MEHER SPIRITUAL CENTER
Meher Baba's Home in the West
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September Newsletter 2021 |
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"What is spirituality? It is the undoing of what you have been doing since ages. You always thought of selfish motives for eating, preserving your life, and attending to every need with zeal. All these lives you have made a habit of looking [out for] yourself. If the slightest thing goes against your habit you are upset. Now, to undo all these selfish bindings, you have to do what you have not been doing, or not to do what you have been doing.
What you have been doing always is thinking of yourself; so now you must not think of yourself, but think of others. This is what is called love. But it needs character, poise, perseverance. Poise—what is it? That state of mind where nothing excites you, nothing upsets you. Only [if you have poise] can you help others, then only can you make others happy. That means love. Thinking not of yourself but of others."
Meher Baba
Lord Meher, p. 2095
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Dear Meher Center Family and Friends,
A loving Jai Baba from Meher Center. The Center has been open to day-time visitors for the past year, but by this time next week, we will finally be welcoming overnight guests for the first time in nineteen months. There is great joy in the air as Center staff and volunteers are busy making final preparations for the October 1 date: when pilgrims return to experience the sacredness of overnight retreat in the company of their Beloved.
In 1952, when Meher Baba was first physically at Meher Center, He said to Filis Frederick and Adele Wolkin, two women who were meeting Him for the first time:
Nothing matters but love for God. Masts have this love. One must drown in the lake of fire and come out unscathed to reach God.
Hundreds of years from now people will be talking about what we did here, what happened while the Master was here. And then I will come again—and again, and again—and so will you all. *
In Baba’s love and service,
Buz Connor
For Meher Center board and staff
*Lord Meher, p. 3076
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In this quiet hour at Meherazad, Eruch Jessawala, Baba’s beloved disciple and interpreter for decades, talks to a group of Eastern and Western lovers about Baba’s work: how suffering is Baba’s tool to awaken us; how the seeker slowly becomes the sought; and how the whole purpose is just to love Him.
Video, 1:06:12
Meherazad, India, January 21, 1993
Courtesy of Sheriar Foundation
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The House of the Gatekeepers
By Jamie Keehan
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When Meher Baba visited the Center for the first time in 1952, Elizabeth Patterson asked Him if He wanted her to move onto the Center property that she had spent so many years preparing for Him. “No,” He replied, “Not until I tell you to.”[i]
Baba specified that, when the time came, Elizabeth should build a house near His own. Elizabeth asked whether that wouldn’t take away from His seclusion and privacy. Baba answered: “You will be my gatekeeper.”[ii] Eight years later, in 1960, He sent the message that it was time to build.
Elizabeth immediately got to work designing a house for herself and Kitty Davy, another of Baba’s dear Western disciples asked by Him to tend to the Center. She hired Truman Moore, who had constructed Baba’s house, to build on just the spot that Baba had indicated. Kitty wrote that “the long-awaited dream of Elizabeth and myself to move to the Center was about to be fulfilled.”[iii] Elizabeth wrote, “It will be a joy to build.”[iv]
From the very beginning, the house was on the minds of Baba’s women Mandali in India who frequently and lovingly corresponded with their Western sisters on the Center. Mani described a conversation she and Rano had regarding names for the house. Mani thought of “Meherana,” meaning “Meher Come,” the deepest wish of Elizabeth, Kitty, and all the other lovers waiting breathlessly on the Center for His return. Rano thought of “Dilruba,” the Persian name that Baba had given to His dear and stalwart Elizabeth. It meant “Stealer of Hearts,” and it stuck.[v]
Like every building on the Center, Dilruba was constructed with meticulous care. The walls were painted light colors to offset the shadows of the lush oceanside trees. The furniture was refinished to match. Bathroom after bathroom was added to account for the lovers who would live at Dilruba over the years and all those who would visit. And, finally, it was ready.
Soon after Kitty and Elizabeth moved into Dilruba, Mani wrote of the women Mandali’s experience from India: “It seemed to me we could smell the scent of the pinewood, see the glimmer on the lake water, and catch a crimson glimpse of the cardinal as I did on my first morning at the Center—and stepped into Dilruba to greet all His stolen hearts.”[vi]
Elizabeth sent a black-and-white photograph of Dilruba to India along with one of the bricks that had been used to build it. Mehera lovingly kept the photograph. Mani wrote of “the sample of Dilruba’s complexion, of that softly blushing pink,” and said that “Beloved Baba touched it…”[vii] Elizabeth wrote in a letter to Jane Haynes: “I really feel that the house has been blessed by Baba when He touched the brick sample.”[viii]
Years passed, and the sweet, indefinable presence of the house only grew. It was a place where Baba’s dear lovers remembered Him constantly: where Elizabeth tended ceaselessly and devotedly to the business of the Center, where Kitty bustled with busy cheer, every day and every night for decades.
And of course, the atmosphere was not only for them. After Baba dropped His body in 1969, countless young seekers came to the Center to learn more about Him. They arrived at Dilruba’s doorstep, and there were Kitty and Elizabeth and other dear Western disciples of Meher Baba. As Buz Connor, who was one of those young seekers, puts it: “When they were telling the stories about Baba it was just one person removed, it was like being there … what people received was a sense of Baba.” Even after Kitty and Elizabeth passed, the hospitality and work that they embodied remained: in community teas in Dilruba’s dining room; in talks about Baba in the living room; in bedrooms converted to offices where Center workers still attend to business as Elizabeth always did.
