The Eternal Date

On January 31 st , 1969, at 12:15 PM, Meher Baba dropped His physical form. The grief was unimaginable for so many of the lovers who had grown accustomed to His physical presence. And alongside that grief started to appear something else— a silent, brilliant, unchangeable truth that makes sense of the day’s name, “Amartithi,” or “Eternal Date.”

It started at the epicenter, with the close ones who had been living with Baba. Even in the midst of this wrenching and impossible change, they steadfastly did what they thought would please Him. They attended to their responsibilities, including all the new and unexpected ones. They tried to keep cheerful. They welcomed the thousands of lovers who suddenly flocked to Baba’s doorstep to pay their last respects to His physical being. In their constant and unquestioning obedience, there was no break in Baba’s presence in their lives. And many of Baba’s lovers throughout the world felt the same: that the day was not one of death but of movement, Baba shifting from a small town in India directly into their hearts.

There have been fifty, nearly fifty-one, Amartithis since that first one. The experiences of each of them, by each of Baba’s thousands and thousands of lovers, have been innumerable. Even in my own brief time with Baba, the trappings of Amartithi have been so different: my first year as a Baba lover, I accidentally spent January 31 st at Baba’s Samadhi, after feeling a strong urge to book my first flight to India in late January not knowing when (or what) Amartithi was. Then there were years of celebrating the day on a break from work in Portland, Oregon; or meditating with my new dog on my lap; or singing with dear friends at the Meher Baba Center in El Cerrito.

Last Amartithi, I found myself in the Barn, along with hundreds of members of my Baba family, all crowded in what felt like concentric circles around Baba’s chair. The fire was burning, and so was the affirmation of Baba’s continued presence—in the chair in front of us, yes, and also in each of our unique hearts, and maybe out and out through the wood of the Barn into everywhere, and everything.

Now, for the first Amartithi since that first one, I’m packing up to go back to Meherabad.

My experiences of Amartithi are not that numerous and not that special. But in each of them, and I daresay in each of all our experiences over the past fifty-one years and on into eternity, is the same quiet thread of truth— the truth that the Mandali acted on from the beginning, and that poured out into the hearts of every one of Baba’s lovers across the world on that day in 1969. That Baba’s grace and smile and laughter and presence and love are fully present and real wherever we are, and are as fully alive in us as they have ever been.