BABA'S LAST MOMENTS IN AMERICA

 
Meher Baba's last Sahavas in America came to a close the following day, Friday, May 30. We all went to Wilmington, North Carolina, very early in the morning with Baba and spent the last few minutes with him in the airport.

Baba remarked, "I am in you all. But I only can enter your heart when you have driven out everything else." He added, "I am God. I am in you all. But I feel shy; I do not enter your heart if I find there the slightest impurity."

When Anita Vieillard, who had come late, asked Baba how long he had been at the airport, Baba said, "Since eternity! I never come and I never go. I am present everywhere. Isn't it wonderful that I never leave?" Baba also seemed to do some inner working; his fingers were moving rapidly, and one time he tapped his right leg, then his left, then his right again.

Then, after embracing a few people, despite having previously announced a prohibition on embracing him, he was placed in a wheelchair and taken to the plane. We waved goodbye to him, and he waved back to us through his window on the plane. Baba then went on to California with the men mandali and Lud Dimpfl. After spending one night at the Dimpfls' home, Baba and the men mandali went on to Australia.

This was the last time Meher Baba came to America. The circumstances of this American Sahavas were unique. Our Beloved, out of love for us, had journeyed all the way from India, while enduring an ever-deepening suffering for mankind, to give us the incomparable blessing of his companionship, and to allow us to share his suffering in a small way.

Although this American Sahavas had been announced as a substitute for the big gathering in India Baba had described in 1956, I still felt hopeful that the time would come when the Westerners would have the chance to go to Baba in India. As it turned out, this opportunity would come four years later.