Meher Baba Books Los Angeles

"There is nothing that love cannot achieve and  
there is nothing that love cannot sacrifice."  

- Meher Baba, The Path of Love, p 67


Weekly Reflections No. 38
from Meher Baba Books
(Los Angeles, California)
July,31, 2015 

Hello Dear Companions:

Greetings from Los Angeles, California, once again. Happy summer and winter to all of you. I realize my friends in Australia are experiencing a different climate than us in USA, yet we are all connected with our divine inner links, no matter what.  

Time for us to meet again on Fridays, for our weekly appointment with Meher Baba -- this time to remember Him for His matchless divinity. The theme for this week is Meher Baba's divinity. We are here to have a good time with His words and works.

July 30th marks an interesting day in Meher Baba's life. On 30 July 1968, Meher Baba declared, "My work is done.  It is completed 100% to my satisfaction."
Meher Baba in late 1968, sitting in the chair at his home in Meherazad/India

Also on this day in 1953 Baba drew a picture of himself as a mischievous chicken. The original story of the Mischievous Chicken was dictated by Meher Baba to Bhau Kalchuri during 1967. It is contained in the book "The Nothing And The Everything" by Bhau Kalchuri. Together with Meher Baba's book "God Speaks", these two books comprise most of the main body of Meher Baba's spiritual cosmology.
 
Drawing done by Meher Baba, July 30, 1953, of Himself as a Chicken. (Source: The Nothing and the Everything by Bhau Kalchuri, p. xi) 

Another great event to reflect on is Meher Baba's visit to Meher Mount, in Ojai, California. At 4:00 a.m. on the morning of Thursday, August 2, Agnes Baron, co-founder and caretaker of Meher Mount, drove Meher Baba and His mandali (close disciples) from the Roosevelt Hotel on Sunset Boulevard about 85 miles north to Meher Mount. When Agnes and Meher Baba arrived on the mountain, a fog had settled in over the Ojai Valley, and Meher Baba said, "I love Meher Mount very much and feel happy here."  

  

When all had arrived, Meher Baba called everyone into the guest house on the property (since burned down in the 1985 fire). He asked the group how they liked Meher Mount. One said, "It has a spiritual atmosphere." Another said, "It's comparable to Meherabad Hill" [in India where Meher Baba's Tomb Shrine is located].  On the first Saturday in August, an annual celebration

is always held, commemorating the anniversary of Avatar Meher Baba's 1956 visit to Meher Mount.

 

  

AVATAR MEHER BABA taking a tour of Meher Mount on August 2, 1956, with caretaker Agnes Baron. Close disciple Eruch Jessawalla is holding the umbrella. Photo: Mehermount.org 
As you may recall, in recent circulars we have also been reflecting on the topic of "Women In the West and their Roles". Filis Frederick notes in 
The Awakener Magazine 
(a periodical she edited and published) that "In the early Twenties, Meher Baba predicted His work in the West would be done by women, and in the East by men." 
 
Cover of The Awakener -
with kind permission from The Awakener Magazine online
 
Filis wrote a great series of articles on this topic, from which we continue to draw. This week, we continue to cover the life full of service of Kitty Davy (part 2). Enjoy reading. 
 
We hope you enjoy these small occasions for reflecting on the divinity of Beloved Baba's words and life. You may email us at:
with any questions and/or requests. Keep Happy in His Love.

In His Love and Service,
Mahoo Ghorbani for Meher Baba Books                      
 
Meher Baba's Divinity 
 

 

 

God wants us to see Him

 

Previously, in November 1938, Consuelo de Sides had come to see Baba in India; but she had also paid visits to other gurus while there. It was in reference to this habit of visiting other spiritual personalities that Baba advised her on the 16th at 4:10 P.M.

 

"You are one of my most intimate ones, one of the five trustees of my Universal Center, and you have been longing for my contact.

So, as one of my most dear ones, in all honesty I want to give you one piece of advice. Do not dig at many places. Even if it takes a long time to get water, you should dig at only one place. Eventually, water comes.

 

Do not get involved in groups. It will be a mess. I want you to realize by actual experience. I, personally, tell you to do one thing. You can attend to your external duties, as you have been doing, but find some hours - one, two or three hours a day - when you could, all alone, devote yourself to what I will tell you to do now.

