I put it out of my mind with the thought, « Well, I won’t find out anything further about this guy in the South » — shows what a Yankee I was — « so when I get to New York, I’ll check it out. »

In New Orleans I met some people who let me throw my sleeping bag down on the floor to sleep at night. It was a very free-spirited period, and I was having a great time. I was there about three days, when one evening I ran into an old wino leaning up against a lamp post. He was holding a magazine in his hand.

« I use ta work on that shiiip », he slurred, pointing to an advertisement for a ten day sailing cruise out of the Florida Keys. At that moment, for some reason, I lost all awareness of the improbability of this man’s accuracy, and I believed him.

« Really ? » I answered. And I asked him, « Is it hard to get jobs on a ship like that ? » Looking at the advertisement, I thought, « Boy, that would be fun ! A ten day cruise in the Caribbean, and if I worked on the ship I wouldn’t have to pay any money. »

« Oh, naw, » he told me, swaying back and forth. « They need people all th’ time. No problem. You jus walk right on ‘n’ they’ll hire ya. »

« But I don’t even know port from bow on a ship. »

« Doesn’t matta. They’ll train ya. »

« Really ! ? » This was sounding better and better all the time. So I decided that after New York, I would head down to Florida.

The next morning, I had this feeling, « I have to leave now. » So I did. I got these long rides which took me straight up to New York. I never had to wait more than an hour and a half.

On the New Jersey Turnpike, heading into New York, I suddenly remembered when I was five years old, listening to a song that had been on a record which my folks had. I had played it over and over again. I would dance and skip around the whole house, singing to « The Happy Wanderer. »

The song was about a guy who wandered as he sang, his knapsack on his back. And I recalled knowing, even then, that a day would come when I would hitchhike across the entire United States, and that this would be a major, major event in my life.

Of course as I grew older, I had totally forgotten about this. Now, suddenly, it all came back, and with that memory came a feeling of great bliss. So there I was, my childhood vision fulfilled, skipping joyously down the New Jersey Turnpike, past the « No Hitchhiking » signs with my thumb out, singing « The Happy Wanderer » at the top of my lungs.

I arrived in New York and remembered that, while reading the article in the Texas desert, I had decided to check out this Meher Baba person. I thought I’d find a bookstore, and maybe pick up The Discourses which the couple in the truck in Oregon had mentioned. But before I could find a bookstore, I found myself at a « Be-In » in Central Park.

I was wandering around, looking up at the trees, when suddenly I bumped into someone bending over. I looked down to see if I had knocked him over and to apologize — and I saw that he was picking up a picture of Meher Baba ! As I saw Baba’s picture, I heard myself say, « Baba — that’s why I came to New York. I want to find out about this guy. »

The guy leaped back five feet, just jumped, totally startled. His reaction seemed all out of proportion to my statement. It wasn’t until about three days later that I recalled what I had actually done when I saw the picture, was to jump three or four feet in the air and shout at the top of my lungs, « BABA ! THAT’S WHY I CAME TO NEW YORK. I WANT TO FIND OUT ABOUT THIS GUY ! » But at the time, I had simply heard my own words, and my reaction was, « Did I say that ? I didn’t come to New York to find out about this guy ; I came to see Hair. Oh well. »

The picture that the guy was holding was in the pamphlet « The Universal Message. » He handed it to me along with another card that also had Baba’s picture. On it was written, « I am the Highest of the High. I am that Ancient One, whose past is worshiped and remembered, whose present is ignored and forgotten, and whose future is anticipated with great fervor and longing. »

I read it and thought, « Well, yes, that’s the way it happens, but just because this Meher Baba says it, doesn’t mean that’s who he is. »

This was a Saturday, and the guy gave me information about some meeting that was going to happen on Monday night. I wasn’t really a meeting type of person, but I thanked him and turned to go. I looked back, but he was gone. « Oh well, » I thought, and I wandered on.

Later I found out that there had actually been a whole circle of people sitting around singing songs to Baba, with his picture in the middle. So they had seen all of this happen. And, all of a sudden, they didn’t see me any more, either.

But come Monday night, there was nothing to do, so I thought, « What the heck ; I’ll go to the meeting. » It was my perception at the time that I was just mildly curious. I got there very late ; it was almost over. A man was standing up in the front giving a talk about the period of time when Meher Baba took up his post as Avatar. He said that Baba was riding a bicycle and some elderly woman named Babajan called to him. He went over to her, she kissed him between the eyes and he didn’t eat or sleep for nine months. And his mother was worried.

« Big deal, » I thought. « If he’s God, that’s nothing. And if he’s not God, well, people make up stories. » So it meant nothing to me. At first I didn’t see the guy I’d bumped into in Central Park there. But he had seen me come in, and after the meeting he came up to me. His name was Gary Noguera.

« Hi ! » he said with a big smile. « I’m glad you’re here. I didn’t think you were coming. » His words were really genuine. It wasn’t like going into some religious groups where the people seem so glad to see you — and then you can feel the clutches coming out to get you. It was just nice, and I liked that.

He told me that after the meeting some people were going over to somebody’s house, Fred and Ella Winterfeldt’s, for apple juice and cookies, and I was invited. So I went along.

As I was sitting there, looking at these people, I saw that they were absolutely radiant — beautiful with love ! I was really, really taken by this. But then I caught myself — « Now wait a minute. just because they’re beautiful does not make this guy God. He might have fooled them. » If somebody’s God, that’s something you have to find out from your own heart.

I asked them, « What do you do ? » Because I was into meditation, I was wondering what disciplines they practiced.

« Baba said to love God. »

« Great. What do you do ? » I figured they didn’t quite know what I meant.

« Well, all day, every day, you love God, » was the answer.

« Yeah, but what kind of exercises or practices do you do to develop that capacity ? I mean, what do you do ? » I persisted.

« Well, everybody you meet is God, and you love God. »

« Yeah, but what do you do ? »

Eventually Gary gave me this pamphlet, « Baba’s Wish, » which had six points :

Baba said : The lover has to keep the wish of the Beloved. My wish for my lovers is as follows :

1. Do not shirk your responsibilities.

2. Attend faithfully to your worldly duties but keep always in the back of your mind that all this is Baba’s.

3. When you feel happy, think « Baba wants me to be happy. When you suffer, think « Baba wants me to suffer. «

4. Be resigned to every situation and think honestly and sincerely, « Baba has placed me in this situation. »

5. With the understanding that Baba is in everyone, try to help and serve others.

6. I say with my Divine Authority to each and all, that whosoever takes my name at the time of breathing his last, comes to me. So do not forget to remember me in your last moments. Unless you start remembering me from now on, it will be difficult to remember me when your end approaches. You should start practicing from now on. Even if you take my name only once every day, you will not forget to remember me in your dying moments.

-Meher Baba

I read it over and realized that this was as much as I was going to get, and it kind of placated me.

Someone named Bruce was in a rocking chair. « How did you get here ? » he asked.

I told him briefly what had happened so far. He sat there with a big Cheshire cat grin on his face, rocking back and forth and looking at me. « Oh, it’s so nice seeing someone who has just come to Baba ! »

Now I felt the clutches, and I thought, « Oh, one of these religious nuts ! » But he was happy with it. « Let him be happy ; I don’t care, » I thought. Of course, I couldn’t see the grin on my own face.

Someone named Bruce was in a rocking chair. « How did you get here ? » he asked.

I told him briefly what had happened so far. He sat there with a big Cheshire cat grin on his face, rocking back and forth and looking at me. « Oh, it’s so nice seeing someone who has just come to Baba ! »

Now I felt the clutches, and I thought, « Oh, one of these religious nuts ! » But he was happy with it. « Let him be happy ; I don’t care, » I thought. Of course, I couldn’t see the grin on my own face.

I heard from these people about a place called Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It was the Meher Baba center for the western hemisphere, and it had a library.

For all I knew, it was one house, with one wall of one room filled with bookshelves which they called « The Library. » Anyhow, that was the image in my mind. But I thought that a library would be okay, because then I could look at his books without having to buy anything.

« And, » I thought, « it’s no problem to go there, because it’s right on my way to Florida where I’m going anyway, where they are going to pay me to take this cruise. What the heck, this is how I can check this guy out. I’ll just stop in. »

« Yeah, I’m going to go there, » I told the group. Suddenly, everyone was excited ; I was really amazed. « Why are these people so excited about my going to Myrtle Beach ? » I wondered.

Anyway, I hung around New York for about a week. I saw Hair and a couple of other plays. I became friends with Gary and some of the others who followed Meher Baba, and then I started hitchhiking south.

When I got into Myrtle Beach, I called up the Center and got Elizabeth Patterson on the phone. Elizabeth was one of Meher Baba’s Western mandali, and had been primarily responsible for building the Center at Myrtle Beach. She explained to me that there were 500 acres of virgin forest, private cabins, a communal kitchen for fixing your food, and it was

3.00 per night. It was certainly more than the house with a wall of books called a « library » that I had imagined.

Then Elizabeth insisted on sending somebody to pick me up so I wouldn’t have to hitchhike the last two miles.

« How will he recognize you ? » she asked.

« Well, I have long hair. »

« Oh, not too long, I hope, » she interrupted.

« Oh no, » I thought. « Another one of these bigoted, bullshit, uptight organizations. Oh well, I’m here. »

« No, my hair isn’t that long, » I told her. After all, it was only shoulder length. It wasn’t down to my waist or anything. « I have on a green coat[... ]. »

Then she told me they were closing the Center in two days because they were going to India for the 1969 Darshan.

« Well, » I thought, « I didn’t want to stay longer than that anyway. I’m going to Florida. »

Elizabeth sent Frank Eaton to pick me up. He was a really nice guy ; I liked him. We got to Dilruba, Elizabeth’s house, which is where you checked in back in those days.

I met Jane Haynes and Kitty Davy, who, with Elizabeth, were the caretakers of the property. Then Kitty, who had also spent many years with Baba, took me in her little golf cart to the cabin where I was to stay.

And as we were rolling along, she looked at me, and in her inimitable, perky, British accent, she asked, « How long have you been searching ? »

« Hmmm, searching, » I thought. « Well, I’m doing this meditation and I’ll have God-realization in ten years... » That’s what I believed about the meditation ; if you did it twice a day, then there would be no more rebirths. «... so I’ve got what I need. There’s nothing left for me to search for. I’m just curious. »

Aloud, I said to her, « I’m not exactly searching. »

« Oh, yes you are, » she responded with confidence, « You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t searching ! This is a special place, you know. People don’t come here ; they’re called here. You didn’t come here ; you were called here. »

I groaned to myself, « Another nut. » But, she was so happy, I mused, « Well, let her be happy. She can think whatever she wants. It doesn’t matter to me. »

She drove me up to the Green Cabin where they often house single men. As I threw my backpack in the room, I noticed that the last person who had been there before me had tacked up on the wall a piece of lined paper with a quote from Baba written in pencil :

« Things that are real are given and received in silence. »

It touched me when I saw it. « Well, that’s really nice. That’s true, » I reflected.

Kitty took me to the communal kitchen area, what is now called the Original Kitchen. Jim Meyer was there sweeping up. She said to Jim, « Now, he’s new to Baba, and he wants to know this and this and this... » and she named off seven or eight things.

I just looked at this woman, because she wasn’t doing something simple like reading my mind and telling him what I wanted to know. She was giving him questions which I had, but had not yet been able to formulate into words — and in the way that I wanted to know about them.

As she was saying these things, I was thinking, « Yeah, yeah, that’s the way I want to know about this, » and « Yeah, that’s the way I want to know about that. Say, this woman’s pretty tuned in. Maybe this Meher Baba is somebody after all. »

So Kitty left and Jim started telling me about the Center and about Baba. I told him I meditated, and he said, « Oh. Well, then you’ll want to go to the Lagoon Cabin, where Baba used to meet with people privately when he was here. It’s very special, and that’s where many people meditate. »

Since it was time for my meditation, I went over to the Lagoon Cabin and had this really deep meditation. I later heard that someone saw me come out and I was staggering. It was very profound.

Then Jim showed me around the Center, and the last place he showed me was The Barn, the hall where Baba had met with large groups. He left me there, telling me I could look around there, and that afterwards, I might like to go to the beach.

I looked at the plaques that lined the walls ; each had a different quote from Baba. As I read them, I responded to every single one with, « Well, that’s wrong ; that one’s absolutely wrong ; that’s wrong too... »

The philosophy I’d had in relation to the meditation I was doing was that life was to enjoy and any form of renunciation was an aberration. But Baba was saying things like : « Want nothing and you will have everything, » and « Seek not to possess anything but surrender everything. »

But, at the same time, everything I was reading made my heart just soar with an immense feeling of joy and beauty ! In my heart, I felt so good that I didn’t care if the quotes were right or wrong, true or untrue. It all felt so beautiful that I kept on reading until I had read them all, and then I walked back into the center of the Barn. I was standing by one of the chairs, looking at Meher Baba’s picture and feeling this incredible atmosphere of love.

« Wow ! » I realized, « if it feels like this here now, in 1969, and Baba hasn’t been here for eleven years, what did it feel like when he was here ? » I had thought the meditation room where I’d been in Canada had a good feeling to it, but it was nothing even close to this !

I was standing there feeling all of this, when I noticed that one of the chairs in the front was roped off from arm to arm with a cord. Obviously Meher Baba had sat in that chair, so no one else was supposed to sit in it.

Immediately, the cynical side of me came forward and said, « No, no. I’m sorry, I can’t dig this trip. Just because he sits in a chair, they rope it off. No, I can’t relate to that. »

Then I remembered the guy in New York who’d said, « It’s so nice to see someone who’s just come to Baba, » as he was smiling and rocking back and forth in the rocking chair. And there was Elizabeth asking about my hair, and Kitty saying « You didn’t come here ; you were called. »

Now they rope off this chair just because he sat in it. « No, I’m not into this. » And I stood there getting more and more cynical.

Then, after about a minute, I remembered when I had been at Fred and Ella Winterfeldt’s house in New York, where people went for apple juice and cookies after the meeting. I had seen how everybody looked so beautifuI and loving, and I had thought at the time, « No, I can’t judge Baba by the way other people relate to him. If he’s God, that’s something you have to find within yourself and in your own relationship with him, from heart to heart, one on one. »

I looked back at the chair, and I realized I was caught in my own logic, because this was simply another way that somebody else related to him. So it was clear that I couldn’t judge him by that.

Others had to be able to find him in their hearts, and in their relationship with him. « So they roped off this chair because they think he’s God, » I thought. « That’s far out. They think he’s God ! »

My mind started reeling inside, thinking of that. « They think he’s God ! But how would you know for sure ? » And then I thought, « Well, if God wants you to know he’s God, I guess he’d have his way of letting you know... »

I looked around the room. « I don’t know why I’m here, » I pondered, « and I don’t know who Baba is, but I guess there’s enough here to make it worth investigating. When I get back to San Francisco, I’ll go to the Baba Center there and check him out seriously. As long as I keep meditating » — meditating to me, at that time, meant keeping my link and holding onto God — « then, what have I got to lose ? »

Those six words — « what have I got to lose ? » — were the last words of my old life. In a moment’s time, I was sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. Something happened inside my heart, and I knew I had finally found what I didn’t even know I was seeking. My heart was full and complete. Tears came tumbling down my cheeks, and I knew I was home.

