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Some of the Western lovers of Avatar Meher Baba were already on the high seas when 'Fredella' Winterfeldt received this cable in New York. Others were leaving in a day or two, singly or in group flights, bound for Guruprasad, Poona, India, where the Beloved had called His Lovers, East and West, for a momentous spiritual gathering at His feet. For almost a year, preparations had been in progress, cables, letters, circulars exchanged round the world, not to mention all the private struggles and preparations, financial and otherwise, individual lovers were making to take the great trip.

 

This was the long-promised, East-West, men-and-women Sahavas which the Master had planned for 1958 in India, then postponed. Later, it was scheduled for May, 1962, then shifted to one full week in November, 1962. The Sahavas period was again cut short to four days only, November 1st to 5th. In a letter from Mani, dated October 16, the women learned that Baba wished a special visit on the morning of October 31st with us and the Eastern women mandali. No one was to arrive in Poona before October 28, except those coming by sea. The Sahavas was, Baba said, only for His lovers, not for the general public, and no one was to hope for individual attention or help, spiritual or otherwise, but to come only to enjoy His company, the true meaning of the word "Sahavas."

 

"My words can never be in vain. Whatever I have said must and will come true When it appears otherwise, it is due to your ignorance and lack of patience.” In 1956, at San Francisco, Baba had pointed to each of us saying, "You must come” to the coming East-West Sahavas: thus we became known as the "Musts." And Baba recalled this fact to several who were hesitating to attend the 1962 gathering, a further indication this was the same meeting He had foretold.

 

I planned to travel from the West Coast, joining the Sufi Group in Hawaii, but had many setbacks in health. Baba cabled that I must "try my best to come;" so, with His Divine help, I made the 18,000-mile trip, in the pleasant company of a dozen Baba-Lovers, led by Murshida Ivy Duce. As usual, the Master's meeting was called at a crisis-point in world affairs: the Russians in Cuba, the Chinese in India. We stopped one day at Tokyo and one day in Kowloon, Hong Kong, where Herman Alvarado, Baba's sailor-boy, popped up to join us; and Dr. Chamberlin got on our plane at Bangkok; He had been lecturing in the Far East. We arrived around midnight, October 28, in Bombay; the immigration officer shook his head when he read my reason for corning—"spiritual darshan program." These mad Westerners! But we were joining lots more mad Easterners!

 

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