AT HOME AMONG THE STARS

 
In Hollywood Baba met hundreds of people in private interviews and a thousand or more at a public reception which was held at the Hollywood-Knickerbocker Hotel. It was my privilege to stand at his right side and introduce the guests as they came down the receiving line to his position in the center.

I say 'privilege' advisedly, because though few of the hundreds who passed before him that night seemed even dimly to apprehend anything of his spiritual magnitude, the act of speaking his name over and over again an hour or more produced in me a great feeling of ecstasy. I felt as though I were somehow sharing in the Master's work of sowing divine seeds. Some of them, no doubt, fell on barren soil, but others must have taken root, some day to blossom and bear fruit, for the spiritual feeding of the world.

Much of Baba's important work while in Hollywood was with motion-picture luminaries. He was laying his first cables in that sphere of life which, he assures us, will some day produce a wholly new type of motion picture. On all of his succeeding visits to the West, much of his time was given to this same kind of activity, until he finally found those with whom he knew he could trust the motion-picture phase of his work.

One evening, while we were in Hollywood, we went with Baba to Pickfair, where a large dinner party had been in progress. Here Baba — whose choice of abode is a tiny hut on a barren hillside in India — sat in the midst of Pickfair's luxurious appointments as though he had been born and bred in such an atmosphere. Amidst the tinsel stars he shone like a resplendent planet, completely at ease — wholly unconcerned with the curious stares of the dinner guests.

Seated against a background of flowers this Bright Messenger, whose x-ray eyes penetrate the most skillfully conceived mask, poured forth his radiance upon this cross-section of ultra-modern and ultra-complex humanity. On a couch opposite sat Cary Grant, receiving with utmost boredom the sincere homage of Baba's handsome young brother, Adi; an interesting contrast between worldly sophistication and child-like simplicity; between ennui and joy.