Spread My love
De Simple Silence.
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[modifier] The Mandali Are Missing
Throughout the European trip, the men mandali traveled separately from our party. They were due to arrive in London at 1 :00 a.m., and Baba asked Will Backett to meet them at the airport. Just as in Myrtle Beach, I had a premonition something would go wrong, but Baba denied my repeated requests to accompany the Backetts.
In the morning, Baba called us into his room and asked, « Did the mandali come ? »
Everyone assured Baba they had heard luggage being moved during the night and surely the mandali were in the hotel at that very moment. « Bring them to me ! » said Baba.
Rano went to call the mandali, got no answer, and hurried to the desk, where she was told they never arrived. Baba had us all scurrying about trying to find out what happened. We phoned around, but no one had seen a group of Indian men wandering about. Then Baba sent just about everybody out in taxis to search for them. Only Delia and I remained behind.
While this was going on, Baba was unusually forceful about the problem. He’d turn to Delia and say, « It’s all your fault ! » Delia was miserable. After Rano and Dr. Donkin returned, he declared, « It’s all Rano’s fault. » Then Rano too looked miserable. Every time I tried to open my mouth, he’d give me a glare that clearly warned me not to say a single word. After a while, it became all Donkin’s fault. Then it was the women mandali’s fault. Then it was the men mandali’s fault. Then it became Baba’s fault. And lastly, it was God’s will.
Baba often assigned blame to people for incidents in which they were barely involved. If you answered back, you were needled a bit. But if you simply accepted the blame, he would glow and immediately shift the fault to someone else. You were left with the exhilarating knowledge that you had actually triumphed over your formidable ego.
After some time, the Backetts returned, and we all held our breath, expecting a renewed explosion from Baba. But in the sweetest, mildest way, he said, « Will, I don’t quite understand how this happened. »
Will said he’d waited two hours at the gate, but somehow the mandali had passed him by. He was dreadfully sorry. Baba sent the Backetts out of the room and then blamed us all anew. By now, however, we were aware of the divine chess game being played. A sense of fun began to bubble to the surface, and we found ourselves not wringing our hands or hanging our heads in shame, but laughing. That was when he called Will and Mary back in to give them their share of the scolding. At least that’s what we thought he would do. Instead, he sat them on either side of him, took their hands, and told us, « These are my archangels. »
Only a few minutes later, the exhausted and disheveled mandali came straggling down the hall. They’d reported to another hotel where Baba planned to hold his interviews and, finding no trace of him, had spent most of the night searching London. They finally tracked us down by going clear out to Delia’s flat in Richmond, where her brother directed them to the proper hotel.
Baba sent us all out of the room, and the mandali went in to face him alone. Time passed without so much as a peep. Then suddenly the door opened and out they shuffled, heads drooping.
« What happened ? » we asked.
With one breath, they moaned, « Baba says it’s all our fault ! »
They were completely unprepared for our response. We roared with laughter and couldn’t stop even when we saw their pained expressions. Finally we explained, « You don’t understand ! All morning long, Baba’s been saying, ‘It’s all Rano’s fault.’ ‘It’s all Delia’s fault.’ Then it was Donkin’s, Mehera’s, Mani’s, Meheru’s, Goher’s, Charmian’s, and Baba’s fault. Then it was God’s will. »
« Really ? » they asked.
Whereupon they cheered up a bit, and off they went.
God, as the Avatar, exhibits human emotions and behaviors. When these human traits are expressed through his human form, we experience them very differently than the way we usually experience these emotions and behaviors. The blame Baba directed at us was imbued with his love and a deeper purpose we could sense, even if we couldn’t completely understand it. It held none of the binding anger and pride that normally compel humans to blame others.
[modifier] Baba's Beach
The next morning, we all followed Baba down to the ocean shore, where he said he wanted to find seven seashells to bring home to India for Mehera. First he walked into the warm water and threw a stone out into the Atlantic. Then he sat down on the sand while we all set out to find seven worthy shells.
Normally Myrtle Beach is a treasure trove of exquisite shells. The sand is littered with ebony mussels, gold cockles, angel wings, slipper shells, and scotch bonnets. You can even occasionally find the rare lightning whelk, prized because it grows in a counterclockwise direction. I had found superb shells on my previous visits, and now I was hoping someone might find one of the amazing conches that wash ashore now and then, sometimes all the way from Florida. But there was nothing. It didn’t seem that there was one good shell on the entire beach. People filed back cupping shells that were broken and decrepit, nothing but beat-up relics of the pounding surf. I was very disappointed, but still we brought them to Baba and laid them out on the sand.
Gradually the pile of shells around Baba grew. « They’re so worn out, » I thought. It never occurred to me until later that something has to be worn out to earn God’s deepest regard. One has to fully complete one stage before moving on to the next, and that’s probably just as true for the dainty creatures of the sea.
[modifier] Another One For India
When the music was over, he [Baba] asked each of us to come forward for our final embrace. Some approached him directly, while others flung themselves down full length in front of him. I was watching this with the Australian poet Francis Brabazon, and each time someone prostrated themselves, he would say, « Ah ! Another one for India. »
When I asked him what he meant, he said those who flung themselves down in the Indian manner were likely to be reborn in India in their next life. I have no idea if he was joking or if he really knew something.
