Meher Baba, Avatar of the Tortoise

De Simple Silence.

Contents 1 Desperate Times 2 Dropping The Body 3 The Last Darshan 4 The Love That It Takes 5 Karma Sensitive Psychotherapy

[modifier] Desperate Times

I believe that we live in desperate times that are getting ever more desperate. Somehow, knowing there’s an answer allows me to accept the extent of our desperateness. I also believe that’s the way the human mind works. If a situation is truly desperate and no avenue of hope can be seen, the mind tends to deny the full extent of ominous things in order to preserve some measure of hope.

It is so psychologically disastrous to be without hope that the mind recoils against it. Therefore, we should not lightly and callously condemn those who do not accept our state of crisis as being in abject denial.

Denial has the important function of preserving hope, although, ultimately, that cannot be its justification. To be without hope is disastrous because hope is actually part of reality ; to lose hope is to lose reality.

Reality is not just the « hard stuff » — the material world — but includes the human being. Hope is essential to the human being. Hope is not to be confused with wishfulness.

Wishfulness can obscure reality, whereas hope opens us up to it. Had I not had hope, I do not believe that I would have recognized just how desperate these times are.

That’s where Meher Baba comes in.

Baba physically came into this world in 1894 and left in 1969 — a life of seventy-four years. For the last forty-four of those years, from 1925 on, he was silent — no words or sounds escaped his lips. All of his communications — and he communicated extensively — were by means other than speech and, amazingly, by means other than writing.

When Meher Baba began his silence in 1925, he wrote for about a year, usually on a slate. Then he abandoned the slate and began using an English alphabet board. He would communicate through the laborious method of pointing out, letter by letter, what he wanted to say. In 1954, Meher Baba dispensed with the alphabet board and relied on hand gestures.

It should be understood that Meher Baba’s silence was not because he had little or nothing to say. Baba’s words, expressed silently, are among the most profound and comprehensive that we have, as you will be able to judge for yourself from quotes that I have used throughout this book.

One reason for Meher Baba’s silence, he said, was that, « You have asked for and been given enough words — it is now time to Iive them. »

Who is the you in this statement ? It is all off us. Then who is he ? That is the subject of this book — and that is why I talk about hope.

This book began when I returned to Maine in August 1997 from a visit to the tomb of Meher Baba in India. Among the messages waiting for me was one from Connie Leavitt. I had not yet met Connie, but we had spoken once or twice on the phone.

She and her husband own a book production studio on the coast of Maine and she told me that she was going to launch Seven Coin Press and was interested in publishing books with a spiritual or philosophical focus.

From our previous conversations, Connie knew that I had a spiritual orientation and had written in the field of alternative economics, although spirituality is not explicit in that work. When we first met, we discussed a book that I was then writing — a critique of the modern mindset and its resulting damage to both the environment and society. It sounded interesting to her, and so I sent her a copy of my previously published book, Adam Smith’s Mistake.

After reviewing Adam Smith’s Mistake, she returned it with the comment that, with all due respect, it was not the type of book that appealed to her — it was too academic and intellectual.

Rather, her objective was to publish visionary, inspirational, and positive life-experience books that would reach out to a general readership.

Well, I am not really an academic in that I do not teach at a college or university. Even though I do think that for society to change, a broader group than academia needs to be reached, the ability to do this kind of reaching was probably beyond me.

I thought that Connie and I most likely did not have the basis for doing a book together. We wished each other well and said that we might meet in the future to discuss our interests in spirituality.

So, I was a little surprised to find a phone message from her on my return from India. In my everyday work as a psychologist, I advertise my approach as « Karma Sensitive Psychotherapy. »

It seems that she had seen my ad and wanted to know more about my method of therapy. In any event, when I returned her call, she was interested to hear that I had just returned from India, one of several trips since my first one in 1969. She had never heard of Meher Baba and when she asked about him, I stumbled around a bit and came up with a vague answer, such as the commonly used « spiritual teacher. »

Despite what I felt was the blandness of my answer, Connie still wanted to know more, and she seemed intent about it. I might have brought in the term Avatar at that point, because I had just come back from India and Meher Baba’s tomb and may have had the special energy that such a visit usually brings.

Perhaps some of this came through to her. Finally she asked, « Did you ever think about writing a book about Meher Baba ? »

When I replied, « No, » she said, « Do you think it’s something you could do ? »

I said that it was something I could think about for the future, but for now I needed to finish my new book on the problem of the environment, and I left it at that.

When I woke up the next morning, surprisingly, my head was full of thoughts on writing a book about Meher Baba. I somehow knew what such a book would be.

I would use my life as a lover of Baba to present an account of him. My story would tell how I came to grips with Baba and who he is or is supposed to be. My encounter with Baba would, out of necessity, have to be individual, but I am also aware of the paradox that through the individual, we can reach the universal.

As Charles Purdom, a lover of Baba who had numerous contacts with, and wrote a biography about, Meher Baba, put it :

[Meher Baba’s] work is with the human soul in general and equally with particular souls, for increase in consciousness is increase in particularness. It is a paradox that the more fully the soul knows itself and the more meaning it gives to the « I, » the more completely it knows itself to be one with, not separated from, and having identical interests with all other souls.^[1]

My story is the story of someone who never met Meher Baba physically, which will be the case for almost all readers of this book. If Baba is who he is supposed to be, then the physical meeting is not necessary.

Indeed, the major work of such a one is something that only begins to unfold or become apparent after his physical death. It is by that continuity and eventual increase of his influence that history knows that such a one was real.

Of course, his lovers know it outside the judgment of history, and that is precisely how they become his lovers. That process must always be a personal one.

To talk about the spiritual and universal and to connect both with reality is to allude to things that the modern world in its skepticism does not believe exists. To overcome such skepticism is one of the purposes of the appearance of Meher Baba.

In this book, I will describe, as accurately and as honestly as I can, how this process worked and works with me. The reader can evaluate and judge for him- or herself. One of the reasons for this book is to give the reader an initial basis for doing so.

I have used the word lover several times. Meher Baba is supposed to be a spiritual authority. One who believes in an authority and adheres to that authority is seen as a follower of that person. Why don’t I just say that I am a follower of Meher Baba ? What is this business about being a lover of ?

Meher Baba, himself, referred to his followers as his lovers. It was a term that Baba used first. Why did Baba do this ? He was referring to divine love. He said that those who were being drawn to him were beginning to practice the highest spiritual art that is possible — that of divine love.

This implies at least two things. One is that there is such a thing as the divine and that love is closely connected to it, and two, that Meher Baba, for some reason, is a worthy or appropriate figure to be associated with such a love. Both of these claims, as far as I am concerned, are outrageous within the context of the modern world. His claims and statements run against the whole tenor of modem mindset.

The modern mindset, besides its skepticism, is particularly concerned with personal gain. That follows, of course, from its materialism, which is both philosophical and commercial. To talk about divine love, which is, of course, not sexual love and not the love of acquisition, is to talk about something that was left far behind in our past.

I am personally uncomfortable with the term lover of Meher Baba. It seems presumptuous of me to call myself a lover of Baba, which is to say someone capable of that kind of love « pure » love.

In fact, it would be just as presumptuous of me to claim that I felt that toward anyone, Meher Baba or no. After all, pure, four letters that it is, is still a very big word. Baba knows all this, just as Baba knows everything.

By referring to his followers as his lovers, Meher Baba is in effect telling us that, as short of the mark as we are, indeed, as selfish and possessive as we are, through contact with him, in fact by the mere knowledge of his name, we are taking a step toward the path of pure love.

We start with where we are, as always. Our love can be as impure as love gets : possessive, selfish, lustful, you name it, but by contact with Meher Baba, in any form, even in name, that love begins the process of its purification.

In fact, the modern world is such that this concept of pure and purification will be looked upon askance. So, the other issue that the modern world looks upon with suspicion, authority, is joined with the concept of purity.

