WIDENING OF INTEREST, NOT CUTTING DOWN

 
With Baba there was frequent change, never routine for long. He wanted one to be fluid and adaptable, to accept the easy and the difficult, unattached to either, with equal poise and cheerfulness.

Not only did Baba plan the work of each, but He also made one feel He was the worker too by His intense interest in all one did. For example, when He came up the hill from lower Meherabad, or before He left in the morning, He would come to the kitchen to inspect what we were cooking.

Naja, one of the earliest of the Eastern group, told of a day when she was cooking for the two hundred Prem Ashram boys and Baba came into the kitchen to inspect the rice. Baba found the rice not too well cooked, each grain not separate as it should be and He had new rice freshly cooked.

As Naja explained to us, it was not that Baba was concerned that the boys should have perfectly cooked rice, but He wanted to bring home a lesson to all: that all work, whether done for Him directly or indirectly, from the cooking of a simple dish to the writing of a book, must not be carelessly done.

From the kitchen Baba would go to the garden where the plants were being watered or seeds sown, or go to the office room to discuss the Meher Baba Journal, and go to the sewing room to take an interest in what was being made. Baba, through His example, showed that the life of the spirit is unified, though made up of so many particles; a widening of interest, not a cutting down.