Some people, on meeting the Master, have to be helped out of the world into a higher plane of thinking and acting. I was just the opposite. Baba had to make me face the world and become aware of the ugliness and torment as well as the fine things that most people grow up knowing. As an only child of intellectual parents — one a writer, the other a professor — I had been so protected in every way that I was quite unprepared to take my place in adult life. I withdrew into books and fantasies when outer life seemed too harsh or unpleasant. I saw life only as I chose to see it, and shut my eyes to what I did not like. Baba had to turn me around and make me face and overcome the world as it is. Over a long period of years and many difficulties, He has always been in my heart and by my side. Baba accomplished what psychiatrists and loving friends failed to do. He helped to make me a more balanced person.

At Harmon people came and went from New York City and elsewhere, to meet the Master during the month He stayed there. Some came down from the upper room exalted and uplifted; others were in tears, overcome by the tremendous experience. Some had to be led to a separate room to rest and compose themselves.

Always we were aware of the Master — it was like living in Heaven knowing God was in the upstairs room. The house was permeated by His Presence. Many times I had the privilege of taking Baba's meals to the door of His room, where I could catch a glimpse of Him as one of the disciples took the tray.

Several friends came to meet Baba the day I did, and we were given rooms in a nearby guest house. The first night we were there the house caught fire and we escaped in our nightclothes. The house burned to the ground, and we were so happy to be forced to move back into the same house with Baba that none of us cared what things were lost or inconvenience suffered — we were in the house where Baba was; that was all that mattered!

The next day Baba called us to His room, and asked if anyone was hurt. On being reassured that we were all untouched by the fire, Baba told us that fires often spring up where He goes. Afterwards, He went to see the smoldering ruins and returned with some photographs that were all that was left. They were pictures mother had of me when I was seven years old. The mats were scorched but the pictures were untouched. Baba showed them to me but made no comment. I have never seen them since.

There was a young disciple with Baba named Ali, and I remember dear Chanji, and I believe Behram and Kaka. Names are not my strong point and I was really only conscious of Baba — other people came and went as shadows in an unreal world.

I do remember Meredith Starr. Later I was to meet Meredith's brother-in-law Kenneth Ross, who became my husband. I also remember clearly Princess Matchabelli —a fascinating and unusual person, and young Anita de Carlo who always seemed to be close to her. Among other young people there was Milo Shattuck, Grace Mann, Howard Inches, Donald Holloway, with all of whom I went rowing on the river below the house.

To my great joy Baba said He wanted me to stay at Harmon while He was there, and when He left, to remain until He returned. I was to help type letters and announcements to the press about Baba and His mission. Needless to say we who stayed at Harmon that winter lived only to see Baba again when He returned in the spring, at which time He stayed only a few days.

Perhaps the best way to express what the experience at Harmon meant to me is to append here some of the things I wrote at the time. I may add that I had never written verse before meeting Baba. All of a sudden I had to write — it was the only way to express the experience and the poems were my songs of praise to the Beloved.