It is best if there is a balance between the head and the heart, but to combine them and keep them balanced is almost impossible. Even in small, petty matters, the intellect rules the heart and spoils its mood. There is nothing better than if your duty is performed according to my wish, and with a balance between the head and the heart. Try and I will help you.
Even as a little salt spoils an entire pail of fresh milk, so also the virtues of a man are nullified by a streak of pride in his character.
Meredith Starr, 38, along with his fiancée Margarita (Margaret) Ivelyn Ross, 36, and her younger sister Esther, 31, arrived in Toka at noon on Saturday, 30 June 1928. With them came Minoo Pohowala and Ardeshir Shapurji ("Kaka") Baria from Bombay, Keki Irani from Ghatkopar, and Rusi Irani from Quetta. Rustom met them at the confluence of the Pravara and Godavri Rivers and brought them to Toka in his car. They were pleasantly surprised at the beautiful surroundings and immediately liked the place. The group offered flowers and fruit to Baba. Rustom took them on a tour of the ashram, and they were allotted special rooms that had been built for them and furnished with furniture brought from Meherabad.
Roland Meredith Starr had been interested in Eastern philosophy and spirituality from an early age.1 When he read the Upanishads he felt as if he had lived with such thoughts for ages. He spent time with Aleister Crowley and then Rudolf Steiner.2 After much meditation and periods of solitude, he gained some spiritual insight, and when he met Rustom in London in April, he said his prayers for the guidance of a living Master were finally answered. He and Margaret had sold all their belongings before coming to India, expecting to live in Meher Baba's ashram permanently.
Meredith later wrote:
Before meeting the Master, for nearly 20 years I had sought with unabated ardour for the secret of life. During this period many remarkable experiences were vouchsafed me, including states of cosmic consciousness lasting for several months.
Yet, on meeting Shri Meher Baba, I realized that during the whole of my previous life I had been like a man stumbling about the desert in a starless night with only a rushlight [rudimentary candle] for guidance.3
Later that night, explaining to Starr about meditation, Baba stated, "Meditation and concentration should be as natural as a lizard concentrating on its prey oblivious to everything else. Its concentration is so one-pointed that it only waits to pounce with no other thought except the hunt, until it has caught its prey."
Footnotes
- 1.Meredith Starr's given name was Herbert Close. His father, a successful investor, was deceased, but had separated from Meredith's American mother. Meredith had changed his name when he was 27, perhaps in relation to his work as a reviewer for The Occult Review, in which he also published some of his poems. Meredith married in 1917 and had two sons, but he and his wife divorced in 1930, and he married Margaret Ross later that year.
- 2.Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) was a British occultist and writer; Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) was an Austrian mystic and Theosophist.
- 3.The Occult Review, November 1929, p. 335.