Even though he was about to leave, Baba met a few newcomers including one woman from New York who had missed him there. Another woman who had come that day had been told she had to belong to a group to attend one of the meetings.
Baba assured her, "Many of my followers belong to no group at all yet belong to my real group which includes all my lovers and all my groups. My real center is the heart of everyone who loves me."
Recovered, Lud Dimpfl drove Baba and the mandali to the airport. Baba asked him to roll his window up, as he did not like the draft, but Lud, in his excitement to be driving Baba, kept absent-mindedly rolling it down! Baba had to ask him to roll it up. "Now whenever I am in that car and touch the window handle, I think of him," Lud later said.
The entire group had followed Baba to the airport to see him off, but as he had earlier instructed, Baba prohibited any of them from embracing him. He frowned as one woman broke into loud weeping and begged for an embrace. Yet, to one here and there, he gave a loving pat on the cheek or chin, as if to say, "Be brave! Chin up!"
A stranger stopped, struck by Baba's appearance and his lovers' evident absorption in him. "Who is that man?" he asked.
Filis replied boldly, "He is the Messiah."
Instead of taking offence, the man commented, "He very well might be."
Bili Eaton had not wept, although she too was feeling sad, of course. She related :
Everyone was in tears because Baba was leaving. I was very proud of myself, thinking, "I haven't cried and I'm not going to cry!" and I was doing very well. We were in a circle around Baba and everyone else was blubbering away. All of a sudden Baba put his hand on my shoulder and "blaa ..." the tears started rolling. When Baba wants to get to you, he gets to you; there is no way you can escape!
Filis later described that final, heart-wrenching parting:
Too soon it was time to go. Baba strode down the ramp as dozens of hands stretched out to him in farewell. He clasped one tightly, then another. One of the youngsters ran down the passage ahead of him and slipped an orchid garland over his head. He embraced her and returned the garland. Then it was really goodbye as we watched him walk up the stairs and into the huge transoceanic plane. There was his divine hand waving slowly at us from the third window. Now there was no help for the tears that fell down my cheeks. The age-old separation has begun again.