Meher Baba Manifesting

 

Darshan: A Time for Lovers
Fills Frederick, Los Angeles

The first touch of Baba's darshan was the tremendous baptism of monsoon min-the first of the season as our plane landed in Bombay Airport, around 4 am Monday, June 2nd, after a long glide over the Indian Ocean in full moonlight. It dampened our luggage but not our spirits, as welcoming cries of “Avatar Meher Baba Ki Jai" flickered from the balcony of the airport. Bombay and Poona lovers had come to welcome us to India, and to the great darshan. It was surprisingly easy to get through customs and pile into the special buses each manned by a Baba volunteer or two. I made my fin contact with Meherwan Jessawala, brother of dear Eruch.

After a night's rest in various hotels, we board the Deccan Queen at the station and began the 3-hour journey to Poona. Here natural phenomena seemed staged just for our benefit. As dusk was falling, huge orange and violet monsoon clouds drifted over the Ghats, [mountains] against which the black trees and the purple rocks glowed like a scene from Dante's Divine lnferno 'Baba's light show,' one youngster called it.

At Poona we walked from the station to the hotels, breathing once again the soft, magic air of an Indian night. Our Los Angeles group was put up in the Poona Club, where Freni and Rustom Dadachanji were in charge of us, with an assist from Baba’s two nephews, Sohrab and Rustom, and Bejon. This was also where Dr. Donkin, author of The Wayfarers stayed.

Tuesday, June 3rd: After the bank visit and the shopping spree (the Kashmir stores did a roaring business, being run by a Baba devotee), we had lunch at the Club; we all voted for vegetarian food, much to the surprise of the manager. Dr. Donkin gave me a lift in his "Blood Clot," a red Wolsey, over to Guruprasad, where Lenny Willoughby was rehearsing tomorrow’s entertainment. I stepped off to greet Mehera, Mani and the girls in the adjoining room.lt is hard to describe what it was like to meet Mehera again, to see how grief for her Beloved Baba had etched lines in her beautiful f face. I could not keep from crying. It was as if in her Baba was there and yet nor there. It was the first shock of the Darshan for me, a shock of love and grief combined in a way that turned both into something else, something beyond. But there was also the well-remembered sparkle and vivacity of Mani, Baba's sister, and the loving greetings of Naja, Mehera, Khorshed, Dr. Goher and Rano.

Mehera started to speak of all the things that had happened around the time of Baba’s passing. She told us how on January 31st a man in Pakistan saw Baba standing on his veranda. He said "Baba how is it that you are here? You were in India." Baba replied: "Yesterday 1 was in India, today I am everywhere." Also, at noon, on the 31st, the whole of Mombasa in Africa was completely covered in darkness at 12 noon for 15 minutes and a very loud noise was heard. Also one of the English group stopped at Cairo, on his way to India, to the Darshan, and at night he saw a tremendous, brilliant star, in the southeasterly part of the sky (in the direction of India) . This star was seen by others. Another phenomenon was the crescent moon which was seen-again in Arica-with a star stuck on its tip (Mehera holds her fingers out to illustrate the crescent and the star) with a bright pink halo around it: and star and moon set together! Then she got up and went over to her treasure-box and showed us a lock of Baba's hair, a reddish curl, from his younger days; also some special photos of Baba and some photos of Naja dressed in improvised, hilarious costumes. She explained how Baba used to ask Naja to dress up every day in a different costume to make him laugh. You wouldn't believe they all were Naja! Diane Cobb and a few others came in to greet Mehera. Mehera told us how, after she had combed his hair, Baba sat on her bed. So then she asked Baba to sit also on the other side of the bed and he did so. "He was so kind!" She showed us exactly how Baba at first on this side, then on the other.

Adi gave me a lift home. Some of the boys had gone to Babajan's tomb in Poona and gotten 'over-ceremonializcd' by some strangers there; and also met Najoo Kotwala, who had known Baba when she was a little girl. She used to write 'Baba, Baba, I don't know about your being God and all that but I call you Big Daddy.' She used to say "Take me to see my Big Daddy. "

Some of the boys visited Don (Dr. Donkin) and he told them how he first met Baba in 1932 in London. He recalled it "was just a polite interview," until he turned to leave. He had his hand on the door knob, when Baba struck him with his Divine Love, like a shock. ''Why else would I stay in India 30 years?" Don smiled. 1 also had a chance to meet Stan Alapa, the Hawaiian who first heard of Baba from those returning from the first Darshan, as they took a respite on Hawaii; also Kari and Joseph Harb, “holdovers" from the first Darshan .

Wednesday June 4th: The First Day of Darshan.