We can say that Baba’s authority, among other things, is the authority of purity, and, in fact, the authority of pure love. That is a vastly different association than the one we usually have with the idea of authority.

The question then arises, if Meher Baba is this, how come almost no one knows about him ? Well, one answer would be that this world is just not very interested in purity or pure love.

As Baba lets us know, and we are beginning to realize from our direct observations, this world will need to wake up to the necessity of these qualities if it is to get out of its current ominous condition. Meher Baba says that it is for this « awakening » that he has come, and that in time, this awakening will become clear.

It’s a question of timing. « I have come not to teach, but to awaken, » he has said, and that is another way of understanding his silence.

So I asked myself that morning as I thought about my conversation with Connie, is it Meher Baba’s timing that this has come about and that I now write such a book ? I could only know by trying to go ahead with it. Perhaps the problem of the environment cannot wait, but a book by me on what the modern world is doing to the environment could.

A book about Meher Baba, the Avatar, would be a more direct answer and source of hope than any analysis and recommendations that I could put forth as a social scientist.

I wrote a couple of chapters and then I met with Connie. I decided to bring a video of Meher Baba so that she could see who Baba is as a living, breathing, and moving about being and she could see how Meher Baba communicated in and through his silence.

Photographs and film are central to conveying a sense of Meher Baba. After Connie watched the video, she told me that something inside of her « jumped. » She was not sure why or what that meant. It was a good sign.

I hope, for the readers of this book, that something inside of them jumps. We all need something inside of us to jump. It is this inside — so vast — that has been closed off by the scientism and skepticism of the modern world, until it is nearly nonexistent. I, like many of you, personally know this.

Therefore, I write about how life changed for me and the meaning and my understanding of this change. This is not, however, a story about me ; it is a story about Meher Baba told through my experience.

My story allows you to connect with who Meher Baba is through your own story and leads you right up to this point.

[modifier] Dropping The Body

I settled into my work area on an upper floor of one of the innumerable government office buildings in downtown Washington, commuting to it from the commune where I lived. Mountains of reading quickly came to my desk ; I needed to catch up with the research grants that were already approved as well as the numerous applications for new grants.

Richard Nixon had been elected President in November, and there were rumors that all new appointees under the previous administration took office. Because new staff in any branch of the Justice Department underwent a FBI security clearance that often took several months, an employee was hired only as a « consultant. »

When interviewed, I told the department head about my antiwar background and participation in Students for Democratic Society (SDS). It seems that he, too, was antiwar as were others, at least in the lower levels of the government — and he didn’t think my background would be a security check problem. In any event, I had my job until the check was complete, and I told the department head that I would be going to India for a week in April.

Near the end of January 1969, I was given a two-fold assignment to the Bay area in California. The first purpose of my trip was to meet with several grant recipients to see how their research was proceeding, but this was more or less tacked on to the second purpose, at least in terms of the timing of the trip.

The student strike against San Francisco State University was in full force. Student demonstrators were attempting to shut down the school and the president of the school, S.I. Hayakawa, along with a large phalanx of mounted and unmounted police, were trying to keep the demonstrators out of the way and the school open. The strike was highly confrontational and featured regularly in the national news.

The Justice Department wanted an investigation of the demonstration and a representative report on the nature of these students as well as information on campus unrest throughout the country. It was proposed that I — who had a personal background in these matters and in that sense was an « expert » — be one of a group of three people to go to San Francisco.

A military security specialist was also assigned to the group. To take this assignment certainly seemed strange, but I knew that my life was taking a new direction and this was a part of it.

When we arrived in San Francisco, we met with the local TV station, KQED, to view recent videotapes of the confrotation. Watching the tapes of the students, with whom I easily identified, while my government associates made less-than- sympathetic comments felt like the « twilight zone. »

This feeling of ambiguity increased later when we went to the campus to meet with Hayakawa and other school administrators. There I was, dressed in a dark suit and part of the government team, being escorted by police through student demonstrators with armed police on the roof and students shouting epithets at us as we made the long walk from our vehicle, down a path, and up the steps into the administration building. Once inside, we all breathed a sigh of relief, but for me it was all quite strange — psychologically I felt both on the outside and inside at the same moment.

When I walked into the vestibule of Hayakawa’s office, I was amazed to see a poster of Meher Baba on the wall ! What was this ? Incredible. The improbable appearance of a picture of Baba appearing during this strange, threatening, and wrenching circumstance was as if he was saying, « See, here I am. I am always with you. » After the meeting, I was told that an office assistant was a Baba lover and had been allowed to hang the poster.

The meeting with Hayakawa was brief and mostly ceremonial after which we collected background information from his deputies. When we finished, I steeled myself for the agonizing walk through the demonstrators to our car. Later, there were meetings with teachers, some of whom were sympathetic to the strike. All the while, I was busily writing notes for the report.

During my time off, I visited the Sufi Center on Sutter Street, where I had gone to that first Meher Baba meeting a year and a half before. Much had changed in my life since that meeting — from atheist to believer, from one who saw the world in mechanical and materially causal scientific terms to one who began to see all things as directed and happening for a purpose.

From one who made his own way in the world — whatever that was and in whatever direction — to one who now had a « master » and accepted that master to be the long-awaited Savior. This time I went to the Sufi Center as a Baba lover, feeling very much a part of the group — a distinct contrast to how I felt about my role as a government agent.

One evening, I met with one of the research grant recipients. We planned dinner out and to look over her research in her office. The most convenient place to meet was her apartment. As she ushered me into her living room she said she’d like me to read an interesting essay while I was waiting for her to get ready for our meeting.

She was intrigued by a writer that she thought was special, an Argentinean named Jorge Luis Borges. As she handed me a book of his essays she asked, « Do you know what an Avatar is ? » I almost fell off the couch.

My immediate, impulsive response was, « Do you know what an Avatar is ? »

« Of course, » she answered. « It’s a reincarnation of a Hindu god. »

Close enough, I thought.

The reason for her remarkable question was that the Borges essay she wanted me to read was called Avatars of the Tortoise. I didn’t get a chance to read all of it then, but I’ve since read it numerous times. I revealed how remarkable her question was to me and told her something of Meher Baba. She, too, was struck by the coincidence.

This was my introduction to Borges, who, a few years later, received the Nobel Prize in literature. He was truly a great writer who, in both fiction and nonfiction, wrote of the strangeness of life, the ironic and seemingly symbolic twists and turns of fate, of paradox lurking everywhere, of the intriguing but just-out-of-reach sense that there may be a guiding purpose behind the otherwise seemingly random and purposeless play of events. In this particular essay, the tortoise refers to the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea’s paradox of the race between the swift Achilles and a tortoise.

If the race is analyzed a certain way, Achilles will never overtake the tortoise. That is to say, suppose the race begins, and the tortoise is given a head start of fifty yards. Let us also say that Achilles is ten times faster than the tortoise.

When Achilles arrives where the tortoise was when the race started (the fifty-yard line), the tortoise has moved five yards ahead. But when Achilles gets to that point, the tortoise is still a half a yard ahead. The same thing happens at every point in the race.

Achilles gets closer and closer to the tortoise but can never catch it. When he arrives at a spot where the tortoise was, the tortoise has moved a little bit ahead. Achilles’ approach to the tortoise becomes an infinitely declining series of distances, but the gap between them is never eliminated.

Borges recounts how this same paradox, in one form or another, has been presented by writers throughout history along with various attempts to explain it ; that is his meaning of « avatars of the tortoise. » Each appearance of the paradox, which he defines as a regression ad infinitum, is another « avatar » of it.

Although there are various ways to resolve the paradox, it gives us a fundamental understanding of the limitations of the intellect.

That evening’s experience with avatars of the tortoise was another striking event in a week that seemed to have an intense energy.

As my work and visit to the Bay area was coming to an end, I decided to pay a last visit to the Sufi Center before leaving for Washington. Hanging on to the pole of the cable car on my way up the hill to the center, I recalled that Baba had repeatedly said that he was everywhere, and I felt that I had experienced that most pointedly during the week.