Those six words — « what have I got to lose ? » — were the last words of my old life. In a moment’s time, I was sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. Something happened inside my heart, and I knew I had finally found what I didn’t even know I was seeking. My heart was full and complete. Tears came tumbling down my cheeks, and I knew I was home.

I never had to ask or answer the question, « Is Baba God ? » Suddenly it was as if the knowing had always been there.

When I was a small child, I used to read about Jesus in the Bible. People would fall at his feet and wash them with their tears. I had wondered what that must have been like. And now it was happening to me.

I have never been able to describe to anyone what those moments were like. But just a tiny glimmer of it might be like being a sailor in the time of Columbus, out alone in a ship, sailing and lost at sea for so long that you forgot that land ever existed.

Every day you were at sea you’d wake up and you’d still be at sea. Then one morning you awaken, you walk up on the deck, and you see that your boat has drifted into the harbor of your home port. Everything that you had forgotten — your home, your loved ones, your whole world that you had forgotten — is suddenly before you.

All of these feelings would well up from deep within you and come forth. That would be just the tiniest fraction of what I felt there with Meher Baba in those moments.

I sat there in the Barn for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then I got up to leave, and as I turned the handle to open the door, I heard a message in my mind, and the message was in two parts :

« I have found my Master ; my search is ended, »

and,

« My journey is beginning. »

Then I had the thought, « After what I’ve just experienced, hearing messages in my mind is nothing, but I’m fortunate, because they are true. »

And I walked out of the Barn, 180 degrees from where I’d been when I walked in, now totally turned towards Baba.

I stayed at the Center for a couple of days. During that time I realized there was no job for me on a sailing ship out of the Keys in Florida. I also realized that fantasy had been Baba’s way of getting me to Myrtle Beach.

Since the Center was closing for the staff to go to the Darshan in India, I headed back up to New York to spend time with the Baba-lovers I had met there. On the trip up, I kept having the feeling of wanting to go to the Darshan, because before dropping his body, Baba had invited us to come between April 10 and June 10. But I had read somewhere that he’d also said, « If you really want to come but can’t, I am everywhere, and I will give you darshan wherever you are. So don’t worry. »

I had to console myself with that, because I had no way of getting to India that I could see.

When I arrived back in New York, Andy Muir had just returned from his trip to the 1969 Darshan. He gave a talk about being in India with Baba, and as he talked, my heart exploded with yearning to be there. After the talk I sat there in the chair wondering, « How can I go, Baba ? How can I get there ? I must get there ! »

I thought of one scheme after another to somehow make the

600 that would enable me to take the last charter trip, which left on June 1^st. But it just seemed impossible to get the money together soon enough.

As I sat there, trying to figure out how to do the impossible, Gary Noguera — the guy I had bumped into picking up Baba’s picture in Central Park — walked up to me. Gary was 19, and he’d been out of school for one year, working at the New York Library and saving money, though he didn’t know why.

« You’d really like to go to Darshan, wouldn’t you ? » he asked.

I nodded.

« I’ve got

500 I can lend to you, » he said.

Then Tommy Morrow, who was sitting on my right said, « I could loan you 140. »

And Julie Cole, who was sitting across the room overheard. She literally jumped up, clicked her heels together, clapped her hands, and said, « Oh, you need money for India ! Good. I know a woman who would like to lend 200 to someone who wants to go to India. »

So there it was — in less than a minute. I was amazed.

For a flicker of a second, the thought went through my mind, « Never go into debt. » Then, instantly, I threw it out, as another thought came : « It doesn’t matter for this. God means more than everything else. »

And I accepted.

Three days later I had a job that lasted until the day before our flight left for India. And I had a place to stay in New York and food to eat until we left. On June 1, 1969, I flew with 150 other Baba-lovers to India to keep the appointment that Baba had promised.

The first morning at Guruprasad, we all assembled. I was so new to Baba, I didn’t really know how they did things ; I was just there with everybody.

Baba’s chair was at the front of the room with his picture on it ; his sandals were where his feet would go. Baba’s women mandali were sitting on one side of Baba’s chair and his men mandali were on the other side.

A clock began to chime, and it chimed nine times. A man, who I later learned was Eruch, stood up and said simply, « It is nine o’clock. You have kept an appointment with God. »

Suddenly it was as if a whole ocean of love rolled over me. I hadn’t known what to expect, but this caught me completely by surprise. It moved me to the core of my being and began a week that I will always remember.

Sometimes people would go up and bow at Baba’s chair. The mandali had explained this wasn’t required or expected, and that we were free to relate to Baba as we felt from our own hearts.

Yet there came a time when I suddenly felt drawn to go up and bow down to Baba, at his chair. I stood up and slowly walked forward, until I was eight or ten feet from his chair.

I never knew how I walked the last eight or ten feet because the next thing I knew I was kneeling there, with my hands on the arms of his chair like they were with his hands, and my face on the seat of the chair as if it were resting on his knees.

I was sobbing uncontrollably, but with a smile that stretched for miles, cheek to cheek, and absolutely happy in my heart to be there with my Beloved Meher Baba. My life was complete and fulfilled in being there with Baba in this moment.

At a certain point I experienced powerful shocks that felt like electricity coursing through me, hand to hand — through my chest, my heart, my arms. I don’t know how long I knelt there with Baba, but at a certain point I had the feeling to put my head at his feet.

It was as if my physical body moved as fast as my thought, and instantly my head was at his feet. I felt a sensation similar to magnetism in my head while I bowed at his feet. I think it went on for about twenty seconds or so. Then it stopped, and I knew it was time for me to stand and move on, to allow room for someone else.

I stood up, but I could not turn away. I backed away to my right, to Baba’s left. There was a doorway there, but I didn’t turn. I just backed away, continuing to face Baba’s chair. When I got to the doorway, I turned and walked out of the room, then collapsed in tears again.

This woman caught me, and because I was crying she said, « Don’t be sad. »

I smiled. « I’m not sad ; I’m so very, very happy. »

At the end of the week we flew home, yet that week means more to me than a hundred thousand lifetimes. I don’t know how to describe what it was like to be with Meher Baba that week, and from that time on. Now every day is with Baba.

Before I came to Baba, I was very happy. But now it would be unthinkable agony to ever not be living with Baba. There is no comparison between the past and what my life has been like since being with Baba — his love, the fullness, the richness, the completeness, the beauty and the joy of being with him, even in the lowest of times.

Life has had its ups and downs, of course — life does. But even the worst moments, compared to my happiest moments before, are so much richer and fuller for living with Baba.

Thank you, Baba.

Jai Baba.

[modifier] A Spiritual Light Show

Cathy’s Story

My connection to Meher Baba is definitely through the arts. He gave me the wonderful gift of music. I was born into an artistic family ; my father was an artist and my mother a musician. I am a musician also, and a music teacher like my mother. I also learned to love singing from my mom at an early age and, more recently, Baba has very sweetly opened up a gift within me for composing my own songs. These I dedicate to him because, of course, he gave them to me.

My first conscious experience of God in my life actually occurred when I was sitting in the bathroom at about the age of ten. I was gazing at one linoleum tile that I’d often studied before, because it looked as though it had a three-faceted face.

When I was older, I realized that it looked very much like the three-faced Indian deity sculptures of the Creator-Preserver- Destroyer. But on this particular day, I sat there gazing at this one tile, not giving it much thought, but still wondering who those faces were, looking out in different directions.

All of a sudden I heard a voice inside me say, « I am That I am. » I looked around, wondering where that voice had come from. « I am That I am ? » I had never heard anything like it, and it didn’t make any sense to me. But it was a distinctive, strong voice.

One day years later, I was reading in the Old Testament that Moses went up on the mountain and asked God, « What is Your Name ? » or « How do you call Yourself ? » God replied, « I am That I am. » As I read that, it was as if everything inside me exploded ! I realized that this was what I had heard as a child !

That early event was very powerful, but it became even more so when it started making sense long afterwards. And, I might add, as I have shared this experience over the years, many people have told me of spiritual experiences that they also had in the bathroom !

I didn’t actually have any strong, traditional religious upbringing because my mom was a Christian who had been turned off by the hypocrisy which she saw as a child in her church, and my Dad was a Jew who was not interested in organized Judaism or going to synagogue. So neither of my parents participated in their traditions in any organized way. God was not talked about much, so spirituality was something that came from within me when Baba wanted to open the floodgates.

When I was twelve I started to go to the Methodist Church in town. A friend mentioned that she went to church, and I became curious. Very quickly I became enamoured of Jesus Christ. I used to pray very fervently every night, and I had several experiences of him.

I remember one time Jesus floated down over the dirty clothes hamper in the corner of my bedroom. He was encircled by a mandala of beautiful, effulgent light, and he made a sign of blessing. So I commenced this very zealous inner life that went on much to the surprise of my parents. I think they wondered where on earth this girl of theirs had come from.

I first heard of Meher Baba through my best friend at college, Annie Weld. Annie and I were on the same dorm floor and quickly became friends over cups of tea while we were at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. That was in 1966.

Unbeknownst to us at the time, Baba threw us together for his purposes. Within a short time Annie invited me down to her family’s beautiful home in Gloucester, north of Boston, right on the ocean. I immediately became a part of her wonderful family — it felt as if I’d always been there, enfolded in their love.

Annie’s older sister Katharine had met a very sweet fellow, Goodwin Harding. We called him Goody. He was going to Harvard, where he’d heard about Meher Baba, and he was very taken by his teachings. We saw Katharine and Goody often, since they lived nearby.

Once Goody gave us a « Don’t Worry, Be Happy » card with Baba’s picture on it.

« Who is that ? » I asked.

« That’s the Christ, » Goody replied.

Annie and I tacked the picture up on our kitchen wall, and I remember very vividly that friends would come visit and ask about it.

« Who’s that funny looking pizza man ? »

« That’s Meher Baba. He’s the Christ, » I would say. And when I think of it now, I realize that I had no idea what I was really saying ! I must have believed it on some level to have repeated it. But we were very carefree and happy in those days, just swimming along in our ignorant bliss. So there was Baba smiling out from above the kitchen sink.

Then one day a very strong experience drew me closer to him in an unconscious way. I had a dirty drinking glass, one of those thick, six-sided ones. I was about to put it into the sink, but as I reached out, it very lightly tapped the edge of the porcelain sink.

That tap must have hit the weak spot in the glass, for it shattered into a million pieces ! Startled, I looked up at that moment at Baba’s picture and he was just smiling away. This did something that riveted me to him in a deeper way.

Later, when I reflected on it, I remembered that in the Jewish tradition, when a couple marries, they break a glass and that brings good luck to the marriage. It felt to me that the breaking of that glass was a pre-amble to the wedding — that deep mystical connection — I was soon to have with Meher Baba.

Katharine and Goody moved to Oregon and lived there for a year and a half. Katharine wanted to marry Goody, but he was uncertain that the timing was right for a long-term commitment. She didn’t know what to do, and felt she needed clarity. She also felt threatened by this Meher Baba thing. She perceived Baba to be some false guru who was going to take Goody away from her, that he was going to go up onto some mountain top and become a yogi in a loin cloth and « Om » his way out of her life. So although Katharine was crazy about Goody, she decided to go away and find herself.

A mutual friend had told her that, even if she was not interested in Meher Baba, the Meher Center in South Carolina was a good place to go if she were ever in distress or transition. Off she went, across the country to Myrtle Beach where she had an incredible experience of Baba’s love, and became a Baba lover herself.

When she called Goody and told him, he instantly started driving his VW bus from Oregon to join her in Myrtle Beach. Midway he had an accident, but, undaunted, he flew the rest of the way to be with her. It was a very dramatic story, and then and they immediately decided they would soon get married.

At this time, Annie and I had dropped out of college and hitchhiked to Mexico. We had a colorful summer — a wonderful time — I even got thrown in jail briefly, and we had a number of other adventures there.

After we left Mexico, we hitched around some more. As I think about it now, we put ourselves into a number of very dangerous situations. But Annie and I began to realize that we sensed the presence of guardian angels or someone watching over us. Both of us felt that we were being guided and protected during this time of wandering, because there had clearly been divine intervention several times when we were on the point of real danger.

We finally returned to Massachusetts to finish off our last year at college. In the meantime Katharine and Goody were back in Massachusetts making plans for their upcoming wedding.

Now Katharine was on fire with her new-found love for Meher Baba, and I remember her sitting in her room chattering excitedly, « There are these things called sanskaras, old impressions or patterns, right Goody ? And you have to renounce your ego and efface yourself. »

Annie and I looked at each other skeptically, because we were very involved at this time with a therapy for strengthening our egos ; we felt that this was how one made one’s way successfully through life. Losing our egos was not something we were very excited about. Consequently, our reaction was, « There goes Katharine, off the deep end over Meher Baba ! »

On the other hand, the energy was very high, and they were so much in love. All the wedding preparations were proceeding, and of course we were to be included. On January 22, 1972, we were all gathered at the Welds’ beautiful home overlooking the ocean. Charles Haynes, who had met Baba as a child and was very committed to him, had been asked to read Baba quotations and also to add inspiration to the spiritual aspect of the ceremony.

It was late in the afternoon of a beautiful, muted gray day when the wedding began. On an exquisite Chinese table, two candles were lit to signify their two souls, and at the end of the ceremony, the plan was that these would be extinguished after a single candle was lit to signify their union in Meher Baba’s love.

It was five in the afternoon, and dusk was coming on as the two candles were lit. At this moment all the lights in the house instantly went out. And since it was a gray January day, it was quite dark — except for the candle light. A big smile spread across Charles’ face ; he knew that Meher Baba was up to his tricks. He reached out and lifted one of the candles, holding it as the entire ceremony was carried on by that gorgeous, soft light which filled the room. It was a profound ceremony ; Baba’s words were read and then the rings were exchanged. At the very moment that the original candles were extinguished and the single candle was lit, all of the lights came back on again !

Now Annie and I had not only been strengthening our egos in therapy sessions, but we had also become involved in the occult. We loved to read Tarot cards and throw the I Ching, and we had been visiting a friend, a psychic witch, and her warlock consort. We had also been involved with drugs, as many were in those days, something which further enhanced our occult preoccupations.

So when the lights went out, we thought that was great. After they came back on, Annie came running over to me and gave me a big hug, exclaiming about the incredible timing of the lights and the intense feeling of love pervading the room. She had found out that when the lights went off, the caterers had gone to check the fuse box, but the fuses were all okay. So the lights had just gone off and come back on by themselves !

We looked at each other, thinking, « If Meher Baba has powers[... ] if Meher Baba can turn lights off and on[... ] maybe this guy is of some interest to us. » So that little worm of the occult was being wiggled very successfully under our eager noses !

Another recollection that is very touching to me is that Charles Haynes later told us how strongly he too, had felt Baba’s presence that afternoon. There was an incredible feeling of love that permeated the whole room. I had thought that it was just marital bliss oozing out of everyone and everything. But now I feel it was Baba turning up the juices, not only because of the wedding, but because he was about to successfully capture a number of new souls in his divine net that evening.

We went on to celebrate with the wedding dinner, dancing and music. Everyone was having a marvelous time, and we forgot about the lights. At the end of the evening we gathered for a heartfelt sendoff to Katharine and Goody, who were going on their honeymoon to India.

