OM POINT INTERNATIONAL CIRCULAR • ISSUE 11 • SUMMER 2013 contentsissue #11 3 Bicycle Tracks -- Sarah McNeill 8 Sadguru Narayan Maharaj in Kedgaon -- Karl Moeller 12 Seven States of Understanding -- Meher Baba 13 Review of the play The Escape Artist -- Kathy Hill 14 Poem Where There Is Love -- Simin Mohajerani 15 Poem When The Clouds Parted -- Anne Weichberger 16 Poem Intuition -- Sara Sanders 17 Poem Forgetmenots -- David Lee 18 Poems A Few Gnomic Verses -- David Raphael Israel 19 The Affirmation -- Sarah McNeill 20 Three Poems -- Fereshteh Azad 21 Poem This Fountain of Oneness -- Irma Sheppard 22 Hafiz quote and commentary -- Meher Baba 22 Cover credit and information -- Wodin 23 Poem The Ways -- John Oxenham POINT 24 The Passing of Konrad Kaserer -- L. Weichberger AZ Daily Sun Obituary 25 Poem Morning Meditation -- Marla Faith 26 Poem Discipleship -- Marla Faith 27 Meher Baba Asheville website announcement and information 28 Interview with Fereshteh Azad 33 May I Meditate? The Case Of The Constant Companion -- H. Talat Halman 37 Bobbi Bernstein CD Review -- Debby Blackman 38 Beads On One String -- Cordoba, Spain OM 40 Forgiveness Seminar: a Retrospective -- Soleil Brigham & Laurent Weichberger 43 Chicago Sahavas Announcement INTERNATIONAL CIRCULAR • ISSUE 11 • SUMMER 2013 SUMMER • 11 ISSUE • CIRCULAR INTERNATIONAL CREDITS: All written works © individual contributors except excerpts from books on or by Meher Baba, in which case Editor - © original publisher. Cover ©Steve Jameson, 'Wodin'. Kedgaon photos ©Bif Soper, ©Karl Moeller, ©Avatar Meher Laurent Weichberger Baba Trust. Photos in Talat Halman's 'Meditation' article © Karl Moeller. Bicycle graphics and others are in the public [email protected] domain. Layout-walla - Karl Moeller [email protected] BICYCLE TRACKS The story of nineteen year old Merwan Irani, on his bike, wending his way along Malcolm Tank Road in Poona to sit SARAH MCNEILL under the neem tree at Char Bawdi with Hazrat Babajan, was England a good place to start. It was May 1913, on the unforgettable occasion when the ancient Babajan kissed Merwan on the forehead. Wandering back home in a dazed state, he left his bicycle behind. There’s no record of what happened to the Another Amartithi comes and goes; abandoned bike, though I recall Mani once telling us how Another bicycle bell their mother, Shirin, was not pleased that it had been left by Alerts me to You the road at Char Bawdi and she sent one of Merwan’s Joe di Sabatino brothers out to fetch it back to the house. In search of something about the history of the bicycle, I In 1922, Nervous won a lottery held after Lateef presented a learnt that a two-wheeled contraption called a velocipede new bicycle to Baba. Baba told Nervous to give his old (because the rider had to use his feet to make it go!) was bicycle in exchange for the new one, and then ordered the invented in 1790 by a Frenchman. Fitted with wooden wheels, mandali to break up the old one and throw the pieces into a but with no saddle or handlebars, it was also known as a nearby well, an instruction which was immediately put into boneshaker! It was a further one hundred years before the action although the men original design developed were at a loss because the into what became known as old bike was in perfectly the ‘safety bicycle’ complete good working order. This with sprocket chain, fixed event took place while Baba pedals, handlebars and air- and some of the mandali filled tyres. And also a saddle were at Chinchwad. When to sit on! By the end of the Baba returned to Poona, nineteenth century, Baily told him that during production lines were his absence, he, Baily, had working flat out to meet accidentally fallen into the demand as the new means of well near their hut and had transport became a must- been rescued from have item, a passport to the drowning by a passing twentieth century! Bicycle stranger. When asked what shops and bicycle repair time this had occurred, the shops multiplied across all other mandali realised that five continents, and by the the accident and subsequent time Merwan was a student at rescue had taken place at the exact moment when the bits of Deccan College in Poona, office workers, policemen, soldiers Baily’s old bicycle were being thrown into the well at and millions of other cyclists had taken to the highways and Chinchwad. Later, Meher Baba explained, “Instead of byways of cities, towns and villages around the world. allowing Baily to drown, I sank the bicycle in the well. It was simply an exchange of gross mediums.” Lord