I had been wondering whether I wanted to live in Washington, D.C. after the darshan or to move back to Myrtle Beach to he in close proximity to Baba’s home in the West. Now I strongly sensed that because Baba was everywhere, I really didn’t have to live in Myrtle Beach, but it seemed clear to me that any decision should be on hold until after I had seen Baba.

Although I was going to the Sufi Center on a weekend, I was still surprised to find so many people there. I was more surprised when I saw the looks of sadness and dejection on their faces.

I gave a wary, but cheerful hello, and then someone took me aside and asked if I knew what had happened ? I said no and was told that the news had just arrived that Meher Baba had died in India at 12 :15 P.M. on January 31, 1969 !

I was fortunate to be at the Sufi Center when I got this news ; it would have been much more difficult for me if I had been traveling or alone.

Rick Chapman and Lud Dimpfl, a longtime Sufi teacher who had been with Baba on numerous occasions, came to the Sufi Center and talked to the group about this incomprehensible event. Lud pointed out that Baba had said that « a dark cloud » had been over his head and was going to burst and that his « humiliation » would precede his « glorification. »

This was it, Lud said. Baba died and had not broken his silence. Then Lud drew our attention to something interesting. A family letter from Mani, dated January 26, had come from India just a few days ago. In it she said she was surprised to be writing so soon after her letter announcing darshan.

It contained a message that Baba had dictated for his birthday, which was not for another month, February 25.

The message was :

To love me for what I may give you is not loving me at all. To sacrifice anything in my cause to gain something for yourself is like a blind man sacrificing his eyes for sight. I am the divine beloved worthy of being loved because I am love. He who loves me because of this will be blessed with unlimited sight and will see me as I am.^[2]

The news was numbing, at least initially. I had returned to Washington thinking that Baba would break his silence any minute now, or any day, or any week. It was as if the drama of his life had reached its denouement and Baba would now have to produce.

I began to feel a curious sense of freedom. No tension now. There was great disappointment concerning the darshan, but if Baba broke his silence, the fact of not seeing him would hardly matter.

I had been told by some of my closest friends that the FBI had been to visit them to ask about me. We felt this was amusing because logically, given the counterculture background of some of my friends, this would set up an infinite regress of the FBI asking my friends’ friends about them and so on ad infinitum ad absurdum. More avatars of the tortoise.

Yet, I had an uncomfortable feeling of being under suspicion or accused of a crime when, in reality, I was an American citizen working for my government. Typical of many in the antiwar movement, I never felt that my opposition to the Vietnam War was an opposition to America — rather that America was acting in opposition to its own best principles and that the actions of opposing the war were actions of true patriotism.

It was a surprise to my boss, my coworkers, and by this time even to me, when the FBI informed my department that they had concluded that I was a security risk and had to leave my job. This had never happened to anyone else in the department and my colleagues looked at me with a mixture of regret, curiosity, and even some apprehension.

My boss came to me and said, « My God, Ken, what did you do ? » I thought I had already told him. Well, whatever I did, it was enough. I had to pack up and leave immediately — and wasn’t able to hand in my part of the report on the San Francisco State University strike.

I went to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), but found that there was no legal recourse to confront the decision. The experience certainly did not serve to endear « the system » to me. A year later, I discovered just how nasty the system could be.

In Washington there was massive discontent toward the government and ever-mounting opposition to the Vietnam War. After I came to Baba in 1968 during the demonstration in South Bend, I began to feel differently about politics.

I had entered politics as an atheist, believing that whatever did or didn’t happen in the world was entirely up to us. There was no guiding force behind the universe nor the affairs of human beings. There was no benevolent God overlooking and directing things so that all would turn out well in the end — even if that end was not on Earth but in an afterlife. For me there was no such thing as an afterlife anyway.

After coming to believe in Baba, all that slowly began to change. I say slowly because the implications of the existence of God (versus the lack of that existence) run so deep that this change in outlook must take time to slowly work its way through the totality of one’s mind and being.

The question of God, of course, is the ultimate question of existence and all else rests upon it. In fact, the completion of this transformation from atheism to full oneness with the divine is the completion of spiritual realization.

After accepting Baba, I found that I lost some of the desperation that was a part of my political activism. It wasn’t just up to me or us — there was something greater behind all of creation and it was moving in its own omniscient way to bring the world to where it needed to be.

Baba had specifically described this state and said that he had come to bring about this transformation. He referred to it as a « New Humanity » in which « cooperation will replace competition ; certainty will replace fear ; generosity will replace greed. Exploitation will disappear. »

So I knew, or at least felt I knew, that even in the midst of the tragedy of the Vietnam War and the tragedy of all other human inequities and injustice there existed a plan and a purpose, and the carrier of that plan and purpose had come to Earth once again to « true the standard of human values » and restore a golden age. All of this was to come into being when Baba broke his silence.

But now Meher Baba was dead and he had not yet broken his silence. Around me were desperate and frantic opponents of the war. Before Baba died, I had taken hope and sustenance in the newfound security that God existed and that this was a special time in human history when he made a direct appearance on Earth in human form to give us this assurance and hope.

I was aware that when Baba was alive this knowledge didn’t easily communicate ; I had learned to more or less keep my belief to myself. It would be nice to give this news to others and to help them realize the same sense of inner assurance that I now had, but I found that this was not easy to do.

However, this didn’t matter so much — Baba had to and would break his silence soon and then all would know anyway. Meher Baba had said, « When I speak, I shall manifest the Divine Will, and a world-wide transformation of consciousness will take place. »

Meher Baba was dead. I expected the silence to he broken imminently. As the days stretched into weeks, I began to lose some of my confidence. The antiwar movement was working hard to end the war, and I was still involved, but with a certain sense of detachment that I had never had before. Now where was I ? What was going on ? In one corner of my mind the skeptic arose or, should I say, arose again. I had been a typical modern scientific materialist, which is also to say atheist.

The atheist is the inheritor of the skeptical stance first and most powerfully introduced into our history by Rene Descartes who felt impelled to confront medieval Christian mentality with what was to become known as radical doubt. This doubt set off a train of historical development in which science, not only as a method but as a particular metaphysic belief system, gradually replaced religion as a source of knowledge and as the basis of truth.

By the late nineteenth century, the metaphysic of materialism replaced the spiritual as the dominant conception of what is real. Given a push by what can be referred to as the « doctors of modernity » (replacing the « doctors of the Church » of the Middle Ages) — Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud — God, and all that God implied was pronounced dead.

This, of course, did not mean that there was a God that actually died, but that the false idea of God, inherited from humankind’s ancient past, could now be replaced by true knowledge — that is, the only reality is physical reality. Anything not material, such as the mind, and by implication the spirit, was a byproduct of matter (that is, the brain). Darwin said that the mind is just a secretion of the brain. This metaphysical concept not only defines the modern mind, but is what makes that mind modern.

The skeptic, therefore, is an important person in our world, and a part of myself as well. Skepticism had played a vital role in my life and my coming to Baba. Because Meher Baba died and did not break his silence as he had repeatedly said he would, doubt naturally arose. Were the materialists right after all ? Was this notion of an Avatar, a God in human form, of God at all, a fantastical belief formed from human weakness, credulity, and wishfulness ?

Suddenly, surprising news arrived from India : the darshan was still on. How was this to be ?

The reason that Mani wrote that surprise letter of January 26 was not to send Baba’s birthday message in advance, although she did that as well, but rather to send a circular that Baba’s secretary, Adi, wrote in regard to the upcoming darshan.

At the age of 74, after the strain of the arduous work during his lifetime and two severe car accidents, Meher Baba’s health had inevitably deteriorated.

Beginning by a reference to the last three years of Baba’s seclusion work, Adi wrote :

Beloved Avatar Meher Baba wishes all His lovers to know that His three years of intense work has shattered his health.

In spite of this He has invited His lovers from all over the world to come to Him for His darshan next summer for it is the time for them to come to Him and receive His Love.

