M
EHER
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PIRITUAL
C
ENTER
Meher Baba's Home in the West
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In those who contact Him (the Avatar), He awakens a love that consumes all selfish desires in the flame of the one desire to serve Him. Those who consecrate their lives to Him gradually become identified with Him in consciousness. Little by little their humanity is absorbed into His divinity, and they become free.
Meher Baba
Discourses
, Seventh Revised Edition, pg. 269
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Dear Meher Center Family & Friends,
A loving Jai Baba to all. I wanted to take a moment to say how heartening and touching it has been to witness the initial response to the Center’s recent outreach for financial assistance. Much thanks to all supporters of Meher Center for your loving generosity in helping to maintain His home in the West. And just to let you know, a ‘snail-mail’ copy of the same letter is also being sent to our entire mailing list
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as not everyone receives these digital newsletters.
One of the articles in this newsletter focuses on the serious automobile accident
that took place on May 24, 1952, on Route 64, just outside of Prague, Oklahoma
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when both Meher Baba and Mehera were gravely injured.
Baba once said that “the life of the Avatar is an Illusion-consuming Flame.” The Avatar uses His physical form to suffer for all of humanity, and through His suffering He helps us to gradually become free from our age-old bindings, and to experience who we really are.
"He burns His own cloak of illusion (which is His constant crucifixion) so that others’ illusory cloaks will also be burned. And the brilliance of the Avatar’s Shama (flame of a candle) attracts the moths (parwanas). The Avatar burns His own cloak of illusion to attract His lovers to Him. Once His lovers are drawn to Him, His naaz (whims of the Beloved) may make them suffer, but this suffering is ‘real suffering’ as it frees them from all suffering and eventually unites them with God." - Meher Baba
How fortunate we are to live in a time when God in human form has come among us. And how compassionate He is to take on this immense burden of suffering all for the sake of love.
In Baba’s love and service,
Buz Connor
For Meher Center board and staff
*
Glimpses of the God-Man
, Bal Natu, Vol. 5, pg. 176-177
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The Nitrate Movies of
Elizabeth Patterson
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In 1933, Elizabeth Patterson filmed Meher Baba in India and Italy using a hand cranked 35mm movie camera. These short clips, painstakingly restored by the Meher Baba Film Archive International, are the only film record of that time.
Video, 5:12
From the film,
I am the One Reality
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Small Kindness
By Jamie Keehan
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This time, in reading over the accounts of Meher Baba’s accident in 1952, I noticed the kindness.
It was there from those first excruciating moments when, on the morning of May 24, 1952, Stanley J. Moucka, living along Route 64 near Prague, Oklahoma, heard a crash and ran out of his house. There it was, the smashed Nash that had been carrying Meher Baba and four of His close Mandali on a cross-country trip from the Meher Center to California. Elizabeth was trapped behind the wheel of the car with broken ribs and arm, her first question, “Is He alive?” Mani was in shock, Meheru had a fractured arm and hand. Meher Baba was lying face-down in the mud, covered in blood, His beloved Mehera bloody and semi-conscious beside Him.
Moucka ran to the victims. He covered them with blankets from the house, and flagged down a passing car—two more strangers, a man and his pregnant wife who were on the way to the hospital, and said they would send help immediately. He comforted Mani, who was on her knees in the mud by Baba and Mehera, and years later she remembered the kindness with which he repeated his answer to her desperate inquiries: that the ambulance was “coming… it’s coming.”* The mother of the man who had been driving the other car climbed out, unharmed, and started using her handkerchief and some water to wipe Mehera’s face.
They were taken to the hospital where the town doctor, Dr. Burleson, known in the community for his goodness and generosity, leapt to work to help them—especially Mehera, who had a badly fractured skull and who he thought might not survive. And as he tended to the victims, and in the days after as they all began to heal, there were more moments of kindness. A
shopkeeper asked about the sufferers, giving the group her only basket of strawberries, which she had been planning to take home. A neighbor bought a cup of coffee for the shocked, exhausted Mani. The owner of a restaurant, overhearing talk about them being unable to find flowers to buy, offered them the magnolias from his front yard, which Baba later gave specially to Mehera.
