MEHER SPIRITUAL CENTER
Meher Baba's Home in the West
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Photo courtesy of Sufism Reoriented |
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During Baba's visit to the house of Sri V. V. Narayana Rao, he questioned Baba: "Baba, how to keep our contact with you, the Avatar, constantly?"
Baba replied: "Well, do you feel constantly hungry? When you work hard, you get hungry. When you feel hungry you take food and then you forget about the food. So, work for Me in such a way that you feel hungry for Me. Sometimes think of Me, sometimes work for Me, sometimes talk about Me, but not all the time.
"If you go on eating continuously you will get indigestion! Before you go to bed say, 'Baba, I entrust all that I did, thought or spoke, good and bad to you.' When you get up say, 'Baba, I now begin entrusting all thoughts, words and deeds to you.' Say this just twice each day for five minutes, but with all your heart in it.
"Do that and make Me responsible for all you do or think. Then you are free ... but you must do it honestly. This much will be more than sufficient to maintain the contact with Me.
"I am the ocean. I can accept flowers, coconuts and also filth. So, throw everything in the ocean with all your heart. This is a great thing if done wholeheartedly, otherwise it goes into your own pool of water which gets filthy because of your dirt."
Meher Baba
Sweet Reminiscences, Balagopala Bhaskara Raju, p. 5
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Dear Meher Center Family and Friends,
Much love to all from Meher Center. We continue this week with a celebration of Meher Baba’s first visit to Meher Center in April of 1952. Especially featured in this edition is a video by Jamie and Zo Newell outlining the development of the Center.
We have now opened the Center to evening programs on Friday and Saturday nights only. Beginning the week of May 16, we will be open for weekday evening programs. More information will be available in the next few weeks.
In Baba’s love and service,
Buz Connor
For Meher Center board and staff
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Meher Center Origins and Development |
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During this special month, we are once again sharing a film by Jamie and Zo Newell that documents the long, loving, painstaking process of creating a home for Meher Baba in the West. It begins with Elizabeth Patterson’s and Norina Matchabelli’s search for a location for an American center, and culminates in Baba's arrival in 1952.
Video, 1:32:04
2019
From the Meher Spiritual Center, Inc. Archives
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Life at the Center
By Jamie Leonard
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Photo courtesy of Sufism Reoriented |
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After seven years of immense and loving effort, Elizabeth Patterson wrote Baba in the fall of 1951 that His Center in Myrtle Beach was ready, that all His conditions for visiting the West had been met, and that she hoped He would come soon. He cabled back, “Absolutely happy EliNorina [Baba’s nickname for Elizabeth Patterson and Norina Matchabelli] successful having Baba definitely come to America about end of March God willing. Deepest love, Baba.”[i] Two weeks later, on October 16, He began what He called His Manonash work.
This work, like the rest of New Life, will probably always remain enigmatic. Even the close Mandali who were there would later tell pilgrims that though they were face-to-face with Baba’s work at the time—models of buildings representing five world religions, deep seclusion on Seclusion Hill or in a newly-built cabin in lower Meherazad—its meaning eluded them. After He emerged, He shed a little light on the deep importance of the work: “This is Manonash, the annihilation of the false, limited, miserable, ignorant, destructible I to be replaced by the ‘Real I,’ the Eternal Possessor of Infinite Knowledge, Love, Power, Peace, Bliss and Glory in its unchangeable existence.”[ii]
Baba went on to describe His inner state after the Manonash work, touching especially on some of its abiding contradictions: “This satisfaction is due to the feeling I have of having regained my Old Life Meher Baba state, yet retaining my New Life ordinary state. I have regained the Knowledge, Strength and Greatness that I had in the Old Life; and retained the ignorance, weaknesses and humility of the New Life. This union of the Old and New Life states has given birth to LIFE—Life that is eternally old and new.”[iii]
From the very beginning of this Life, Baba talked daily with Dr. Donkin, planning His trip to the West. He had explicitly connected the trip to the manifestation of His Manonash work in a letter to Elizabeth before Manonash began: “In order that the results of my work from Oct. 16, 1951, to Feb. 16, 1952 may be fully manifested in the Western world—either with the fullest success or as an utter failure—I must be in seclusion for the first two weeks of my stay in America … After these first two weeks of seclusion I shall see everyone everywhere because, eventually, I shall have to give to the world the results of my four months’ work.”[iv]
On March 21, 1952, a month before Baba arrived on the Center, He began what He called the “Complicated Free Life,” a stage of the Life that was to last throughout His time there. During the Complicated Free Life, He said, binding would dominate freedom.
