Baba had selected certain individuals from the list of scheduled appointments whom he ordered Malcolm and Norina to approach about donations for his work in India. Norina did not hesitate, but Malcolm was uneasy about the prospect and thought: "To solicit money from our friends as soon as they have met Baba seems in bad taste. It's extremely embarrassing."
Seeing Malcolm disturbed, Baba explained to him, "It is not the money that is important, but that you obey me implicitly without hesitation, as Arjuna obeyed Krishna when Krishna told him to slaughter his relatives."
Malcolm summed up the hectic period at Harmon:
Baba, whom we expected would spend most of his time in cloistered contemplation, had proved a veritable dynamo of intense activity ... Instead of seeing a few people each day as we had been led to anticipate, he was granting interviews from early morning until late at night. Visitors from all over the United States and Canada poured through the house. Letters, telegrams, cables and telephone calls sped to and from all parts of the world.
Our hospitality was constantly being augmented — more housing for additional guests who arrived from distant places and needed shelter — more and more food for those who accepted the invitation always extended to every visitor to stay for lunch or dinner. Meals were for 20, 25, 30 people, prepared on a wood stove that sometimes worked and sometimes balked.
He was silent, but not even a cyclone could have been more active or, in a way, more devastating. Men and women came [out of Baba's room] after their five or ten minute interviews with this speechless being from India so exalted that they wanted nothing for the moment but to be left alone with their experiences.
Asta Fleming Case, 37, a Norwegian-born actress and friend of Cath Gardner, had seen Baba in a dream two years before, and invited Baba to visit Boston, where she was currently residing.1 Baba went there on Saturday, 21 November 1931. Cath drove a car from Harmon with Baba, Jean (sitting next to him) and May Cluse. Chanji and Ali went in a car driven by Julian Lamar. Malcolm also accompanied them. Several times during the drive, Baba covered himself with a shawl or cape to do his inner work.
The group stayed at the Vendome Hotel in Boston.2 The next day, Baba went to see Asta Fleming Case at her home at 279 Newbury Street.
Footnotes
- 1.For a time, Asta Fleming toured Europe playing the leading role of the Madonna in Max Reinhardt's production of The Miracle (the same role for which Norina had become famous).
- 2.Hotel Vendome was located at the intersection of Commonwealth and Dartmouth Avenues. (Part of the building burned down in 1972. Nine firefighters were killed in the worst firefighting tragedy of the city's history.)