MEHER SPIRITUAL CENTER

Meher Baba's Home in the West

January Newsletter 2024

Meher Center Archive Photo Collection

"You should become lost in the idea of possessing the Beloved by hook or crook. When you are prepared in your heart of hearts to gain union with God at the cost of life and the ridicule of the whole world, then perhaps you may be said to have entered the lane of divine love."


Meher Baba

The Unstruck Music of Meher Baba God's Voice, by Maud Kennedy, p. 23

Dear Meher Center Family and Friends,


On January 31st, 1969, Avatar Meher Baba laid aside His beautiful physical form after a lifetime of unfathomable selfless service, sacrifice and suffering for humanity. On that day, Baba’s secretary, Adi K. Irani, sent out the following telegram:


AVATAR MEHER BABA DROPPED HIS PHYSICAL BODY AT TWELVE NOON 31ST JANUARY AT MEHERAZAD TO LIVE ETERNALLY IN THE HEARTS OF HIS LOVERS


As part of Meher Center’s celebration of Amartithi this year, we are presenting a virtual gathering that will include a talk by Rick Chapman, who was present at Meherabad when Beloved Baba’s body was covered in 1969. It will begin at 8:00 p.m. EST on the night of Amartithi here in the West—Wednesday, January 31st—and it will include some surprise musical guests as well as rare photographic imagery from that time. Please visit our Virtual Programs page to join us.


In Meher Baba’s love and service,

 

 

Buz Connor

For Meher Center board and staff

Darshan at Avatar Meher Baba's Samadhi

Join us for a beautiful virtual Darshan at Meher Baba's Samadhi, accompanied by the Gujarati Arti.


Video, 4:38

Courtesy of Meherabad Moments

In Joy

By Preeti Hay

In a talk honoring the fifteenth year of Baba’s Amartithi in 1984, Kitty Davy spoke to the crowd about remembrance and joy. Quoting the dictionary, Kitty defines joy as “a forceful, sustained state of happiness that is associated with sharing, self-realization, and high-mindednessan exultation of the spirit.” She then goes on to quote Mani, who points out that both joy and sorrow reveal glimpses of the poignancy of human experiences thus drawing one closer to God.1

 

Reflecting on Kitty’s words, one wonders how joy can be identified. A very simplistic answer can be this: one knows it when one sees it. And if joy is such a forceful experience, would it not, like love, be experiential and therefore contagious? If you have met Ken Richard and Betty Kornitzer, you would know what I am talking about. 

 

Ken and Betty live in Rhode Island but are winter volunteers here at the Center. This is the seventh year of their working with the Cabin Crew. I remember seeing them when they first arrived to serve the Beloved; it appeared they were floating on clouds. Their joy was palpable and so was a sense of good fortune and marvel that oozed out of them. The same sense continues today. Volunteering together had been their dream and now it has come true.

 

It is no wonder that their story is sprinkled with the sparkle dust of wonder. Ken first came to Baba in 1970. He was part of a group of seekers of truth in Mystic, Connecticut whom Kitty affectionately called “Mystic mystics.” Betty, on the other hand, heard about Baba through Ken. She had always been a seeker but found herself trapped in an unrewarding job as a lawyer. One fine day she decided to give it all up for something that made her heart sing. That thing was to serve God with people. With that yearning she went to seminary to become a minister when she was fifty years old. Due to visual problems, it took her six years until she finished her degree and became a preacher at a Unitarian church.

 

How then did the two of them meet? They chuckle with a twinkle in their eyes when I ask this question. “Should we tell her?” they say to each other. Turns out they met on a dating website! Both of them had a profile that made it clear that God was important in their lives. Before they knew it, Ken had told Betty about Meher Baba and during the first year of their courtship they came to the Center. There was no looking back for Betty. She was compelled to go every three months from then on.

 

They married soon after. When they came back as a married couple, it was natural for Ken to spend time with his old friend Arthur Kimball, also one of the “Mystic mystics.” Arthur was then the head of Cabin Crew and, as it would happen, Betty and Ken landed the job of not just cleaning cabins but specializing in Intensives. “You can either clean a cabin in between guest occupation or when the cabin is closed down for intensive cleaning and that is what we do,” says Ken.

 

What does an Intensive involve? “We clean every inch of the cabin for several days. This includes ceilings, walls, kitchen counters and refrigerators. We also take lamps and beds apart and put them all together after we have cleaned,” says Ken. “And my specialty is kitchens, I love to make them shiny,” adds Betty. 

 

They speak of cleaning with such passion that I assume they must have a proclivity for such work but when I ask them, they both vehemently debunk my assumption. “It is rewarding because it is a way of doing something the way Baba wantedkeeping the cabins ready as if He were coming tomorrow. It is an opportunity to follow His direction. Knowing that the next pilgrim will be happier makes us happy,” says Ken. I can’t help but ask if they are cleaners at home. “No,” laughs Betty. “One year we decided to try intensives at home. We did two Saturday mornings and never, ever brought it up again! It was not rewarding like it is here because we don’t do it for ourselves here,” she says.

 

While both of them see their work as service, they go about it slightly differently. Ken finds the work meditative in his conscious repetition of Baba’s name while doing it. “Remembrance of His name is the receptive self but the way you become something is the expressive self and this work allows the integration of those two elements,” says Ken.

 

As for Betty, while she is hunched over cleaning surfaces with toothbrushes to achieve minute perfection, her heart is overflowing with gratitude. She inwardly talks to the pictures of Baba in the cabin, basking in a sense of living in the midst of a great miracle. She remembers a line from one of Ken’s songs, “Who am I that I should happen to be at the threshold of Your kindness?” For Betty, it is nothing short of a miracle that Baba has brought her here with a partner who will serve Him with her. 

