Instantly, Baba looked sharply into Don's eyes, clapped his hands and asked, "What are you thinking?"
Don was thinking: "Baba is an absolute stinker to let that boy pass through all that and not take pity on him!" But he said, "Baba, I was thinking, what right do I have to sit at your feet?"
Baba brightened and motioned to Eruch to bring Steve Simon in the hall. As he entered, at that instant, Simon experienced, in his words, "a space as sweet and soft as marshmallows." Simon was dazed and delightfully happy as he sat before Baba.
In the past, Simon had regularly taken drugs and freely admitted it.
"Have you tried to stop?" Baba asked.
"Several times," he replied, "but each time I have started again."
Baba asked him more about himself and his background, and then had Eruch summarize what Robert Dreyfuss had been told about drugs.
At the end, Baba stated, "Now promise that you will do your best to stop taking drugs. Whenever you feel any temptation, think of me and I will help you."
Simon promised to try.
"Do you have any money to get back to America?"
Simon said he had very little, and Baba instructed Meherjee to give him Rs.100 to cover the cost of a simple hotel room and food in Bombay until he could find a ship on which he could work his way back to America.
Baba remarked to Don Stevens, "Both of you are from America, so I want you to keep in touch with Steve and give him a helping hand."
Steve and Don left Meherazad at 1:30 P.M. in Meherjee's car. They traveled to Bombay, where they met Robert Dreyfuss at Ashiana, Nariman and Arnavaz's apartment.
It was later learned that when Steve Simon reached Bombay, he took the money Meherjee had given him and bought some drugs. Simon could not give up drugs, but, in his words, "Baba took away something even more evil; that was my desire to kill people." After the Army, Simon had joined the criminal underground in Miami and he had killed people for hire. This he never did again after he met Baba. Simon was an unusually perplexed man, and in his words, "I know what is truly evil and dark." For Simon, Baba was always "the good in my life."