We continued, up to the last moment, to try for some other solution, but settled for a voluntary receivership. And so the cycle of life and work at The North Node, which had claimed our energy and attention for over eight years, came finally to a close.

But, as is always the case when one cycle ends, another was beginning. We had word that the farm at Hancock was at our disposal for the summer. Our transportation to Hancock and our share of the general expenses for the summer were contributed by friends in New York. The end of June found us in Hancock, where a new life was awaiting us.

For me, that new life included revitalization, which had started, strangely enough, the moment I left for Boston to help the group there to begin The New Life Experiment. In Hancock, earth, air, sun, water contributed to hasten the process, as did also meditation, creative activity and spiritual companionship, freed at last from the restrictions of material pressure. It also included reorientation, which would not have been so easy, had it not been taken thoroughly in hand, inwardly and outwardly, by someone in India who was still just a name to us -- Shri Meher Baba.

We had not been in Hancock for more than ten days when Mary Antin, for whom there had not been room at the farm, but who had accepted an invitation to spend the summer at the MacDowell Colony at Peterboro mainly to be near us, telephoned to say that Milo Shattuck had suddenly appeared there, and was very anxious to meet us. Within an hour we were sitting out on the lawn in front of the house, hearing of the life at the English retreat from one who had actually been there.

Milo had not met Shri Meher Baba, but he had heard about him from Meredith, and he was glad to tell us what he knew. Fortunately, we had read such things as The Life of Milarepa and The Life of Ramakrishna, so we had a background of traditional knowledge of the master-disciple relationship. Otherwise, what Milo told us might have seemed fantastic.

But we were interested in anything that would help to quicken consciousness, and apparently Shri Meher Baba did have a genius for that. Even through Milo, who had never met Him, we could feel His beauty, His love, His power. We were to feel more, shortly, and directly.

It happened that on the day that Milo appeared, Jean and myself were alone at the farm. Rudhyar had gone to Boston. Alice had driven to New York to meet Max and Lillian Wardall, who were returning from Europe to spend the summer with us at Hancock. Cath Gardner, who owned the farm, had not yet arrived. We asked Milo if he could possibly come back for another visit before he returned to England. He promised that he would.

In the interval between Milo's first and second visits, we did the best we could to transmit to the others what he had related to us. We were helped considerably by the arrival of a copy of Meredith Starr's "Arrows of Flame", a volume of poems, most of which were written while he was in India with Shri Meher Baba, and which he himself had sent to me. They too captured and communicated the power, the beauty, the love of Shri Meher Baba. When I read them aloud to the group out under the trees after dinner, we were all deeply impressed.

Milo's second visit proved even more interesting. Questions by Rudhyar and Max Wardall brought out many previously undisclosed facts. Max had traveled throughout India with Krishnamurti, Mrs. Besant, Bishop Leadbeater. Rudhyar had been interested for years in the master-disciple relationship. He knew a great deal more about it, intellectually, than we did, and was much more sympathetic to the idea of it than we were.

Consequently, I was somewhat surprised, though I was deeply touched, when Milo, just before his departure, gave me a ring which Meredith had brought back with him