Baba motioned to her if she wished to ask anything. Josephine said that she would like to help people.
Baba gently replied,
"First, you must learn how to help."
Many years later, Josephine related:
The thing that caught you most were those beautiful melting eyes that you could look into and just lose yourself completely. There was a sense of such beauty and purity — an exalted feeling whenever you were near Baba — even the whole house was filled with it. Beauty was the term that comes to my mind most in relation to Baba. It was beauty in its highest form — he seemed to radiate it — and of course love. When I first met him, I knelt in front of him. He smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. His touch was so gentle, like the petal of a flower. I always had the feeling with Baba that he was not physical at all; he was just barely in the physical body. You weren't dealing with a human being. You were dealing with a spiritual being, temporarily in a physical body ...
Anything that was your highest aspiration seemed to be centered in him. Anything of the most beautiful, most pure, most holy that you ever imagined was in him and intensified, magnified really. He was the center of all the highest things that you'd ever thought of or ever experienced in any form. Such sweetness and gentleness and lovingness and beauty. Those were the things that I was most aware of in Baba.
Jo, as she was called, was allowed to stay at the Harmon
Retreat to assist her mother with chores. She was given a room in one of
Margaret Mayo's other houses (near Mayo's own residence) which Margaret
had agreed to make available to guests visiting Harmon. But the first night Jo
was there, the house caught fire at 1:00 A.M. and burned to the ground.1 The visitors,
however, were not upset, as it afforded them the opportunity to move into the
house where Baba was staying. Thus, they were able to spend the night under the
same roof with him.
The next day, Wednesday, 11 November 1931, Baba called
them to his room and asked if anyone were hurt.
On being reassured that all were
fine, Baba explained, "Fires often spring up where I go."
Baba then went to inspect the smoldering ruin.
He asked
Jean, "Will our hostess suffer financial loss?"
"No," she replied, "on the contrary. It so
happens she is in greater need of the money than of the guest house, and will
benefit by the amount the insurance company will pay her."
Baba was satisfied, then responded, "Since no one
will suffer severely through this experience, we should rejoice that the fire
happened. It is a good sign. Those who lost their few belongings in the fire
will begin a new life. Those who managed to save their possessions will have to
wait for their new beginning."
Some of the guests had lost money in the fire and Baba
remarked to them, "Christ asked much more than this. To those who came to
him he said, 'Leave all and follow me.' "
A successful novelist and screenwriter named Perley Poore
Sheehan, 56, met Baba on the 10th, and six persons came to meet him the
following day. Among them was Norina, who brought a young woman named
Anita de Caro.2 Anita was a talented art student in whom Norina had
taken an interest and was helping financially. On one occasion, Anita recalled
her first encounter with Meher Baba:
I had been brought up Catholic. [Knowing I was about to
see him,] all of a sudden I was frightened. I thought: "If this is such a
great religious man, how am I to behave? I can't shake hands with him. The
only thing to do is kneel. I'll make the sign of the cross and say, 'Bless me, Father,' and kiss his hand."
Footnotes
- 1.The house, known as the Hill Top bungalow, was located across the river on Ridge Road, about three miles from the Harmon Retreat. The fire started when flying sparks from the chimney ignited the roof.
- 2.Anita later married Roger Vieillard.