Photo courtesy of Frank Bloise 

Heroines of the Path:

Princess Norina Matchabelli

By Filis Frederick

... Her wide acquaintance among the elite of Europe - the avant-garde artists, the aristocrats and intelligentsia, also proved useful, especially in the "film project" which kept going for many years. (Karl Vollmoeller helped on scripts.) Her savoir faire was useful on His many trips through Europe, as she spoke English, German, Russian, Italian and French fluently. In her enthusiasm for Baba, she brought many people to meet Him, some obviously not destined for the path; this led to some amusing encounters. One concerned the Queen of Romania, who was big socially then. The queen sent Baba a telegram "the Queen of Romania is prepared to receive Baba."

Baba replied, "Meher Baba is prepared to receive the Queen of Romania" (at Portofino, Italy). Of course she didn't come.

Another time Norina introduced a friend who was a passionate devotee of classical music. The interview was going poorly, the lady's attention was wandering. Baba said to Norina "Get that record!" "That record?" Norina gasped. "Yes!!" She put "La Cucaracha" on the phonograph. The lady excused herself and left. Baba's eyes twinkled.

One can smile at Norina's naiveté about whom to bring to Baba, but it is interesting to note, first, Baba gave in to her whims, and second, how lucky these people were to meet Him, ready or not! Sometimes He refused, for example, in India, she begged Baba to meet Krishnamurti (he once was acclaimed as Avatar of the Age by the Theosophists, a position he wisely repudiated). Baba said, "Leave him alone, he is on the fifth plane and will stay there until he dies."

It was she who told me Einstein met Baba.* His daughter Maria had been drawn to her in her role of the Madonna. She said Einstein remarked, "All I know is nothing compared to what Baba knows."

She introduced a very well-known Italian philosopher to Baba. He literally entered talking about God, God this and God that, spouting metaphysics. Suddenly Baba threw His alphabet board into a corner of the room and the man stopped talking instantly. Tears came into his eyes. Silently he experienced Baba's real darshan - an overwhelming wave of divine love. He bowed to Baba as he left, apologized and said, "Now I know what Divine Love is."

Norina with Meher Baba and Elizabeth Patterson, 1947-1948; Photo courtesy of Charles Haynes 

One day at Winstead, Connecticut, where Elizabeth and Norina had established a summer retreat, she told us a mother and daughter would visit us. This is the mother's story: she was five months pregnant and was driving herself and a woman friend, a well-known opera singer, over the Alps to Rome, to meet Baba. There was a bad accident and the friend was killed. Overcome with guilt and remorse, the woman met Baba, who told her, only He could do it, but He would switch the soul of her unborn child with the soul of her friend. Her daughter was thus her old friend.

One of the souls drawn to Baba through Norina was Anita de Caro (now Mme. Vieillard) who met her in New York in the Thirties.

"I was a very young girl when I first met Norina. I met her through a school friend, who wanted to be an actress; I wanted to be an artist. Norina had been very well known before meeting Baba. I would like to give you a little description of her. She was very tall, extremely beautiful. When you saw Norina, Baba and Mehera together, they looked like three beautiful creatures coming out of a painting of DaVinci. They all had a kind of long, slim, thin-boned expression and a great beauty when they were all together . . . Norina . . . had great beauty, she had culture, she had a romantic theatrical attitude towards things. Everything for her had to have style . . . But really, in her heart there was the longing and desire for something that she herself didn't know.

"You see, because of her culture, because of her background, because of always wanting the high and not realizing it had to be low, you can see what she had to go through. When she met Baba she cried and cried . . . I remember how she told me - we would speak Italian together - she said to me, 'O darling, at last I have found what I have always been looking for . . . ' But the God she was looking for was a God she saw only in the high, and she couldn't see it in the low, so how difficult it was for her, only for Baba could she accept it. . . . '

Norina was one of the privileged Westerners who joined Baba in India in the Nasik Ashram in 1936, together with her dear friend Elizabeth. This was a very intense period of Baba's work with the group. Norina with her very strong personality and autocratic manner was often a storm center for the emotional conflicts Baba brought up. At times, Baba had put her in charge of household affairs - a very vulnerable position!

Meher Baba with Norina (left ) & Elizabeth (right) in India. Photo courtesy MSI Collection

Bringing up the "shadow" side of a disciple by actualizing it in some crisis - even a petty domestic one, so that person can face the negative in himself, is one way Baba peels the ego. "Elimination of the ego is My specialty" He once told an English reporter. He used to joke and say "Other ashrams are a vacation - nice, quiet meditation, yoga, etc. Here we do real work." Painful work on the ego of course.