8:30am We bussed to Guruprasad, chanting 'Avatar Meher Baba Ki Jai!' took off our shoes by the portico steps, left our passports and rickets with Meherwan Jessawala, and filed into dear, familiar Guruprasad Hall. Quietly we seated ourselves facing "the chair," in which was propped a large photo of Baba. After coming halfway around the world ... we are here, in His Presence! Mehera, in a fragile blue sari, opens the darshan by garlanding the photo w ith jasmine, small pink roses and tinsel. In a low voice she says 'Avatar Meher Baba Ki Jai!' Two hundred-fifty strong we reply 'Avatar Meher Baba Ki Jai!' A clock in the hall chimes nine as Eruch says “You have kept an appointment with God."

Eruch: "We begin the program at 9 o'clock. Beloved Baba has arranged the program for the Westerners from 9 to 11. Today is the 4th of June '69 and we have the last group, mostly from the United States. We begin by invoking Meher Baba's blessing: “Avatar Meher Baba Ki Jai!”

"Avatar Meher Baba Ki Jai!"

"Baba was very particular that we should recite the Master's Prayer in his presence. So we've asked Don Sprinkle to begin the program with His favorite prayer." Don recites the Prayer and we respond line by line. Then Mehera greeted us with her soft 'Jai Baba,' hands folded in Namaskar, Mani greets us next: "Mehera and all of us are so very happy to see you dear ones of Baba here today, to receive His d:mhan, and to receive His love. 'We all bow down to your love for Baba! Jai Baba!" /

Just as Baba always, before beginning darshan, would ask everyone to feel at home, so Eruch too invites us to be at ease in Guruprasad-even in the crowded hall-to forget everything and just be with our Baba. After a few points on shopping, reporting illness, etc., he says "Baba would feel concerned and want you all back at your hotels at 10 pm; that is the time Baba gave all His lovers who came for darshan. Be in Baba's company-that's what he would want you to do."

Eruch continued: "Baba cannot be absent. His presence is ever felt by us. I call it an appointment with God. It fills our hearts with joy. It is a great privilege for all of us that God has allowed us to come to Him even after He left His form. Don't be mindful of the vacant seat, He completed His work. He has (just) pulled off His coat. He is here. Pour out your love. In His form, He not only rested, but worked. What was His work? We can't know the many facets of it. But one was to take upon Himself the suffering of mankind.

"After He had completed His universal work, He permitted us to touch the seat, but during the months He was doing the work, in His compassion, He would not permit us to touch it. It would have probably been harmful because the burden of the suffering of humanity was borne by Him while He used that seat when He was doing His universal work. The seat has its own significance, and it has become a sign-post for all Baba lovers who knew of Baba's last seclusion work."

Eruch says he will read Francis' address, and after the address each of us may approach the chair and begin the darshan ... "It will take a long, long time for each one to be with Baba and also go to that room and pay your respects there."

Address given by Francis Brabazon at Guruprasad, Poona during the Darshan days, 1969:

JAI BABA!

I am amazed and filled with joy to discover that the Beloved I have been serving for many years is truly a very mighty Beloved. Of course, I have known all along that He was God. But there are so many Gods. There is the God which people see in a shape of illusion such as a sunset or a mountain view or a symphony, or whose hand is seen in one's not getting caught in a rain-storm or in obtaining a good job: no doubt a very comfortable and profitable God to have--well worth a Christian candle or some Hindu incense-but not a God to whom one would offer one's life. There is the God who rules the shining planes of consciousness: but sight of his face would blind one. And the God who is beyond the planes is unknowable except by his own Grace. And he is extremely careful to whom he gives that Grace.

So when beloved Baba used to tell us that He was God, I used to think, "Yes, Baba, you are God all right-the One God and all the Gods-but what good is that to me? In fact, I used to get so fed-up with Him being God that I wished He wasn't or I wished He was sort of an Old Testament God for whom I could slaughter some fat lambs or a spotless young bull in return for some added acreage. I got so tired of His being so much God that I wrote a song about it and sang it to Him. 1t goes something like, "If only you were a bit less God, a bit more Man, I wouldn't feel so much like someone upside down in a garbage can.”

"But Baba wasn't going to become more Man just for my sake, so I had to settle for Him as the Divine Beloved, one whom I could serve sometimes, instead of thinking about myself all the time. After all, although He is God, and sometimes is a Man, being one's own and the world ‘s Beloved is His main job. Others can become as much God or as much Man as He, but only Baba is more beloved than any other beloved. And is infinitely worth serving.

But now a great problem arises. How to serve that One who is all-beloved, for whatever one does with love is done by Him. All that is done for the Beloved is done by the Beloved. And so one arrives at the painful conclusion that the Beloved alone exists-which means that oneself doesn't. And that's a terrible predicament to find oneself in, for one is still there!