Perhaps this binding can be seen in Baba’s physical suffering and helplessness as the trip approached: He endured piles surgery, fever and infection from a smallpox vaccine, and an intense restlessness noted by the women Mandali. Certainly, it can be seen in the bloodied helplessness of the automobile accident that would occur on May 24, four days after Baba left the Center. Nevertheless, by the time Baba’s plane hit the ground in New York and they saw Elizabeth “waving frantically”[v] to them, His mood also had some light, some buoyancy. And so, at long long last, Baba brought Life, His Life, onto the Center.
As indicated in His letter, Baba spent His first two weeks in seclusion. Then He opened the floodgates. Darwin Shaw describes his experience of that time: “Along with his presence, Baba brought Divine Love, which not only spread out, enveloping the Center, but extended out into the surrounding countryside—how far, we do not know. But especially at the Center, Baba’s Divine Love transformed the atmosphere in its Sweetness and Beauty. It was truly magical.”[vi]
The love kept pouring: dear old lovers traveling to see their Beloved again, new ones not sure what to expect, flooded with inexplicable tears at His presence. In the talk that Larry Karrasch gave at the Center during the 70th Anniversary Celebration this month, he described seeing God as a shy four-year-old child: the homecoming not to a stranger but to the Divine Beloved. At the “open house” on May 17, 110 people were expected, but they just kept coming until the number swelled to over 300, basking in the sudden unimaginable presence of God.
Baba said that in the Complicated Free Life, “Bindings would dominate freedom.” But during those sunlit days at the Center, there are hints of something more, something that hearkens to the culmination of the Manonash work and the Fiery Free Life that Baba promised was to come, in which “both strength and weakness, freedom and bindings would be consumed in the fire of divine love.”[vii] In that first trip to the Center, in the eyes of the little children seeing God and the adults who felt the “relief and joy”[viii] of finally coming Home—maybe some of that all-consuming divine love was already seeping in amid the binding and the suffering, blending into the holy paradoxes of Baba’s Life.
[i] Lord Meher, Online Edition, by Bhau Kalchuri, p. 3007
[ii] Lord Meher, Online Edition, by Bhau Kalchuri, 3029
[iii] Lord Meher, Online Edition, by Bhau Kalchuri, 3030
[iv] As Only God Can Love, by Darwin Shaw, p. 88
[v] The Joyous Path, by Heather Nadel, p. 542
[vi] As Only God Can Love, by Darwin Shaw, p. 89
[vii] Lord Meher, Online Edition, by Bhau Kalchuri, p. 3100
[viii] Lord Meher, Online Edition, by Bhau Kalchuri, p. 3085
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Caring for Meher Center:
The Center Alligators
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It’s spring! The Center is bubbling with spring flowers and wildlife. Recently, alligators have been spotted swimming or sunning themselves at the edge of Long Lake.
In her diary from 1952, Mani writes about spotting wondrous wildlife on Center including the “famous alligator with his wife who has a paw missing.” Tickled at the thought of the original inhabitants of the Lake, I wondered how long do alligators live? And how far do they travel? Turns out the American Alligator lives for about 30 to 50 years. They reproduce quite profusely. They do not travel too far and usually stay pretty local. Could our current alligators then be the descendants of the original ones who were around during Baba’s visits?
Disclaimer: Keep your kids away, but don’t be surprised if you see blissed out reptiles meditating on and recollecting cross-generational accounts of the Avatar’s visit to their homeland. Hey, didn’t He say He came for all creatures?
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Champagne, Curry and Chicken
By Preeti Hay
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Photo courtesy of Sufism Reoriented |
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On April 18, 1952, Meher Baba and the women boarded a TWA (Trans World Atlantic) flight from Bombay heading for New York. After several postponements, the time had finally arrived for Baba to travel to His ‘home in the West’ and for the first and only time, the women Mandali accompanied Him to the Center. Not only was the trip full of profound adventures, but it was also full of humor—much of which revolved around food!