It is the time ; and the place, Guruprasad, Poona has been fixed.

But with the present condition of His health, how beloved Baba will give His darshan to the thousands who will come, yet remains to be determined ; but it will be. He will give His darshan.

This darshan, Baba says, will be the last given in Silence — the last before He speaks His world-renewing Word of Words.^[3]

When the mandali approached Baba about how difficult it would be in his fragile state of health to undergo the strain of such an extensive darshan program, more extensive than he had ever given before, and then he was younger, Baba reassured them :

It will be easy for me to give my lovers my darshan, so you are not to feel concerned about it. I will give darshan reclining and that will be no strain on my body. It will be different from all previous darshans and it will be the last in silence. Although I will be reclining I will be very strong. My physical condition now is because of my work, but by then my work will be complete and my exultation will be great.^[4]

Mani’s next letter in March 1969 announced that darshan would be held as planned. In her letter, she gave an account of Meher Baba’s death and said that because of this statement, the mandali knew that Baba intended the darshan to take place.

Almost all of Meher Baba’s time in seclusion had been spent in his home quarters at Meherazad, nine miles north of the city of Ahmednagar. In early December 1968, he began having muscle spasms and after January 12, 1969, he never left his room.

Around that time, Padri, one of the mandali, in a conversation with Meher Baba, casually remarked, « Baba, the mandali have become old and it is better to close the shop. »

Baba replied, « No, the shop will now be opened. »

The spasms increased. Baba said to some of the mandali, « This is my crucifixion. »

Even Baba gesturing with his fingers would bring on a spasm. A doctor was called on January 30 to see him, and there were no spasms. As soon as the doctor left, the spasms increased.

On the morning of January 31, Meher Baba gestured to the mandali to bring in a board on which were written three couplets by the Persian poet Hafiz, whom Baba said was a Perfect Master. The couplets stressed complete surrender to the will of the Perfect Master and his omniscience, even if not understood by others.

The couplets were :

BEFITTING A FORTUNATE SLAVE, CARRY OUT EVERY COMMAND OF THE MASTER WITHOUT ANY QUESTION OF WHY AND WHAT.

ABOUT WHAT YOU HEAR FROM THE MASTER NEVER SAY IT IS WRONG BECAUSE MY DEAR THE FAULT LIES IN YOUR OWN INCAPACITY TO UNDERSTAND HIM.

I AM THE SLAVE OF MY MASTER WHO HAS RELEASED ME FROM IGNORANCE ; WHATEVER MY MASTER DOES IS FOR THE HIGHEST BENEFIT TO ALL CONCERNED.^[5]

At 12 :15 P.M., Baba had an extremely strong spasm. He was sitting on his surgical bed with his back and head raised. Baba flexed his arms and closed his mouth tightly. His respiration stopped.

There were vigorous efforts to revive him, but they did not work. Previously Baba had said, « The dropping of the physical body of the Avatar or by the Sadguru [Perfect Master] is not death, for even while he uses the body he is in no way attached to it and has no sanskaric link with it. »

When Adi sent out a telegram that day to various Baba centers around the world to inform them of this event, it read,

AVATAR MEHER BABA DROPPED HIS PHYSICAL BODY AT TWELVE NOON 31 JANUARY AT MEHERAZAD TO LIVE ETERNALLY IN THE HEARTS OF ALL HIS LOVERS. BELOVED BABA’S BODY WILL BE INTERRED AT MEHERABAD ARANGAON ON 1 FEBRUARY AT 10 A.M. IN THE TOMB HE HAD ORDERED TO BE BUILT LONG AGO.^[6]

From that point on, the term « dropping the body » was generally used to refer to Baba’s physical departure to indicate the intentional aspect of the Avatar’s death, as compared to other deaths. A number of years previously Baba had relayed another message for his birthday, in which he said,

« I am never born, I never die. Yet every moment I take birth and undergo death.[... ] Although I am present everywhere eternally in My formless Infinite State, from time to time I take form, and taking of the form and leaving it is termed My physical birth and death. In this sense I was born sixty years ago and will die when My universal work is finished. »^[7]

Baba’s words made it clear to the mandali that Baba had meant for the darshan to proceed as planned, even without his physical presence. What that would be like, no one had any idea, but I was determined to go.

Some Baba lovers in the West, including Don Stevens, Alan Cohen, and Rick Chapman, flew to India to try to be there for Baba’s interment at Meherabad on February 1. Because of the Indian heat, it was expected that the interment could not be delayed for more than one day even with blocks of ice arranged around Baba’s body.

He was placed in the open crypt in his tomb. His face was peaceful and serene, as if he were asleep. Besides the handful of Westerners, thousands from India came to pay their last respects to the physical form of the Avatar.

There was a definite and intense awareness of Baba’s presence ; no one wanted to leave. At the end of the first day, many followers were just arriving to have a last contact with Baba.

Singing and music were spontaneously struck up by various groups of Easterners, which continued into the night. No deterioration in Baba’s body was observed, and with people constantly arriving, the mandali decided not to close the crypt that day.

These same conditions continued into the next day and the day after that. Baba’s body remained « fresh and lovely » as Mani described it. This went on for seven days from January 31. This time was later described as the « Last Sahavas » — the last intimate stay and visit with the Avatar.

Finally, on February 7 (coincidentally Baba’s birthday on the Zoroastrian calendar), with still no deterioration, the decision was made to enclose Baba’s body in his crypt.

Although it was not reported in the Western press, an extraordinary event occurred during this time. The Kaaba is the holy shrine of pilgrimage for Muslims throughout the world and every Muslim expects to make a Haj or journey to the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, at least once.

It was front-page news in Eastern newspapers, especially in Muslim countries, that flooding had submerged the Kaaba in nearly six feet of water making it inaccessible to pilgrims. The Kaaba area is desert and flooding had not happened in the fourteen hundred years since the time of Mohammed, whom Baba said was his previous incarnation as the Avatar.

The flooding lasted seven days, from January 31 to February 7, 1969, the period of Meher Baba’s lying in state — his « Last Sahavas. »

This seemed a powerful sign that Baba’s tomb in Meherabad had become the Kaaba of the new age. Clippings of these newspaper reports have been archived in Meherazad.

In Washington, I was far removed from the interment and did not know anything about it until Mani’s letter arrived in March. I was without a job and had little money saved, which would not be enough to go to darshan in April.

I applied for jobs in psychology in the Northeast, but it was apparent that I probably would not find anything or certainly not save enough before it was time to leave for India.

Fortunately, I belonged to a teacher’s credit union in South Bend, and I was able to get a loan to cover the expenses that I needed for the trip.

[modifier] The Last Darshan

I went to India with the second of three groups from America, which was referred to as the « Myrtle Beach group. » The West Coast group, which included members of Sufism Reoriented, left first, and we were followed by a group from New York and New England.

We were flying on an Air India charter flight, and as the day for my departure from Kennedy International Airport approached, I could feel the excitement building. The excitement could be attributed to this being my first trip to the exotic land of India, but I knew that it was related more to the unknown of going to « meet » Meher Baba even though he was no longer in the body.

At the airport, James Ivory, a writer from « The New Yorker, » approached several members of the group. He was interested in India and had heard about the trip. (Years later, he directed with Ismail Merchant, producer, a series of elegant films based on classic novels — among them « Heat and Dust », « Room with a View », and « Howard’s End ») Ivory hoped to interview us before and after our trip and compare our expectations with our actual experiences. Several of the group said that they had no, or were at least trying not to have any, expectations.

Other than the excitement of the unknown darshan, what else was there for us to expect ?

When I landed in Bombay, after 24 hours and several touchdowns, I had traveled halfway around the world. Disembarking from the plane directly onto the airport tarmac, I collided with India ; a combination of humid heat unlike anything I had ever felt before and a pungent, fetid smell surrounded me.