Late that night, Annie, her younger sister Helen, and I sat in the kitchen to talk and unwind. Annie’s parents had gone to bed, and we were talking about the wonderful evening. In reviewing the amazing light show, we wondered what was going on with this guru. Maybe we should check Meher Baba out. « Perhaps we should go to the Baba Center in Myrtle Beach, » suggested Helen. « What about it ? »

Annie and I looked at each other, but somehow we weren’t quite there yet. I can’t remember who, but one of us said, « Maybe in a couple of years. He seems wonderful, but masters are not really for me. »

Just as we were hemming and hawing into the void, once again all the lights in the house went out ! We could hear Annie’s father, upset and grumbling, as he tromped downstairs to the fuse box. « First the lights go off at the wedding, and now they’re off again. What’s going on around here ? »

But in the kitchen the moonlight softly filtered in through the window as the lighthouse from Eastern Point sent gentle sweeps of radiance through the room. In the midst of this beautiful luminosity from the moon and the lighthouse, at the same instant, Annie and I began to experience an incredible bliss !

In that same moment we both knew that Meher Baba was our Master, and we knew that our search was ended. Swimming in this ecstatic bliss, we also knew that we were both experiencing the same thing at the same time.

Because of that, I can’t remember which one of us said this, but one of us said to the other, « Well, when are we going to the Baba Center ? » And we both totally understood, because of what we were experiencing, that we had to get there as soon as we possibly could.

The other said, « Well, let’s go as soon as we graduate, » which would be in about two weeks. We didn’t know anything about Meher Baba except that he had told us to lose our egos, which we hadn’t been too happy about, but as we sat there in the soft light, we were transported into such ecstasy that we didn’t care anymore.

All we knew was that our search had ended at last. I don’t know how long that went on, because it was a timeless experience. And in this timeless bliss, we floated off to bed.

Early the next morning as the sun came up, maybe around six o’clock, there was a very insistent ringing of the doorbell downstairs. Once again Annie’s father stomped down the stairs grumbling, « What’s going on here ? It’s six o-clock in the morning ! Who’s at the door at this time ? »

Since the doorbell kept ringing and ringing, Annie and I had gotten up and peeked around the corner of the foyer as her father opened the door. Instantly the doorbell stopped ringing. He went outside, looked around, found nobody there, and stomped back up to bed.

Annie and I looked at each other. Again, there was this knowing that it was Baba, and this feeling of insistence, as though Baba were saying, « Open the door of your hearts ! Come to Me ! » To both of us this meant to go to Myrtle Beach as soon as possible, the minute we finished with graduation.

So on January 31, 1972, Annie and I took off, hitching south on Amartithi Day, the anniversary of the day when Baba dropped his body. Four days later we arrived at the Meher Center in Myrtle Beach.

I remember so vividly driving through the Center gates and entering Pine Lodge. Annie and I melted into tears when we met Jane Haynes, whose first words to us in her beautiful, soft voice were, « Welcome home. »

Immediately afterwards we were taken to meet Elizabeth Patterson at Dilruba, who with loving authority told us not to hitchhike again because « it makes too much work for Baba to have to look after you. »

It was later, as Annie and I sat over breakfast in the Refectory, that I was hit with the reality of what we had gotten ourselves into, or that is to say, how Meher Baba had slipped us into his love-net. Rosalie Dunphy was there and she said, « You know that Meher Baba says you should try to control your impulses and try not to be promiscuous. He wants you not to use drugs, and to control your anger[... ]. » Soon, we found out that he didn’t want us to be involved with the occult, either !

Well, I had been having a wonderful time with all of the above. I remember staring down at my grapefruit and thinking, « Oh my God ! » I could see all my external desires being roped in. I’ll never forget staring at that grapefruit and feeling the shock, but then realizing that it was too late. We were already trapped in Baba’s wonderful net.

During that first visit to the Center I was also having experiences of automatic writing. I thought I was getting messages from Baba — my hand was moving and my body would sway back and forth.

I’d been thinking, « Man, I’m really up there. I must be on the higher planes. » But luckily, I talked to Kitty about what was happening, and in her crisp British accent she said, « Oh no, you mustn’t engage yourself in that or encourage those kinds of things. That’s the occult, and Meher Baba doesn’t like that kind of thing. Take a shower, take a walk, just get up and do something else. »

I realized, « Oh phooey, I just have to be me, » which was much more boring than allowing my hand to write gorgeous spiritual messages or my body to sway in occult psychic ways. All of that was something I had to control ; I had to be a normal individual, finding my way step by normal step into the Avatar’s abode.

I think of all of those very important early lessons now, and I feel so thankful to have had Kitty and Elizabeth’s guidance, because it’s easy to get caught up, in a very subtle way, in thinking how spiritual you are as you engage yourself in those things.

I later had the great honor of working with Elizabeth Patterson and Kitty Davy for eleven years at Dilruba in the Meher Center in Myrtle Beach. Elizabeth and Kitty were two of the Western mandali whom Baba had sent to establish his « home in the West. »

Dilruba was Baba’s nickname for Elizabeth Patterson. Dil means « heart » and ruba is « stealer » or « thief of. » So he named her « The Stealer of Hearts. »

Her father had given the land for the Center, and her house, which was also the office, was named after her. Baba had asked Elizabeth to run the Center, and had asked Kitty to help her.

Kitty’s nickname from Baba was « Saroja. » So the Saroja Library at the Center was named after her. The library also has the Dilruba Reading Room next to it, and I think of that beautiful building overlooking the water as being symbolic of the two women who were instrumental in shaping the Center, and who also enriched so many people’s lives over the years with their very different gifts.

Margaret Craske, who also lived with Baba for a long time, would go there on holiday and summer breaks from teaching dance in New York City, and I developed a close friendship with her, too. She also taught me much, for which I am eternally grateful !

I served in many capacities for a number of years at Dilruba, and I had the good fortune to be intimately involved in the life there. That was such a blessing for me because of these women’s greatness and the examples they set in the day-to-day grind of ego effacement. At the time these lessons were hard to bear, but the strictness with which Kitty and Elizabeth expected all of us to lead our lives was based upon their years with Meher Baba. That made me take my inner path more seriously.

They also taught me the importance of living a normal, day-to-day life, and within that normality, to try to find Baba in everything. Kitty’s selflessness was a beacon of light ; daily I would witness her humility, and it would bring me back around to realizing what Baba wants of us.

Elizabeth’s attention to every little detail was also an amazing thing to witness. She taught me about serving others in little, very practical ways that would seem mundane, but how important they were. She would take me to the Center, and I’d watch her do things for people before they arrived — like check a mattress, put a rug on the floor, or put an extra pillow on the bed because she knew that the person coming was writing a book and used two pillows to write in bed.

One time Jeanne Shaw was coming, and her kitchen had a teapot that was chipped, so we went off to find a good teapot for Jeanne. In tiny, tiny ways Elizabeth showed me that those things were the important ways of serving and loving Baba. To be aware of others and their needs was to perform a spiritual service.

I remember one normal Dilruba day. The phone was ringing off the hook, two or three people were waiting to see Kitty, I had to prepare a meal, and several other things had to be done immediately. In the middle of all that, Elizabeth had asked me to make one of the beds because a guest was coming to spend the night. As I frantically rushed to make the bed, I put the bottom sheet on, put the bedspread on and very neatly tucked the bedspread over the Pillow, but entirely forgot to put on the top sheet.

With great aggravation I realized my mistake. I was very stressed from all of the myriad requirements on my time, and I started muttering profanities under my breath. At this moment Elizabeth very calmly walked in and sat down on the other bed in the room.

« Oh Elizabeth, I’m so upset. I made the bed wrong, and there are things on the stove, and the meal’s not ready. Now I have to make the bed over again ! »

« Yes dear, » she said with great, loving grace, « You have to learn poise. That is one of Baba’s lessns — to maintain poise in the midst of intense activity. It’s very difficult isn’t it ? »

« Yes, it sure is, » I grumbled. But her words were not lost on me. The lessons learned were always given in love, so much love.

Of course there were the « hammers » too, as they are sometimes called. Like the steel that is being tempered or the pot that is being hollowed out, those harder lessons are also part of that continual surgery that Baba does on the ego.

Toward the end of Elizabeth’s life she was more and more beset with pernicious anemia and wasn’t getting sufficient oxygen to her brain. It was during this period that I received much of my « hammering. » Despite all of her physical suffering, Elizabeth was an amazingly composed person.

But as her illness progressed, she became short-tempered with me and with whoever was there. For a period it appeared that Elizabeth was always « on me, » and that Kitty also was very demanding. Of course they were perfectionists in the ways that Baba had taught them. But I would often think that I could do nothing right. It was very difficult.

When Elizabeth died, in December of 1980, I remember coming into Dilruba a few days after the funeral. It felt so strange that she was not there. I missed her physical presence so !

At the same time I was struggling with a great anger that I had developed toward her. I was unable to forgive her for the constant hammering that had gone on for so long, this criticism of whatever I did. That is how I perceived it at the time. Now she was gone and I was still angry.

« Why have you done this, Baba ? » I asked inwardly. Then, as I looked over at the fireplace, above the mantel I saw the beautiful still color photograph from one of the movies taken while Baba was in Myrtle Beach. There was Elizabeth with Baba as he was planting a tree outside the Barn. Baba was gesturing beautifully with his eyes closed, moving his hands out from his heart as if to say, « I give you my love. »

I looked at Baba and asked again, inwardly, « Why did you do this, Baba ? Why did you give me this experience with Elizabeth ? I feel so angry and I don’t know how to get rid of this anger at her ! » I looked more closely at the picture. Elizabeth was standing next to Baba as he was doling out mountains of love from his heart.

Then I realized, « Oh my God, Baba is telling me that this is how he was giving me his love. » In that instant, as I looked at Baba’s hands gesturing out from his heart, all the anger that had been building and building, to a point where I was almost unable to go to work, was suddenly gone !

And now I feel grateful for the ego-hammering. I realized in that moment that this is how Baba, in his love, helps us to develop inner strength, flexibility, and depth of being. Baba says that he came to take away our attachments, not just to give us what we want.

That is definitely what he was doing with me. To experience his love we have to become mote and more hollow, or more and more tempered by the blows of his compassionate hammering and molding.

While I did not meet Baba in the physical form, I have had the wonderful opportunity of knowing him in the spirit, in that internal world that is the true Reality. I also had the great good fortune to meet Baba’s Beloved Mehera while she was alive, and those meetings, over many years, have been profoundly meaningful.

It was when I met Mehera and the other women mandali in 1973 that I finally realized with great happiness and thankfulness that I was glad I was born a woman. My sister and I were the only two children in our family. My father’s siblings never had any children, and since my sister and I were the only Haas progeny, we could not, of course, carry on the Haas name.

This meant that the Haas lineage was dying out. Because I was so close to my father, I had often wished I had been a boy, to please him and carry on his name. He was always totally crazy about us and never said anything, but I still had this inner wish.

Meeting Mehera and the other wonderful women disciples — and seeing their strength, yet their soft compassion — opened up this incredible thankfulness that I did incarnate in this lifetime in a female body, and that I am able to love Baba in that feminine way. What was a secret unresolved question in my mind became grateful acceptance.

There is one experience with Mehera that has remained, for me, an incredible memory and gift. It has filled me with strength for many years. It occurred one wonderful day in mandali Hall in Meherazad when I was fooling around, kidding and joking with Janet Luck. Mani, Baba’s sister, had come in and just played her sitar for us, and we were all in a very happy state.

Then we were invited to join Mehera, who had just come out onto her porch. Janet and I bubbled our way over to the porch to find that Mehera was in a sad, lonely mood, missing Baba so much. She was near tears, as I remember. As we sat there, we were all very aware of her sorrow, and we wanted to find a way to cheer her up. Since Janet and I were in a bubbly mood, I’m sure Baba used this energy to make his Mehera feel happy.

« I know, » Janet suddenly exclaimed, « let me show you the broom trick. » Someone brought her a broom, and she proceeded to perform this impressive, elaborate, gymnastic feat.

Starting with the broom in front of her, she stepped over it and then somehow lifted it over her head without ever moving her hands from either side. As all of these gymnastic machinations transpired, Janet looked as though she was tied like a pretzel. But she finally came out of it, and everybody clapped enthusiastically.

I decided I would try it, and I jumped up. Baba must have put me into this rather wild state, and I grabbed the broom, announcing, « I, too, am going to do the broom trick ! » Of course, I was much less supple than Janet, and I stood there in my long skirt, doubled over, struggling to maneuver the broom — a most ungainly mess of a pretzel.

All at once I saw the humor of it, and I started to capitalize on my absurdity by grunting like a mad monkey, jumping around and acting crazy. But I persevered and got through. Finally, I triumphantly raised the broom above my head, grunting in victory like an ecstatic Hanuman — or Hanumaness.

But what was so wonderful was that as Mehera became more and more taken with my insane pantomime, she started laughing and laughing. My silliness had helped to break the mood of her missing her Beloved Baba, and I was so happy to see her coming out of that sadness. We all breathed a sigh of relief to see her laughing so joyously.

With great sweetness and love, Mehera said to me, « That was very good. Baba would like that. You persevered and you kept going. You didn’t stop until you completed your task. Perseverance is a very spiritual quality. Always remember to persevere in your journey to Beloved Baba ! »

I’ve never forgotten that. Every time I’m in a deep pickle, the story of Mehera and the perturbed pretzel reminds me of that day. Baba wants us to continually persevere with him and for him. He takes ten steps to us but we have to take that one step, even though it may be very difficult. As Mehera said, Baba wants us not to give up. And we will be merged with him one day.

Avatar Meher Baba Ki Jai !

During that first visit to the Center I was also having experiences of automatic writing. I thought I was getting messages from Baba — my hand was moving and my body would sway back and forth.

I’d been thinking, « Man, I’m really up there. I must be on the higher planes. » But luckily, I talked to Kitty about what was happening, and in her crisp British accent she said, « Oh no, you mustn’t engage yourself in that or encourage those kinds of things. That’s the occult, and Meher Baba doesn’t like that kind of thing. Take a shower, take a walk, just get up and do something else. »

I realized, « Oh phooey, I just have to be me, » which was much more boring than allowing my hand to write gorgeous spiritual messages or my body to sway in occult psychic ways. All of that was something I had to control ; I had to be a normal individual, finding my way step by normal step into the Avatar’s abode.

I think of all of those very important early lessons now, and I feel so thankful to have had Kitty and Elizabeth’s guidance, because it’s easy to get caught up, in a very subtle way, in thinking how spiritual you are as you engage yourself in those things.

I later had the great honor of working with Elizabeth Patterson and Kitty Davy for eleven years at Dilruba in the Meher Center in Myrtle Beach. Elizabeth and Kitty were two of the Western mandali whom Baba had sent to establish his « home in the West. »

Dilruba was Baba’s nickname for Elizabeth Patterson. Dil means « heart » and ruba is « stealer » or « thief of. » So he named her « The Stealer of Hearts. »

Her father had given the land for the Center, and her house, which was also the office, was named after her. Baba had asked Elizabeth to run the Center, and had asked Kitty to help her.

Kitty’s nickname from Baba was « Saroja. » So the Saroja Library at the Center was named after her. The library also has the Dilruba Reading Room next to it, and I think of that beautiful building overlooking the water as being symbolic of the two women who were instrumental in shaping the Center, and who also enriched so many people’s lives over the years with their very different gifts.

Margaret Craske, who also lived with Baba for a long time, would go there on holiday and summer breaks from teaching dance in New York City, and I developed a close friendship with her, too. She also taught me much, for which I am eternally grateful !

