Harry Thomas grew up, and was living in Los Angeles in 2002. (I don't say LA here, because then you will think I'm talking about Lewiston-Auburn). In February of that year he was to play and sing some songs at Baba's birthday.

Someone told him that 2002 was a "Year of the Horse," and that Baba had been a horse, referring to the Chinese calendar. Harry had little idea what this meant in the Chinese system, so he went to look it up at the public library in LA (I can say it now) that was in Chinatown.

Soon after that, as he puts it, "a whole world opened up" to him. This world eventually involved seeing that Baba has encoded into the Chinese calendar that he was the "White Horse Avatar," who is called "Kalki" in the Indian Vedanta, the next expected appearance of the Avatar, come to renew the world. And that was not all. The ultimate purpose of this encoding was to reveal the year that Baba would break his silence and manifest.

When I first read about this in Harry's article in the May, 2002, Love Street Lamppost (LSLP), I found Harry's write-up a little bit intriguing, but far too complicated, with what seemed to me at the time to be an overstretching of some points and coincidences, so that I did not try to follow it all the way through.

Some time after that I got a letter from Harry saying how much he enjoyed my book, Meher Baba: Avatar of the Tortoise, and that this has been the only Baba book that his mother had read. I wrote back thanking him and made a reference to his intriguing article in LSLP (leaving out the "too complicated" part).

In response to that Harry sent me a videotape of a talk he gave in 2002 at the LA Baba center on the material of Baba and the Chinese calendar. Being a creature of the media age, like everyone else, I watched the almost two hour video all the way through, whereas I wasn't able to do so with the article.

And then I got zapped, which means that "I got it." This was so much the case that I began a back and forth correspondence with Harry about the material, and got to the point where I made up my own Chinese cycle chart and did blow ups of the relevant pictures, etc., and decided to present it at at this year's Baba retreat in Michigan.

I also felt that our Maine group should know about this, as well as everyone else in the Baba world (we can forget the rest of the world for the time being), and had referred in advance to making this presentation at one of our upcoming Baba meetings.

Doug Leavitt was generous enough to make scanned in copies of Diane Cobb's wonderful painting of Baba as Kalki available for everyone in the group, which was done at one or two meetings prior to when I expected to make the presentation. And then, lo and behold, Harry moved from LA to Boston.

I have to tell you, my friends, that I sincerely take this as an instance of Baba's grace and divine providence. Now we could have Harry himself here to do, or at least participate in, the presentation, and this happened at the November 16th meeting.

Let me in the briefest fashion state what I think are the main facts of this material, without trying to explain it or give all the relevant details and connections. That can be found in either Harry's original article, or in a forthcoming article in either The Glow or in a pamphlet that hopefully will be available through the Baba bookstores.

The Chinese calendar exists in 60-year cycles that began in 2637 BCE. Therefore, dates are not linear, as in our calendar. So, for example, the year 2000 in the Chinese calendar would be year 16 in what happens to be the 78th 60-year cycle.

There are twelve animals that correspond to each of the years, beginning with the rat and ending with the pig, so that in a complete cycle of 60 years each animal sign appears 5 times.

Baba was born in the 31st year of the 76th cycle. That was a year of the horse, specifically, "Horse in the Clouds." Note, coincidentally with this, that Diane Cobb has Baba appearing in her painting as a horse in the clouds. Also, each year has an associated color, an element, a yin/yang sign, and other qualities, and I will refer to these when they become relevant.

One of the first things that strike a Baba lover looking at this system is that a horse is the 7th animal in the cycle, and we know the significance of this number in Baba's explanations and work and, particularly, that he is the 7th Avatar in this cycle of time.

Also there is great significance to the number 31, Baba's birth year in the cycle. Baba was 31 when he took silence, and he first came to the west in 1931, and, of course, he dropped his body on January 31. It is quite possible that all of this so far may strike someone, as it might have me, as curious and coincidental, but "so what." Let's not get superstitious here. But more is yet to come; including what I think is the zinger or wake up call about all of this.

The doubling of numbers is deemed auspicious in the Chinese system. But what a doubling we are about to see (and this is not the zinger). Baba's silence began and most of his advent in the 77th cycle of the calendar — double 7. An incredible coincidence when you think that these cycles began some 4500 years ago.

Not so much as a coincidence now, but in terms of significance for Baba as Kalki, the White Horse Avatar, the Diane Cobb painting is a rendition of one of a series of five photographs that appear in Lord Meher of Baba riding a white donkey. In this monumental 20-volume book, these pictures are specifically identified in one of the captions as representing Baba as Kalki.

