and said "I am going to India." Nobody said a word. And my husband did everything to help me get ready, making all the arrangements for my trip. It was a very hard trip, but I did have one very wonderful experience which made it more than worthwhile. This was 1962, the last time that any of us here saw Baba.

What happened to me is very hard to explain. Well, it seemed like I woke up and the whole room was all filled with light. It was oh, so beautiful. I had the feeling there was love in a tangible form and it impressed me so that there was love in a real form, not an emotion. It was just like seeing a picture of a cake and having a cake in your hand. It was real, with form, and not a feeling. It was all just so beautiful, so wonderful. I thought it was the greatest thing that I had ever, ever experienced. So I went to sleep and when I woke up in the morning, I said to Wilma, my roommate, "wasn't it wonderful?" She said, "what?" I thought it had actually happened and Wilma hadn't experienced or seen what I had. It was a tremendous thing, although I can't really explain it to make it clear. Then later, after I came home, I read an account of the East West Gathering (but never could find it again), which quoted Baba as saying, “One night I gave out my love and some of you received it."

They all wanted me to go to the Last Darshan* and I knew I couldn't go and they couldn't understand why I wasn't going -- that Baba had invited us and we should all go. Remembering that first trip, I thought physically I wasn't quite up to it. Baba had said we were not to go if it interferes with your job, if you don't have the money, or if you are not in good health. I told Elizabeth an experience during my previous trip. I seemed to be alone the whole time because of having made my reservations separate from the group in Myrtle Beach. I especially had the hardest time trying to walk, it was just like something was pressing me back. When we were to leave we went by train to Bombay and then were to take the bus to the airport. The buses were all lined up! I was struggling along and they were all going to the buses and there seemed to be a great mass of people around. I tried to walk fast, but was dragging along and trying so hard. I thought I saw someone in our group go off in another direction and I followed her and found myself back in the train station, all alone. I asked for the group, wondering how they were going to get to the airport. I thought I was lost forever and I didn't know where to find the group. Then someone came up and said, "your group is over there." Well, that was horrible, for a minute -- thinking that I would be in that place forever. When I told Elizabeth, she said it really had been a mistake, that we should have been together. There I was absolutely helpless in a great mass of people!

Today I think of Baba continuously, always conscious of him as I was of Inayat Khan for twenty years. I was in tune with his rhythm, as I am now with Baba. When I first started to read the Discourses , I couldn't get the rhythm. Each one has a distinct rhythm of their own. My life did have a great, great meaning. In my search for oneness, I found in Sufism there is oneness. I had read Theosophy, the Rosicrucians, Christian Science -- and hadn't found it there. So when I came in contact with Sufism, it was all there, everything, the oneness -- that all the religions were really inwardly one religion and all the masters were really one and the same.

So it wasn't until many years later I realized that I was doing Sufi work and was also doing Baba work because I was the only Sufi in Myrtle Beach and every person who came asking about Sufism was sent to me. I thought, well, now the two have come together, Sufism and Baba's message -- and they are one. So I found really then the oneness complete. After we moved here the Baba group didn't grow fast -- it just kind of stood still, like the Sufi group in Detroit. Until about the time my husband passed away, about '66 or '67, and it seemed like Baba had pushed a button and they all started coming. The Sufi group grew really simultaneously with the Baba group. The young people from the colleges were the first ones. Every year more and more came. It's strange, isn't it? Well, it had to be the right time. The timing seems so important . . .

All these things that Baba said come back to me with a little more meaning, deeper

* 1969