I served in many capacities for a number of years at Dilruba, and I had the good fortune to be intimately involved in the life there. That was such a blessing for me because of these women’s greatness and the examples they set in the day-to-day grind of ego effacement. At the time these lessons were hard to bear, but the strictness with which Kitty and Elizabeth expected all of us to lead our lives was based upon their years with Meher Baba. That made me take my inner path more seriously.

They also taught me the importance of living a normal, day-to-day life, and within that normality, to try to find Baba in everything. Kitty’s selflessness was a beacon of light ; daily I would witness her humility, and it would bring me back around to realizing what Baba wants of us.

Elizabeth’s attention to every little detail was also an amazing thing to witness. She taught me about serving others in little, very practical ways that would seem mundane, but how important they were. She would take me to the Center, and I’d watch her do things for people before they arrived — like check a mattress, put a rug on the floor, or put an extra pillow on the bed because she knew that the person coming was writing a book and used two pillows to write in bed.

One time Jeanne Shaw was coming, and her kitchen had a teapot that was chipped, so we went off to find a good teapot for Jeanne. In tiny, tiny ways Elizabeth showed me that those things were the important ways of serving and loving Baba. To be aware of others and their needs was to perform a spiritual service.

I remember one normal Dilruba day. The phone was ringing off the hook, two or three people were waiting to see Kitty, I had to prepare a meal, and several other things had to be done immediately. In the middle of all that, Elizabeth had asked me to make one of the beds because a guest was coming to spend the night. As I frantically rushed to make the bed, I put the bottom sheet on, put the bedspread on and very neatly tucked the bedspread over the Pillow, but entirely forgot to put on the top sheet.

With great aggravation I realized my mistake. I was very stressed from all of the myriad requirements on my time, and I started muttering profanities under my breath. At this moment Elizabeth very calmly walked in and sat down on the other bed in the room.

« Oh Elizabeth, I’m so upset. I made the bed wrong, and there are things on the stove, and the meal’s not ready. Now I have to make the bed over again ! »

« Yes dear, » she said with great, loving grace, « You have to learn poise. That is one of Baba’s lessns — to maintain poise in the midst of intense activity. It’s very difficult isn’t it ? »

« Yes, it sure is, » I grumbled. But her words were not lost on me. The lessons learned were always given in love, so much love.

Of course there were the « hammers » too, as they are sometimes called. Like the steel that is being tempered or the pot that is being hollowed out, those harder lessons are also part of that continual surgery that Baba does on the ego.

Toward the end of Elizabeth’s life she was more and more beset with pernicious anemia and wasn’t getting sufficient oxygen to her brain. It was during this period that I received much of my « hammering. » Despite all of her physical suffering, Elizabeth was an amazingly composed person.

But as her illness progressed, she became short-tempered with me and with whoever was there. For a period it appeared that Elizabeth was always « on me, » and that Kitty also was very demanding. Of course they were perfectionists in the ways that Baba had taught them. But I would often think that I could do nothing right. It was very difficult.

When Elizabeth died, in December of 1980, I remember coming into Dilruba a few days after the funeral. It felt so strange that she was not there. I missed her physical presence so !

At the same time I was struggling with a great anger that I had developed toward her. I was unable to forgive her for the constant hammering that had gone on for so long, this criticism of whatever I did. That is how I perceived it at the time. Now she was gone and I was still angry.

« Why have you done this, Baba ? » I asked inwardly. Then, as I looked over at the fireplace, above the mantel I saw the beautiful still color photograph from one of the movies taken while Baba was in Myrtle Beach. There was Elizabeth with Baba as he was planting a tree outside the Barn. Baba was gesturing beautifully with his eyes closed, moving his hands out from his heart as if to say, « I give you my love. »

I looked at Baba and asked again, inwardly, « Why did you do this, Baba ? Why did you give me this experience with Elizabeth ? I feel so angry and I don’t know how to get rid of this anger at her ! » I looked more closely at the picture. Elizabeth was standing next to Baba as he was doling out mountains of love from his heart.

Then I realized, « Oh my God, Baba is telling me that this is how he was giving me his love. » In that instant, as I looked at Baba’s hands gesturing out from his heart, all the anger that had been building and building, to a point where I was almost unable to go to work, was suddenly gone !

And now I feel grateful for the ego-hammering. I realized in that moment that this is how Baba, in his love, helps us to develop inner strength, flexibility, and depth of being. Baba says that he came to take away our attachments, not just to give us what we want.

That is definitely what he was doing with me. To experience his love we have to become mote and more hollow, or more and more tempered by the blows of his compassionate hammering and molding.

While I did not meet Baba in the physical form, I have had the wonderful opportunity of knowing him in the spirit, in that internal world that is the true Reality. I also had the great good fortune to meet Baba’s Beloved Mehera while she was alive, and those meetings, over many years, have been profoundly meaningful.

It was when I met Mehera and the other women mandali in 1973 that I finally realized with great happiness and thankfulness that I was glad I was born a woman. My sister and I were the only two children in our family. My father’s siblings never had any children, and since my sister and I were the only Haas progeny, we could not, of course, carry on the Haas name.

This meant that the Haas lineage was dying out. Because I was so close to my father, I had often wished I had been a boy, to please him and carry on his name. He was always totally crazy about us and never said anything, but I still had this inner wish.

Meeting Mehera and the other wonderful women disciples — and seeing their strength, yet their soft compassion — opened up this incredible thankfulness that I did incarnate in this lifetime in a female body, and that I am able to love Baba in that feminine way. What was a secret unresolved question in my mind became grateful acceptance.

There is one experience with Mehera that has remained, for me, an incredible memory and gift. It has filled me with strength for many years. It occurred one wonderful day in mandali Hall in Meherazad when I was fooling around, kidding and joking with Janet Luck. Mani, Baba’s sister, had come in and just played her sitar for us, and we were all in a very happy state.

Then we were invited to join Mehera, who had just come out onto her porch. Janet and I bubbled our way over to the porch to find that Mehera was in a sad, lonely mood, missing Baba so much. She was near tears, as I remember. As we sat there, we were all very aware of her sorrow, and we wanted to find a way to cheer her up. Since Janet and I were in a bubbly mood, I’m sure Baba used this energy to make his Mehera feel happy.

« I know, » Janet suddenly exclaimed, « let me show you the broom trick. » Someone brought her a broom, and she proceeded to perform this impressive, elaborate, gymnastic feat.

Starting with the broom in front of her, she stepped over it and then somehow lifted it over her head without ever moving her hands from either side. As all of these gymnastic machinations transpired, Janet looked as though she was tied like a pretzel. But she finally came out of it, and everybody clapped enthusiastically.

I decided I would try it, and I jumped up. Baba must have put me into this rather wild state, and I grabbed the broom, announcing, « I, too, am going to do the broom trick ! » Of course, I was much less supple than Janet, and I stood there in my long skirt, doubled over, struggling to maneuver the broom — a most ungainly mess of a pretzel.

All at once I saw the humor of it, and I started to capitalize on my absurdity by grunting like a mad monkey, jumping around and acting crazy. But I persevered and got through. Finally, I triumphantly raised the broom above my head, grunting in victory like an ecstatic Hanuman — or Hanumaness.

But what was so wonderful was that as Mehera became more and more taken with my insane pantomime, she started laughing and laughing. My silliness had helped to break the mood of her missing her Beloved Baba, and I was so happy to see her coming out of that sadness. We all breathed a sigh of relief to see her laughing so joyously.

With great sweetness and love, Mehera said to me, « That was very good. Baba would like that. You persevered and you kept going. You didn’t stop until you completed your task. Perseverance is a very spiritual quality. Always remember to persevere in your journey to Beloved Baba ! »

I’ve never forgotten that. Every time I’m in a deep pickle, the story of Mehera and the perturbed pretzel reminds me of that day. Baba wants us to continually persevere with him and for him. He takes ten steps to us but we have to take that one step, even though it may be very difficult. As Mehera said, Baba wants us not to give up. And we will be merged with him one day.

Avatar Meher Baba Ki Jai !

[modifier] The Real Relationship

Jane Brown

[Manque la partie V]

I came to the Meher Center in Myrtle Beach for a visit in August of 1973. Two years later, in 1975, I moved here and started volunteering with The Happy Club, a club started when Meher Baba was here in the 1950’s for the poor children in town. They would come every Saturday and have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and then we would take them swimming or bowling.

I worked with Jane Haynes doing that, and I also had a job at Sheriar Press for a while. I worked on the cabin crew for fifteen years, and now I work in the Dilruba administrative office. And I sing ; I love to sing, and have been giving concerts every other Thursday night since April, 1983.

There are two things I particularly remember about God in my childhood. The first was singing in the chorus. The teacher’s name was Mr. Bliss.

One time when we were singing the Lord’s Prayer, we got to the part that says, « For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, Forever, Amen, » and for some reason I was struck very powerfully by that phrase, and started crying.

Of course, everybody noticed, and one of my friends asked me impatiently, « Jane, what’s wrong with you ? » But Mr. Bliss explained, « Sometimes people get very moved by music. » I felt that he understood, and I was comforted.

When I was about eight years old, I would go alone to Sparks Woods, a forest across the street from my house on Long Island, New York. I pretended that I met God there, and we would dance around the woods together. I remember that it was like a waltz, and I felt very happy. That was 1956, and I found out later that Baba was in New York at that time.

I also remember talking to God at night before I went to sleep, and I used to write to him every day in a diary for years and years. I would address him « Dear Goddy, » and tell him things like, « Today I wore my pink mohair sweater and.[... ] »

My family wasn’t religious. We were Catholic, and we would go to church, but we didn’t really pay attention to anything. My dad was really funny. He used to make us laugh in church, and I liked that. My mom gave me books when I was very young, around seven years old — books about Zen Buddhism and Walt Whitman’s poetry.

In May of 1968, I was in New York City on spring break from college when I saw a picture of Meher Baba on a lamp post. I vaguely remembered seeing his picture the year before, in a bookstore, but this time I felt a more clear connection. And I remember thinking, « Oh, he looks like one of my family. He’s my favorite guru of all. »

Then, on January 31, 1969, I became really depressed for no apparent reason. I found out later, that was the day that Baba dropped his body. Somehow I noted it and always remembered my experience on that date.

During my college years I met a guy, got involved in a relationship, and started doing drugs. I remember the first time I did drugs, I apologized to God. « I’m really sorry for doing this, » I told him.

I must have somehow known that Baba didn’t like drugs. One day, toward the end of college, I remember putting on some music, and the words to the song were, « The man that paints the pictures will catch you when you fall. » I realized, « Oh, the Man who paints the pictures will catch you when you fall ! That must be God ! Oh, where is he ? Where have I been all of these years ? » And I had forgotten all about him.

When I got back to New York, I bought the book Be Here Now, by Richard Alpert, now known as Baba Ram Dass, and I started meditating on Baba’s face, not knowing why. In the book Ram Dass said, « Okay, Meher Baba, do your thing. You have forty seconds. »

It was a joke about Western mentality — wanting God- realization really quickly. Challenging this idea, I would meditate on Baba’s picture for long periods of times. Light seemed to pour out of the photograph, and I felt that I received much from that experience.

In one of my first jobs out of college I worked in the music business, and I got to be friendly with Bob Dylan. One night he sang a song to me called « To Ramona, » a song about waking up and not feeling sorry for yourself, recognizing this is all a dream and getting on with the program. That song opened me up in such a way that I became receptive to the things in my life that were pulling me toward Baba.

One day in the fall of 1972, I found in my office an article by Peter Townshend, who wrote the rock opera « Tommy, » as well as a number of songs about Meher Baba. Attached to the article was the 1925 photograph of Meher Baba called « The Ancient One. »

Back in 1970, I had said to Jesus, « Where are you ? I know you are back on Earth. Please let me know where you are, and who you are ! » And suddenly, as I looked at this photograph, I knew that Baba was Jesus. And I was so touched, because I knew my prayer had finally been answered.

Around that time I went to interview for a part-time job in a Karate school, and the woman there had Baba’s book Listen Humanity on her desk. « Oh, how do you know about Meher Baba ? » I asked.

She had a friend named Dennis who attended Baba meetings, and he had lent her the book. It seemed as if Baba was popping up everywhere in my life, and it wasn’t long before Dennis was taking me to my first Baba meeting.

The night before we went, I had a dream in which I was holding my fist up in the air, and I was leading a lot of people, saying, « There’s only one man who is going to free me, and I’m going to find him. »

I remember the moment I first walked into the Baba gathering. Charles Haynes, who has been an inspiration to so many people over the years, had come with a group from Boston. They were singing « Victory Unto Thee, » a song Vivekananda wrote to Ramakrishna. Bob Brown, who later became my husband, had written words and a melody for Meher Baba. As they sang « Victory Unto Thee, » I joined in as though I knew it, and I was home.

It wasn’t long before I started coming to visit the Meher Center at Myrtle Beach, and soon I was singing there regularly. The audience was so receptive and loving that they gave me confidence to sing more, because I was very nervous in the beginning.

My voice was shaking, my hands were shaking, and I think they felt sorry for me. But afterwards they came running up and hugged me so lovingly that I thought, « Well, this is a good group to sing for. » So I kept singing, and I got a lot of encouragement from the Baba-lovers.

I made my first trip to India in February of 1975. That is when I met Mehera, the closest to Baba of all of his mandali. Mehera asked me to sing often ; she was extremely supportive of my music and made me feel very confident.

She said so many things about it — that my singing made her feel much closer to Baba, that it brought his presence to her, and that my love for Baba touched her very deeply. I was completely overwhelmed to hear her say such things. I would sing almost as if I were singing through her, because I didn’t feel as if I had enough love for Baba, and she had so much. And there was this stream between us that was so clear, especially in the music.

But what really brought me to Baba happened at the end of my second trip to India, in 1976. I never wanted to leave Mehera’s side, so I would go every morning at 9 :00 am, or as soon as we were allowed to go, and I would just sit there all day.

Mehera wanted music, so I would sing, and we would giggle, and talk all day about Baba. I had grown so very fond of her that by the end of my time there, I couldn’t imagine going home and being without her — not having her in my daily life. So there we were on the porch, just Mehera and Meheru and I, and I started to cry.

« Why are you crying ? » she asked me, so gently. « Because you are leaving ? »

« Yes, Mehera, » I sniffled.

She came over to me and wrapped her arms around me with everything she had. She held me tighter than anyone had ever held me in my life. And she said Baba’s name in my ear, over and over for about fifteen minutes.

It was as though I needed to feel Baba’s acceptance, and that is when I felt it. That’s when I felt I really came to him, totally. Mehera put her cheek against mine ; I felt she was thinking of Baba and feeling his close presence.

Thus through her, I felt so close to him. And then she whispered in my ear, « I love you. » I had never been loved as much as that by anyone. It was a hundred percent acceptance, and I felt it from Baba and her at the same time.

After Mehera hugged me, I ran into Mandali Hall, where Baba’s chair is, and threw myself at his feet. « Okay, » I said, « I’m yours. » And that became the name of the first album that Bob and I did together years later.

When I left Mandali Hall, I was so intoxicated I could barely walk. I was kind of stumbling and bumping into trees. I turned around when I got to the little arbor, and Mehera was waving to me. « This is true love, » I thought. « She’s still there. And she’s not going to let go until I’m gone. This is what it means to really follow through with someone. »

I got in a rickshaw, and Mehera even came to the gate. As we disappeared around the corner, I turned around and saw that she was still there, and she didn’t stop waving until I was out of sight. It was so sweet.

