Baba cautioned those present to take care of their health, but also hinted, "You might have to suffer for the sake of your being here with me."
(Later some of them did experience upset stomachs and flu.)
Those who had not yet met Mehera and the other women mandali did so, and then the various buses and cars that had been specially hired took them back to their hotels.
In the afternoon Baba called the Western men to Guruprasad to receive his embrace. Charles Purdom, seeing him that afternoon for the first time since Myrtle Beach in 1958, recorded his impressions of Baba:
To meet Baba again after more than four years was to find him greatly changed. He was, now more than ever, a suffering man. His expression was as bright, his eyes as keen as ever, and his alertness seemed not to have diminished, but he was withdrawn, and for much of the time looked far away, as though not belonging to the world. He constantly smiled and was ready to joke, and his humor had not deserted him, but there was a certain indifference that I had not noticed before. Above all, there was an immense sadness that moved me strangely. When he walked, one saw that he moved heavily.
A friend of Margaret Craske named Buddy Rossin, from New York, was meeting Baba for the first time.
The first thing Baba asked him was, "How is your ear?"
Buddy was taken aback. He was deaf in one ear from a war injury but had never told anyone.
In September, Joseph Harb had suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized.
When he approached, Baba asked, "Why didn't you take my name at the time of the attack?"
Joseph too was stunned by Baba's omniscience, but happy that Baba had been watching over him.
Gary Mullins, 22, had found out about Baba in San Francisco one year before from a chance encounter with Ivy Duce (he had picked up a package she had dropped on the street!): "Baba appeared like a perfect rose. He was the most beautiful human being I had ever seen in my life. [Meeting him] was an experience of aesthetic perfection."
As Eruch called his name, Gary came forward:
I would give up everything in life, and I mean everything , if I could experience, once again, those few moments when I first met Meher Baba. It is my supreme memory of being with him while in India...We were being introduced to Baba by Eruch...Baba, sitting on his couch, beckoned for me to come to him — so simply, so childlike, and so far beyond any words I could possibly create.