This event took place on July 8th, 1936. This date happened to occur within the twelve-year period, from Horse Year 1930 to Horse Year 1942. These 12-year periods from horse year to horse year, Harry has called a "Great Year of the Horse."

And now the qualities associated with a year come in. The horse in 1930, beginning that Great year of the Horse, happens to have an associated color as white and an element of metal, the latter can be taken in ancient Chinese to represent a sword. These designations, again, correspond to Baba as the White Horse Avatar, wielding his sword of Justice and Truth.

That Great year of the Horse ends in 1942 with a horse called, "horse in the army," and this was when WW II was going full force.

Now let us go one more 60-year cycle around from Baba's birth. We arrive at the western year of 1954 (1894+60), one of the most significant years in Baba's advent. He formally announces that he is the Avatar; he gives out the Avatar's Call and the Final Declaration, and he holds a series of mass Darshans, including "The Three Incredible Weeks." The Darshan in Wadia Park had an estimated 70 to 100 thousand attendees, probably the largest of Baba's advent.

Also in that year Baba has an enactment of the Bhagavad Gita, and a reading of "The Ten Avatars" (this is apart from Baba saying he was the 7th appearance in this cycle of time), which points to his role as the promised Kalki. In 1954 he dictates God Speaks, which appears the next year. Finally, on November 7th he gives up the alphabet board. Also of interest, Harry points out that this date is 10/7, a reverse of 7/10 when he began his silence.

Now let us return to the principle of the doubling. When we go around the cycle one more time from 1954 we arrive at the year 2014, two completed 60-year cycles from Baba's birth year. Interestingly, that year will also conclude a Great Year of the Horse, which began in 2002 (twelve years previously). This will also be the 10th Great Year of the Horse since the year Baba was born, and 10 is also a significant number for multiple reasons, perhaps the most important of which is that Kalki is taken to be the "Tenth Incarnation of Vishnu" in classic Vedantic lore, as we referenced previously in Baba having this ancient text read in 1954.

Now let us recall that it was in 2002 (another Year of the Horse) that Harry discovered all of this, so we can see that year as a "count down" in a 12-year Great Year cycle to the year 2014. For all this, and numerous other reasons, Harry was led to the conclusion that Baba had encoded into the Chinese calendar that he would break his silence, and begin his Manifestation in 2014.

Why the Chinese calendar? Harry speculates that it's cyclic, and cycles are so important in Baba's account of advents and history. Also, it's one of the oldest recorded accounts of time we have in the world, and that could be taken to mean ancient as in the "Ancient One."

All this can be taken to be significant and worth paying attention to, as certainly it was for Harry as this world opened up for him. Instead, it may be taken as merely an intellectualized creative excursion. But all this is before the zap.

After Harry had come to the conclusion about the silence breaking significance of 2014, he happened to look again at the White Horse photos in Lord Meher. And here's my second lo and behold, and this is the zap: The page number where the first White Horse photo appears is page 2014!

Besides this most amazing coincidence of all, there are two other things worth realizing about this. One is what I have just referred to above. Harry had already concluded that 2014 was the year before he saw the page number on which the picture appears in Lord Meher. That is, he didn't go looking for this page number, and then put all of this together. He had already come to the conclusion that 2014 was to be the year, for the reasons stated previously.

Secondly, is that this occurrence gives us a possible confirmation outside of the Chinese calendar for Harry's discoveries, which themselves were made entirely within the context of the Chinese calendar. What we find here is a remarkable correspondence of two ostensibly entirely separate and different "systems," the Chinese calendar and Baba's own almost 7000-page biography, Lord Meher.

We find then two entirely amazing correspondences, or coincidences of the most incredible probabilities, pointing to 2014 as the year. The first is the fact that after 4500 years of the Chinese calendar, the particular cycle of Baba's silent advent is the 77th one. So there we have the significant doubling of the 7's, a "horse year" taken twice — and two double cycles from Baba's birth gets us to 2014. Then, the page in Lord Meher that begins the series of White Horse Avatar pictures is the same 2014.

There is one more thing to be pointed out. In 1932 Baba encouraged and even participated in his most extensive announcement of the impending breaking of his silence, and that was to be in The Hollywood Bowl. Radio hookups were being arranged and several of Baba's followers even purchased special dresses or outfits for the occasion. But, as we famously know, Baba did not appear in the Hollywood Bowl and break his silence, and as result many of his newly made followers dropped away.

But what did Baba do instead of coming to the Hollywood Bowl and breaking his silence? He went to China, and did not come back to the States. So maybe this is ultimately to tell us, that we too should "go to China" for the answer to the great mystery about Baba breaking his silence.

And that is what Harry, unknowingly and unwittingly, did. And then Baba brought him to us here in Maine.