Every time I was in India, Mehera gave me little presents, or put some money in a little envelope and gave it to me, saying, « These are my savings, and I want you to have them. Buy whatever you want. »

She knew we didn’t have much. I would buy clothes or whatever I needed. One year, after Bob and I were married, I bought him pants and a beautiful blue shirt with a Nehru collar that was the style then. Mehera would insist on paying for the « stitching » — the tailoring — as well. She wouldn’t let me pay for anything.

Mehera was also very much a part of Bob’s and my marriage. And this is how that happened : I left the Center and moved to New York to study singing from 1977 to 1982. I had gone to India in ‘75, ‘76, and ‘81. And during the ‘81 trip, Mehera said to me, « I wish for Baba to send you a nice man to marry you and make you happy, » and she made a little fist and raised it up in the air.

« Well, that’s a done deal, » I thought to myself. « There’s no way around this one. »

But then I said to her, « Well, what if I want to marry Baba ? »

« Yes, » she answered sweetly, « but if you are the marrying kind, he’ll send you a nice man. »

I followed her to her porch, and she started talking about Mirabai, and how much love she had for Krishna. Then she talked about how much Baba loves it when women can give up men for God.

I sighed deeply, « I can do that. »

Then Mehera looked at me directly and said, « But you can’t pretend you have this love. »

And I thought, « Okay, it’s true. I’m no Mirabai. » Mehera always put things into perspective for me.

I returned to New York City and soon was dating Bob Brown, who had now also moved there from the Center. Mehera knew him well — he’d been to India many times — and she loved his music.

I wrote to Mehera often and got advice from her about our relationship and relationships in general. And Bob had been married before. So she told me, « Take your time. »

Mehera once wrote to me, « If it is Beloved Baba’s will, the relationship will grow to be a closer one, and by Beloved Baba’s Grace, a lasting one. This will depend on both of you, who are, we hope, wiser people from your past experience. Do not push it, but let it grow and mature, and only take the final step of marriage if you are both very certain that you love one another deeply. »

Bob and I got engaged in December of 1981. In May of ‘82, we decided to move to India for six months and possibly get married there if everything went well and if Mehera approved. We lived in Poona for a little while, and then we moved to the Pilgrim Center.

I brought Bob to Mehera’s porch one day. She smiled, and put her forefinger and thumb together to sign that it was perfect. « I’m so happy to see you together, » she said. That felt like a confirmation from her.

But I still wanted to feel it out and be with him there in Baba’s atmosphere. In time, we did decide to get married, and when it came time, I wanted to have the wedding by the tree where Baba’s face had appeared to Mehera a few months after he dropped his body, when she was missing him so much.

I thought, « How much truer love can you get than that ! What a great place to get married. » I asked Mehera if she would want to have any involvement in the wedding, and she said, « Yes, » in such a sweet but casual way that I wondered if she knew what she was getting into. But she did.

The wedding was set for August 16, 1982. Mehera told us « Get married first in town, then come, and get married here with us. » So first Bob and I went to Baba’s tomb at 6 :00 in the morning — I was so nervous about it.

We were still asking Baba, « Please let us know if this is your will and your wish, » when all of a sudden a group of people came in and piled flowers on the Samadhi. They knew we were getting married that day, and they sang us a wedding song. That was the first sign.

Then a woman named Kristin who was about to become a minister, took our hands in front of Baba’s tomb and put them together. Later I realized that was our first wedding — there, before Baba.

We went to town and got the papers signed. Aside from our best man and photographer, we had goats as witnesses.

Then Bob and I went in a rickshaw to Meherazad. Mehera and Meheru were there waiting for us, and they had made little stencils of wedding bells on the walkway from the porch out to the tree. Mehera had instructed me exactly what to do : buy a garland for Baba’s bed and one for the tree. I had bought flowers for my hair, as well.

We went into Baba’s room with Mehera and put a garland on Baba’s bed, and then we went out to the tree. All we wanted in the way of vows was to say Baba’s « Beloved God Prayer, » so the four of us said that together, and as we said, « Help us all to love you more and more[... ] and still yet more, » we put the rings on.

Then Mehera turned to us and said, partly as a question and partly as an affirmation, « You will always stay together ? »

Bob and I looked at each other, at first a little apprehensively, then shouted « Yes ! »

Later Mehera. wrote, « I often remember the happy occasion, so beautiful in its simplicity, when you both exchanged vows in Baba’s presence in Meherazad, before Baba’s tree. Let this closeness and love shine in your lives and bring you closer to Baba. Make your marriage a happy one, and you will be pleasing Baba. »

... continued tomorrow...

But of course as marriages go, there was growth involved. About a month after the wedding I got really angry at Bob, and the next morning I went up to Baba’s tomb and said, « Okay, I’ll stay married, because at our wedding Mehera made us promise that we would never leave each other, but I’m really fed up. I only want you as my husband, Baba. You’re the only one. »

Just then Bob walked into the tomb. And I ran out. Mansari was almost begging me to take prasad, the little blessed sweet that is always given to each person as they come out of the Samadhi, but I wouldn’t take it.

Bob and I stood by the side of the tomb and had the biggest, worst fight we ever had — right outside of Baba’s Samadhi ! Nana Kher, who used to lead the prayers, walked by with his eyes down ; the cooks came out of the kitchen to look at us — it was horrible. Interestingly, before that I had rarely expressed anger, but here it was all coming out.

When Mehera heard about it, I think she had the impression that I had a terrible temper, so she told me, and would sometimes remind me, « Whenever you get angry, just say Baba’s name over and over, and then count up to ten and back. »

Another time she told me, « Never want the last word. » She would often counsel me about our marriage. One time when I was on her porch, I asked Baba inwardly, « What can I do to make you and Mehera happy. I’ve been given so much. What can I do ? »

I guess Mehera picked up on my question. She had a way of just answering prayers made in silence to Baba. She came out to me, called me back into her room, and said, « I’ll tell you what will please me and Baba. You and Bob should always give in to each other. You should give in to his wishes, and he should give in to yours. »

As it turned out, Bob and I had a very beautiful marriage, and Mehera was often a part of it in some way. She had told me in the beginning of the marriage, « Marrieds should never be celibate. »

Later she wrote another letter : « I was glad to hear from you and Bob that you are both happy and well-adjusted, getting along harmoniously. It is for you to nurture this good relationship, to think of one another’s happiness before your own. It shows nobility and greatness in you to give in to the other’s wishes, have tolerance and patience, and not want the last word. »

When Bob and I got married, we weren’t really thinking in terms of singing together. We had sung on one album years before, and I realized then that we actually sounded good together. After we got married, he asked me to sing some on his children’s album.

Then we started singing concerts at the Meher Center. Jim Meyer was singing each Thursday night, and we asked if we could sing alternate Thursdays, so we began doing that in April of 1983.

Then we thought we would make a little cassette of ourselves singing together, and we decided to call it « I’m Yours », after that moment I had knelt at Baba’s cushion. We were amazed — everybody loved it. Of course, everybody loved Bob so much anyway, even though he never had much confidence in his music.

But people liked the album so much that we were encouraged to keep singing publicly. They invited us to California and to the different Sahavas gatherings around the country. The Bob-and- Jane-Brown thing became a big deal, to the point where we really questioned if that’s what we wanted.

In a way we were like two other people sitting on the sidelines watching this whole thing happening before us. But it was great karma that Baba had given us to be able to both work at the Meher Center in Myrtle Beach and sing together.

It was almost as though we were brother and sister ; in a way we sacrificed our marriage to some extent. All our time was with other people ; we barely got time alone. We both worked at the Center in different capacities.

In New York we had been very romantic, but when we moved down to Myrtle Beach, it became more a marriage for the community, although we did have a wonderful relationship. Really, we couldn’t have asked for anything more.

[... partie V manquante... ]

The entire Baba world came to our rescue. When Bob was dying, it was as though they couldn’t do enough. They would come over and give a massage or go shopping for us. « Please, can I do anything to help ? » « Can I sing a song for Bob ? » « Here’s a poem. » « Let me clean the house for you. » « Here’s money for you. » Over and over again, people would hand us a thousand dollars or provide something else that was so badly needed.

We wouldn’t have gotten through those months without the love and companionship of the Baba community. Bob’s friends sat with him for hours. Jim Meyer came and read to him every day from Lord Meher without fail, and Emily did her magical massage on me.

Scott O’Neil spent hours taking care of him. All of his friends came — John and Anita Dennison, Gary Edelman, Mark Palmer, Craig and Lisa Lawn, Jeff Wolverton, Marc Flayton, Don McBride, Ann O’ Neil, Burt and Ruth Rosen, Raphael and Virginia Rudd, Buz and Wendy Connor, Darwin Shaw, Jane Barry Haynes — they would spend hours holding his hand.

Walter Witkowski said to me the night before Bob went to Baba, « If it takes a month or a year or many years, I am here 100%. » Everybody came to help.

It was incredibly moving for me to see the inner connections between all of us — connections that you might not know about in day to day life because of personality conflicts, or people being busy, or whatever « stuff » there might be between you.

But when Bob was dying all of that disappeared, and I could feel the network of lovers across the country, in India, and in Europe. It was very clear that this love had been there forever, ages and ages, and it was amazing for both of us to experience it.

I had gotten Bob an electric bed and put it in front of the window. One day I whispered to him, « Now, when you go to Baba, just imagine yourself springing from this bed and flying up into the heavens. Just picture that chariot that Kitty talked about. »

Kitty had said shortly before she died, « Baba’s coming in a chariot in three days to take me, and I’m going to be very, very happy. » She had then asked me if Bob Brown could come too. And I said, « No ! »

But now here was Bob Brown’s chariot coming, and I said, « Baba’s going to come in the chariot right outside the window. » And Bob said, « Will he make me sit in the boot ? » « Boot » is British for trunk. That was Bob’s sense of humor.

What I felt the last few days was Baba pulling Bob to him with so much love. And I could feel Bob succumbing to that. Interestingly, that was what the pain was on my side — not so much losing Bob, because I had already reckoned with that, but not being able to go with him to Baba.

That’s how I felt at that time ; later on I felt the loss more. But at that time I just felt that Mehera was tidying up the heavens, getting everything ready for him, and part of me wanted to go too. People had seen Baba in the room with Bob as much as three weeks earlier. It felt as if the room was filled with beautiful spirits and angels.

The last day, I called everyone I could think of, and twenty-five people came over. I called all the Baba groups around the country and asked them, « Bob’s on his way out, so just think about Baba all day and night. Say Baba’s name. Think of Bob in Baba’s arms. »

I called India and told them, then called England and France. Everybody was chanting that whole day.

All the people in the room with Bob were also chanting « Meher Baba, Meher Baba » at different rhythms. I said to Bob, « If you can’t say Baba’s name, we’re all saying it for you. » People called in from all over, and I’d put the phone up next to Bob’s ear so they could say Baba’s name to him. It was such an incredible day. Who could ask for a better death !

The last person he spoke to was Bhau Kalchuri. I called Bhau in India and told him that Bob was going soon, and Bhau said that there was nothing we could do now but to say Baba’s name, and then I held the phone and Bhau said « Jai Baba » to Bob.

He died just after noon, at 12 :15 pm on a Friday, which is the time that Baba went. Then, after Bob left, I felt him come back into the room, with so much love and gratitude, just to say goodbye.

It wasn’t until afterwards that I felt a million different emotions about his death. At first I was in denial, and that actually lasted a couple of years. I said to Baba, « I’m going to have a great time now, and I’m not eating any more health foods » — as if that would spite anybody but me !

I went to India a week later and had as much fun as I possibly could. I’m feeling more grounded now, but after Bob passed away, I did everything I could to reconnect with him. Thinking he might reincarnate soon, I actually chased pregnant women for a while, women who might be carrying Bob.

But after meeting two hundred babies who I thought might be Bob, I thought, well, this isn’t it. It’s not about seeing the baby, because the baby wouldn’t know it was Bob anyhow. A baby isn’t going to suddenly say, « Hi, Jane. I was your husband. »

So I finally realized that it really doesn’t matter who Bob is now. What matters is how you love those who are around you now, what relationships you have in the present, and how you keep them alive.

And if Bob and I are supposed to meet again, we will. I think we will. And Baba will take care of it — or he won’t. I don’t think that’s what matters to Baba. What matters to Baba is our journey to him. If we get focused too much on any one person, then it’s more work to get back to Baba again.

However, it took a while for me to give up trying to contact Bob. I realized I didn’t know where everyone goes when they die. We can say they go to Baba, that they’re happy with Baba. Everyone says it. But really, I have no idea what that means or where Bob is. Sometimes I wish he could just write me a post card from heaven or something and say, « I’m okay. »

As I was talking to Baba about all of this one time, I finally realized that what it comes down to is Baba and me, and that’s it. Everyone else disappears. I’m going to disappear too.

But while I’m here, all I really have is Baba. That annoyed me at first, but actually my relationship with Baba became more real after that, because I could be mad at him.

So, through the process of losing Bob I finally understood what Baba meant when he said : « I am the only one that exists. » And he never leaves. Everyone is going but Baba. He’s the one to think about, to be with, to love, to have.

He’s my priority. That’s the relationship I need to keep clean and clear. And that’s the relationship I need to work on more than any other.

[modifier] God Sat Down With Me For Coffee

Jeff Wolverton

I’ve worked at the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach since 1977. I’ve been a caretaker, worked with cabin crew preparing cabins for guests, and I’ve greeted people. I also have done « overnights » — we always have someone on duty twenty-four hours a day in case of emergency.

When I do overnights, I get to sleep at the Center, and if there’s anything needed, I’m right there by the phone so I can respond. I’ve been here now for over twenty years, and it’s been magnificent working in this environment, in Meher Baba’s atmosphere. It’s been a great privilege.

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, in Tacoma, Washington. We had a large family — five kids — and we were a bit on the unconventional side.

My parents had both been communists during the American labor movement of the 30’s. They were not followers of the Russian Communism, but the communism that emphasized the worth of each person.

So, in our neighborhood, we were basically the « heathens » on the block. We would sleep in on Sundays, wake up, read the funnies and eat waffles while everyone else in the neighborhood went off dutifully to church. However, after church was over, all the kids would come over to our place, because our home was this sort of loving center of the neighborhood.

We didn’t have any formal religion, but what we lacked in that department, we made up for in our fun-lovingness. We lived in a big, rambling house with sprawling lawns. There were often ten or twelve kids stopping by at a time, coming over for meals, or even sleeping over during the summer months.

I think of my childhood as very idyllic, and it went on forever. It was a very open house — kind of like the Meher Center. I guess I could say that life here is an extension of those times.

My mom, oddly enough, despite her affiliation with communism, was very devoted to Jesus. We kind of knew that, although she never spoke about it. It was just known. My dad was basically an agnostic bordering on atheist.

When people would ask his religion he would say that he was an onion worshiper.

« What’s that ? » they would, of course, ask.

And he would answer, « It’s the only faith that really moves me profoundly to tears. » He always did his own thing. He was not worried about what other people thought.

The only brush I had with formal religion came when my brother and I went out to the Midwest between my third and fourth grade ; we spent the summer in Indiana with my grandparents. There, for the first time, my brother and I went regularly to church.

