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MEHER SPIRITUAL CENTER
Meher Baba's Home in the West
Meher Baba's Amartithi
January Newsletter 2021
Meher Nazar photo collection
"The Avatar is always one and the same, because God is always One and the Same, the Eternal, Indivisible, Infinite One who manifests Himself in the form of man as the Avatar, as the Messiah, as the Prophet, as the Ancient One — the Highest of the High. This Eternally One and the Same Avatar repeats His manifestation from time to time, in different cycles, adopting different human forms and different names, in different places, to reveal Truth in different garbs and different languages, in order to raise humanity from the pit of ignorance and help free it from the bondage of delusions."

Meher Baba 
Lord Meher Online, pg. 3392
Dear Meher Center Friends & Family,

Greetings from Meher Center as we celebrate the 52nd Amartithi on January 31, the day Beloved Baba dropped His body to live eternally in the. hearts of His lovers.

Please join us for Meher Center's virtual Amartithi Program this Sunday. Information about the program is available at the end of this newsletter.

In Baba's love and service,


Buz Connor
For Meher Center board and staff
Unbounded Love
This poignant footage provides a rare look at Baba's Mandali—a mere ten days after the dropping of His body. In their raw, brave states, these disciples answer questions about Baba's hints, His physical body and its crucifixion, His humiliation, His instructions, and their own personal anguish.

Video, 15:48
Courtesy of Sufism Reoriented
Mehera's Fortitude
By Preeti Hay
Meher Nazar photo collection
The account of Baba dropping His body and the events leading up to it were full of contradictions, intense suffering and shock. He had hinted of a time when His physical body would no longer be present, but absorbed in His intimate companionship, the Mandali could never have imagined the prospect and meaning of an event of such enormous proportions. In the middle of the vortex of agony was Mehera, who Baba called His very breath. What happens to the breath when the Beloved’s body ceases to exist? 
 
In 1968, Baba put His two forefingers together and said to Mehera, “We will always be together, you and I.” A few days later He went on to add, “When I come next time, I will bring you with me.” In the same year, Baba came to the verandah at Meherazad and said, “I’m thinking of resting for 700 years.”* He had indicated that His work was complete, and that the time had come. He had also reminded His close ones that He was not the body. Simultaneously, in His unfathomable ways, He had promised to give darshan in April of 1969 to many of His young ones. 
 
On the morning of January 31, 1969, Mani delivered Baba’s last message to Mehera: “Mehera, Baba says be brave.” A few hours later at noon, with a fierce spasm Baba dropped His body. After the initial doubt, a realization dawned that Baba was really gone. The room was filled with the cacophonous cries, wails and shouts of disbelief. Across from Baba’s bed, Mehera sat absolutely stunned, with not a single teardrop in her eyes–half dead. When her tears started to flow, her weeping did not stop for months.
 
In 1927 Meher Baba had chosen the site of His entombment on Meherabad Hill. Once arrangements were made in Meherabad, Baba’s body was brought on an ambulance from Meherazad for its final sojourn. Mehera changed into her sari, all but mechanically. As the women’s car climbed up Meherabad Hill, the moon was rising, and the sun was setting. Mehera cried, “Baba darling, come back,” she said over and over again. “How can I live without you?” How could she? She had been held close in the most sacred cocoon of His love. She was the purest drop, having lost all of itself in the ocean of His love.
 
As the news spread to Arangaon and Ahmednagar, pilgrims began to arrive to behold His form for the last time. Walking up the hill, the only sound they heard was the wind carrying the wailing of Mehera’s voice that pierced their own aching hearts. Mehera did not want to leave the tomb. “Baba is here, I must be with him, wherever he is.” Endless requests from Eruch and Mani were of no use. Finally, the thought that Baba’s bedroom in Meherazad would be dark and would need light, made Mehera leave His side at midnight. 
 
For the next seven days, Mehera nursed Baba, being appalled by His rose-like body on ice in the dirt of the earth. She went into the crypt and wiped off the sawdust from HIs feet, then she tied a scarf around His neck to protect it from the harshness of the ice. She held out her arms to Him, kissed Him and clutched His feet, shaking them, as if for Him to wake up to take her with Him. But during this time, concurrent to the inconsolable grief, something else was unfolding; call it grace, love or the fulfillment of a promise. Mehera showed an uncanny fortitude in relating to the pain and loss of His lovers who came. To the crying pilgrims she said, “Don’t cry. Baba is here [pointing to their hearts]. Baba has not gone. He is still with us.”
 
