Upcoming Special Presentations on Meher Baba’s Life and Message
The Center is dedicated to being a vibrant source of information about Meher Baba’s life and message. The programs listed below reflect a variety of ways of presenting and sharing this information to all who are interested. For more information on the “Meher Baba’s Life and Message” program, please click here.
Life with Baba
April 19th: 2:00 p.m. at the Library Reading Room
A Presentation by Susan and Philip Lutgendorf
Susan and Philip Lutgendorf came into indirect contact with Meher Baba in the late 1960s and later had many opportunities to be in the company of His mandali during extended periods of living and working in India. In this informal conversation, they will share memories of their early interactions with Beloved Baba (including Philip’s sending Him brownies in 1968!) and with His close ones both in the US and in India.
Meher Baba’s Messages on Drugs
May 16th: 7:15 p.m.at the Meeting Place
A Presentation by Rich Blum
Starting in the mid-1960s Baba expressed grave concern about the use of hallucinogenic drugs by the youth in the West, and He issued a series of messages explaining the dangers of these drugs. He stated that not only was the experience induced by hallucinogens an illusion into illusion, and a far cry from real spiritual experience, but also that their continual use could cause physical, mental, and spiritual damage. Baba gave great importance to the spreading of his drug messages, and He specifically instructed His three young “Baba boys”, Allan Cohen, Rick Chapman, and Robert Dreyfuss to do that work. He referred to the boys as His apostles and often expressed how proud He was of them. This presentation will chronicle their work through their own firsthand accounts, and illustrate how their efforts led to Baba’s statements penetrating the very core of the growing counter-culture in the U.S. This in turn laid the groundwork for the formation of a whole new generation of Western Baba lovers.
May 17th, 2:00 p.m. at the Meeting Place
The following day, Rich will lead an open discussion where people can share their memories of those times and also discuss the continual problem of drug use in the West. All are invited to participate.
Weekend Presentations by Peter Nordeen: June 6th, 7th and 8th!
The Avatar’s Circle
June 6th: 7:15 p.m. at the Meeting Place
An in depth look at what Meher Baba has revealed about the Avatar’s circle, which will include some rare explanations. Most of Meher Baba’s mandali were members of His circle of 120. Who were the people of Baba’s circle? And who were the two appendages of the first circle? We will also look at Baba’s Circle Chart done by Rano Gayley.
The 100th Anniversary of Meher Baba’s Silence
June 7th: 7: 15 p.m. at the Meeting Place
A comprehensive look at the history of Meher Baba’s silence, and what it means for His work of bringing the ‘great spiritual upheaval’ to humanity in this age. Meher Baba adjusted and changed the intensity of His great silence during His lifetime. But what were these constant promises to break His Silence about? When will the world feel the effect of His Silence?
All Things Baba
June 8th: 2:00 p.m. at the Meeting Place
Questions and Discussion: Bring your hardest Baba questions for this free flowing Questions and Discussion session with Peter Nordeen!
The Art of Praise as a Path to God: Francis Brabazon’s Foundation-laying for a New World Civilization
A Presentation by Ward Parks
October 17th: 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. and 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. at the Meeting Place
October 18th: 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. and 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. at the Meeting Place
October 19th: 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. and 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. at the Meeting Place
Praise and blame are two of the most potent tools in the arsenal of human expression. We praise what we love and want to become, and we castigate what we want to turn our faces away from. For this reason, praise helps to illuminate and motivate the search for God.
Among Meher Baba’s disciples, no one did more to articulate the role of praise in our relationship to the Divine Beloved than Francis Brabazon. Stay with God, his greatest single poetic masterpiece, explains how praise belongs to the essential nature of art itself, not just poetry, but painting, music, dance, and all those cultural forms that render before our eyes and ears and sensibilities what is highest and most beautiful. And through his own poetry—his songs, his ghazals, his narratives, his plays—Francis opened new channels and provided a model for how the art of praise can help inform the new civilization that will establish itself on the basis of Meher Baba’s Avataric Advent.
In this three-day program we will explore, through the medium of Francis’s poetry, the modalities of praise in all its range and diversity within the dynamics of the relationship between the lover and Beloved God.
Selected readings: from Stay with God, The Golden Book of Praise, Let Us the People Sing, In Dust I Sing, The East-West Gathering, The Word at World’s End, and other works.