The East, the Orient, lay directly against my face and skin. In the old dilapidated terminal, Indian faces were all around us pressed up against the screens that served as barriers between the outside world and the customs area. When we were through customs and walked into the Indian populace, we were met by a group of Bombay Baba lovers who greeted us with a vigorous and glad shout of « Jai Baba ! » (victory to Baba).

My heart opened. Here, in this foreign place was a most intimate welcome. I began to feel that I was coming home.

On the ride from the airport to our Bombay hotel, I began to experience a feeling of ecstasy. At the hotel, we were fed lavishly even though we had been served appealing Indian food many times on the plane.

I was uncomfortable with so much food. In the street in front of the hotel, we had been approached by adults and children begging for pennies who pointed to their open mouths and said, « Uncle, uncle, I am hungry, » but somehow even this could not dint my mood of exhilaration.

As we rode to Victoria Terminus, the huge, ornate train station built by the British during India’s colonial period, I began to sense the meaning of India. It was as if scales had been removed from my eyes, and I could see into the core of Indian life — perhaps all life. What I saw was bliss. This feeling stayed with me during our kaleidoscopic train ride on the Deccan Queen through the ghats (mountains), fields, and hills of the Deccan plateau to the city of Poona where the darshan was to be held.

As we passed through the railway stations along the way, the teeming crowds were remarkably still and quiet with little of the rush that is commonplace in the United States. Even in the late afternoon when the stations are most busy, the crowds were peaceful — like a vast human still life suspended in contented waiting.

In the countryside, the people seemed close to nature. They appeared organic, conscious of the earth and sun, living on the brink of pure naked being. As the sun set and the train moved across the land, I saw family groups gathered on the ground in quiet circles.

Twice I saw a solitary figure with legs crossed, sitting on a hillside or outside a hut meditating or contemplating the setting sun. I realized that nowhere else had I seen people engaged in meditating as a natural part of the passing of the day. How many highrise buildings is this worth ? How many factories ? I visualized these people coming face-to-face with their existence — no false covering between. It is this, I thought, that must be measured against their « poverty. »

The darshan program was scheduled to begin the next day at 9 :00 A.M. in Guruprasad, where Meher Baba would have met with us. Guruprasad is a large Indian residence owned by a Maharani, but given to Meher Baba for his use. It is an ornate structure with statuary in a front garden, and a large tiled porch extending around three sides of the building.

The main room was a small hall and where we gathered. Some of the mandali, including Mani, were already there, greeted us warmly when we arrived, and asked us to sit on carpets on the floor. We faced a large armchair where Baba would have been sitting. A large framed photograph of Meher Baba was placed in the chair encircled with a heart-shaped garland of flowers, and Baba’s sandals were at the foot of the chair.

I felt a twinge of disappointment when I saw the chair with Baba’s picture. We had traveled halfway around the world to see a picture of Baba ? For me he seemed painfully absent. I felt a sense of make-believe ; let us pretend that Meher Baba is here.

The mandali were gathered near Meher Baba’s chair, and as the large wall clock chimed nine times Eruch Jessawalla stood up in front of us and announced, « We have kept an appointment with God. »

That statement touched my heart and eased my feeling of Baba’s absence. One by one, the mandali spoke. Like Eruch, each of the mandali, in their own way, conveyed the absolute sense and conviction of Meher Baba’s reality as God — and as the ever-present God.

This, of course, was the first time that I had seen them, but I recognized most of them from biographical material I had read. They spoke in an easy natural way and expressed the feeling that « we were all in the same boat » when it came to Meher Baba. They didn’t have inside knowledge or special secrets that the rest of us were not privy to. I was surprised, and when I left the gathering, a bit confused. I had unconsciously expected that the mandali would reveal secret information to us. But this was not the case.

What did they know, I wondered ? Surely they must know something.

After a while, Eruch announced that we would now take darshan from Baba. He said that Mehera, who is esteemed as Baba’s closest mandali, would begin.

I watched her go to Baba’s chair and bow down, placing her head at the base of the chair as if at Baba’s feet. Then she stepped aside. There was a pause, an expectancy, and it became clear that each of us was to follow her lead.

I had no idea that this was to be a part of our gathering. One by one our group went to the chair and bowed as Mehera had done. My mind was caught in a frozen position ; I didn’t know what to think.

Some went to the chair and stayed longer than Mehera had. Some laid down in a pranam (flat) position in front of the chair. A deep, solemn atmosphere filled the hall. I saw a number of people weeping as they came away.

Those who had bowed down spontaneously hugged others as they finished. As the rows of people dwindled, my time to take darshan was quickly approaching. My heart beat stronger and stronger. Was it fear ? I didn’t know what it was. I felt that my beating heart was a hand knocking to gain entrance through a door within me. When I returned to the States, I wrote an account of my first darshan with Meher Baba :

I walked up to the chair and kneeled down, and I was overwhelmed. There were several strong physical sensations, one was the knocking supplanted by a fire that rose within my chest and spread to my mind, my consciousness.

Baba was in the chair ! No visions, I did not see him, but I knew he was there[... ] I felt it was the apex of the feelings that had been building in me since landing in India. Here at the base of a seemingly empty chair, Baba showed me Who He was. I wanted to call it supernatural, but in a deep sense it was the most natural thing that ever happened to me. A Sufi-type phrase came into my mind : « When the oil of mind is touched by the fire of love, there is consuming heat and light. »

At some point the physical became purely mental, or spiritual, and I keenly felt the relationship of the lover to the beloved. Someone said that he felt like a son at the foot of a loving father. Another Sufi-like phrase came to me, « The lover assumes many forms in order to catch the eye of the beloved. »

One of the group very cogently noted that it was particularly important for Baba to have this darshan without His physical body so that we could realize the darshan is given to us by ourselves. For me, Baba’s presence in the chair was uncanny, but it was none other than my true Self. Baba, in the body, is an externalization of what is within each of us. He is pure love, the ultimate distillation of what we are.^[8]

The trip to India lasted a week. The week’s schedule included a one-day trip to Meherazad and Meherabad, which are about a hundred miles from Poona, and another darshan at Baba’s chair in Guruprasad on the last day.

In Meherazad, we saw where Baba spent his last years in seclusion, where he died, and where most of the Mandali live and would return to after the darshan in Poona was over. Meher Baba’s tomb is located at Meherabad. Although I felt awe going to where Baba’s body was buried, I did not experience the power and presence of the darshan. It felt like a visit of historical importance rather than spiritual. Taking darshan again in Guruprasad on the last day was not like the first day. It merely felt « normal, » perhaps devotional, but I felt nothing unusual within.

After that first darshan I was in heaven. Meher Baba’s divinity, for me, was confirmed beyond measure. Even though Baba was not there outwardly, I knew that my inner experience was exactly what it would have been had Baba been physically present.

That is what Meher Baba showed me. He did not need to be physically present to give darshan.

Many others had a similar experience, but it is important to note that not all did. Some in the group felt much less — maybe even nothing. It wasn’t automatic. This was similar to when people met Meher Baba physically. Some had a strong, emotional inner reaction and some had little or no reaction. The evidential meaning of these differences in personal reactions is difficult to grasp and contains some of the essence of the mystery of spirituality — and a fundamental challenge to the questioning intellect.

By the end of the week, India began to lose some of its initial incredible charm. More and more I noticed the dust and the heat. The beggars and the crowds began to wear me down and remove me from the serene reaches of the heaven that I was in for a while. I became disturbed by Meher Baba’s brother selling Baba buttons and other memorabilia (even though I liked having my Baba buttons and the pendant picture of Baba that I bought to wear). In that skeptic’s corner of my mind, which I found had not totally vanished despite the darshan, I questioned : Why are they selling us this stuff ? Is this whole thing just a gambit for a group of Indians to make some money off the Westerners ? Faint though these questions were, they were there.