While Baba may never have set foot in the home that He asked Elizabeth to build near His own, many of those arriving on its doorstep over the next six decades have still found Him dwelling there.
[i] Love Alone Prevails, by Kitty Davy, p. 563
[ii] Love Alone Prevails, p. 563
[iii] Love Alone Prevails, p. 563
[iv] Letters of Love, compiled & edited by Jane Barry Haynes, p. 160
[v] Letters of Love, p. 165
[vi] Letters of Love, p.185
[vii] Letters of Love, p. 187
[viii] Letters of Love, p. 189
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Caring for Meher Center: The Archives |
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The extraordinary Preservation and Archives team at the Center have been silent heroes for years, with their meticulous preservation and reverence for Meher Abode, the Lagoon Cabin, and the Barn, and for the treasures and historic materials associated not only with Baba’s visits to the Center, but also with other periods of His advent. Maintaining a vibrant preservation and archives program as a way of presenting Meher Baba to the world is very much in keeping with Meher Center’s Charter, as directed by Meher Baba: “devoted and dedicated to the name and spiritual purposes of Meher Baba, and to the dissemination of His teachings.”
Last week, we lost our Preservation and Archives Coordinator, the remarkable Dot Lesnik, to a sudden passing. Baba whisked her away quite abruptly into His arms. Her decades’ long dedicated and loving service to the Center will be missed but will continue to inspire her team and the rest of us, as we ever aspire to pursue that same attention to detail in caring for Baba’s home in the West.
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"Baba waited for me"
By Preeti Hay
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“I was never a seeker. Baba came to get me,” said Judi Schoeck when we started talking about her life with Baba. Judi has been working at the Center Gateway for close to two decades and has been with Baba since the early seventies. So how does one end up working at God’s front gate without having sought Him? Is it chance, is it mercy or just a good story? I was about to find out.
Judi’s story is one that is full of heartache, transition, and a final arrival. A month after she turned twenty, in a roaring roll of things, she moved to San Francisco from Manhattan to work at Rolling Stone magazine. Having not received her issue on time, she had written to them offering to work for them to improve their circulation. Her confident offer was met with an instant hire over the phone! About a year later, at the end of 1970, the real reason for her hire was revealed. The mailroom boy put the latest issue of the magazine on her desk. The cover had a picture of Meher Baba and the article was written by Pete Townsend. “I had seen a billboard with the ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ message before and it had appealed to me. This article sparked my interest further and I started reading about Baba. I first read Listen, Humanity, then Avatar and eventually the Discourses—a book that I ended up living with. In the early days, when I read the Discourses, I said out loud, ‘This is what Jesus would say if He ever came back.’”
But life was not all roses just at His recognition. More grinding work had to be done. Judi’s life was tumultuous with drugs, failed and troubled relationships, and serious mental health struggles. “Being a Catholic girl, I wondered if I was blaspheming by giving up Jesus. No one around me wanted to talk about God and either way, I did not know what consecrating one’s life to the living Christ meant, yet.” Drowned in her own life’s turmoil, she did not meet another Baba lover for eleven years. It took a long time for her to give up drugs and to feel worthy of His acceptance. “I was trying to connect with the impersonal God and missed opportunities to be with Baba. But some years later, in photo slides, I found pictures of Baba all over my apartment. While I had been thinking that I was not connected, what mattered was that He was connected. Now, I am trying to reframe the narrative for myself: my tragic early adulthood was filled with His love for me. He waited for me, until I knew what it was to be faithful to Him.”
Once Baba turned the key, it appears that the solitary woman’s life which was more internal with Baba was turned to experience Him in outer spheres and with other people. In 1982 she started going to Meher Baba House in New York and became involved with the work crew right away. She helped set up for meetings, was part of the entertainment committee and was also on the board. In addition, she drove people to and from the meetings. After ten years there, she moved to Denver for work, where she helped start the Rocky Mountain Sahavas and wrote for the Broken Down Furniture magazine. By now, having travelled to India, Myrtle Beach and later Australia, she was all in.
When the Denver stint ended, Judi’s father (who she intended to take care of) planted the seed of the possibility of moving to Myrtle Beach. While he did not live to make the move, Baba had lit the spark illuminating a path waiting for her. In 1999, she moved to Myrtle Beach and started her own Pilates and massage studio. Meanwhile she dedicatedly volunteered at the Center until a time came when she had to close her studio. “I think Baba indulged me until a place opened up on Center for me to work.” She started part time in 2004, became full time in 2009, and continues now as the coordinator of the Gateway. “It is such an amazement that I am here. Every morning I ask Baba to guide me, because I know that I am not here to help Baba, He is here to help me.” Her life here is full not just with work but with being able to participate in programming through her music and announcing the evening programs.
In the years that I have worked with Judi, I have observed a formidable reliability in her. An intentional effort to be present, wholly. Showing up again and again with determination and taking things on without hesitation. When I share that with her, she says, “I guess with Baba I do not have goals, except to love Him.” Paradoxical as it may be, the lack of goals can clear the way for more work. “The real work is to be present, to hear the next step,” she says.
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