you any time, these lots could be sold any time, perhaps tomorrow someone will come and buy them." Well, I said, "we can't make up our minds so quickly," to which my husband and said, "Why can't we?" Immediately, he took out his checkbook and made a payment. I pointed to this lot and said "this one." So we found ourselves going home with property here and had never expected it. What attracted me about the Acres was being near the ocean and the beautiful pine trees. I thought my husband must feel the same way I do. He told me many years later that what drew him was being able to live mid-way between Washington D.C. and Florida, where he had many close relatives. I felt afterwards Baba must have put rose-colored glasses on our eyes and made it such a beautiful place and we just couldn't resist it.

It was at the Barn that we met Meher Baba.* Of course, I was so eager, so very eager to meet Baba. It just seemed it meant everything to me. I saw him standing there -- it was just like I had just reached the goal, the final goal. He looked just so beautiful standing there -- a beautiful, beautiful person. I went to him and he embraced me and said, "You are my neighbor. You have always been my neighbor." He might have said more but I didn’t hear it. And I actually heard it. It wasn't through an interpreter because Adi was the interpreter at that time and he was sitting down. Baba was standing with me, with his arms round me. I said to him "I've come to the end of everything." I felt like I had, really -- that there was just nothing more. Baba said: "The end of everything is the beginning." It was a wonderful meeting, a great meeting . . . to find after all the agony inside and wondering how I could ever go on.

It was an end and a new beginning for me because from then on, I was never living close to the Sufi Center. So the second time I met Baba I asked him where my work would be: would it be with the Sufi Center (I always felt strongly I was a Sufi), or with the Center here? Baba said: "You will know the answer within yourself." And then I said to him I had been a Sufi student for so many years and it had meant everything to me, that I could not have lived my life without it and that Inayat Khan was such a great master. Baba said to me: "We are all one, we all work together."

I also met Baba a second time in 1952. One evening in Myrtle Beach Elizabeth came to the hotel and I ran out to greet her and she asked me if I had met Baba. I said to her, "I just don’t feel satisfied just meeting him once . . . " I wanted to see him again. She said they where leaving for California in the morning but suggested that I go to New York in August to see him again. It was after the accident that I saw him for the second time, in the company of my daughter. Strange to say, I do not remember a thing that was said – not one word. When we got up to leave, my daughter went out first and Adi said that Baba wanted me to stay. So I sat down and Baba gave me a discourse on the four great religions and all the steps until one arrived at the final step. Baba named each step separately and said "and there is Baba."

Although when my daughter met Baba in 1952, she seemed to have no feeling at all for Him, but when Baba came in 1958, she came down with her little children and said she would like to meet Baba again. So I wanted to go in with her when she met Baba. When she went in, I went in too. Eruch said, "You've been in before." I said, "Yes, but I wanted to be here with my daughter when she met Baba." Baba took her head and kissed her on the forehead. Eruch said, "You are blessed, Baba has kissed you on the forehead."

Then, of course, I went to the East West Gathering. I was afraid I wasn't going to go. My husband really didn't want me to go. I guess he didn't want me to go so far away. I was at my daughter's house in Schenectady that summer before we left in the fall. I said to Marie, "Would you tell Daddy that you think I should go to India? I really want to go." So she came to me one day and said "I talked to Daddy about it but he said, 'No, Mom can’t go.' " And that night I must have been feeling very, very bad. Just like everything had stopped -- the whole world was empty. Then, in the middle of the night I heard a voice say, "You must go to India." The next morning I got up, went down to breakfast,

*in 1952