When we landed at Kennedy International, sure enough there was James Ivory waiting to get the follow-up story. His article entitled « Jai Baba ! » appeared, unsigned as per usual, in the Talk of the Town section of the June 21, 1969, issue of « The New Yorker. » I was surprised to find it beautiful and sympathetic. He was evidently open and responsive to the joy and energy our group shared when we returned. In my growing penchant for sensitivity to coincidences, I noted that June 21 was the day after my birthday as well as the Summer Solstice — the day of most sunlight.

Baba lovers who had met Meher Baba and been with him for a time did not waver as I and others did. Their experience of the darshan remained steady, strong, and profound. Darwin and Jeanne Shaw of Schenectady, New York, first met Meher Baba in 1932 and were among the longest-term American/Western Baba lovers. The article in « The New Yorker » ended with Ivory interviewing Darwin about the darshan :

Between the Indian Baba disciples and our group there was a heart-to-heart exchange of pure love reminiscent of the love feasts of the early Christians. Everyone felt that the barriers had been broken down. There was a sense of newly experienced oneness[... ] Throughout our stay, there was the quality of a timeless experience, which became intensified as each day passed. We feel that that will remain with us, even when we are back in the Western world and we return to our everyday lives. And we also feel that Baba’s work will now expand very greatly, because he is no longer encumbered by the gross body but can operate from the level of the spirit as infinite consciousness, which he has always said he really was. And is. « He restoreth my soul » — this is what everyone feels.^[9]

I spent a week in New York visiting parents, family, and old friends. One night, driving along the New Jersey Turnpike outside New York City, I passed the oil refineries that line the turnpike. Smoke and oil fumes poured into the air. At night, with a multitude of gas jet flames and the smoke, this looked like a scene from hell. To me, it seemed evident that because of the pollution and ugliness this was a world that could not continue and must pass away. In 1969, this was my first explicit thought of the environmental problem. I had not yet heard the word ecology.

Later that week as I walked in downtown New York City, I heard the faint sound of live music. The music got louder. I heard drums and brass, and then a marching band turned the corner and came my way. The music was stirring and uplifting, and I began to cry.

As ordinary as it was, this event had the sense of an act of God. It was sheer spontaneity ; its coming right my way a gift. It seemed to exemplify that all of the world is brought to us — given to us, if even in the most seemingly mundane ways.

Before I left for India, I had applied for a job in Albany, New York. When I returned, I received a letter asking for an interview. Darwin and Jeanne Shaw held a weekly Baba meeting at their house in Schenectady, a neighboring city to Albany. If I got the job in Albany, I would be in close proximity to their home.

The Baba meetings at the Shaws were the longest running in the United States or indeed anywhere in the West. This made the job in Albany much more attractive to me. Fortunately, I was hired as a psychologist on the acute inpatient unit of Albany Medical Center and as an associate faculty member at Albany Medical College.

During the time I was in Albany, and certainly in retrospect, I was aware of Meher Baba’s special care and guidance in placing me in an environment that gave me the grounding in his reality, specially and uniquely supplied by regular contact with disciples as close to him as the Shaws. Often out-of-town visitors would come to the Shaws’ just for this contact and experience. Shortly after I arrived in Albany, several people moved into the area specifically to live near them.

When I write about Meher Baba placing me in Albany and Baba’s guidance in the events of my life, it is from the perspective of believing that Meher Baba is God and that God guides all the events of the universe. For he says, as it has been classically revealed, « not a leaf falls without my will. »

Saying this about God’s control of all phenomena raises questions about human free will and where it fits into the whole picture. But the bigger issue raised by this perspective is the question of whether God exists as well as the claim that Meher Baba is God.

I am well aware that the skeptic will see my beliefs that Meher Baba is God and that Baba places me in such and such a situation as a fictitious belief system that seeks to ascribe a directed purpose to events to satisfy a need for order, security, and meaning. As such, it is fundamentally divorced from reality. For the skeptic, the scientific materialist, there is no purpose behind anything in the universe but the natural order that exists.

Scientific materialists certainly admire and wonder at that order, and their research and theory building is based on it. Although, in the past, spiritual and scientific perspectives were at loggerheads, today there is development afoot to reconcile the two or to see the scientific materialistic view and the spiritual one as existing in two different spheres of knowledge — one need not exclude the other.

This development is an interesting one and relates to the grand question of whether God exists or is a figment of one’s mind.^[10] When I write about Meher Baba doing this or that, I know that I am adopting a stance that is either absurd or pathological to the traditional scientific mind.

As to the question of God’s guiding hand, I relate an experience I had when I first moved to Albany. Earlier that summer of 1969, I had driven to Albany and put down a deposit on an apartment before my job began in September. When it was time to move, I packed all my belongings in the old Nash Rambler I had bought with borrowed money and headed to the city.

I arrived at twilight and had a little trouble locating the street where I had rented the apartment. Not quite sure where it was, I pulled into an open parking spot. Someone was walking down the street, and by the time I parked and got out of my car, he had advanced to where I stood on the sidewalk.

I decided to ask him for directions. As I approached him, I saw the face of Meher Baba. He was wearing a Baba button on his shirt — a picture of Meher Baba ! The stranger was as surprised as I was when I said Meher Baba’s name in recognition and equally amazed when I pointed to a large photograph of Baba laying on top of my things piled in the rear seat.

For me, this was Baba’s way of appearing and saying « welcome to Albany » — again letting me know that he was always with me.

The man I met on the sidewalk that night had been a student at State University of New York-Albany and was returning to the area to visit some friends. Indeed, he had come to tell them about Meher Baba. Our meeting was incredible because it was a coincidence of spectacularly low probability.

At that time, Baba lovers were scattered throughout the world, but their relative number was infinitesimally small. To arrive in Albany at dusk, pull into an open parking space because I’m lost and need directions, get out of my car, and at that moment (with a picture of Meher Baba visible in my car), come face to face with someone wearing a Baba button seemed beyond normal to me.

No matter how spectacular or unlikely a coincidence may seem, the skeptic invokes the concept of « event space » or « probability space. » For the believer who experiences the event, it seems unlikely to have happened by chance but rather reveals the presence of God’s guiding hand. The skeptic might then say, « Ah, but you have misunderstood the probability space, a typical human failing — compounded by the human desire to have a father figure controlling the world and providing security. »

For the skeptic, probability-space reasoning properly compares thousands of encounters with people when nothing special happened versus when a « special » event occurs. Rather than believe that the experience could not happen by chance, the so-called specialness is not surprising at all, but likely given the number of times the dice is tossed.

Not surprisingly (probability space or no probability space), a rich Meher Baba community developed in the Albany- Schenectady area over the next two years.

One notable event during this period was a visit by my former boss from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. We had hit it off during my short reign of employment and stayed in touch after my return from India and move to Albany. He was interested in my trip to India, but thought of me as « this good guy who has this odd thing about following an Eastern guru. Oh well, everybody has their thing. »

He was a somewhat serious practitioner of tarot cards, however, and could not, in good conscience, dismiss another’s involvement in something he believed to be esoteric.

During his visit, a Baba meeting was scheduled at the Shaws’. He asked me what occurred at a Baba meeting, and I told him that it was quite a natural and straightforward event — that we gathered informally and chatted, mostly about our lives with Meher Baba. After our discussion, Darwin would read a Meher Baba Discourse and we would have a short, silent meditation. Sometimes, if someone brought a guitar, we sang. Then Jeanne would serve light refreshments in the kitchen where there would be more informal chatting. When it got much too late, Darwin and Jeanne would sweep us out of the house.

Because that seemed safe enough, my friend decided to go. During the more formal part of the meeting, he appeared to be paying rapt attention to the Discourse reading and the discussion.

Later, I saw him in animated discussion with Darwin and Jeanne. On the way home, he told me that he heard Baba’s voice during the meeting — actually a little dialogue back and forth with Baba. He felt Baba’s presence and reality (reminiscent of my inner exchange with Baba at his chair in India). After he returned to Washington, he contacted the Sufis and eventually became a member of Sufism Reoriented.

