My first impulse was to drop everything, and go. I had such strong feelings to just leave my job and go. But I resisted them because, after all, the newspaper item stated that he would be there, at Harmon-on Hudson for a week, and a couple of days it would be the Memorial Day weekend and I would have three days. So I resisted the impulse to just go. But that first morning I went to my job as usual, and I could be alone on my job, and this great reaching out to him was in my heart. I felt that he came to me, in the spirit. I knew that I was with him. This was my first conscious inner meeting with him; my first conscious inner reunion with Christ. (Christ, in the form of Jesus, had always seemed very real to me.)

That was the beginning of some thirty-five years of spiritual struggle such as I had never expected to go through, and I guess it has really only just begun. That first inner meeting seemed like a joyous reunion rather than an initial contact, a reunion that seemed to have come about after perhaps thousands of years of separation.

A few days later I went on to Harmon-on-Hudson and, as you might guess, it was just my luck; Baba had finished his work there earlier than expected and gone on to California. I had missed him. This was a bitter lesson, one of the most difficult lessons I have ever had in connection with Baba. When he says, "Come", whether it's inwardly or outwardly, that's the thing to do. Of course, I don't mean by that that you should disobey his instructions and just suddenly go off to India. Fortunately, there were a few American followers of Baba still at the retreat when I got there. One of them suggested that I might like to write a letter to Baba. I said, "Yes, I would ". So, I sat down and poured out my heart, offering my life, expressing my eagerness to serve him and his Cause in any way that I could. After finishing the letter, we drove over to the Post Office; - it was a Sunday afternoon, - dropped the letter in the mail slot and returned to the retreat. A short time later we sat down to the evening meal. We had scarcely begun eating when Baba began to answer my letter, through the heart center, welling through with his love. "Yes, I will accept you. Yes, you may serve me. I give you my love." This was his acceptance. I just sat there with tears coming down my face. The others there realized that something like this was happening, and everyone was quiet. These were two of the first inner contacts with Baba. Later on, there was an exchange of correspondence. One of the things that Baba said in one of his letters was, "Those who are united in love are ever in spirit and they know no separation."

It was some two years later, in 1934, that my wife, Jeanne, and I actually got to meet Baba in the flesh at the Shelton Hotel in New York City.