"You are returning now full of special experiences though you are unconscious of them. That is why you are so uneasy and even upset, and why you feel that you are going empty-handed. But once the veil is torn open there will be light, knowledge, understanding, illumination — and then you will know all."
Baba urged Garrett to follow all the orders he had been given, especially about refraining from lustful actions.
Baba warned him, "One physical relationship and it's all lost, so beware !"
Garrett Fort left Nasik on 24 March 1937 by train with Chanji and, following Baba's orders, set sail the next day at noon on the Conte Verde headed for California. He was never to see Meher Baba again. Fort's departure was the beginning of the end of the Nasik ashram. It was also one of the reasons why the magazine Avatar never got started.1
Garrett's ideas were innocent but naïve. A successful Hollywood screenwriter, who had enjoyed lucrative sales of his writing, was returning from "occult" India having spent months with a God-conscious Master. He was enthusiastic about going back to work in the movie business and earn thousands of dollars to send to Baba. His only thought was of how proud Baba would be of him. Yet, things were not to turn out as Fort had planned. In fact, he would have been wiser had he stayed in India and let Baba decide his future, instead of formulating his own schemes of how to "help" Baba, though he was very sincere in them. Meher Baba would seldom say no to someone who was keen to do something, who came to him for his consent or permission. Baba would allow the person to use his mind to pursue his dreams, and then learn for himself the wisdom of leaving everything to the Master.
As things tragically turned out, Garrett Fort returned to Hollywood to face years of unemployment and inactivity. He plunged deeply into debt and wrote long letters to Baba detailing his plight. Not finding work was sheer torture for him, and it was deeply frustrating not to be able to earn any money for Baba's cause. The irony of the matter was that, during this period of contact, Meher Baba would actually send him money from time to time. Several months of communication passed between Baba and Fort. After one of Fort's "whining" letters (as he himself described them) asking Baba to do something to help him, Baba sent the following letter (from Cannes, dated 3 October 1937):
Footnotes
- 1.Baba had stated that the magazine should continue for five years, but the other Westerners, too, only stayed in Nasik seven months, so the publication never materialized. Perhaps Baba had other reasons for issuing orders relating to the magazine, since it did bring out a number of conflicts between Malcolm and Fort, and Baba always worked through conflict. The planned publication, however, was not completely dropped and was to start up eighteen months later as the Meher Baba Journal.