"People know it all by heart but they don't grasp it or God would hear . . . Pray from the heart by giving 'yourselves.' Just saying the words or being still, unless you are giving yourself, is useless. It is the prayer of the heart, the giving of your heart, that counts. Those prayers are answered. Jesus meant you don't pray, you don't ‘ask,' because you don't really 'ask' with all your being . . ."

If one desires to live eternally, one must die for Baba. If you know what that means, why, you understand. It is the profound thing. Dying does not mean physical death; it means dying inwardly."

Journey of the Heart

Recollections of Meher Baba's American Visit, July 20-August 7, 1956

With the inestimable help of Ivy Duce and Mike Loftus, who took tape recordings of the tour, of Elizabeth Patterson, Kitty Davy, Lud Dimpfl, Mr. and Mrs. Shaw, Marion Florsheim, Virginia Rudd, Dana Field and many others whose notes and recollections were of assistance to the Editor.

Friday, July 20

Drawn together as if by an invisible magnet of Love, about 60 persons who love Baba had gathered at the Idlewild International Airport by 6 A.M. early Friday morning. Dawn was just breaking over the flat south shore of Long Island as the various devotees met one another inside the airport. Many were from the New York area, but others had come from as far away as California, Texas and South Carolina to be with Baba. Happy, excited greetings were exchanged in an atmosphere tense with expectation and longing. Baba's plane, the "Rainbow," was posted on the Pan American schedule board as due in from London at 7 A.M.

This was Baba's fifth visit to the United States, the last being in 1952. There were several in the group who had missed Him on that visit and a few who, though not having met Him before, had been drawn to Him for years. But the Beloved One, in answer to the longing of His