Four years later, when back on the Center, looking out over the lake, Meher Baba said, “The source of Eternal Bliss is the Self in all… all suffering is his labor of love to unveil his own infinite Self."** To me, these acts of kindness throughout the agony of the accident and its aftermath were an affirmation of the Self in all: that we give care to strangers because there are no strangers. In each tiny, seemingly insignificant act was a flicker, a glimmer of the vastness of God’s love, hidden underneath.
*
Mehera-Meher: A Divine Romance,
David Fenster, Vol. 3, Pg. 41
**
Lord Meher Online,
Bhau Kalchuri, Pg. 4041
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Highway 64
Poems by John Dennison
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Elizabeth Patterson: A Life in Discipleship
By Preeti Hay
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Baba’s sister Mani once shared that Elizabeth’s nickname among the Eastern women Mandali was ‘Yes Baba dear.’ This was because whatever Baba asked of her, she instantly replied, “Yes Baba dear.” Elizabeth was the founder of the Meher Center along with Norina Matchabelli, charged with the responsibility of finding the Center and then developing what would become Baba’s home in the West. But just as Elizabeth’s epitaph says, “Elizabeth, disciple of Meher Baba,” she was first and foremost an exemplary disciple, one who has shown us by her life with Baba and in her legacy at the Meher Center that at every step, all our lives with Baba are flower beds to sow the seeds of His pleasure.
Everyone who knew Elizabeth uses similar words to describe her: practical, poised, imperturbable and steadfast. In fact, Baba called her, “My rock.” It must take no less than being a rock to come to be a woman of her magnitude. In running the Center, Baba had remarked, “Whatever Elizabeth decides is what I want for My Center.” In that He bestowed on her a responsibility that she took on with humility and poise but completely bereft of any assumed spiritual authority.
Elizabeth’s poise, among many things, was a result of her complete faith in Baba. Her commanding presence stemmed from her absolute trust in Baba, followed by confident action. When asked how she knew what Baba wanted her to do each day, she replied, “Every morning I take a few moments to listen in silence for Baba’s guidance. Now he doesn’t answer in so many words. But when I listen each morning, the day becomes the answer.”
Another exceptional quality that she exhibited, especially in running the Center, was her inimitable and meticulous attention to detail. Very much like others in Baba’s Mandali, attention to little things was a discipline that Baba instilled in His close ones. Wendy Haynes Connor recalls one of the first times that she witnessed Elizabeth’s famous sixth sense when it came to the Center. One day Elizabeth called Wendy to bring the car. Elizabeth had to stop driving towards the end because of her failing eyesight and by this time she was hunched over from age and injury, and moved very slowly. When Wendy arrived, she saw Elizabeth struggling with a large pink tray covered with an odd assortment of things. She guided Wendy first to the Lantern cabin. “Do you see any matches?” She asked. “No,” replied Wendy. Then she asked, “Do you see a potholder?” “No.” “A lid?” Elizabeth happened to have a lid that fit a teapot perfectly. Then she kneeled down awkwardly to paint a part of the toilet seat where the enamel had worn off. Their work at the Lantern was done.
Next, they went to Cedar Nook. Somehow Elizabeth knew that the toilet tissue roll was empty. “Now we need to put this roll behind the toilet. There must always be an extra toilet tissue for the guest.” Then, at another cabin, they cleaned a soap tray and put new soap in. They re-arranged cutlery drawers and set the table in preparation for guests to arrive that afternoon. And Elizabeth also had Wendy lie down on a bed. “Now sit up. Put your feet on the floor. Do you see the little carpet?” Wendy saw the carpet way off to the side. “That’s not going to keep your feet warm is it? Now move the carpet to where a guest’s feet would most likely land when they get up.”
How can one sum up such a life? But if one were to try, an anecdote from Charles Haynes’ book* about Elizabeth comes to mind. She remarked once, “You know Baba doesn’t want us to stand on the threshold, when we did He would gesture, ‘come in or go out – but do not stand on the threshold.’ So why don’t you come in?” And that was Elizabeth, the definition of a disciple who wholeheartedly dove into life with Meher Baba and never looked back.
*
The Day Becomes the Answer,
Charles Haynes, Pg. 9
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