His female counterpart lived twenty years after her Beloved. For some she was the physical symbol of Baba’s advent. Holding her hands was to hold the very hands that He had held with the utmost love that creation had to offer. To rise to such love is every lover’s humble wish. And rise, she did: with acceptance, fortitude and bravery. Over time, Mani gathered what Baba had gifted Mehera with His last order. “I later realized he was not asking Mehera to be brave–he was giving her the courage to be brave,” she said. “That’s why,” she added, “When Baba says love me, he is not asking love from us, he’s giving us the love to give him.” ** 
 
*Mehera Meher, pgs. 453-454
**Mehera Meher, pgs. 490-498
When You Suffer
By Jamie Keehan
ECPPA photo collection
“When you feel happy, think: ‘Baba wants me to be happy.’ When you suffer, think: ‘Baba wants me to suffer.’”* This was one of Baba’s five wishes for His lovers, which He had read out in the Barn three times one morning in 1958, while He sat in a yellow chair that had belonged to Princess Norina Matchabelli. 
 
Emotions can seem discrete, and personal, and perhaps ours to control. But this wish of Baba’s forces us to recognize God’s hand even in the light and shadows of our inner world. To me, there are few examples of this more powerful than Norina’s life with Baba.
 
Norina’s first connection with Baba was through tears.** She laughingly said to her friend, who had been moved by Him, that she, too, would like to weep—and then found herself sobbing inconsolably for days, before even meeting Him. When she finally did meet Baba, she recognized the divine Beloved that some part of her had always known and devoted her life to His cause.
 
There were moments of light and bliss. Norina lived with Baba in India from 1936 to 1942, and when she returned to America, she started feeling His voice within her. She shared these “thought transmissions” with audiences across the United States in the 1940’s, the only person we know of who Baba allowed to speak for Him in this way. Many people first heard Baba’s message of love through Norina’s talks. His inner guidance, along with her exquisite artistic eye, were also instrumental in making the Center what it still is: deciding where to place cabins, painting the rafters of the Barn a Mediterranean blue. 
 
But by 1947, Norina began to fall into a depression. In May of 1952, she finally welcomed Baba to the home that she and Elizabeth had so painstakingly built for Him. But she could barely participate in His visit, and later that month, the depression got so bad that she needed to be hospitalized. It would be with her for the rest of her life. 
 
“When you suffer, think, ‘Baba wants me to suffer.’” We all experience inner pain, some of us depression with the loss of meaning and perspective that it brings. But when we’re so deep that we can’t feel Baba, is it still part of His will? In our inner darkness, is He still there? 
 
Norina makes it so clear. She loved Baba, and Baba loved her, but even after seventeen years of energetic, creative life with Him, she had to embark on what Baba called the “dark journey of the soul.”*** And while she couldn’t always experience His presence through the pain, still, He loved her; still, He came to her. In 1952, when she was hospitalized, He suffered a car crash and became a patient in the same hospital. During Baba’s 1956 visit, when she couldn’t even leave her bed to be with Him, He appeared by her bedside again and again, with tiny, tangible acts of care: administering her medications; giving her a handkerchief to keep under her pillow.
 
“When you suffer, think ‘Baba wants me to suffer.’” Maybe we can’t ever fully understand why. But one morning on that same visit in 1956, while Norina lay in a nearby cabin, Baba sat looking over the lake—just as Norina and Elizabeth had, thirteen years earlier, when they realized this was the place for Baba’s Center. It was there He dictated: "Only because of the infinite love and mercy of God can man learn to realize through the lessons of misery on earth that inherent in him is the source of infinite bliss, and that all suffering is his labor of love to unveil his own infinite Self."****
 
*Part of Baba’s message “My Wish,” Lord Meher Online, pg. 4380
**Details of Norina’s life from Norina’s Gift, introduction by Christopher Wilson and Charles Haynes, pgs. 1-54
***Norina’s Gift, pg. 37
****Lord Meher Online, pg. 4041
Amartithi Program Details
Meher Center virtual Amartithi program
January 31, 10:30am & 8pm (EST)

Morning program: 10:30 a.m. - Click here to join

  • 10:30 a.m. - Prayers & Arti 

  • 12 noon - Silence

  • 12:15 p.m. - Sharing 


Evening Program: 8 p.m. - Click here to join

  • Steve Klein - Poetry

  • Rick Chapman - Talk on the Interment in 1969 

  • Buz Connor - Music


Detailed Zoom Information
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89376855274

Meeting ID: 893 7685 5274
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