 

In silence and in seclusion, all alone in one room, with all your heart, cry out, deep down in you cry and say, "Baba, let me see God who is in me! Baba, let me see God in me!" Cry out with such longing that during these hours you want nothing else but to see God. And, Consuelo dear, you will see him. Will you carry this out? You will then see God.

 

"Do it honestly, as if your very life depended on it. Nothing more, nothing less. If you want to see God as he ought to be seen, do this, I tell you. You are so dear to me, and I will help you, but do it very honestly. Cry, cry, cry! God wants us to see Him, longs for it more than we long for Him. It is the truth. I know it. But He wants to be seen. How? With great longing and aspiration. Try it. You will have the longing if you try honestly. We must see him in this very body. So, will you try? "  

 

Consuelo said she would.


Lord Meher online pp. 3079-3080    





 


Meher Baba in India, 1933 -- still image from films shot by Elizabeth Patterson (in India & Italy), recently restored and released by
Meher Baba Film Archive International

"My abode is infinite. It is formless. But there are seven doors in my abode. Each door remains closed to all those bound in illusion. The aim of involution is to open these seven doors to experience my infinity.

"The first door is extremely difficult to open. All the kingdoms of evolution stand at this door. Humanity has its back to this door. All faces are turned toward illusion. Humanity is the nearest kingdom to this door.

"I come to open these seven doors. I work to cut a hole in the first door. That door leads to the first plane. This cutting is my work during my lifetime."
 
Meher Baba (1967), quoted by Bhau Kalchuri in his book Avatar of the Age Meher Baba Manifesting, excerpted in The Awakener Magazine (Volume 21, No. 2 (1985), pp. 58-59), and excerpted here by kind permission of The Awakener Magazine online , with thanks





"I have no connection with politics. All religions are equal to me. And all castes and creeds are dear to me. But though I appreciate all 'isms,' religions and political parties for the many good things that they seek to achieve, I do not and cannot belong to any of these 'isms,' religions or political parties, for the absolute Truth, while equally including them, transcends all of them, and leaves no room for separative divisions, which are all equally false.

"The unity of all life is integral and indivisible. It remains unassailable and inviolable in spite of all conceivable ideological differences.

"I am equally approachable to one and all, big and small, to saints who rise and sinners who fall, through all the various paths that give the divine call. I am approachable alike to saint, whom I adore, and to sinner whom I am for, and equally through Sufism, Vedantism, Christianity, or Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, and other 'isms' of any kind, and also directly through no medium of 'isms' at all."

~Meher Baba, November 1952, India, 
quoted in Kitty Davy, Love Alone Prevails: a story of life with Meher Baba (2001), p. 697

  

  

New portrait painting Just finished, by Charlie Mills
  
THE HIGH ROADS TO GOD
Meher Baba

 

The quickest of these High Roads lies through the God-man, who is consciously one with the Truth. In the God-man, God reveals himself in all His Glory, with His Infinite Power, Unfathomable Knowledge, Inexpressible Bliss and Eternal Existence. The Path through the God-man is available only to those fortunate ones who approach him in complete surrenderance and unwavering faith. Complete surrenderance to the God-man, is, however, possible only to very advanced aspirants. But when this is not possible, the other High Roads, which can eventually win the Grace of God, are:

 

1) Love for God and intense longing to see Him and to be united with Him

 

2) Being in constant company with the saints and lovers of God and rendering them wholehearted service

 

3) Avoiding lust, greed, anger, hatred and the temptations for power, fame and fault-finding

 

4) Leaving everyone and everything in complete external renunciation, and in solitude, devoting oneself to fasting, prayer and meditation

 

5) Carrying on all worldly duties with equal acceptance of success or failure, with a pure heart and clean mind and remaining unattached in the midst of intense activity

 

6) Selfless service to humanity, without any thought of gain or reward.

  

Meher Baba, The Path of Love (1976, 2000), pp. 97-98  

 







 
"Have you all heard of Saint Mira? 
 

Baba signaled for a break. Some remained clustered around his chair, especially the children. On resumption, he asked, "Have you all heard of Saint Mira? In India, everyone knows her. People sing the bhajans sung by her in praise of Krishna." 


