Chapter 36: Interested In Remaining Disinterested
1962Page 4,784 of 5,444
Baba instructed them to return to Meherazad at exactly 4:00 P.M. on 16 February 1962. They were early, so they stopped at Happy Valley for tea. Baba remarked he would not see Don Stevens until the morning, but within two minutes of their arrival, Eruch called Don Stevens, who saw Baba smiling, standing in the doorway of the hall. Baba met with them for two hours. They related their trip to Aurangabad and vicinity.
Among other things, Baba stated, "Long ago 30 great Sufi saints migrated from Persia to the hill at Khuldabad. Five stayed there and the rest disbanded in one's, two's and three's to various parts of India."
(The most famous of them was Qutub Zarzari Zar Baksh, the Master of Sai Baba.)
According to Don Stevens, "Baba always seemed to have a devilish way of diving and then zeroing in on my instinctive convictions of what the Christ of our times would certainly do and what he would obviously avoid." The first time Baba did this to him two years before, Stevens was completely unprepared. Previously in 1960, during that visit to Meherazad, Baba had Eruch describe the proposed center in Hamirpur, Meher Dham, which was to be dedicated to Baba's work. Stevens was listening to Eruch's detailed description, just waiting for Baba to end it all with the clearly necessary punch line often emphasized by Baba that, "he had not come to establish a new church or religion." Therefore, with the exception of the Meher Center in Myrtle Beach and a few other establishments, such as Meher Mount in Ojai, which he had encouraged for special reasons, such "church-like centers" were not needed and Baba would have to correct this misguided effort.
Finally, Eruch finished his description, and Don Stevens waited confidently for Baba's capping statement. It did not come. Baba just sat there looking happy and pleased, and instead it was obvious he was waiting for Stevens' praise of the Hamirpur people. Don Stevens recollected: "I stuttered something utterly inane, and then spent several very heart-searching days digging into the unthinking Stevens' prejudices that had obviously landed me with a superficial conclusion." Often after that, Baba had Eruch describe other new centers that were being built or rented which were devoted to his work, such as in Andhra and Poona.
But Baba was not finished with Don Stevens yet, concerning this matter of his ingrained ideas about establishing "temples" or "churches." When he arrived at Meherazad in February 1962, Stevens later related, "the warm embrace had hardly stopped tingling through my chest into my spinal column, when the next depth charge was lobbed right under my sternum and exploded."