PART THREE
Reminiscences of the City of Lost Angels
By Filis Frederick
It is July, 1956.
PART THREE
Another person I met at this tiny New Age gathering was Merle Gould, who published the Cosmic Star and had a bookstore in Hollywood of the same name. He had made several movies; one was "The Body is a Shell," another, "The Prophesies of Nostradamus," narrated by Basil Rathbone. Merle was one of the first Californians to "network" New Age spiritual groups and arrange group conferences. It was at the Cosmic Star Bookstore I gave my first public talk on Baba . . . a slide show, "The Evolution of Consciousness" based on God Speaks. When I got home later that night, there was a cable from Baba on my door. "So happy you are giving talk on God Speaks. Love blessings, Meher Baba." Yet I had not written or cabled Him at all! This loving gesture of support from the Avatar encouraged me to continue to make contacts and give public talks, as I described above, through visiting other groups and centers in L.A.
On Sunday afternoons I would have a small Baba meeting at my home (always providing a generous buffet; unused to California distances, I thought everyone would need food after the long drive out to the beach!)
It was in the very early 60's that I met my first "hippie," Jim O'Brien, an ex-mental patient. He would come and talk and borrow books (and never return them!). When Dr. Hoshang Bharucha came to visit in '61, Mrs. Fuchs had arranged for our "handful" of people to meet at her home but, at the last minute, her husband refused to welcome us so she proposed meeting in Schwab’s Drugstore. I couldn't see it; then Jim spoke up: "Come to my pad." So we held our very first L.A. meeting in the first "hippie pad" I'd seen — mattress on the floor, no furniture, stacks of books. Dr. Bharucha seemed disconcerted at first, but relaxed as he began to talk — teasing us by saying he knew who and where the Five Perfect masters of the Age were, etc, etc. I think he had expected me to have a big group in this city and was very disappointed.
But no one did, really, until 1965 or so. Ivy Duce used to phone me and complain how difficult it was to keep the Sufi Center open. Baba told her to be patient and one day the souls would come . . . and they did! In 1964 it all began to happen: the Berkeley sit-in, love-ins, riots, Tim O'Leary and Dr. Alpert pushing LSD, the Beatles, the Vietnam war, Jerry Rubin and all the rest of the 60's flash. The flower children sprouted everywhere . . . and so did the sudden upsurge of interest in Meher Baba, of course, along with other Eastern gurus: the little Maharshi and his TM mantras, Bubba Free John, Self-Realization, Zen, the Tibetans, the Hari Krishna's, the Moonies, the Children of God, and others I can't even recall got their fair share of attention. And in the orthodox religions, there were the Charismatics, the Jesus freaks, the speakers in tongues, etc. (see Larry Pesta's story, p.44). As Baba said, when the big Avatar-wave arises in the Ocean of Love, all the little creeks and rivers of the old-time religions get filled up, too.
I recall going with a friend in 1964 to hear Leary and Alpert at the Santa Monica Auditorium. They were apostles of a new "revolution" in consciousness — achievable [sic] the hallucinogenic drugs, peyote, LSD, etc. The hall was packed. I remember being shocked and angry that a drug high was being equated with illumination. The rest is history now. Alpert, actually, after hearing of Baba from Allan Cohen, went to India to try and meet Him, but the God-man was in seclusion. Alpert found another guru and became Baba Ramdas. There is an interesting correspondence between Alpert and Baba on drugs and it became the basis of the Baba pamphlet. "God in a Pill". Meher Baba took a strong slant against drugs and was much concerned with their use by young people in the West. He asked three young men, Robert Dreyfuss, Allan Cohen and Rick Chapman to be his "Three Musketeers" and crusade against drugs; He wanted them to use the electronic media as much as possible.
This led to an interesting development here in LA. In 1967 the boys called me up and said they had 10 days of free time and they wanted to fulfill Baba's order and get on TV and radio — would I help? I was stuck: whom did I know in Hollywood? No one! I had visited a few studios for Mattel, and Angela Lansbury's mother had come to our meetings once or twice. Then I remembered Nick Lamprinos, who had appeared on the Joe Pyne Show when Merle Gould had demonstrated the quackery of Philippine "psychic surgeons". Nick had been the patient! Backstage, Nick had become friendly with the producer. Nick volunteered to contact him, and sure enough, Joe Pyne liked the idea — a show based on pro and con advocates of hallucinogenic drugs. But he did not expect the pro-druggie to collapse right on camera! A touch of Baba's humor! Allan and Rick quoted Avatar Meher Baba’s message against drugs. Fortunately, "avatar" was a non-denominational word, or Joe might have been unfriendly. The upshot was that all the big L.A. TV and radio talk shows invited the boys to appear . . . Louie Lomax, Stan Bohrman, Peter Bergman, Elliott Mintz, etc. In ten days, they appeared on 18 different shows. Someone even asked us who our publicity agent was! Because of this first media breakthrough, Rick, Allan and Robert and others, including myself later on, gained access to many shows, thus fulfilling Baba’s wish. Rick writes to Mani: "Opportunities in Los Angeles have been extraordinary. On August 19th (1967) Allan (Cohen) and I appeared on a radio program for two hours which reaches a million persons in this area. On August 22 we taped a radio interview with Joe Pyne, whose show is nationally syndicated and reaches several million. The following day we participated in his television show, which reaches about fifty million across the nation ― and not a drop of cynical venom for which the show is famous appeared during our interview. He asked about Your Silence, why you keep it, what You predict for the future of humanity, whether You claim to be like Jesus and Buddha, whether You have disciples like Jesus did; and the rest of the show was occupied with LSD and drugs in general."
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