At Meherabad we would eat our evening meal, the eight of us, (seven Americans and one Australian) sitting by kerosene light in one little room. The food there was plentiful and good, cooked to western palatability by those taught to understand it. I think we all loved and relished and appreciated the food as it was prepared at Meherabad.

As for me, I could have taken it with just a little more spice. So I asked Padri one day if I couldn't have a little chatani (spiced relish) on the side. That night the chatani was there alongside the other warm pots of vegetarian food. My companions, knowing that I had ordered it, were quick to point it out to me, while all avoided it as if a scorpion were sitting there ready to attack. My companions watched wide-eyed as I mixed a little of the chatani into my food, and all broke into peals of laughter when I took my first mouthful. The chatani did not reappear again nor was it asked for.

Another night we came down from the Hill to find our supper as usual waiting for us in the room. Every evening there is a little darshan program at Baba's samadhi. And we could always come down from this with our lanterns and, full of Baba's love, eat our evening meal. On this one night some one casually looked into each of the waiting pots of cooked food. He suddenly exclaimed, "There's macaroni!" Everyone rushed over just to look and be sure. Then dancing and jubilation broke loose in the little room.

Baba works through His lovers in many ways but perhaps in no way more effectively than through their stomachs. I have sometimes thought that there is nothing more pitifully helpless about man than the fact that he has to eat. If man did not have to eat, it seems to me that he might never experience fully the sense of his own helplessness, and his utter dependence on God. If he did not have to eat, he would never reach that feeling of hopelessness which ultimately can bring him face to face with the Divine Beloved.

One morning I came into the kitchen of Mansari 's house where she sits with lovers come from afar and tells her tales endlessly, tales for which she is already world famous, of the Master of Masters and His mighty feats of love-conquest. My first visit to that room was the most memorable; it was the day when Mansari served tea and some very special baked cookies. I say special because these cookies had in them the taste of Love. I had never tasted anything like these cookies, and I could not resist eating one after another still hot from the oven. Never before had I been made to realize so vividly that Love is something that can be made to be experienced and felt through the gross senses. These cookies were not ordinary cookies. There is no doubt that these cookies, baked by Mansari, were not only from Baba, but of Baba. And so I sat eating love cookies one after another and listening happily to the endless chatter.

Somewhere in all the ceaseless chattering and clamor of the mind there is a point of Real Silence to be seized. Because of Meher Baba, we know this to be true. As long as this chatter and clamor of the mind continues, any practice of outward silence is a mere pretense, a sham, because it does not partake of the Real Silence. Some day, we hope, this point of Real Silence will break within, bringing to calm the endless turbulence. Some day, we hope, that point of Silence will come to rule the mind, and this will be the Real Breaking of Beloved Baba's Silence. It is to reach that point that we struggle to get closer and closer to the Beloved in our hearts. He sits enthroned in infinite bliss within that point. Helplessly we travel all the way to India, hoping to touch that point. God has surely delivered His Son to the world, but when will the world be delivered by His Son? Little by little, I suppose, as we struggle Home one by one to place our heads at His feet. All this helplessness and hopelessness can at last end through His grace only by the final breaking of His Silence within. Meanwhile I am the beggar