THE IMPORTANCE OF TRYING TO PLEASE HIM

 
Although the word "consciousness" is in common use today, in my early years with Baba the word "awareness" was far more often used. However, I cannot recall Baba's using or emphasizing either word to any great extent, or if He did I was not aware of it at the time. The words we were most familiar with were love for Baba and obedience that followed from that love. What Baba emphasized was happiness, cheerfulness, and the importance of trying to please Him more and more — bringing us closer to loving Him more and more.

Looking back, however, I realize that above all other aspects of our early lives with Baba in India and in the West, He was silently and continuously weaving one fine thread onto the canvas, and that fine thread, as I see it today, concerned consciousness. Why, for instance, did Baba call us so frequently to be with Him — to sit with him, to play various games, receive various orders and duties?

I feel He was working to try to bring consciousness away from self and away from the many objects of illusion and duality to the one object of Himself. He appeared never to tire of having us around and His constant inquiry was, "What are you thinking of?" And who could forget his smile and His twinkling eye when you could reply, "Of you, Baba."

Think of it: companionship with infinite Consciousness, infinite Divine Love — which Baba was and is and always will be — and yet at the time we did not comprehend this. Baba was our friend and companion. Undoubtedly this was as He wanted it — winning our love so spontaneously and at the same time watching our awareness being gently shifted to Himself as the one object of consciousness.

Over the years, this gradual shifting of consciousness grew as our love for Baba deepened. Many of us feel and observe, when we visit the mandali at Meherabad and Meherazad, that we are meeting face to face with those whose consciousness is completely absorbed in the one object of consciousness, Meher Baba. And yet at the same time the mandali are immersed in the daily duties assigned to them — a perfect balance of head and heart.

How clear today is that moment in 1937 when we were in Nasik and Baba called me suddenly "out of the blue" and spelled out on His alphabet board: "Learn to love the One in the many and not the many in the One. I am the only friend who will never let you down." How often have I pondered this phrase! And now it is so clear what "the many" means: all the varieties of illusion and duality.