This was a novel experience for us. Since our family was so informal, church was a very unusual setting for us to be in. In fact, I remember that when people closed their eyes for prayer, my brother and I would look at each other, and I remember thinking that at that time we had the whole place to ourselves. Everybody else was buried in prayer.

My grandmother — my mother’s mother — was very devout. She would read the Bible from cover to cover every year. One time she gave me this little glass ball that had a mustard seed in it. And she said, « Honey, if you have faith the size of a grain of mustard, you can move mountains. » So I kept this mustard seed in my pocket and I actually believed my grandmother completely. I felt her prediction would come true one day.

I came back to the fourth grade and, lo and behold, I felt Jesus watching wherever I went — at home, on my way to school, out on the playground — everywhere. And he was very, very loving. I never said anything about this to the other kids, because they had been going to church all along, so I figured that they already had that experience. My perception was that there was nothing judgmental or critical about Jesus ; he was so loving and personal.

But as the year wore on, I became more involved in my studies, in sports, and in being with my friends. By the end of the year I had totally forgotten about Jesus watching me. By high school I was basically an agnostic.

I had no recollection of the experience with Jesus. However, due to my parents’ example, I believed that there was one family of humanity, and I believed in love as the greatest thing in life.

When I was in high school, I knew everyone, over two thousand people, because I’d grown up with them. Although we didn’t hear anything in the family about God, a line in Baba’s writing that I read years later, expressed the sentiment that came through in our family : « Everyone is first in importance, and no one is second. » We were very inclusive, and it was a neat household.

Some part of me did believe there were deeper things within us, and deeper things in life, but I hadn’t really articulated them too much. There was one buddy of mine, Denny Moore, who later also became a caretaker at the Meher Center.

We grew up together, and he and I used to read about spiritual, psychic, and magical phenomena. We both had leanings in that way. He believed in reincarnation ; I didn’t know what I thought about it, but I also recall that his mother believed in reincarnation without any doubt.

As I was growing up, there was one girl two grades younger than I who always felt familiar to me. I knew that we would one day be together. And sure enough, in my senior year we went together. We poured into this love all the enthusiasm and creativity and fun that we could, which is possible when you have so much time on your hands in high school.

It was a platonic relationship, but we were very close. When we were together — even within ten feet of each other — we would find ourselves in another dimension, an almost timeless state that would just be there. It wasn’t a blissed-out state, but something profound that helped me know that life could be deeper than just ordinary experience.

During my senior year, we were all looking at colleges, and I applied to a number of eastern colleges. I wasn’t psychic or anything, but I had this feeling deep inside that I would find what I was looking for in life in New York City, even though I had no idea what I was looking for.

So I chose to go to Columbia University, and in 1963, when I was 18, I headed across the United States by train, leaving my life and all of my friends In Tacoma behind.

On the train there were many others who were also going east to school, and we had a grand experience. A buddy of mine who was going to another school had a guitar with him, so we sang folk songs and had a great time until we got to Chicago.

There we changed to the New York Central, and all of a sudden the atmosphere became impersonal. The porters weren’t as friendly ; they wouldn’t do anything for you unless they got a tip.

I recall that those of us coming from the West were kind of shocked. However, we didn’t let that spoil our fun. All along the way we’d say farewell to the people we’d met as they got off and headed for their respective colleges. Eventually, I was the last guy to leave the train.

As I lugged my suitcases out of Grand Central Station and started across West 34^th Street, I got the shock of my life. I had never seen people treat one another in such a harsh way. The indifference and the cruelty were obvious. There I was in the big city, a young kid who’d had this idyllic, loving upbringing.

I remember looking into a restaurant and seeing the manager putting pressure on the waitresses, who in turn, put pressure on the customers — to turn over the tables so they could make more money. I actually wept to see this.

I wasn’t the kind of guy to weep, but that behavior really affected my heart. Until that time, I had seen only the more positive side of life, so I am thankful that I got to see a broader view. Eventually I grew to love New York, and I met some very loving people there.

I went to college where there were brilliant and well-known professors. I had thought, or hoped, that they would also have something to say about life.

But what I found was that although they were intellectually brilliant, they didn’t really have much love for or interest in us students. I was extremely disillusioned. It wasn’t long before I knew that what I was looking for in life was not going to come from these professors.

Maybe I thought I was going to meet Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky or somebody equally deep — some large souls. But the professors just didn’t have the breadth of humanity that I assumed that I would find at a college of this caliber.

So from my perspective, the academic aspect of school did not nurture or satisfy the confusion that our generation was experiencing.

Yet, I made many friends, and we had a great feeling of unity and camaraderie. Of course my buddies and I would do what people usually do in college — talk about life and its purpose until late into the night.

We were all basically agnostics or atheists, but were very much seeking to understand. So we began our own investigation of life on a parallel track with the academic side of college.

We had a wonderful time together. We also went through a lot of suffering, because we really didn’t have a clue about the deeper meaning of life, although we often thought we did.

In fact, I used to say somewhat sarcastically, « I don’t believe in God, but if he would sit down and share a cup of coffee with me, that God I would give my whole life to. » And as it turned out, that statement had great relevance later.

One year most of my circle of friends got a big apartment together. But in time, drugs became an element in college life. First it was marijuana, and then it moved on to other things. I tried drugs a little bit, just in a recreational way, but I didn’t like the effect they had on me. It would last too long.

It wasn’t that I had any bad trips, but they made my mind fuzzy for weeks afterwards. As time went on, I began to see the core of unity that my buddies and I had enjoyed over the years start to fracture before my eyes.

People got into their own heads with the drugs, and eventually our unity — living together with our lives overlapping — began to disintegrate, and we all drifted apart. We still stayed in touch, but the intimacy that we had was lost. That loss affected me very deeply, and I became extremely depressed.

Eventually I got a place by myself in a rooming house on 122^nd Street, near Broadway. The only window in the room looked out on an air shaft in the interior of the building. If you looked out and up about ten flights, you saw a tiny square of sky, not even enough to see what kind of day it was. Down below was all the debris that people had thrown out the window over the years.

It was so depressing, that I began sleeping eight hours, then ten, sixteen, and twenty hours a day. I went from the joy of my childhood to the most depressed state imaginable. At one point everything became two-dimensional. It was awful.

Everything in life became[... ] just[... ] flat. It was so terrible. I should have seen a counselor or gotten some other support, but my nature was just to tough it out.

Fortunately, there was one woman who befriended me. She would have me go over to her college and made sure that I ate lunch. Basically, she saved my life ; she kept me from going into a completely irretrievable mental state.

I was in such bad shape one evening when I was talking with one of my sisters, that she realized something was very wrong. She immediately sent me a train ticket to California, and I got the hell out of New York City. I dropped out of school, left everything behind, and took the first train I could catch across country to where she lived in Palo Alto, California.

It took a long time to recover. I felt so distant, that it was like looking through binoculars backwards, so whatever you look at is reduced. I was disconnected from everything. It is almost inconceivable how I went from the happy person that I was to that !

But my sister had four kids ; they were all very young — between three and five. They didn’t know what was going on inside of me, but they wanted to play. And I still had my instincts of how to play, so I played with these kids and we went everywhere together for months and months.

While I was with my nephews and nieces, I knew I was in the presence of innocence and warmth ; even though I couldn’t feel it, I could see it and I knew it was there. I had to keep focused on that. Eventually, gradually, I emerged from that darkness.

A year and a half later, for some reason, I decided to go back to college, so in the fall of 1967, I returned to New York. At first, I couldn’t find a place to live. I stayed in different places, and even slept on the sofas at the university.

Finally I found an apartment on 81^st or 82^nd Street. The moment I came to this apartment, I began to have a sort of inner awakening. I was put into this state which I used to call « happiness for no reason. » I was happy, and the feeling was not based on how things were. It had no basis.

I was an English literature major, and I hadn’t even read anything about spirituality at that point, but I began to become aware that there was a whole deeper destiny to our lives in a way that I had never before conceived.

About ten years later I was at the Meher Spiritual Center, in the Original Kitchen, talking with Tex Hightower. He was one of Margaret Craske’s dancers, and had met Baba through her in 1952.

While we were talking about New York, we discovered that Tex had lived in the apartment adjacent to mine while I was experiencing the « happiness for no reason. » He had lived there for years.

So I must have come within the radius of his devotion to Baba and the Baba treasures that he had in his apartment. It must have just come through the walls, because the inner awakening seemed to come out of nowhere.

Then, in the spring of 1968, I took an art class. It met three times a week, and midway through the class we would have a break and go up to the top of the building to a little canteen for refreshments.

One day I had gotten a cup of coffee and a roll, and had just settled at a table when a guy said, « Can I join you ? »

« Sure, » I nodded.

The guy sat down and proceeded to tell me all these fantastic things that weren’t so much about Meher Baba, but about Baba’s metaphysics — that there are fifty-six perfect souls on the earth at all times, that five of them are perfect masters, that there are seven planes of consciousness, and if you misuse your powers on the fourth plane, you can go all the way down to stone form.

He just rattled off all of this random, unedited stuff about Baba. His name was Donny, and he was so lovable and entertaining that I skipped the rest of class and just listened to him for the remainder of that period.

A few days later I was up in the canteen, and Donny came over again and just continued on, talking about all of these amazing things. Gradually we became friends, and I was just fascinated listening to him.

I remember one time he was reading The Wayfarers, which is about the masts, or God-intoxicated people, that Meher Baba contacted during one phase of his work.

« See this guy ? » he exclaimed, pointing to a photograph of one of the masts. It was a picture of a disheveled man sitting on a pile of rubble. « This guy spent nineteen years in a public urinal ! »

This was the kind of information he would give me. It was an incredible mix. Yet every so often he would preface what he was telling me with « Baba said, » and it would be something that I could relate to in my own life. Baba’s words were some of the first outer confirmations of some of the things I had long felt about life.

After a couple of weeks, Donny asked me if I wanted to go to a Baba meeting. He was a nice guy, so I said I’d go. I invited another buddy of mine, Ken Richstad, and the three of us went together.

This was when the meetings were held, I believe by Baba’s order, every Monday night on West 57^th Street. At first the meetings were held in the Steinway Recital Hall, and later on in Little Carnegie Hall.

I remember that it was a miserable, bleak winter evening and we took the subway downtown. We got there, went up to the fourth floor, and as the elevator doors parted, we stepped into this hallway filled with all of these old ladies — fat ladies, thin ladies, black ladies, white ladies, Puerto Rican ladies, Jewish ladies.

As soon as they saw us, they started hugging us as though we were long lost nephews. I remember looking over at my buddy Ken, who also grew up in the Seattle area, and thinking, « This, in New York City ? This kind of spontaneous warmth ? » Thus they led us through the hallway with their hugs, passing us from one person to another, until we finally got to the meeting hall.

I really can’t remember anything about the meeting itself, except there was a movie of Baba, and maybe some books for sale. But apparently at the end of the meetings, they would always have a period of silence.

Two of Baba’s lovers, Fred and Ella Winterfeldt, were part of the program. Fred would ask people to think of Baba and Ella would ring a bell to begin the silence ; then after three minutes, she would ring the bell to end it.

At that time Baba was still physically on the Earth, in India, so no doubt for most people this was a very palpable way of connecting to him.

But I recall that when they asked us to think of Baba, I thought, « Well, I don’t even know who he is ! » When Donny used to talk about following Baba, I used to say, « I don’t believe you should follow anyone. Why would you follow someone else’s way ? You have your own unique path to the Divine. »

That was my sentiment. I didn’t believe people should follow anyone. So when they asked us to close our eyes and think of Baba, it felt to me as odd as if I were asking someone to close his eyes and think of my Uncle George.

I mean, I had nothing to go on. Donny had never told me anything personal about Baba ; he had talked more about the metaphysics and teachings. Now, the idea of focusing on Baba was like thinking about Immanuel Kant — how many people know about the personality of Immanuel Kant ?

« Well, it’s just three minutes ; I can wait this out, » I thought, as I looked around the room. My mind wandered back to when my brother and I were in my grandparent’s church, keeping our eyes open while everyone was praying.

Although I had never really felt that one should follow anybody, looking at these people in the room — these homespun, very natural, kind people — I thought, « Even though I’ve never thought of religion as good, this doesn’t look bad at all. »

As I was looking around, my eyes fell upon a large photograph of Baba propped up on an easel at the front of the room. In that picture, he is sitting in a chair, looking out. It’s the same one that is in the Lagoon Cabin, where Meher Baba used to meet with people at the Center.

As I glanced at that photograph, suddenly Baba’s eyes came alive. There was unfathomable love in his eyes, and I knew then that there was no love beyond this love. In fact, in that very instant, I knew my whole life was going to be led for him.

Then Baba began looking at everyone in the room, and I could see that each one was his very favorite. When most of us look around a room, we brighten up more for some, a little less for others. But each one there was clearly Baba’s favorite.

In a moment, Baba’s eyes began to get larger and larger, and all of a sudden I was looking directly into them. They filled the entire room, and it was like looking into oceans and oceans of love.

Then in a flash, I was lifted up into a sublime realm, such as I had never experienced before. At the time, I felt we were outside of the universe ; it was some place, and Baba was there beside me. As I looked down, about seventy-five or a hundred feet below was the room where we were all sitting.

Then Baba said to me that he wanted me to serve those people, his people. My background had been basically humanitarian, and I spontaneously asked him, « Why just them ? Why not every man ? » I just blurted that out, because one of the reasons I didn’t like religion was that it was exclusive. Yet the answer for that was not to come for some time.

The next thing I knew, the bell was ringing and I was back in my seat.

Oh, my God ! I mean, I had never expected to have such an encounter going to this little meeting of people I didn’t even know ! I had just gone along for the ride. Little did I know that I would find out the whole meaning and purpose of my life — the whole focus of my life ! I was ecstatic.

After the meetings, everyone would go over to the Horn and Hardart Automat across the street for coffee and pie a la mode. Most of these people had met Baba, and they would share all of their stories. We were just spellbound hearing about their amazing experiences of being with Baba — what he did and what he said.

My two friends had also had amazing experiences ; Ken, like me, had gotten blasted by Baba, and Donny, who had brought us there, was sky high at what had happened to us.

When we left there, Donny and Ken hoisted me up on their shoulders and we headed across West 57^th Street, surrounded by all kinds of people coming and going. And while I was up there, I had the thought, « We’ve got to be the three happiest guys on the face of the earth at this moment ! »

After that evening, I felt Baba watching me ; wherever I went, there he was. Then I remembered back to fourth grade, when Jesus had watched me, and I realized that he was the very same one watching me ! I knew then that Baba had been Jesus.

Later I found out that he was called « The Ancient One, » and had been not only Jesus, but also Mohammed, Buddha, and all the other incarnations of God. But I had the experience of being watched by him, not in a judgmental or Old Testament sense, but in a very loving way.

That was in the spring of 1968. It was the end of the school year, and there were riots at Columbia University, but that held no interest for me. After my experience with Baba in the meeting room, I could not imagine going back to college at all. College was on another planet after this !

So I dropped out and determined that I was never going to work the rest of my life ; I was just going to focus on Baba. It was a ridiculous idea, but that’s what I decided at the time.

I went out to Seattle and tried to embark on that lifestyle, not really living on the streets, but walking around barefoot and just barely getting by. I tried to tell everybody about Baba. I was shocked to find that almost nobody was interested, but I felt obliged to tell them.