The next year, 1970, The Who performed their rock opera Tommy, which became a popular contemporary classic on stage and in film. Pete Townshend, the composer and leader of the group, was drawn to Meher Baba in 1968 and accepted him as the Avatar.

In Behind Blue Eyes, a Townshend biography, he is quoted as saying, « Never will I be able to stand back from myself and pretend anymore that God is a myth. That Christ was just another man. That Baba was simply a hypnotic personality. The facts are coming home to me like sledgehammers, not through the words I read in books about Baba, not through even his own words. But through my ordinary daily existence. Meher Baba is the Avatar, God incarnate on our planet. The Awakener. »^[11]

Although it is not common knowledge, Tommy was inspired by and dedicated to Meher Baba, and Baba’s name is listed in the credits as the Avatar. In one of The Who’s anthem songs, « Go to the Mirror Boy, » is a reference to Meher Baba, « Right behind you I see the millions, » and a 1970 issue of « Rolling Stone » featured an article by Townshend entitled « In love with Meher Baba » with Baba’s picture on the cover.^[12]

Another singer, Melanie Safka, became nationally known with the launching of her album, Candles in the Rain. The cover of the album featured Melanie wearing a Baba button and the words « Meher Baba lives again, candles in the rain » from the title song.

And then there was « Woodstock. » Because Albany is relatively close to Bethel, New York, several of us planned to go. Bruce Hoffman, an English professor and Baba lover from down state, printed two-sided cardboard flyers with quotes from Baba and his picture and widely distributed them at the festival.

In the Woodstock documentary opening scenes, as the camera pans around the festival, it briefly stops at a tree showing a poster of Meher Baba. The August 29, 1969, Time magazine story of the event pictured a thatched shelter at the festival with a Meher Baba poster at the entrance.

One appearance in the media soon after Meher Baba dropped his body was a Time cover story in the June 21, 1971, issue entitled, « The Jesus Revolution. » The story discussed the renewed interest by young adults in the life of Jesus. Time titled its essay, « The New Rebel Cry : Jesus Is Coming. » The article’s author wrote of the Jesus movement with its mass baptisms in rivers, Christian coffee houses, and two popular musicals, Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell. The date of the issue, June 21, was interestingly synchronistic to me : It was the solstice as well as the same date that The New Yorker had printed its Meher Baba article two years previously.

The 1971 Time article did not mention Meher Baba nor the claim that Meher Baba is Jesus come again because that claim had not then, any more than now, risen above the threshold of recognition within our culture. As for me, however, there was a telling sign in the article. The four-page centerfold section of the article was a layout of color photographs of various happenings within the Jesus movement. The section ends with a full-page image of Jesus Christ in Godspell « crucified » on a chain-link fence.

The caption was, « Unlike Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell has a hopeful ending suggesting resurrection. » If you looked closely, the photograph of star Stephen Nathan, who portrayed Jesus in the musical, showed Meher Baba’s face printed on a button pinned to Nathan’s red suspenders-right over his heart.

My work at the Albany Medical Center was intense. I led a therapy group and managed a psychodrama program in the acute inpatient unit, met with and evaluated individual patients, and occasionally taught at the medical school. The hospital’s psychiatric program was excellent, well run, and relatively progressive. I have fond memories of my colleagues.

The Albany Medical Center was not far from the Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, where the famous, or infamous, dissident psychiatrist Thomas Szasz taught. Szasz wrote The Myth of Mental Illness. Some of the doctors associated with the program in Albany had been his students. At times, these doctors presented a questioning, critical attitude toward traditional psychiatric procedures.

Although the « old » was still present, the age of biological psychiatry was beginning, eventually gathering steam to become the dominant point of view today. This movement has swept away almost all alternative approaches to psychiatric disturbance and largely rejected Szasz’s critique of the « illness model. » Clinical psychology, with its less biological underpinning than traditional medicine, has fared somewhat better but not much.

At that time, I was very much the young radical with energy, enthusiasm, and an optimistic desire to change the world. The Avatar had come, and he was about to break his silence. It was the job of his disciples, like myself, to be the avant garde of this coming revolution in consciousness — Baba’s « New Humanity. »

My office at the Albany Medical Center was next to that of a well-known doctor who was a cystic fibrosis expert. Because he was in general medicine, and I was a psychologist many years his junior, we did not appear to have much in common and seldom talked at any length. Yet, he seemed friendly toward me and went out of his way to make rne feel welcome at the hospital.

About a year after my arrival, the doctor approached me and confided that before my move to Albany, he had been questioned by the FBI, who implied nefariousness and asked if he had any knowledge of my previous activities. He told them he knew nothing about me because we had never met. It was an astounding revelation for me.

It seems that after the FBI performed the security check and told my department to let me go, they then proceeded with this action, which could have no other purpose than to taint my future employment. Fortunately, when they spoke to this doctor he was offended by the government harassment and so bided his time, got to know me, and then told me.

In spite of the hospital’s progressive psychiatry program, I felt it was still out of tune with the times. Although it was a medical institution and not part of the general profit-oriented economy, it still seemed to function under the « industrial » system. Patients were shuffled in and out assembly-line fashion and the staff was pressured to keep them moving through the system.

Early psychiatric drugs such as Thorazine and Mellaril were used, as was electric shock. This was long before the days of managed care, which explicitly places medicine within the corporate-for-profit care framework.

So, after nearly three years at the Medical Center, this young, impatient, naive radical was burned out. In 1971, a couple I knew, good friends from graduate school, joined forces with two other families and moved to Maine. They bought wooded land on the coast in Hancock County not far from where Scott and Helen Nearing had their homestead. The Nearings practiced back-to-the-land living and wrote the book Living the Good Life.

The three families planned to build homes, begin gardening and farming, and build an alternative community. After their move, I visited several times and found their life and their plans appealing.

I considered changing the direction of my career and my life. A big decision : What should I do ? Should I stay in Albany where I had a well-paying job and a strong Meher Baba group even though my work was increasingly unsatisfying ? Or should I move back to Myrtle Beach to be near the Meher Baba Spiritual Center ? I even considered « dropping out » altogether and moving to India.

After considerable deliberation and meditation, I decided to leave the Medical Center and move to Maine. The final clincher was that land adjacent to my friends’ acreage became available for purchase. I could buy the land and eventually, with the help of the others, build my own house.

Meher Baba said that after all due consideration, once a decision is made one should let go of all second-guessing and move ahead wholeheartedly. No matter what one decides to do, Baba is always there to help and guide, which gives one confidence to take risks and approach life with a sense of adventure.

Not that careful and practical matters are to be overlooked. Not at all. Meher Baba cautioned us to be practical, but to make decisions and live life with a full sense of confidence. As for making mistakes, because of his influence, I now believe that there is no such thing as a mistake. God requires only that we are careful and thoughtful in considering our options (using reason) while listening to the voice of our heart (intuition, not our emotions). Once we make our decision, we are to go with it and do our very best.

In the summer of 1972, I moved to Maine. I didn’t have a job — actually I didn’t want one. I had some money saved and friends. I would soon own my first piece of property. This time when I moved, I pulled a rental trailer. As I drove up the winding dirt road to the old farmhouse where my friends lived while building their new home, the back wheels of the trailer went off the road and into a ditch.

I was stuck and had to walk the rest of the way. Welcome to Maine !

Over twenty-five years later, I am still here. And, I did get the trailer out of the ditch.

[modifier] The Love That It Takes

When I met Kitty and Elizabeth in 1968, I knew only that they were two matronly ladies who had lived with Meher Baba in India. Each had a distinct personality. Elizabeth was austere, dignified, even regal. Kitty, on the other hand much like her nickname, was warm, personable, and profoundly interested in those she met and spoke with. I immediately liked them both and soon observed that all the close disciples of Baba were natural and human, each in their own way.

