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WORK-REPORT: A BABA VENTURE IN

ENGLAND-HOLLAND - SEPTEMBER, 1968

by Dr. Allan Y. Cohen

 

Late on September 10th I set off for London on a plane that left 16 hours late (a Baba-blessing in disguise — I was then able to adjust to London time easily). Karen and Peter Townsend of the WHO rock group thoughtfully met me at the airport and my view of Baba's Love-Game in England began.

 

On September 12, after meeting dear Delia de Leon, head of the London Baba Group, I was interviewed by Lionel Brice of the London Sunday Telegraph. His very good article appeared on the 15th of September; he was quite interested in learning more about the Beloved for himself. I happened to be leafing through that particular issue and my eyes were drawn to a little column which featured "Words of the Week" about certain topics. The first line in a quote about Education from a British professor read: "The perfect teacher is the man who keeps silent." It was clearly Baba's day in the Telegraph! That evening, a contact of Christine Cook's came over to tape a radio interview for BBC. She warned me that the editor might not be too open to Baba and that I should be subtle about how I mentioned Him. Well, the 9-minute recording was edited into about 2½ minutes, but "strangely" enough, the editor retained a question not on drugs, but "Why do you think Meher Baba is the Avatar?" The show was played early in the morning of Friday the 13th, repeated an hour later and then repeated once more on prime afternoon time on Saturday — a collection of their most interesting features over the week. Beloved Baba's Avataric Work-Touch with British media takes on even greater significance in that there are only four radio network stations and three television channels for all of Great Britain, so that one appearance on a network gets to perhaps 25% of all radio listeners in England and Scotland and about 33% of all TV viewers.

 

On the 13th, a press conference was arranged at the Baba Center on Wardour Street. Professor Tom Hopkinson set this up; his trip to the USA "just happened" to be delayed enough for him to compose and distribute a press release to the major media and to issue invitations to the newspapers. His touch was highly professional and extremely helpful. Out of the conference came a good summary article in the Guardian (again mentioning the Beloved), an article in the Mirror, and, surprisingly, an article in the international and American edition of the Christian Science Monitor.

 

On September 14th, I talked on "An Avatar in Our Time" at the monthly meeting of the Friends of Meher Baba — about 70 attended. By this time I had met

 

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