Chapter 11: Portofino

1933· Baba age 39Page 1,532 of 5,444

On the following day, he and the one saved returned together and found the man and his wife there. The man got into a terrible, violent struggle with my two men and was seriously wounded.

Because of the adventure on the cliff the other day, I remembered this incident from ages ago.¹

On one occasion, a person in the group questioned Baba about lust. Their conversation follows:

"It has been said that, by fighting lust, one can develop true love. But you teach that, by developing true love, one can break away from lust."

Baba replied, "The method of love is direct. The other method is indirect and roundabout. It is like eating by reaching your mouth with your hand around your neck."

"When I meet a young woman," the devotee said, "undesirable thoughts come into my mind. Yet when I avoid them altogether, I feel that I am holding back my development. Is there any way out of this dilemma?"

"Free mixing of the sexes as is done in the West is good on the whole. But if the aspirant feels the slightest flutter of impure thoughts within his mind, he should stand aside. But he must love. In order to avoid such thoughts, he should keep the thought in mind that he is to love me in the other person."

The man then asked, "Can one express and develop love through sexual intercourse?"

Baba answered, "If you think that you are expressing love through the sex act, you are sadly mistaken. It is lust which prompts you to engage in it. It is not possible to express pure love through sexual intercourse because of the clash of impressions [sanskaras] involved therein."

During this stay in Portofino, the chairman of the World Fellowship of Faiths sent Baba an invitation through Stokes to attend their conference being held in Chicago from June to November of 1933.² Baba sent a telegram that he would decide when he returned to India and let the man know.

Meanwhile Meredith Starr, who had turned further away from Baba, wrote a letter to Sampath Aiyangar in July 1933 and detailed why he had left Baba:

... I can no longer follow Baba and desire to sever my connection with him completely ... I had my doubts when Baba was in Challacombe and I am now sure of them. My reasons are as follows:

Footnotes

1.Baba also wrote to William Donkin (in 1938) that "Portofino has many past connections with me and my work." He gave no further details of his minor advent in Portofino, or about any other minor advents, although he told some of the early mandali that he had been the Indian warrior-king, Shivaji.
2.The chairman's name was Bishop Francis J. McConnell, and he was writing at the suggestion of one of the other executives of the organization, Kedarnath Das Gupta, who had met Baba at the Stokeses' the previous year. "Not only is he [Baba] a great man," Das Gupta wrote, "but he is also a great leader of the Zoroastrian faith." (Letter from K. Das Gupta to Stokes, dt. 27 June 1933; Columbia Archives.)

PreviousNext

Mastery in Servitude

Six Religious Symbols

Lord Meher Baba

Chapter 11: Portofino

Footnotes