Meher, (Vol.2) One of the first to seek out Merwan, after Hazrat Babajan had described him as ‘my beloved son who will change the Eruch said, “Don’t try to fathom him, don’t try to understand world’, was Babu Genuba Ulpale, who had been a regular his ways, just remember and love him.” That’s How It Was. member of the group that gathered under Babajan’s neem But the mind has its tendency to be constantly chewing things tree at Char Bawdi. He in fact owned a bicycle shop in Poona over. Feeding it with avataric conundrums, thorny issues and and was to become one of Meher Baba’s earliest group of riddles is a useful way to keep it occupied. The idea of an followers. Merwan called him Babu Cyclewalla. ‘exchange of gross mediums’ – a process Baba tells us is simple – seemed to offer scope as mind-fodder. In the first It seems that in the following years, Meher Baba did not place, why throw away a really useful bicycle for such an normally choose to ride a bike for local journeys, preferring to exchange? Why not a charpoy or a pushcart? It was a simple walk which he did very fast, a characteristic he shared with matter to find and follow other bicycle tracks by searching Babajan. According to Baba (who said that she “used to walk online through the volumes of Lord Meher . The memoirs of fast, and at 85 she would run fast”) when he was a young some of Beloved Baba’s mandali provided other references. man, “the mandali had to run or use their bicycles to keep up 3 with me.” There are, however, still glimpses of Baba on a Another altogether different kind of story found in Lord bicycle in those early years in Poona when, known as Meher,(Vol 8) links a horrendous bicycle ride in 1943 with Merwan Seth, he worked at the partition of India that took his father’s toddy shop. An place in 1947. At the time of the amusing account tells us how story, Baba was staying in Lahore Munshi Rahim, a local which was then still part of India. government employee who It happened that a black dog that had met Baba only once or used to visit the bungalow where twice, became convinced that the group was staying went mad young Merwan Seth had the and bit Margaret. ability to read his thoughts. One evening Munshi was Baba called for Krishna at 7A.M. thinking, “tomorrow I must when he was resting after doing eat fish – but how can I buy night duty, and told Krishna to fish?” and the following take the rabid animal away. morning he saw Merwan Seth Krishna made a yoke of bamboo bicycling towards him and cautiously approached the carrying a large fish! “Merwan dog, slipped the yoke around its smiled and, handing the fish head to hold it and tied a rope to Munshi, pedalled away without a word.” Ramjoo’s round its neck. Diaries. No photograph exists. What a great picture that would have been! Although, at the time, it was completely Baba ordered, ‘Take the dog twenty miles from here.’ unremarkable in a country such as India where everything Krishna replied, ‘That is not possible, Baba. The dog is from tiffin cans to whole families were (and still were until rabid – mad.’ quite recently) perched, dangled or lashed to some part of Baba was adamant. ‘It is my order,’ he spelled out. the bicycle’s frame for transportation. Krishna expressed his inability to transport the dog so far. Exercise was another valued function of this chain-driven, Baba looked disappointed, and dictated, ‘All right, take him pedal-powered two-wheeler and Baba gives a eleven miles. And be certain to count the miles carefully.’ demonstration in the early days of Manzil e Meem on the Baba went inside without giving Krishna a chance to occasion when Khodadad K.Irani, known as Asthma protest further. (although he ceased to suffer from the ailment after Baba gave him this nickname!) brought his newly acquired bicycle Krishna got on his bike and, using the rope to pull it and to the ashram. “Baba wanted to exercise and rode it over the bamboo to keep it at bay, he led the dog away. It was an the recently rolled back playground, thereafter instructing arduous task. Using small pebbles he counted off the miles. Asthma never to loan the bicycle to anyone else to use.” It took him five hours to bicycle eleven miles. There was a small pond of water, and Krishna took the dog near the After the move to Arangaon and the setting up and water to give it a final drink before letting it go. As soon as development of Meher Baba’s early base at Meherabad, the dog touched its mouth to the water, it died. Krishna was bicycles were in regular use. A Hindu from the village, peeved.