My heart was pounding with fear. The door opened. Baba was seated Persian fashion [with his legs crossed under him]. I looked at him and went into peals of laughter. I laughed and threw myself on him. "My heavens! It's you," I cried. "You made me go through all this masquerading and fear when it's you! It's incredible!" And I laughed and laughed.
Baba opened up his arms. I was absolutely enraptured and felt a tremendous sense of joy. My whole being felt as if I was in a furnace. Words cannot describe the encounter. It was like meeting someone I always knew, as though I had come to my real home. I experienced a great beauty and great joy.
At their first meeting, Baba asked Anita, "Do you know who I am?"
She replied, "You are the source of all goodness." Norina had explained much to her about Baba, and Anita continued, "I wanted to ask you so many things I had thought of, but when I am near you, I just can't; and there seems no necessity, too."
Baba replied, "Yes, I could explain for hours, but words and explanations are not necessary for one who feels things deeply as you do."
Baba inquired about her interests and when she said she was an artist, he gestured humorously, "Could you paint me?"
She answered, "You are too beautiful and would be too difficult to paint." Nonetheless, two days later, Anita returned to Harmon with Norina (and again on the 18th) and, at Baba's request, attempted to paint his face. Despite several sittings, Anita found that Baba's expression kept changing and she left the canvas unfinished.1
Anita later recollected about that incident:
I hadn't really studied portrait painting, but Baba guided me to do it. Painting him was a great experience, because I learned one cannot put down that which is ever-changing. It would take pages to describe the event of being in Baba's presence while I painted. I cannot tell you how long it took, because there was no sense of time in his presence. Baba looked at me and I lost all sense of time. Everything about him was ever-changing — Baba's eyes, the color of his skin, his expressions. It remains a great mystery to me.
I told Baba, "One cannot paint you because your expression changes every moment. You are never the same!"
Footnotes
- 1.The portrait is kept in the Meher Spiritual Center Archives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.