 

In the same talk about remembrance and joy, Kitty quotes Bal Natu who says that with remembrance, one’s inward journey becomes, “not a matter of mechanical effort, but a natural and spontaneous remembrance of the One whose love makes it easy. Our meditation on Him becomes a delightful companionship with Him, overflowing into gratitude and praise.”2

 

Forty years after Kitty’s talk on the subject, when Ken and Betty leave the Center after our little chat, I see them frolicking away, hand in hand like children leaving a candy shop. In joy. In remembrance. In praise. 

 

1 One Fine Thread, by Kitty Davy, p.194

2 Glimpses of the Godman, Vol. 5, by Bal Natu, p.26

Caring for the Center: The Guest House

Center staff members have been hard at work in the Guest House over the past month. On the inside, this involved painting the dining room, entryway, and sections of the kitchen. Gabe Wood, one of the workers on the project, had a surprise while working on the dining room. As they sanded down the walls, he noticed that one of the coats of paint appeared to be pink. Then, when they started painting with the same shade as before, he quickly discovered that the walls had actually always been a light pink color—it had just faded to such a subtle shade that he thought it was off-white. “It’s not so subtle now,” says Gabe. In the entryway, Gabe notes that two different kinds of paint were used: water-based paint on the walls, and heartier oil-based paint on the shelves to “protect them and the wonderful treasures placed on them.”

 

The outside of the Guest House also received some loving attention: most of the wood was re-stained, including the trim on the porches and the screens, and the threshold to the porch from the outside was re-painted (after raising the door slightly to make it less “scrapey”!).

 

Gabe, who initially learned many of his maintenance skills while working on the Guest House years ago, was happy to get to put those skills to work again. “We took the extra time and it was definitely worth the effort,” he says, “and it’s going to get an Intensive now so it’s just going to look fantastic!”

The Reality Friend

By Laura Smith

Meher Baba with Dr. C.D Deshmukh

Shaw Photo collection

Meher Baba tells us that all this world is an illusion and only God is Real. “It is time humanity had a fresh vision of the truth that all life is one and God is the only thing that is real and that matters. God is worth living for, and He is also worth dying for.”1


When Darwin and Jeanne Shaw were with Baba at Meher Mount, California, in 1956, Baba encouraged everyone gathered there to “Take Me with you” as they walked around individually enjoying the nature of the surrounding area. Jeanne experimented with this idea as she walked, speaking with Baba as if Baba was physically with her; talking to Him, asking Him questions. At one point she “said” to Baba, “Oh, there’s a big beautiful tree over there, Baba. I’d love to see You sitting under it.” And then, within moments, Jeanne was surprised to see that Baba had made His way to the tree and sat under it. Later everyone dispersed but Baba was still there by the tree and motioned Jeanne toward Him. When she reached Baba, He reached over and most lovingly kissed her cheek. Jeanne felt that Baba was showing her His approval of her obedience to quite literally take Him with her. And dare I add, that He was also actually there with her, internally, hearing her, as His sitting down at the tree implied.2

 

Musing on this story, I once said to my mother, “Keeping Him as our constant Companion is kind of like having an imaginary friend!” We talk to Him, we share with Him, we try to remember Him, we imagine what He might say in any given situation or how He might direct us. And my mother, in her unique ability to instill deep insight in a flash, said to me, “Oh no. He’s not our imaginary friend, He’s our Reality Friend!”

 

For years, I chuckled to myself at the brilliance of her statement. Yes! He is our Reality Friend. He is the one grounded in Truth, we are the ones lost in illusion. And then ... one day, it occurred to me ... and it made me laugh out loud ... “Wait a minute ... if He’s the Reality Friend, that means I am the imaginary friend!!!” After getting a really good kick out of this truth bubbling up, I got to thinking, “What does that mean?” If I am Baba’s imaginary friend, and I would most definitely aspire to be that, what does it mean to be a good imaginary friend to Him?

 

Well, what kind of imaginary friend would I like to have? One that is ever attentive. One that is kind and loving and funnymischievous, irreverent! Would I want an imaginary friend who is always worrying and depressed and has a “garlic face”? 


Meher Baba says: “Don’t worry ... Let Baba do the worrying. He enjoys working things out. There is no need for both you and Baba worrying. If you are going to worry then I won’t worry.”3 Did you read that? Baba ENJOYS working things out! So if we want to be a good imaginary friend and please Him, we must not deny His enjoyment of working things out! We can please Baba by allowing Him to work things out. 

 

Would I want an imaginary friend who is wholly concerned with what type of insurance is best or what outfit to wear? Would I want an imaginary friend who is always talking about how bad the world is and how much worse it’s getting? No! I would want a happy imaginary friend: an understanding, compassionate friend. I would want an imaginary friend who is always there for me; thinking of me and how to support and love mehow to please me! 

 

And that, as He has said, is exactly what Baba wants of us. He wants our love. He wants our happy, attentive love and focus on Him. He wants us to aim to please Him. And to be clear, He wants this for our own sake. He wants us to direct our full attention on He who is Perfect, He who is the personification of our Truest Self, so that we may someday come to experience and realize the Truth of who we really are. “God is your innermost Self.”4


In the meantime, may we all have the great good fortune to stay focused on being the best imaginary friend to The Friend that we can possibly be. 


1 Discourses, by Meher Baba, 7th edition, p. 339

2 As Only God Can Love, by Darwin Shaw, p.395

3 As Only God Can Love, by Darwin Shaw, p. 497

4 The God-Man, by Charles Purdom p. 240