"The only solution I found was to accept the position: "You alone are and I am not, but we are both here." And having arrived at this acceptance, Baba now taught me a poetical form capable of expressing all the shades of the impossible relationships of lover and Beloved. Such a form has not existed in English up till now, because the Lover-Beloved dilemma was not part of the British-American consciousness. And, of course, beloved Baba being the author of this new form was (or seemed to be) delighted with my exercises in it.

"And here is a delicious piece of humor in connection with this. There was a period when Baba had me read a new poem to him three times every morning. Do you know why three times? Baba was memorizing them. Why memorizing them? So that he could quote them next time he comes back, in 700 years! That is really God-Man humor, isn't it? Then there were His extraordinary orders or commissions. His last was for 30 ghazals, ghazal is the name of the new poetical form He taught me. It happened this way. One morning after the usual morning business was finished; Baba said He wanted me to write 30 ghazals. Could I do that? I replied promptly and brightly, "No, Baba." This reply seemed to rather astonish Him. He turned to the other mandali and said, "Well, what do you think of that? 1ask this fellow to write 30 ghazals and he says, No, Baba." Then Baba turned questioningly back to me. l said, or rather I groaned, "I don't know whether I can write one ghazal, and you ask for 30. I don't think there are any more in my head."Then he says sympathetically and persuasively, "Try, and I will help you. “ So it was back to the stone-quarry again to cut and build 30 more little poem-houses, each one a bit different; for the Beloved likes variety.

"But still I did not know what a mighty Beloved our Beloved is. This knowledge has come to me only recently, since Baba laid aside His body. "Now, the Beloved would not be the Beloved if he didn't have a 1000 whims and moods, if He didn't play His eternal game of divine pretence; if He was not all ears for the lover's praise and stone deaf to His complaints; if He was not all-knowledge and all-ignorance at the same time. He would not be the Beloved if He did not decorate the walls of His Wineshop with pretty pictures such as "All the religions being drawn together as beads on one string" and "700 years of peace"; and then invite the lover to cross deserts of heart-dryness and oceans of tears to receive the wine of His kiss; but when the lover at last staggers in at the door, the Beloved spends the whole time showing Him the pictures and expecting His interest and admiration.

"What a Beloved our Beloved is! What a Beloved we have chosen to serve! What is it to the thirst-crazed lover if a lot of glass beads are strung on one string? Will that make them turn into diamonds? What if there is 700 years of peace? Will not war again follow? He would not be the Beloved if He did not tell the lover to stand up and sit down at the same moment; to become footless, and walk; to become headless, and think; to exert himself to the utmost, and leave everything to Him.

"Though it is not the time yet for us to know the wine of His kiss on our lips, we have received the kiss of His Word in our hearts. If it were not so, how could all you dear ones who have never seen His Man form be here now? Who but the Beloved of Beloveds could speak His Word silently in your hearts and make you come from across the world to take His darshan, to bow down to Him in your hearts? Such a thing has never happened before. I have been at Mass darshans where tens of thousands came and bowed down to His Man-form. But to come thousands of miles to bow down to Him in one's own heart, that is of an entirely different order of devotion.

Why ha beloved Baba given you people this extraordinary privilege? Because He required a few to do what the many, what everyone, must eventually do: journey across the world of illusion to take darshan of Him in their hearts. What a Beloved is our Beloved; what a mighty beloved. This Word which He has spoken in your hearts, which will be spoken in every heart in the world, will lead you by the hand, and drive you with whips to the door of your Beloved, to the Wineshop of your master, where it will become your own pure song of praise and will cause the Beloved wine master to open the door and bring you in and pour for you a glass of the wine of self forgetfulness and Beloved alone remembrance. The very Word with which He knocked on the doors of your hearts and aroused you to set your feet on the path to Him, the same Word will knock on His door and make Him open it to you-himself. I bow down to this mighty one in each of you.

"But you also have your parts to play on this grand journey you have begun, you must not leave it ill to your Beloved. For every step the lover takes to the Beloved, the Beloved takes 10 steps to the lover. But the lover must continually take that one step. We must practice taking beloved Baba's darshan, bowing down to Him in our hearts, every day, then every moment until we have continuous sight of Him. Happenings will happen, even Grand Happenings. But they will not be that Happening which has to happen in our hearts. So do not look to these other happenings to nourish your faith; depend only upon His Word and its song in your hearts. Be prepared for a long, long journey to have the Beloved's real darshan. But it may only take a mere 700 years to reach His door and bow down to Him for the last time and merge in Him forever.

JAI BABA! The Victory is His."