Eruch gave a brief account of Mira's life:

Mira was a very beautiful girl. She was the wife of a royal prince of a wealthy family in North India, who later 
became king. She loved Krishna with all her heart, but did not live at the time of Krishna, who lived 5,000 years before. Mira lived about two or three hundred years ago. Her husband did not like the way she was going about in the streets, for she was the queen, and queens did not mix with the crowd. She would enter the huts of the poor with the name of Krishna on her lips as she sang. She suffered many trials and threats to test her love for Krishna. She was locked up in a room, her food was poisoned, a cobra was concealed in a bouquet of flowers. She accepted all as the gift of her Lord Krishna, and nothing happened. Krishna protected her. She refused to have anything to do with anyone but her Lord Krishna. 

 

Finally, the king drove her away into exile. She said: "If the king drives me out, I have a place. 
But if the Lord of the universe is displeased, I have no place." The people, too, turned against her.

As years passed, she looked radiant in her rags. Then the king came and fell at her feet. For a man in India to bow down to a woman is a sin, and to his wife, unforgivable. Yet, he fell at her feet because she was sincere. When she died, all revered her, and now people repeat her bhajans [devotional songs].

Baba stated, "I am Krishna. I want all of you to love me as Mira loved me. Mehera's love is different and cannot be compared with Mira's.

A record of one of Saint Mira's bhajans was played in which she sings: "Krishna is mine; I am Krishna's. I have nothing to do with anyone."

Lord Meher, p 4593 (revised online edition, pp. 4393-4394)
 
 

 

 

 

Mandali Moments:  Mani Sings

 

 

  

    A Meher Baba Prayer  

 

I am not the body.
I am not the mind.

I am not this.
I am not that.
I am nothing but a living lie
of that truth that is me
and unless the lie is dead
the truth cannot be.

 

A personal prayer/meditation given by Meher Baba to his close disciples in 1949 (Lord Meher online, p. 2831)

 

 

 

 

Heroines of the Path

By Filis Frederick

 

   
 
  

Filis continues her account of the lives of notable Western women disciples of Meher Baba, with the story of Kitty Davy.  

   

VII - Katherine Laura ( Kitty ) Davy "Saroja"  part (2)

In India and in Europe Baba made good use of Kitty's managerial talents. She was often the one chosen to "hassle" the travel agents to make the constantly altered arrangements on His trips to the West (Cannes, Portofino, Avila, etc.) She was involved in finding "the perfect boy". And, in the ashram, for a long while she was in charge of the kitchen.    

   

This is one of the first "Kitty" stories I heard, before I met her. Baba, before He went away on a mast tour, laid out the menu for all: bread and tea for breakfast. One woman wasn't feeling well, - could she have her bread toasted? Kitty yielded. But everyone knows how good toast smells. Soon all were having toast. Then - what good is toast without jam? It soon became toast and jam for all. On His return, Baba, discovering all this, "ticked off" Kitty, and she was demoted from her reign in the kitchen. The lesson: orders must be followed out literally, or as Kaka used to say in his humorous homilies to Westerners, "No suggest."  

 

Nasik 1933 - Left to right: Elizabeth Patterson, Norina Matchabelli, Delia De Leon, Rano Gayley, Kitty Davy, Jean Adriel ; courtesy of MSI Collection
   

She says:

"Baba's orders had to be obeyed to the letter. Be assured that if you did anything contrary to what He said, He was sure to know about it and would call you to explain. No one who has not lived near Baba can ever believe how every detail of everybody's life throughout the day was His concern. It might have been your food, your health, your bath, your special work, your home ties, but whatever it was it was also Baba's interest. How He also did His spiritual or universal work was a puzzle to me, but He said, 'This must be so. I work all the time, whether I am thinking of the butter, bread or milk. I do My universal work simultaneously. I cannot rest unless I work. When I work, that is My rest. My work is in restlessness'."
 

