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Master had said it did not matter in what position one meditated. We were at that time, meeting in the house of Dr. Bozka herself. We had moved from the dance studio at Carnegie Hall.

 

Everyone, as was only natural, took sides. It seemed the little point mentioned above, on how to meditate, was to be the missing nail that threw the horse. The Doctor called us again to her home and read us the letter she had written to the Master in India. Adele and I had "maneuvered" a plot against her, so it seemed, and she was leaving the group. The idea of writing to the Master any complaint against one of us set us all aghast. The shock bought John Bass around to our side a bit. The very tenet and pivot of the teaching was that we should all love each other and stick together through any difficulties. I recall that none of us made any reply. Self-defense or recrimination was not part of my understanding of my Master's teachings. I also, at last, began to understand more of dear Bozka's character and thought it best to let it all go without comment.

 

My only concern at this point was to somehow continue the group and hold it together. We were now very few, but fortunately, we had one new-old member, an English woman, Kim Tolhurst, a very fine singer and poet, who had met Baba years ago in England and who was considered one of his 'Circle' disciples. She had recently returned to America, and she offered us her studio in the Master Hotel, to continue our meetings. We accepted gladly, and so we began again.

 

Adele and I, however, had decided to write to Baba in India ourselves, not in regard to anything the Doctor had said, but simply in regard to one point, which, I could see was bound to come up again and again. When an important decision was to be taken, who was to decide it? Or how was it to be decided? The matter of meditating with the feet on the ground or off it, or in the air — if one pleased, was obviously unimportant. It was the principle of decision that was in question. In the old days, Princess Matchabelli had laid down the law. She had decided who was to be asked to the group, and who was to be excluded. Her personal intuition was usually excellent, but she, too, had had her biases and pre-judgments. Dr. Bozka, no doubt sincerely carrying on this tradition of a "leader" or authoritarian voice, but without the intuition and the love, and perhaps, the deeper understanding of the Master, had not been able to carry it off. John Bass, devoted as he always was, also did not seem to grasp the feeling of present-day seekers for an independent approach, and he, too, very often, offended newcomers by autocratic statements, exclusions and inclusions. So I wrote out a short and simple letter to Baba, the gist of it being, "If any important question comes up for the group to decide, should we not decide it by a quorum of five or more members, and agree this is to solve any real problem?" Adele and I signed it and sent it off. We did not consult with John Bass, perhaps an error on our part, as he naturally, by this time, felt that he had inherited the mantle of the 'leader'. He was the oldest member, and he had been given the precious file of several thousand names of those interested in Baba by the Princess when she had left for India. An interesting sidelight is, that we were not allowed to use this file to contact people, in her absence in India, but had to work on our own.

 

The Master as he always does, answered us promptly, and simply. He agreed that we should vote as a quorum on any question that came up. We read the letter to all. Mrs. Tolhurst had been unanimously chosen as our new reader; her voice and English diction were excellent. She was also a most attractive and warmhearted personality; a great lover of Baba and also extremely well-educated, especially in Buddhist thinking. During the next four years, under her aegis, our group slowly began to grow. Luckily for us, too, like all English people, she had a great respect for the individual opinions and rights of others. She had taken our side in the 'famous' dispute with Dr. Bozka and she upheld our view on a vote; we did call our "quorum" several times in the following years, on what I do not remember; not, however, without quite a bit of grumbling from John Bass. He often, as he still does to this day, would make a decision that concerned us all, and

 

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