I mean, why should I not tell people that God was back here on earth again ? Even if they didn’t like me for telling them, I figured, I still should at least try to tell them. But later, when I realized that approach didn’t work, I dropped back from that stance.

In a way you might say I experienced an extended honeymoon period with Baba, for he really was my constant focus at that time. But at the same time, I decided to give up all of these things at once : lust, anger, greed, jealousy, and worry.

I tried to do this because I just thought that was what Baba wanted, which I now see as kind of ridiculous. In a short time, I found myself totally backed into myself. I mean, I couldn’t do anything ! I actually lost a lot of my joy.

I tend to do things in extremes ; that’s my nature. Yet in the long run, that discipline turned out to be a good thing, even though it was very stifling. It just took a long time to get my playfulness back.

In a sense, Seattle was the Yukon Territory of the Baba world — it was far, far out there. I wandered around for almost a year before I finally met a woman named Marion who was also devoted to Baba.

She and I used to go to this greasy spoon restaurant and talk about Baba. It was a dive called the Hasty Tasty, and it was up in the University section of Seattle. This place stayed open 24 hours a day.

Hamburgers sizzled on the grill all the time, and the windows were always greasy and grimy. People used to go there to sober up, and college students and drug dealers hung out there.

The one neat thing about the Hasty Tasty was that for ten cents you could drink all the coffee you wanted. And I would go there and consume enormous amounts of coffee — a whole evening of coffee. When you finished one cup, you could just go over and pour yourself another. So this was a suitable place for two nearly broke people like Marion and me.

During this time, somewhere around the summer of 1968, word came that Baba said he would be giving darshan in India in the spring of 1969 for all of his lovers. Now, I didn’t have a job, and Marion had epilepsy which prevented her from working, let alone going to India.

Nevertheless, she and I used to get together in this restaurant and talk about ways of getting to India for the darshan — maybe working our way over on a boat, and then hitchhiking, or whatever. Each time we met, neither of us had made any headway, and time was going by.

Then one day we heard the news that Baba had dropped his body, on January 31, 1969.

Three or four days later we were sitting together in the restaurant with a guy named Rusty. We were having our usual endless cups of coffee and doing nothing else. We were just talking about this and that-nothing in particular. We weren’t even talking about Baba. Suddenly Marion looked at the empty chair next to me and gasped, »My GOD ! Baba’s sitting in that chair ! »

As I turned in that direction, the light was as brilliant as the light of a thousand suns. I tried to look at Baba, but the light was too bright. All I was able to see was the outer fringe of Baba’s great effulgence.

Tears were streaming from my eyes. It is impossible to describe the radiance that emanated from that chair ! Baba stayed there for several timeless minutes — and then he left.

Rusty had seen him too. We were speechless ! We were usually talkative, but half an hour went by without a word being spoken. We were literally struck dumb, overwhelmed and deeply moved at having Baba’s living darshan.

Even though we did not have any way to go to Baba’s last darshan, he, himself, came to this far, remote area in his world and appeared to us !

At a certain point we got up and, as if by silent consent, paid for our coffees and headed up University Avenue. Silently, one by one, we headed off toward our own respective homes.

Almost fifteen years later, in Myrtle Beach, I was sitting with Kitty Davy one evening at dinner, and she was asking me about my life with Baba. It was then that I remembered the thing I used to say in college — I had completely forgotten : « I don’t believe in God, but if he would sit down and share a cup of coffee with me, that God I would give my whole life to. » That just broke me up — to think that Baba, long before I even knew of him, heard and then fulfilled that remark !

Over the years, I’ve had experiences with Baba that were wonderful, unlike any I’ve had before. But one of the most valuable things that I feel most thankful for is that somehow Baba convinced me that in every moment there is something meaningful to do, something of love that can always be carried out.

Life has meaning. Every moment has a purpose. I may not be in the state of mind, at any given time, to actually do or experience that meaningful thing, but something meaningful is always there — whether it’s thinking of Baba, or even if it’s thinking of something I did wrong and trying to understand why I acted the way I did.

Prior to Baba there seemed to be a lot of meaningless intervals of just killing time. And certainly since meeting Baba I have had many failures, but I haven’t given up because I now realize that every moment in life has special meaning, and if I just keep at it, I will get it right one of these times. And that sense of the meaning has also given me an unfailing enthusiasm for this life with Baba.

I also learned something else about serving Baba. When I first started working at the Center in 1971, I had a tremendous amount of energy — so much energy that I felt I could shot-put one of these cabins right to the other side of the property.

After eight years, I had totally depleted myself. Energetically, I had run through my checking account as well as my savings account. I had nothing left. A year went by and I still felt dead ; I could do all of my work, but at some level I was profoundly exhausted.

I had never thought I would run out of energy and vitality, and here I had blown it. I tried everything. I tried diet, I tried sleep, I tried a trip to India. None of it made a dent in the exhaustion — not even being with the mandali or being at Baba’s Samadhi. I was in serious difficulty.

I made my second trip to India during this long period. Six weeks there did nothing to alter this profound exhaustion. I had one week left, and I was biking from Ahmednagar out to Meherabad.

About half-way out, a pin-prick of serious concern registered in me. I mean, I was so dead I can’t even call it a feeling. I said to Baba, « Baba, I can’t do any more. Don’t ask me to do anything. I’ve got nothing left ! I’ve got less than nothing — nothing. All I want to do is put my head on your lap and go to sleep. »

My thought was that if I didn’t get regenerated, I wasn’t going to be able to continue my job at the Center. « Please, don’t ask me to do any more, » I reiterated.

This was one of the few occasions on which Baba has spoken to me. The experience was imparted through my intuition, but if I were to put it into words, I would say that Baba conveyed, « But I don’t need you. I can do what I have to do through this one, or that one, or no one at all. »

Then, simultaneously, came a pin-prick of relief — « Ah, he doesn’t need me ! » And I realized in that moment that 95% of what I took as my responsibility as a human being was imagined — I mean, that included most normal things that people take as legitimate responsibilities !

Then I said to Baba, « Now that you don’t need me, what do you want me to do ? »

And Baba said, « Do what you love doing. »

All of this happened in a ten second span while I was biking.

When I got back to Myrtle Beach, I was still wiped out. I started pruning back a lot of things that I had previously done, and started doing what I felt like doing. As the months went by, however, I found that I was doing all the things I had been doing before, but now I didn’t have to do them.

I had thought that if I gave up being responsible, I’d lapse into irresponsibility. But instead, I moved into a state of non-responsibility, simply doing what I’d always done, but loving it.

I think when Baba said, « I want you to serve my people, » I had a certain ego connection with service. Now, better recognizing Baba’s compassion, I see it more like this :

A father is building an extension on the house. His son comes along, a little tyke, and says, « Dad, can I help you ? »

So what does the father do ? He drives in a few nails on a couple of the boards, and the kid grabs a hammer and bangs away. So he’s there on the project with his father, who is actually doing the work.

Later on, when they go into the house, the little kid says, « Daddy and I are making an extension for you, Mom, » when all he’s really doing is driving in a few nails.

But, the father enjoys the company of his son. That’s now how I see serving Baba. The relationship is more like a child helping his dad build an extension on the house.

Baba likes the company more than he actually needs the help. And we learn from being with him. That’s just my take on it after all these years.

[modifier] Invisibles Hands On The Wheel=

Heather Nadel

I’ve lived here in Meherabad for 22 years, and in India for 24 years. I’ve done many things here in terms of service over the years. I have always worked with the pilgrims and their accommodations in Meherabad. For a long time I was one of several assistants to Meher Baba’s sister, Mani, helping her with her duties as the Chairman of the Trust.

As Mani got older, I worked with her more intensively, until she passed away. I also do some work at Meherazad, where the mandali live, as well as many other miscellaneous chores that come up as a part of life here.

I was born into a Presbyterian family. We had a lot of traumas as children ; they were the usual kind of things — sickness, divorce, mental illness in the family. As I neared my teens, my father remarried, and my stepmother was a Catholic, so I, of my own choice, became a Catholic. I was very enamored of nuns when I was young.

My first experience of God occurred when I was sweeping the stairs one day when I was about twelve. I remember that I was angry, because I wanted to do something else. But this was one of my chores, and I had been made to do it.

I was very irritated at my situation in life. Then, all of a sudden, I had the knowledge deep inside of me that my life was charmed. I knew it. It was a revelation. I knew that I was different — that there was something magical about my life, and that my sister also had it.

Years later I realized that this « charm » was a strong inner life that both my sister and I developed. It was a very deep knowledge which came to me that day, and that inner knowing somehow gave me strength for a number of years.

A few years later I was in an airplane, reading about how the Virgin Mary appeared to a girl in Lourdes, France. For a moment, I gazed out the window of the plane, and there before me was an unusual cloud formation ; in the cloud I saw Christ, opening his arms to me.

I was so struck by it that I sobbed for hours. My parents didn’t know what to do with me. But it was an inner realization of the love he had for me ; it was very deep and strong.

So that made me very, almost violently, Catholic for many years — until I got to college. And then, of course, it was so fashionable to be an atheist, and I became an atheist — just from group pressure.

I did not believe in God for a long time, and I didn’t want to. I wasn’t interested in God ; I had a lot of other things that held interest for me at the time. I went around with a wild, somewhat revolutionary crowd in those days. We had a lot of student strikes and minor felonies and those kinds of things when I was in college.

Then something happened in March of 1969. Some of my friends knew some people who were older than us, and very « far out » in their lifestyle — so far out that they didn’t even go to college !

We were in California ; I went to Stanford in the Bay Area, and these people lived in a commune up on a mountain near us. Between Stanford and the ocean there are some very high hills and a small town called La Honda. They lived among the redwood trees up there, and there was something very intriguing and mysterious about them. So my friend Judy and I decided to go up and see them one night, because they were always into something far out.

Judy and I were sitting on their couch in front of a fire, when all of a sudden someone came in the door behind us and said to the woman of the house, « I found it ! I found a book about Meher Baba. »

We didn’t know what that was, of course, and we ignored it ; they obviously weren’t talking to us. But everyone else of the household became very excited and ran over to look at the book. They were talking excitedly about the pictures — « Wow, » and « at last, » and for « how long » they had been « looking for something about Meher Baba ! »

Well, we were just sitting on the couch doing our own thing, but finally Judy turned and said, « Let’s see the book. » So they brought it over and handed it to us. Judy looked at it, then handed it to me.

It was The Everything and the Nothing, the Australian version, and it had a picture of Baba on the cover. When I looked at Baba’s picture, I gasped and said, « Oh ! I know this man ! »

Judy looked at me, puzzled. « How do you know him ? »

I stared at her with a mix of surprise and curiosity. « I don’t know. But I know him. I’ve seen him before[... ] I, I know him[... ]. »... continued tomorrow...

I looked closely at the picture, but I couldn’t quite figure it out. Of course, we’d been smoking something, as was often the case in those days, so my concentration wasn’t good. But I kept looking at the picture and saying, « I know him. »

I couldn’t get it. « Was it in New York ? It could have been New York. He looks like a salami salesman. He looks Italian. » We laughed about it, but at that moment of seeing him, somehow I knew I knew him. Finally I asked, « Who is he ? »

« He says he’s God, » Judy answered.

I opened up the book, intrigued, and scanned it for a moment, then said, « Well, he looks like he has an honest face, so if he says he’s God, maybe he is. And I’m not God, so I don’t know that he’s not. So[... ] he might be. »

Then I paused for a moment as another thought hit me : « But if God’s the writer of the book, who’s the publisher ? » Because in my mind, publishers were big and writers were little. So it was all quite curious.

But my memory of this episode totally disappeared. I completely forgot about it until years later, when I became connected with Baba. And, at the same time that this memory returned, I also recalled another incident which occurred later the same evening :

A couple of hours had gone by as we sat around with our friends. It must have been about 2 :00 in the morning when Judy and I went out to the car to drive back down the mountain.

It was near the ocean, so the fog had rolled in, and it was really intense. The road home was steep and curving. It was very dangerous, even in daylight. Our friends suggested that we stay and drive down in the morning, but we declined.

We started going down the mountain ; I was driving and Judy was sitting next to me. The fog was so thick that I couldn’t see more than about a foot in front of the car, maybe three feet at the most.

As we curved back and forth, I couldn’t remember it being that treacherous a drive. Hairpin turns would appear out of nowhere, and we both became very afraid because the driving was so difficult. It was so hard to see.

All of a sudden I felt something strange. « Do you see anything on the steering wheel ? » I asked Judy.

« No, » she answered, eyeing me carefully.

« I don’t see it, » I said very slowly, « but I feel it. »

She gripped the door handle. « Feel what ? »

By this time the effects of our partying that evening had worn off, and we were both very keenly awake. I was very clear about what I was experiencing, and I said slowly, « Two hands are steering the car. »

« WHAT ? » She gasped.

« I’m not kidding. Someone else is steering the car. There are two hands. I can’t see them, but I can feel them. I know that they’re there ! I’m not steering the car ! »

Of course, at the same time, I was still steering with all my might. It was a very strange impression. But she believed me, because I was very shaken up by it.

So, slowly, we got to the bottom of the mountain. At the end of the steep descent we pulled up to a stop light. Now it was very late and the roads were empty. Straight ahead was a road we had to cross, and then there was a gas station.

After the light changed, I couldn’t get the car into first gear. After struggling with it for a while and trying all kinds of things, I finally put the car in neutral and we coasted across the road into the gas station.

In those days gas stations had garages attached to them, and there was an all night attendant. We asked him to fix the car, then called my boyfriend who came and took us home.

The next day I phoned the gas station, and the car was ready. When I went back to pick it up, the attendant came up to me as soon as he saw me and asked, « Lady, where did you come from last night ? »

« La Honda, » I answered.

« Naw, c’mon. Really, where did you come from ? » he persisted.

I looked at him, curious about his reaction. « We came from La Honda. »

« Don’t play with me, lady. » Now he was disgusted. « That’s impossible. I got into this car, took one circle around this station, and the front wheel came off ! Now, don’t tell me you came from La Honda. »

He thought I was lying ! Now I was amazed that we had made it down the mountain. Then I remembered the hands on the wheel...

Years and years later, someone asked me how I heard of Meher Baba. I answered, « Oh, I heard of Baba through my husband. He was a Baba lover, and we went to Myrtle Beach, » and I went on to tell about what I remembered at the time to be my first awareness of Baba.

« That’s when you first heard of Baba ? » she asked again. « From your husband ? »

« No, » I paused to think. « No, I think I heard of him before[... ]. »

Then all of a sudden I remembered. I realized that it was the night of the two hands on the wheel that I had first heard of Baba. Until that moment, I had never realized that, nor linked those two incidents. I had dismissed the entire thing.

It was almost two more years before I actually came to know something about Baba. That happened when I met the man who was to become my husband, Eric Nadel. Eric was already a Baba lover when I met him.

Baba had come to Eric on the night that he dropped his body, on January 31, 1969. Eric was, at that time, a caretaker in a forest. That night, as he looked up at the full moon, he saw Baba’s face in the moon.

Suddenly, the moon appeared to come spinning out of the sky and it entered Eric’s heart. At that, Baba took up residence there, and he has been in Eric’s heart ever since. That was Eric’s coming to Baba.

