Meanwhile , another of those contacted was a young American named Jerry Paulson, who had been waiting in India for nearly ten months in hope of being able to see Baba after his seclusion ended. Paulson had first been told of Meher Baba in 1966 in Santa Barbara, California, by Mik and Ursula Hamilton. On his way to India, Paulson stopped in Germany, where he met Mik and Ursula again. They informed him that Baba had gone into deeper seclusion and there was very little chance he would be able to see him.
Nevertheless, Jerry hitchhiked overland to India anyway, arriving with hardly any money. He traveled from one end of the country to the other, staying in constant touch with Baba's secretary Adi Sr. on the slim chance that Baba would send for him. Paulson spent months in Calcutta, and A. C. S. Chari often wrote to Eruch about him, pleading his case. But Baba did not call him.
Finally, in Delhi, when Paulson's money was almost all spent and his frustration from living on next to nothing for so long was at its most desperate point, Adi wrote that Baba's coming out of seclusion had been indefinitely postponed and no new date had been set. Adi felt that now there was probably no possibility that Baba would see Paulson before May or September-October of 1969, and Adi advised him to return to America.
Jerry Paulson was naturally depressed when he received this news, but he wrote back:
My heart has been so long set on seeing beloved Baba that it won't listen to reason. I have been longing to proceed south to be nearer to Baba. Leaving India, turning even my physical back on him, is beyond my powers at this point. But I am not saying I won't go home, or can't go home, or that I wish in any way to go against beloved Baba's wishes. I wish to do exactly what Baba wishes me to do. If it is his will that I return, then I have faith that it will be revealed to me and that Baba will help me carry out his will.
His letter was read to Baba, who still did not call him.
Out of desperation to get money to continue to stay in the country, Paulson accepted a proposition from some drug dealers whom he had met to deliver a shipment of illicit drugs across the Pakistan-India border. (American and European "hippies" were employed to smuggle hashish from Pakistan to India, because at that time neither Pakistanis nor Indians could cross the border.) Jerry was extremely reluctant to do it, since he knew well Baba's warnings about "No drugs!" But he saw no other choice; he was broke, malnourished, and the alternative of returning to America was unbearable in his mind.