I met their assistant, Jane Haynes, a woman in her early forties, who first visited the Center shortly after Norina died in 1957. Jane, like Norina, had been an actress and a stage director and had moved to Myrtle Beach with the actress Zasu Pitts to open a regional theater. When I first met Jane, she was active in a project called "Happy Club," which invited children from the local black community to the Center once a week for a fun visit. Perhaps sensing my activist values, she took me with her when she visited several of these children from extremely poor families and invited me to attend the dedication of a playground in that neighborhood in which her teenage son, Charles, participated in the ceremony. I was overwhelmed with the pain of life and the vibrant love demonstrated by these followers of Baba.

I sensed the inner message, "You see, this is the love that it takes to be really able to help people."

[modifier] Karma Sensitive Psychotherapy

Meher Baba said much about karma, although usually in terms of sanskaras, the minute mental impressions that make up karma. From the standpoint of reincarnation, we come into this life with a multitudinous background of all our past lives and their sanskaras. This background determines the conditions of our birth as well as making up the bulk of our unconscious. From this perspective, the growing interest in "past life therapy" makes sense.

While I can see the value in such an approach, which usually involves the use of hypnosis, I generally prefer to work in a more natural way. Baba makes it clear that the reason that we don't ordinarily have conscious recall of our past lives is that the circumstances of this life are an adequate way of dealing with our karma, or material that forms the structure of our ego. Eventually, when I developed a firmer intellectual grasp of what I was doing in my work as a therapist, I wrote a brochure called "Karma Sensitive Psychotherapy," and used that name to advertise in Maine's holistic, « New Age » newspaper. The themes that I have been discussing in this chapter come together in what was written in that brochure:

~

In many ways Karma Sensitive Psychotherapy appears to be no different from most other psychotherapy. That is, it uses the common psychotherapeutic methods of conversation and dialogue and does not involve any practices that might be considered esoteric or unusual, such as meditation, visualization, hypnosis, or extensive dream interpretation.

Where Karma Sensitive Psychotherapy does differ from conventional psychotherapy is in its interpretation of the meaning of life situations and problems.

Conventional psychotherapy typically relies — as does the conventional approach to life — on the assumption that this life that we are now living is the only life that we have lived and the only life that we will live. The question of what happens at death or afterward is left to religion to interpret or explain and is not brought into the framework of psychotherapy. By ignoring the issue of death and afterward, conventional psychotherapy wittingly or unwittingly adopts the philosophical position that is held by science that material existence is all there is.

However, as the prominence and pervasiveness of religion in human affairs gives ample evidence, the question of death and afterward is fundamental to the issue of the meaning of life. By relying on the scientific assumption of materialism, which ignores the questions of death, psychotherapy accepts the position that the meaning of life is, at best, limited.

A DIFFERENT FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTION

It is here where Karma Sensitive Psychotherapy offers a distinct and radical departure from conventional psychotherapy. Karma Sensitive Psychotherapy involves an assumption that differs from the conventional Western religious assumptions and certainly from the conventional scientific assumptions. It assumes that this life we are now leading is only one of a succession of many lives that we have led and will lead.

In this assumption it shares the beliefs held by millions of Hindus, Buddhists, and other religious faiths, though it is not affiliated with any one of these faiths specifically. Its most specific influence is that of the spiritual teacher of India, Meher Baba, who himself was not affiliated with any specific faith. Meher Baba said, "I am not come to establish any cult, society or organization; nor even to establish a new religion. The religion I shall give teaches the Knowledge of the One behind many."

The fundamental assumption is that our existence began with the beginning of the universe. As the life forms gradually evolved, consciousness also evolved until both life and consciousness reached the human stage, as the thrust of evolution is always forward.

When we are born into a particular life we are unconscious of the experiences of our past lives and have no memory of them. However, all the conditions of our birth, including our race, nationality, sex, and the nature and makeup of our family, are determined by our past lives. This also includes our particular instincts and the kinds of tendencies we have to respond to the conditions we find ourselves in.

Thus our genetic and family makeup is a result of our past lives. As we go through life we deal with all of these issues, and the purpose of life itself is the same as the purpose of evolution. All of this can be referred to as karma.

YOUR KARMIC SITUATION

When you enter psychotherapy with a problem, that problem involves what can be called your karmic situation. This situation encompasses your environment, yourself, and the interaction between the two. Your karmic situation presents you with certain tasks at this point in your life that you need to engage in and master in order to resolve the karmic impasse you find yourself in, and move on with your personal evolution.

Karma Sensitive Psychotherapy endeavors to assess the nature and dimensions of your current problems in terms of the larger picture of your karmic situation and karmic tasks. It does this through the development and use of intuition and rational analysis. This therapy is not past-life regression, and does not involve hypnosis or the attempt to remember past lives. All the issues, problems, and tasks accumulated over past lives are present in some form in this life, and can be addressed in this life, as we are meant naturally to do.

THE DEEPER MEANING OF INTUITION

As has been explained in classical reincarnation doctrine and by Meher Baba, the beginning and end of the individual soul are coexistent with the beginning and end of the finite universe itself. Beyond or outside of this there is nothing less than Infinite Being — the foundation or Source from which the soul derives its individual existence. Therefore, at the root of our own individual being is Infinite Being. It is this Infinite Being that we need to learn to draw on in order to get guidance, find answers, and solve our problems. The process of doing this is the deeper meaning of intuition. Karma Sensitive Psychotherapy helps you develop this ability in order to actively find ongoing guidance from the Source within.

Through deepened intuition, and the practice of looking at your life from a larger karmic perspective, you become more easily able to make meaningful and helpful choices, both internally and externally, in responding to your problems and life situations.

~

There are exceptions to my general practice of not using "unusual" methods. From time to time, certain clients come to me who have psychic or meditative abilities. It is natural for them to put these abilities into practice in the course of therapy. While doing so, some spontaneously have memories of past lives. It has been a wonder for me to witness and be a part of this. I have seen living proof of a part, at least, of what Meher Baba and others have described as the deeper, usually hidden structure of our lives. These memories that have emerged in my office directly connect to issues, tendencies, and problematic feelings in the client's present life. I consider it my privilege to have seen this, and also my privelege to pass this on to you.

Kenneth Lux. © 2001 Kenneth Lux

1. ↑ ^{Filis Frederick, editor, « The Awakener : A Journal Devoted to Meher Baba, » vol. 22, no. 1 (Hermosa Beach, CA), p. 34}
2. ↑ ^{Mani S. Irani, Eighty-Two Family Letters to the Western Family of Lovers and Followers of Meher Baba (Myrtle Beach, SC : Sheriar Press, 1976), letter of January 26, 1969, p. 341}
3. ↑ ^{Mani S. Irani, Eighty-Two Family Letters to the Western Family of Lovers and Followers of Meher Baba (Myrtle Beach, SC : Sheriar Press, 1976). letter of January 26, 1969, p. 342.}
4. ↑ ^{Irani, letter of March 14, 1969, p. 345.}
5. ↑ ^{Irani, letter of August 26, 1969, p. 362.}
6. ↑ ^{Mani S. Irani, Eighty-Two Family Letters to the Western Family of Lovers and Followers of Meher Baba (Myrtle Beach, SC : Sheriar Press, 1976), letter of March 14, 1969, p. 342.}
7. ↑ ^{Meher Baba, 1954 Special Message, from a pamphlet, Meher Baba Calling (Ahmednagar, India : Meher Nazar Books, 1962).}
8. ↑ ^{Filis Frederick, editor, « The Awakener : A Journal Devoted to Meher Baba, » vol. 13, no. 1-2. (Hermosa Beach, CA).}
9. ↑ ^{James Ivory, « Jai Baba ! » « The New Yorker, » June 21, 1969, p. 31.}
10. ↑ ^{This issue is discussed further in Chapters 11 and 12.}
11. ↑ ^{Geoffrey Giuliano, Behind Blue Eyes : The Life of Pete Townshend, New York : Penguin Group, 1996), p. 109.}
12. ↑ ^{Peter Townshend, « In Love with Meher Baba, » Rolling Stone, vol. 71, November 26, 1970, pp.25-27.}