The women had not been abroad since 1937 when they went to Cannes with Baba. In 1952, they were just coming out of the New Life and it was the very first time that any of them had flown. On the plane, Baba sat on the aisle seat and Mehera sat next to Him by the window. Others sat near them to help and protect Mehera.
From the start, Meheru was queasy and could not bear the thought of food. On the other hand, Mani’s enthusiasm on the flight was unmatchable. Mani recalled, “Now for us the flight was a real adventure, because of the contrast with our life in any case … And the greatest thing about it was that Baba withdrew our diet restrictions while we were on the plane.” Mani jumped with joy each time the stewardess came with new and exciting food. In contrast, Meheru refused everything except hot water. “I couldn’t face anything to eat,” she said. Pointing at Mani the stewardess said, “She never says no!” and Mani thought, “Why should I say no? Elizabeth has paid for it. This is first class.” Mani then directed Meheru to pass the food on to her instead of refusing it.
More adventure followed when Baba said they could have whatever was served. And one can imagine Mani’s wonder at such an order. Lo and behold, with lunch arrived a bottle of champagne. “I’d read about it in so many books … champagne, which rich people gave at parties or when a son was born and which, in France, men drink out of the slippers of celebrated beauties.” But it was better imagined than tasted. Mani admitted how disappointed she was at the bitter taste of the champagne. But her short-lived alcoholic excursion did not disappoint in the end. After she refused beer (unlike Rano who enjoyed it on the flight), Mani wondered about something she could ask for that she could later boast about. “Then I realized that whenever I read these detective books to Baba, they were always having a Martini.” After asking for it, Mani waited at the edge of her seat wondering what it would look like and taste like. A beautiful clear glass with a tall, slim stem arrived but alas it looked like a green beetle had fallen into the center of the glass! “Oh, what’s that?” Mani asked a surprised stewardess. “That’s an olive,” the stewardess replied. In her nonchalant voice, Mani replied, “of course, an olive.” The martini was wonderful, and Mani thoroughly loved it.
When they finally arrived in New York on April 20, they were lovingly received by Elizabeth Patterson. On that first evening, Elizabeth wanted to take them to a Chinese restaurant so that Baba could eat some rice, but because it was Sunday, it happened to be closed. Instead, they went to an Indian restaurant which she found hurriedly because there, too, Baba could have rice.
This time more culinary misadventures followed. The over-decorated restaurant was like a museum. More Indian than they had seen in India with thick carpets that were hard to walk on and dark and dingy lighting. Goher was too sick to eat. Meheru was still recovering from her airsickness. “We came so far to eat curry and rice!” observed Mehera and Baba too was perturbed! “Just as the waitress came, she tripped over the carpet. She almost dropped the whole curry bowl over our heads. It just missed me!” remembered Mani.
At the Center, while the women fell in love with every nook of Baba’s home, things on the food front were “not so exciting.” Their diet restrictions were back in place and they were to have only vegetarian food. Beautiful smells wafted from the Original Kitchen where the cooks were cooking. What could it be? It smelled like chicken! But to their utter consternation, the cooks had arrived in posh cars, rolled their sleeves up and cooked fried chicken for themselves before cooking boiled vegetables for the women!
When the women recounted these funny incidents, it was not to demonstrate their discontent but rather the fluid nature of life with Baba. They always remembered the humor which kept them in readiness to obey and accept all that came their way. Memories of relief and awe were also in plenty. At the Center, to their great respite, the women could eat with their hands. This was something they could not do in public places in the West. Mani remembered feeling very hungry when they were in France. Somehow, eating with a fork and knife did not satiate their appetites. So, they were thrilled to be able to eat with their hands while at the Center.
While in America, a dream came true for Mani. At the Guest House, which was like a ‘fairy-doll house,’ Baba pointed to a bottle on the kitchen shelf. It was a bottle of prune juice. Bottled juices were not available in India at the time. Baba filled each one’s glass as a small treat and the women drank juice with Baba every morning, until all the bottles were consumed. “I love fruit juices. I found America was full of fruit juices. If I were to draw a map of America I would draw peaks of beautiful mountains, with waterfalls coming down each mountain, and one would be the prune juice waterfall, and one would be the orange juice waterfall, one would be an apple juice waterfall…”
References:
Mehera-Meher, by David Fenster, vol. 3, pp.15 - 25
The Joyous Path, by Heather Nadel, vol. 2, pp. 537 - 555
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