[modifier] Remarcabale Coincidence
The gifts from a Master continue to arrive and multiply long after he has left the earth. For the Sufi order, these included the evolution of artistic talents that enabled us to celebrate his life and our own devotion more fully. For me life brought new and unexpected sources of love and the most touching reminders of how he had shaped my destiny.
Within a few months of the Last Darshan, a new stage of my life began when Duncan and I were married. We took our vows on September 13, 1969, and lived our first year of marriage in a house in Lafayette, east of San Francisco, across the Bay Bridge. After our wedding, we received the following cable from Ahmednagar:
CHARMIAN DUNCAN MAY BELOVED BABA'S LOVE BLESSINGS BE ON YOU HIS VERY DEAR CHILDREN YOUR MEHERAZAD FAMILY WISH YOU HAPPY MARRIED LIFE IN BABA'S LOVE SERVICE MEHERA MANI
Baba's blessing on the marriage had already made itself apparent, first through Mehera's recognition of Duncan at the Last Darshan and then through a remarkable coincidence that occurred one night shortly before our wedding. On that night, Dee (Duncan's nickname) and I were sitting at dinner, and I was feeling great happiness. My contentment made me think back in contrast to that terrible mid-divorce day in 1965 when I was crying miserably over a magazine picture of a joyous young man rolling down a sunlit hill.
I decided to tell Dee this story and began to describe the picture. I didn't get very far. Dee took over and described the photo and accompanying article in far more detail than I could have. He could do so, I was stunned to learn, because he was the man in the photograph! It turned out that years earlier, he'd been living on a ranch near Cloverdale when a photographer came up to shoot pictures and asked Dee to pose for him. One of those pictures showed him rolling down a bright green California hill with poppies growing in the sunlight. It was this picture, later published in a magazine, that had so utterly broken my heart. And now the man who seemed once to embody all that was beyond my grasp was to be my husband. With what sweetness had Baba laid his plan!
[modifier] Share Some Of My Suffering Happily
Mother and Dad returned to the United States still determined to make a go of it with the house in Woodside. In 1959 my husband and I made the decision to move to California to try to make a better life for ourselves. Mother and Dad invited us to stay with them until we got settled, an idea that seemed quite practical at the time.
There were eight of us living together in Woodside, and then there was the ninth, the most difficult personality of all — the house itself. My husband and Mark and I were almost immediately swept up in the chaos that enveloped it, like Dorothy and Toto pulled into that spinning tornado. Everything electrical seemed possessed — the washing machine, dryer, garbage disposal, deep freeze, stove, furnace, shavers, even the baby's bottle warmer. Anything with a motor also got in on the fun — the lawn mower, pool vacuum, and water pumps. Then came the march of the bugs — ants, bees, yellow jackets, and oak moths — followed by the parade of animals, including gophers and snakes.
Complicating every crisis further was the clash of personalities among the eight of us, made worse by our strenuous circumstances. In addition, things weren't working out financially for my husband and me. We weren't certain whether we should even stay in California. I finally wrote to Baba, who cabled that we should stick it out until the end of November. That was three months away, and I thought I could just bear it.
In August more news of Baba reached us, this time through Mani's Family Letters, and it was good news indeed.
What is more wonderfully reminiscent of real "old times" is something we have not seen for several years, something we had resigned ourselves to never perhaps expecting to see: Baba walking back and forth to the mandali's unaided and unaccompanied. The sound of that sudden clap so dearly familiar and we run out to find Him walking over to our cottage, open umbrella in hand and with a not-so-noticeable limp. We are not quite used to all this and can still find ourselves joyously startled when He suddenly gets up and walks over by Himself to another room. This is not only contrary to our most optimistic expectations, but contrary to the emphatic opinions and advice of eminent doctors and specialists who had been concerned in the matter and knew the extent of the injury. One of them who has seen the transformation said, "It is exactly the condition that would have resulted from the operation we advised. It seems He has performed His own operation!"
During this period, my son, Mark, was trying out his walking legs for the first time, and I was toddling along with him, trying to learn the right steps of parenting and hoping I wouldn't stumble too badly. One day I took him to a park, where I learned a lesson I've always remembered. I was talking to another mother when Mark started toward a slide and began to climb the ladder. When I ran to fetch him, the other mother called out, "Where are you going?"
"To rescue him and get him down," I explained.
"Why?" she asked. "My son slid down at age one."
I looked at her both puzzled and frightened.
She explained, "Your job isn't to stop him from climbing. It's to stand underneath and catch him if he falls."
From that brief encounter in the park, my parenting philosophy took root. Let the children climb and let them do it alone. But be there to catch them if they fall.
While I worked to learn the keys to successful parenting, Mother and Dad continued their exertions to shape a life around the house in Woodside. Now financial troubles were added to their woes. Consulting jobs promised to my father unexpectedly fell through. He and Mother calculated their newly strained finances and concluded it was impossible to maintain their beloved dream home. Mother wrote to Baba, and that's when he told her to sell the house "as it has served its purpose."
Mother sold the house like lightning and arranged for Dad and her to move to an apartment in San Francisco. The dream was over, but so at last were the years of stress and sacrifice trying to realize it. Mani told us that when one of Mother's letters detailing some of these Woodside woes was read to Baba, he said, "It has to be, for lovers like her have to share some of my suffering happily."
Charmian Duce Knowles. © 2004 Sufism Reoriented
