Heading Home

Meher Baba spent much of the last four year of His life doing His universal work in seclusion— despite the strain of the work on His poor physical health, and the thousands of lovers new and old desperate to be near Him. A decade earlier, in the Barn, Baba had asked Eruch to describe His seclusion work to His Western lovers. “He locks himself up in a room,” Eruch had said, “the doors and windows are all locked and there is hardly a breath of air… but Baba sits all day like that, closed and locked in. Baba says the whole world is nearer to him when he is in seclusion.”*

There are moments when it seems to me that Baba is now in seclusion on the Center. And just like it was agonizing for His lovers not to get to be with Him then, it’s agonizing now: there are so many of us longing for the Center, and the nectar of His presence that seems to embrace us the moment we set foot on it.

So many people have had to cancel their trips, or not schedule ones they were hoping to make, or not come for that first tour in answer to an inexplicable urge they’ve had for a while now. For some of us who live closer, we can make these tiny pilgrimages: you can see our tracks beating down the sand every day up to the beach gate, or our cars parked as close as we can get for prayer time. Soon after I started working from home, you could see me taking a crazy journey down Highway 17 from my house, marching past the McDonald’s and the Bargain Beachwear shops, cars whizzing on my right and power lines on my left, until suddenly I could feel it— the silence of the Center, the presence of it, real and humming. And if you looked closely, you could see that in the midst of everything, I had this big floppy grin on my face and tears in my eyes, like I had just tasted heaven. And I had.

Baba’s home is so special. It’s so special that we cross the world just to see it, or drive or walk for hours just to spend a moment at its locked gates, where the sweetness of His presence still spills out over the sidewalk and right into the road where thousands of unwitting souls pass by each day. Baba created His Center for a reason, and He came into human form for a reason. But He also said that His real center is in the hearts of His lovers. He also said, “I am not this body.”

And so some of the biggest work begins when we head home, like He so often asked His lovers to do, to head home and look for Him where He really is, where He always is.

In The Joyous Path ,** one of the books that has been keeping me company these days, there’s a quote that resonates through time to speak to just this. It’s a quote that was special to Baba’s Beloved, Mehera. In fact, it was Mehera’s “fortune,” which she had selected from a batch of Baba-quote fortune cookies sent by an American Baba lover. May it be all our fortunes, during this time and forever, whether we’re walking the grounds of Baba’s sacred places, caring for our families, doing our work, sitting at home. “The more you think of Me, the more you will realize My love for you.”

* Lord Meher, Online, Pg. 4029
** The Joyous Path , Heather Nadel, Pg. 1014