The clock chimed 10 at Guruprasad. Eruch said: "It's ten o'clock, it's time for you to come to Baba, each one of you come in your turn. Bow down to Him in your hearts, in front of His seat where He used to give His Darshan to the crowds. After you have had the Darshan here, enter His room and have His Darshan there, one by one you can come now. We request Mehera to begin the darshan for the whole group. Which Mehera did, before His chair, taking darshan of His chappals. Then all of us one by one, went up to Baba's chair, each in his own way, in his own heart, taking darshan of Baba. Some knelt before Him, kissing the chair, and the chappals there, others stood facing it, hands joined together in silent namaskar. One curved his arms around where Baba's shoulders would have been and kissed him first on one 'check' then the other. Idly, a bee droned in the jasmine taking its own darshan ... I sat in front watching it all ... the current of Baba's love streaming out was so strong I did not, could not move. But then I, too, rose, touched the chair and brown leather chappals, that had shielded His Lotus-Feet from His own earth.

Thence to the room where lhba did His Universal work in the yellow stuffed chair. Nearby His pink jacket and white sadra hung on a rack, His water glass and soap towel handy. Another pair of chappals were tucked under his bed. Here, too, the atmosphere was heavy with His presence. It was a perfume. And one had to cry a little at the fragile physical objects left behind by God-man. Relics? There is, there can be, no relic of the God-man. The whole universe, His creation, has been left behind as His relic and especially His own, His dear souls, His children, now crowding through. Again the mixture of grief and joy, laughter and silence, outgoing love, in brooding awareness flowed about the halls and verandas of Guruprasad. Happy reunions. East-West greetings, new and old acquaintances. And the faces of all those dear youngsters, so full of love of Him! I started to cry again thinking how they missed seeing Baba in His physical form. Yet how happy they were! They opened the heart of a lot of us "old lovers " to a new nobility: the ability to love Baba beyond His human form. They are the new ones, the ones that will have to carry on, loving Baba in his formless Love.

Brother Jal comes to visit bringing a big pile of beautiful photos done by brother Beheram . What a treat!

"Jai Baba! I'm Jal, Baba's younger brother, speaking to you Western Baba Lovers. Many people ask me how is it possible Baba left his body without uttering a word. I told them Baba has started speaking now, not with the tongue, not with this piece of flesh, but with the Divine Tongue that has love in it. I gave them an explanation, that his Lovers from India, Persia, Africa, Europe and especially America, those coming from 10,000 miles away or going back 10,000 miles, spending money to come to Guruprasad just to have Baba's darshan; (there were so many men and women, young, old, sick, and pregnant, who came). They appeared to be taking darshan of Baba's photo and His chair. In reality they were kneeling before Baba and bowing down at Baba's feet. We had to lift some of them up, and we saw the carpet wet with their tears of love for Beloved God. This is how Baba speaks from the heart; that is His love flowing from their tears. This is Baba's Divine Tongue speaking of love in the hearts of his lovers.

"When Baba dropped the body and we got the news we were shocked. There were only fifteen or twenty of us there, just near Baba's Tomb, where His body was laid, two or three doctors and a few of the Mandali, and I was shocked to know some said the crypt should be closed the very next day. But in the evening when the news was broadcast from All-India radio we got hundreds of telegrams requesting the crypt should be kept open for at least one more day, that the lovers be allowed at least a glimpse of Baba. So the doctors permitted one more day. Then Baba lovers started coming by taxis, by train, by whatever vehicle, day and night and they had Baba's darshan. And then we were going to close the crypt on the second day, when again we received urgent telegrams from different stations with further equests to delay the interment. Once again the doctors said, you can't take the risk, permitted only one more day; again more lovers poured into Meherabad. In this way it went on for seven days and the doctors were surprised to see Baba's body was as fresh as ever, as if He were sleeping. His body was robust and beautiful, some of us thought Baba would speak, open His eyes, any minute now. Thousands and thousands of people came and paid homage.

"Mehera, Mani and the others had a meeting and recalled what Baba had said, before He dropped His body: 'I will be alright and I will walk on the seventh day, so you must not worry about it.' February 7th was Baba's birthday according to the Parsee calendar. So, the crypt was dosed on the seventh day, with all tears, bhajans, artis, day and night in presence of thousands of people, and they are still comng.

"So, Baba has started speaking in this way. Now some people from India and other parts of the world are having some experiences. Even in the daytime, they have seen Baba approaching them, blessing the sick, and talking to them, they couldn't believe it. But I told them, Baba is now revealing himself. Baba said, 'The day will come when I will speak one word, and it will penetrate the hearts of the whole world.' That means the day when the whole world will feel the same thing, as these Westerners, who have not seen Baba, feel today. They will experience Baba's love and that's the one Word Baba will speak. Jai Baba!"

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