After we met, Eric tried very hard to get me to be a Baba lover. He tried a thousand tricks. He would make me get up at 5 :00 in the morning to sing « Begin the Beguine, » because all of the mandali used to get up at 5 :00 in the morning and because « Begin the Beguine » was Baba’s favorite English song.

And he did his best to get me to go to Baba meetings. He tried everything. Eric was the first person I had met in years, maybe had ever met, who really believed in God. I mean he really believed in God and lived a life for God. I had great admiration for that, although it didn’t make me believe in God. But it took me a little away from the atheism.

One day he finally said to me, « Meher Baba is the Avatar ! Don’t you realize what that is ? He is the Avatar, the Christ ! »

« I’m happy that he came. I’m happy about it. But what does that have to do with me ? » was all I could say.

« What does it have to do with you ? The Avatar has to do with EVERYBODY ! »

But I didn’t feel it inside — that he had anything to do with me. So Eric and I went through many different adventures, and always Meher Baba was a part of them, but not directly for me.

Finally we broke up, and Eric went off to Canada. I fell into a very deep depression, because when I met him, I knew that Eric had the key to my destiny. I knew it.

We’d had a very dramatic first encounter where we recognized each other, and I then got terrified, because I didn’t know what it meant. But when he went away, I knew I had lost the thread to my life.

And it wasn’t just him, but something he carried with him. He was certainly the most fascinating person I’d ever met, but even more so because of the feelings he had for God.

So I was extremely depressed, and my friend Judy suggested we go to her family’s house in Oregon. Judy was the one who had been on the mountain with me and had also introduced me to Eric. It was Easter break, and she said to me, « Let’s get away from here. You don’t need to be around the places you always were with Eric. »

We left Stanford and went up to Oregon for two weeks. Judy’s parents were darling. I think she had hinted to them that I was depressed, and they were very warm, and loving and friendly.

But I couldn’t get out of that despair I was in. One day in order to help pep me up we all went for a family picnic, through the woods and to the beach. Now Oregon has all these little towns that have literally nothing in them except a post office, a grocery store and a gas pump.

So we drove through a lot of these towns on the way to and from the beach. I was still in my depression — but trying, trying — and we were driving through one of these towns, when all of a sudden Judy said, « Let’s stop here. » It must have been the tenth of these little towns. I don’t know why she picked that one.

Her parents were being very accommodating, so they stopped the car. Something had caught Judy’s eye. « Let’s go over there — there’s an old junk shop. » I won’t say antique shop, for it really was a junk shop. And for some inexplicable reason, we all thought it was a great idea.

We went inside. Her father and brother went to look at the old books, Judy and her mom went to look at the broken crockery, and I somehow ended up in the back of the store where there was a pile of small carpets.

I started going through the carpets, and deep in the middle of the pile was a book. I pulled the book out of the pile, wondering, « What’s a book doing in the middle of this stack of carpets ? » It was so bizarre.

It was a coloring book created by Adah Shifrin, a Baba lover. It was for Baba children, and it had a picture on the front of Baba in Meherazad, holding a lamb. He was very old in the picture ; he was wearing his blue coat and he looked very beautiful.

The book was called Meher Baba’s Love, and I just stood there holding it. As I looked at the book, and at Baba’s face, all of these memories of Eric flooded back to me, and even more so, that sense of destiny that I had lost. Suddenly, as I was looking at the picture, I heard a voice in my heart which said, « I am your real Beloved, and I will never leave you. »

With those words, all of my depression totally evaporated, totally, completely. In fact, for a moment, I was so overcome with relief that I started to weep. The amazing thing was, I later realized, this was not my time to come to Baba. But in his mercy, he came to me and lifted my despair.

Within five minutes I forgot about the voice ; all I knew was that I felt wonderful and that I was holding this book. I went to the counter to buy it — it was only two dollars — thinking, « Eric would like this book. »

At that moment everyone else in the family arrived at the counter. No one else had anything to buy and they were all ready to go. I mean, the instant I found the book, everyone was ready to go !

I gave the book to the man at the cash register, an old man with an earring who looked like a pirate. He looked at the book, then eyed me for a moment, and exclaimed, « Aha ! » That’s all he said.

And I’m sure he had hidden that book for the person who was destined to find it. He looked really delighted, took my two dollars, didn’t say a word, and handed me the book.

As we walked out, Judy asked where I got the book. I told her about the stack of carpets, and we both looked back — because the man was so funny, the way he had looked at me about the book. And as we looked back, there across the entire storefront, we saw all of these tiny little Baba cards propped up in the window !

Years later, when some people from Oregon heard this story, they went back to that store, but the man was gone and the store was closed. Other Baba-lovers in Oregon had heard of him, but I never found out who he was. Yet that moment totally changed my life. Somehow I managed to give up Eric and live my own life.

The next year I was engaged to a wonderful man, a sweetheart, a Russian violinist. He was very beautiful and romantic.

One day we had gone to a concert in the city, and we were driving back home, when all of a sudden I had this internal sense of something being cut. Just cut. I was driving, and it was so strong and so shocking that I stopped the car.

He looked at me and said, « Did something just happen to you ? »

« Yes, » I answered, baffled. « Did something just happen to you ? »

« Yes, » he said, apparently equally as perplexed.

« What ? » I asked.

« I don’t know. It’s like[... ] it’s over. »

I stared at him. « Yeah. » We were very much in love, and had plans, had told his family — everything. « I feel that too, » I said, a little stunned.

We just looked at each other.

« Now what do we do ? » he asked, reflecting the same surprise that I felt.

« Well, maybe I’ll drive you home, » I responded, not knowing anything else to say. So I drove him home, and we never saw or spoke to each other again. I don’t know what happened ; maybe the karma was over. It just stopped.

Now I had not thought of Eric in months. That night all of the people in the commune where I lived sat together and did a Tarot reading for me, because such an odd thing had happened to me that day.

At the center of the spread of cards was love — not just love, but the highest spiritual aspect of love, which I was to find through a romantic love relationship that would be very intense and would lead me to the highest spiritual level possible.

We stared at the cards, incredulous. We didn’t use the Tarot very often, so it was a new thing for us, but we still knew the reading was unusual, especially since my romantic relationship had just ended.

« Who could this man be ? » I wondered.

My friend Andy looked at me and shrugged. « I don’t know. Maybe[... ] » and he named a few of the men I had been friends with in the past. Then the rest in the group pitched in with different ideas of who it might be.

All of a sudden the phone rang. Andy answered it, and it was Eric.

« Maybe Eric’s the guy. » Andy offered as I walked toward the phone.

« Nooo ! » I answered firmly.

I picked up the phone, and Eric asked, without even a hello, « Are you finished with that guy yet ? »

« What ? » I couldn’t believe he was asking this.

« Are you through with him yet ? » he asked again.

I paused, guarded. I hadn’t even spoken with Eric in six months. « Well, why do you want to know ? »

« I just want to know. Is that over ? »

« Well, » I answered, trying to sound offhanded, « yeah ; we broke up today. »

« Then why don’t you come see me, » he suggested.

« No, I don’t think so ! » I was adamant. He had been a heartbreak for me, and now I was over him. I didn’t want to open that up again.

« No, no, no, we can just be friends. I’m out in Ohio. It’s fun ; it’s winter here, and you’ve never been to Ohio. Why don’t you come out and visit ? »

« I don’t know[... ] » I just wanted to put him off. « Let’s write about it. »

Well, he wrote me this amazing letter about how great it would be to be friends, and how we had this destiny together, and somehow he talked me into going out for a month. And of course, we fell in love again.

Yet after some time Eric realized within himself that since it was now getting serious between us, either I would have to come to Baba, or we would have to stop before either of us got hurt.

He realized that he was so extreme a person that he could not marry someone who did not love Baba. He knew it would drive the other person crazy, since he would want to do odd things with his life, like go live in India — which is what happened. And he also realized that I would not be able to do that unless I loved Baba, or it would create a lot of heartaches.

So Eric decided that I would have a last chance, which would be that we would go together to the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach — and if I did not come to Baba at the Center, then he would have to break up the relationship.

Of course, I didn’t know that he was thinking these things. But he was really scared now, because we were really serious, and the consequences of marrying me without my being a Baba lover had become very clear to Eric.

Eric asked me to make the reservations at the Center, which I agreed to, since he was busy with school. I took his copy of God Speaks to the phone when I called ; it had the address in the back so I could get the phone number from information.

My call was answered by Kitty Davy, this very peppy, chirpy little Englishwoman who was one of Baba’s Western mandali. She immediately launched into the rundown on procedures and regulations at the Center. As we were wrapping up the conversation, she reminded me that we needed to arrive by five.

« Well, we’re coming from Ohio, » I said a little hesitantly.

« Oh, » she exclaimed enthusiastically, yet full of British propriety, « for only three days ? You must be very devoted. »

To myself, I thought, « Well, I don’t know about that[... ] »

Kitty chirped, « Jai Baba, Jai Baba. »

I didn’t know what that meant, but I said goodbye, hung up the phone and started down the hall toward Eric’s room.

I don’t know what happened to me, but the next thing I was aware of was that I was sitting on the hallway floor, dazed. Eric was standing beside me on one side, and his friend James Cox on the other. I was holding God Speaks and gazing at Baba’s picture, in some kind of state.

Seeing them beside me, I looked up and said, « I don’t know who that person on the phone was, but something strange is going on here. »

Eric smiled and simply said, « Yeah. »

It gradually began to dawn on me that the place in Myrtle Beach might be more than I had bargained for. But on the other hand, I was cooked and I was hooked — I wanted to check it out.

Our trip was scheduled for April of 1971. On the way down we had a flat tire. Then another. Then the other two tires of the car went flat. The people we were traveling with decided it was a test, and that we weren’t supposed to go. Eric also thought it was a test, but his interpretation was that we were supposed to get there anyhow.

So we spent the last of our money getting to Myrtle Beach on a Greyhound bus. We arrived in the middle of the night, slept on the beach, then headed for an early morning breakfast place.

We were sitting at a booth, sleepy-eyed and dressed in the hippie garb of the day, when a bunch of motorcycle guys came in and sat down next to us. They guessed that we were going to the Meher Center and offered us a ride.

Nowadays I would refuse — they were very rough looking guys — but in those days we just said yes. They were very sweet, and they took us right to the Center.

The place where people check in was still closed, and no one was around, so we climbed over the gate and just walked in. As we were walking through the woods toward the main part of the Center, I realized that this place was enchanted — it was spellbinding.

Eric looked at me, and we started singing an old Appalachian song : « What wondrous love is this, oh my soul, what wondrous love is this, oh my soul[... ]. » We felt enraptured.

When we got to the lake, the only person there was a little girl. Delighted to see us, she gave us a complete tour of the Center until the grownups woke up.

Then followed all of the introductions, including meeting the amazing Kitty Davy, who was almost like a cartoon character, she was so energetic and lively.

Of course we were staying in separate cabins, because we were not married. And — Oh ! I just realized right now ! — my roommate was Adah Shifrin, the woman who wrote the children’s book, Meher Baba’s Love, which I had found in the stack of carpets.

Adah and I stayed in the Log Cabin together. There was a poster over my bed that quoted Baba : « Think of me the last thing before you go to sleep and it will benefit you, » or something to that effect.

So, having the idea that this was part of the program there at the Center, I thought about him and pictured his face as I was going to sleep. I didn’t know, maybe it was one of the rules or something.

That night I had a dream. You know how dreams are — you can’t really explain them in waking terms. But in the dream, Baba’s face was 360 degrees around me, yet it was not distorted or stretched out. All around me was his face, and it was very beautiful.

It was the same face that was in the picture over my bed. As the dream progressed, I found myself falling through fire in ecstasy. I didn’t want to wake up. It was fire, but a fire of bliss.

Meanwhile, Eric had spent the night weeping. He was in a total state, himself. We saw each other, and wandered around together, but we were both lost in our own experiences. He was going through one thing, and I was going through something else.

The next night I dreamed that everything I saw throughout the dream was Baba. The tree was Baba, the ground was Baba, there was a horse, and it, too, was Baba. And I woke up, once again overwhelmed.

That day I realized that I was getting into something very deep, so deep that the question of Eric’s and my relationship didn’t even enter my mind as I wandered around the Center wondering what on earth was happening between Meher Baba and me.

I remember walking across the bridge over the lagoon and thinking that I had to decide. Somehow I knew that I couldn’t use my mind too much with this, but that I did have to decide. I stopped there on the bridge, and at that moment, I made a vow to God.

« You know everything, » I said, « and if you are Meher Baba, then my giving my life to him would be the best thing I could possibly do. If you are not Meher Baba, you know that I mean to come to you, so even then, you will accept my giving my life to him. »

So there, on the bridge, I decided to give my life to Meher Baba.

I wandered around for a while. Eventually, Eric found me and told me it was time to go to Baba’s house. In those days you could only go to Baba’s house on Sunday, and I’d been hearing about it for a long time.

We were on the tour through the house, and although I was listening to the stories, I somehow wandered ahead of the group into Baba’s bedroom. Of course, I didn’t know it was Baba’s bedroom, since I’d never been there before.

As I walked into the room, I had an inner experience of Baba where I recognized him. He was sitting on the bed. It was not a vision, but an inner sight. I saw him ; I knew him ; and more than anything, I remembered him — perfectly. It was as though a veil was torn away from me completely, and I felt so much love for him that I burst into tears.

All I could say was, « Forgive me for forgetting you, Baba. »

How could I have forgotten him ? He was my Beloved. He was my love ! And I had forgotten him ! It was so[... ] it was the experience of my life. I realized that I knew him, and that he knew me, and he was my love.

How had it happened, I wondered, that I had forgotten him ? I could not get over that. I felt so much love from him that I was just[... ] gone.

Jane Haynes came in and looked at me. She gently brushed her hand along my cheek and said, « The heart knows what the mind cannot understand. »

She let me out into the garden, for there were other people in the house and I obviously needed to be by myself. I sat on one of the benches and wept and wept, saying over and over again, « How could I have forgotten ? Forgive me, my darling. »

I gradually recovered and started out of the garden just as Eric was leaving the house. He had had his own wonderful experience of Baba, this being his first visit to the Center after a couple of years of loving him.

We went to the porch at the library and sat there. Eric knew something huge had happened to me. I looked at him, and said to myself, « Oh, no. Now what do I do with this luggage that I picked up along the way ? » — meaning Eric.

At the same time, he was looking at me and thinking, « Well, now that I brought her, it’s happened. Now what ? »

He looked at me. « Do you want to get married ? »

I looked back, paused for a moment, and answered, « Okay. »

It wasn’t actually a proposal at that time, it was an agreement about something we would do. But it was not at all a focus for either of us at that moment, since so much else had transpired.

We left the next morning and got a ride to our car from a Baba lover. All kinds of things happened on the trip, but as we were heading home, we picked up some hitchhikers, who took one look at us and asked, « Guys, what are you on ? »

« Meher Baba, » Eric told them.

« Naw, c’mon. What are you on ? »

We kept saying, « Meher Baba. »

« No, the pills, the dope ; what did you shoot up ? What is it ? »

« It’s Meher Baba ! »

« C’mon ; you can’t get that high from a person ! »

But we both had it — we had the look. We were bursting with Baba’s love.

And from that moment when I experienced Baba in my heart, I have never had a doubt in all of these years. The conviction that I got in that moment was indelible — indelible. And that’s my story.

edited by Carolyn M. Ball. © 2000 Carolyn M. Ball