Links Across Lifetimes

Figure 1

I watched a short video of Filis Federick talking about the links the Avatar makes with people during his advent. Don Stevens, she said, had been told by Baba that the Avatar decides in his current advent who will meet him in his next. These links are most important in the spiritual advancement of individuals. 

This got me thinking about my own links to the Avatar. Initially, I came to Baba via his book, God Speaks. It was Don Steven's book, Listen Humanity, that led me to Avatar's Abode. Figure 1 shows that I was then amongst the "people who have heard of Baba via the Internet, books or contact with people who know about Baba". 

On my first visit to Avatar's Abode, I met Lorna Rouse who, again referencing Figure 1, was one of those people who "have met Baba in his physical form" and was a member of his outer circle who had been allowed by Baba to live at Avatar's Abode. Lorna met Baba in 1958 and it was about forty years later that I met her. After this I met several other people at Avatar's Abode who had met Baba. I should say that throughout this "voyage of discovery" I was accompanied by my wife at the time. We had met in late 1992 and separated in early 2000.

I was with my wife when we travelled to Meherabad in the late 90's. The first person we met at the Pilgrim Centre in Ahmednagar was Bhau Kalchuri who was working in the garden and smilingly met us as we approached. Naturally, we assumed he was the gardener. Little did we know at that moment that he was Baba's gardener whose business it was to plant Baba seeds around the world. A year or so later Bhau visited Singapore and we were fortunate to meet him there for a few hours on his way back to Meherabad. Thus the first person we met was a member of Baba's inner circle.

I consider myself to be most blessed to have had these contacts and all that I can hope for is that these links may lead me to meet the Avatar in person during his next advent. Of course, that's up to the Avatar. You can find out more about Fillis Federick (second from the left in Figure 2) and other Baba lovers by visiting this site.

Figure 2

Bhau Kalchuri

I notice that my last post, almost two years ago, was about Bhau Kalchuri. At that time he was still alive but sadly he passed away on October 23rd of that year. However, I'm still reading Lord Meher and in fact have started re-reading it and am currently reading about his first visit to America in 1932. I've also started to tweet daily on what was happening in Baba's life on the day of the tweet in earlier years. For example, today Baba left New York by train and headed to Chicago. I've been taking a screenshot of a paragraph from Lord Meher and attaching that as a photograph to the tweet so that a lot more information can be conveyed compared to words alone. Here is the screenshot from today's tweet:

 

Now that I'm on the countdown to retirement, I may be able to resume this blog with more regularity. I'll keep the content of this blog more spiritually orientated whereas my Pedagogical Posturing blog can be more mundane and technologically/mathematically orientated. In both cases, I need to update some of my links and add others, including those to Instagram and Flickr.

Baba's Gardener

I'm now up to page 5566 of Lord Meher, Bhau Kalchuri's epic account of the life of Meher Baba. At this point in the biography it's early 1959. Recently Bhau's health has been very fragile but latest reports say he's feeling better. The first time I met Bhau, I was with Sylvia, my wife at the time. It must have been 1997 or 1998. We were approaching the Trust Office in Ahmednagar after alighting from a public bus that we'd taken from Poona. This little guy who had been tending to some of the plants in the garden spotted us and greeted us with a most welcoming smile and showed us into the office where we made arrangements to stay in the Pilgrim's Quarters at Meherabad. He seemed so genuinely happy to see us and asked all about where we'd come from. We assumed he was the gardener and it was only later that we realised he was Baba's nightwatchman and one of his mandali.

Even back then his health was not good. Before leaving India, we visited him briefly in a hospital, in Ahmednagar I guess, where he had been admitted for observation. My last contact with Bhau was in Singapore in 1999 when he visited for a few hours on a stop-over on his way back to India from America. Sylvia and I were having marital problems at the time and he gave each of us an Indian name whose meaning he felt might create harmony between us. I can't remember what those names were now but they related to nature (rain, soil, growth, fertility or such like). It's a pity that I didn't write down more about the events at the time but this was in the days before blogs. However, it wasn't our destiny to stay together and by the end of that year it was over between Sylvia and myself. 

Reading Lord Meher, it's funny to read of the torments to which Baba subjected Bhau. Of course, Bhau did not find them amusing but he endured them and it was all part of Baba's relentless demolition of his ego. In the end, Bhau has left humanity an extraordinary and priceless account of the Avatar's life on Earth. Once I finish I think I'll start reading it all over again because there's so much exquisite detail that it makes you feel like you are really there as the drama of Baba's advent unfolds. In the end, my first impression of Bhau was right. He is a gardener, Baba's gardener, and with Lord Meher he has planted a garden that will continue to grow as the centuries unfold.