Baba sometimes made use of dreams. Norina told me she wakened one morning to find Baba standing outside her window. "Tell me your dream," He said. At first she couldn't - it was a vivid sex dream. At last she did, and Baba said, "Even on the sixth plane, one still has lust".

Baba disbanded this ashram by July, 1937. The next group stay was in Cannes, to which He brought His Eastern women, - their first trip West. They were still in strict seclusion, and on shipboard Norina shared guard duty by sleeping on the floor outside their cabin; she actually did repel one bibulous passenger. I recall her humorous retelling of this and similar contretemps on this trip. She and Elizabeth returned to India, and took part in the strenuous "blue bus" tours of 1938-41. Baba sometimes sent her, together with Dr. Deshmukh, to give talks here and there.

In 1941 He sent His trio, Elizabeth, Nadine and Norina - back to America to do His work. In India Norina had already given talks, so it was natural she was the one to give them now in America, usually in the Carnegie Music Hall on 57th Street. Smaller meetings were held at the home on 67th Street, and gradually a core of interested lovers developed, of which I was one. Norina's inspirational style of speaking was unique. She herself called it "thought-transmission." She rejected any suggestion it was mediumistic. When speaking, the personal "I" switched to "I, Meher Baba." This caused some controversy among her peers, one of whom queried Baba in India about it. Baba sent a cable in reply, which said in essence:

"Norina serves Me through spiritual thought-transmission,

Nadine serves Me through surrender,

and Elizabeth through sacrifice."

When the Master came in 1952, one of her friends, Louise N. also questioned Baba about this "voice" phenomena. Baba indicated it was true. Norina herself wrote about it in an article, "The Voice" (Meher Baba Journal, 1937) as follows:

"Shri Meher Baba has said, 'for twelve years no word has passed my lips. Yet I am never silent. I speak eternally. The Voice that is heard deep within the soul is My Voice, the Voice of inspiration, of intuition, of guidance. Through those who are receptive to the Voice , I speak.

"I am in you the Divine Voice. When I am in you in your own individual conscience the individual show of lure to reorder and change in your own indispensable good, in your own indispensable bad, then I in you sow the pure Divine indispensable Intuition that creates in you the lure , and gives you the individual experience; and in experience does the Work in your show as indispensable Result."

This is the style of her stage talks and dictations, the volume Fragments from a Spiritual Diary and 40 Messages. If one called her a modern poet, her style wouldn't seem so controversial. She always projected a strong sense of love for Baba. Whatever one feels about it as a phenomenon it certainly had drawing power. So many souls were drawn to Baba that when He gave public darshan at Meher Center in May 17, 1952, over 700 people came.

Together with Elizabeth, whose gift to Baba this beautiful Center was, Norina helped prepare it for His coming. It was her sure artistic touch that kept the natural look, the air of a true spiritual retreat. And so it has remained to this day.

She was at His house to welcome Him as He entered it for the first time, in April, 1952. He said next to Meherazad He felt most truly at home here. She was still struggling with the ill health that had plagued most of her life. In 1947, when Baba had recalled her and Elizabeth to India just before the New Life, her own doctor warned her not to go. She had a heart four times natural size, high blood pressure and other complications. Her "thought-transmission" had ended and this had depressed her emotionally. Nevertheless she bravely went to Baba in India and He very tenderly ordered her a complete rest, even six weeks of silence. He visited her almost everyday.

She returned well enough to give some talks in New York before Baba came again in 1952 to America.

But in '52 her health required hospitalization and she was not there to introduce all those dear souls her work had drawn to Him. An interesting point about "health" and the Master: once when very ill a friend had had Norina's horoscope cast and the astrologer predicted her death at that time. But Baba told her that once a devotee surrenders their life to Him the horoscope does not apply. He said He had saved her life four times. (She had also been extremely ill when a child and at that time had had an inner vision of Jesus).

She had a unique place in His Circle as "the changing one." The best explanation of this phrase I could get is that if someone, so to speak, moves out of position in the Circle, Norina could take their place. But as with so many of Baba's cryptic statements, the mystery remains. Norina passed away in 1957, one year after Baba's second visit to the Center in Myrtle Beach. To the end she was fiercely loyal to Baba, through all her sufferings, physical and mental. Even in the darkest "night of the soul" her faith and obedience never wavered, and as such she remains a great example to us all.

Next week we will share from an account of the life of Margaret Craske,

from The Awakener Magazine, Volume 20, Number 2