                  Meher Baba, outside the Guest House, Meher Center, 1952 
                          Photo: Courtesy of the photo archives of Sufism Reoriented

The first week when I was Baba's guest at the Center, in '52, He stirred up many vivid dreams in my head every night, then He made me tell Him each one the next day in front of the women. One night I had an amazing dream of Kitty dressed in a nun's habit, with sparkling dark eyes. Somehow I knew she was St. Theresa d'Avila. I asked her how we should proceed on the Path, especially, should we join a spiritual order or go it alone? She said, "That is a question that can only be answered when Baba comes again." And there was Baba coming up the stairs with His illimitable smile! I woke up and looked out the window and saw Baba looking at me with the exact same smile. When I related the dream to Him, I left out the part about Kitty being Theresa - I was too shy - but it was interesting that Baba, looking into my eyes, spelled out immediately on His alphabet board, "My four favorite saints are St. Theresa, St. Catherine, St. Francis and St. Augustine." For me, He authenticated that Kitty was the St. Theresa type. Baba called her "Saroja", meaning Lotus; the Saroja Library at the Center is named for her.

 

Saroja Library, Meher Spiritual Center
 
Coming from a typical upper-class English family (Kitty was presented at Court, white feather headdress and all) ,she was a member of the Anglican church, and, as she relates in her autobiography, devoted to Jesus. She had read the lives of the Christian mystics. Though she had surrendered her life to Baba as her living Master, in the beginning she did not identify Him as the Christ until, perhaps, one very rainy Easter morning in North India. Baba usually gave her permission to go to church on such a holiday. But as the rain poured down, and she gazed at Baba, she suddenly realized, He   is  the Christ. There was no need to go to Church to find Him.
Photo: Courtesy of Charles Haynes - Kitty, Elizabet Patterson, Jane Haynes  

 

In 1952, Kitty assumed she would be returning to India with Baba, But He asked her to stay in America and help Elizabeth with the running of the Center. I am sure when He came again in '56 and '58 she longed to hear Baba say she would return with Him, but such was not His will. She was too valuable for His work in this country. In a sense, she took Norina's place at Elizabeth's right hand - in fact, Baba used to cable to "Elikit." Not only her gift for managing everyday details (who can forget Kitty barreling around the Center in her golf cart, checking out the cabins?), but her warm personality, her intuitive way of dealing with people and their problems, was a great addition to the charm of the Center. By the '60's great numbers of people were visiting the Center - with the '60's problems! Kitty gave - and she still does at 92 - unsparingly of her time and caring.

 

Photo: Awakener, Vol. 20, No. 2 , p. 40
 

For example, you have waited outside on the porch of Elizabeth's house so long . . . Finally the screen door to her office opens, out pops Kitty, her head wreathed in grey braids. "Are you a book or a problem?" she asks. (It is through Kitty you order books at the Center). You are scheduled for a half-hour visit. In between your "sobs and throbs" as it were, the telephone rings, someone pops in with a message, the cook asks for directions, Beauty (a very misnamed dog) needs attention . . . no matter, those deep brown caring eyes (so like Baba's at times) have looked within you, seen what you need and you come away with the cheer and reinforcement you need. The "pretty brunette", Kensington music teacher is now "teaching" new souls how to follow Baba, by a loving word, a thoughtful kindness, but most of all by the example of her lifetime surrender to the Master. 

 

Mehera Book; p294
         

Every year she travels to India, her spiritual home, and also visits the Baba Centers here in the U.S. and Canada, sharing generously her memories of life with the Avatar.

 

P.S. My most precious memory of Kitty? At the sahavas in California, at Pilgrim Pines: she was on stage, ready to read her talk to us, when Baba "appeared" by her chair, and placed His hand on her head. Just so, we began our sahavas, keeping company with the Lord.

 

Vol. 20, No. 2 (1983), pp. 39-43, used by kind permission.  

  

Editor's Note :
 
Katherine Laura ( Kitty ) Davy " Saroja " 

Born : August 28, 1891 - KensingtonLondonEngland

Died : December 3, 1991 (aged 100) - Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,United States

Buried : Upper Meherabad (near Baba's tomb/samadhi)  

Nationality : English

  

ALSO, NEW AND NOTABLE:

  

Kitty Davy, One Fine Thread (2014), now available at Meher Baba Books

 

    


 
 
A Meher Baba Prayer/ Revised Version


 

Goodbye for now. See you at our next appointment, next week. We conclude with an image of the full moon in the night sky over the vast water. 

 

Enjoy the full moon tonight. Smile ... Jai Baba.

 
 
  
                          


Meher Baba Books (Los Angeles)

 

www.meherbababooks.com

Avatar Meher Baba Center of Southern California 
1214 S. Van Ness Avenue 
Los Angeles, CA  90019 


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