Baba Stirs Us Up!

The following is an edited excerpt from a talk given at the 60th Diamond Jubilee Anniversary of the Glow International on May 31, 2026

For those who follow Meher Baba the renewal of the spiritual life, more than anything else, focuses on the development of an active inner life.

I remember saying to Elizabeth Patterson, “Well, you met Him, so you had Him physically. What are we supposed to do? How do we follow Him now?” And she would say, “Baba works in the same way now as He did then.”

And what I think she meant is, once His love is awakened in the heart, He wants us to constantly remember Him, to keep Him company. I’d be hard pressed to find anything else that He said more than that, except perhaps love.

I would then add to that the desire to please Him, which we heard from the mandali so often. The desire to please Him is the effort that we make to recognize His will within, because it’s there. And then we have to make the effort to make His will our will.

Kitty Davy, toward the end of her life, was a great student of Baba’s. She wrote something called the Consciousness Talk. And she did several versions, because she wanted to come to terms with what happened to her. She went to India, she fell in love with Him, she lived with Him from 1937 to 1952, then He had her stay at the Center, where she lived to 100. So, she was trying to make sense of “what happened to me spiritually?”

In that effort, she wrote a talk about what she called the shift of consciousness away from the ego or maya as the focus of integration in life, to Baba, where Baba becomes the focus of integration. And that’s where this thing comes in about trying to please Him instead of trying to please the world or our desires. If our thoughts are about trying to please Him and find that voice within, then that shift takes place. All of this leads to the final thing, which is self-effacement. Focusing on Him seems to be a key, at least as I understand from what I heard from the mandali. If we focus on Him, through remembrance and seeking His pleasure, then He’s able to efface the things that get in the way of Him.

He said His only job is to take us from where we are to where He is. That’s all He’s doing.

So again, what does this have to do with Meher Center? The Center reminds people of that process of remembering Him, of trying to please Him, and of self-effacement. But it’s not like, “Oh, I should be humble and self-effacing and pious.” It’s not that attitude. The mandali were never like that. Self-effacement happens as a result of these other things: remembrance and seeking His pleasure. Also, self-effacement often kind of hurts and comes from suffering more than anything else.

One of the big things about life at the Center and life with Meher Baba, which Kitty and Margaret Craske used to talk about, is that things have to come up and out. Baba stirs us up so they will come out. This is the other feature that I would add to the list of things that Baba is doing. All the crap comes to the surface, and it’s supposed to, and it’s supposed to be messy.

One of the things that He talked about is harmony. He said harmony cannot be created by God. We have to do harmony. I didn’t understand this when I first heard it.

I’ve often thought about the statement that Baba made that only we can create harmony. But since He is everywhere and does everything, that doesn’t make any sense to me. What’s really going on, I feel, is that He is the creator of disharmony. He loves to create disharmony, and then we have to make the effort to solve it. There’s ample evidence of this on the Blue Bus tours, or in the New Life, where He would talk to the mandali, like, “Why are you being this way, why are you acting in this way? What’s the matter with you? You’re here with me, don’t you know how precious it is?” I feel behind the scenes He’s stirring things up.

There’s the famous sugar cane story I want to tell, because it really illustrates this aspect of the spiritual life with Meher Baba. That story is such a famous one and I’m going to paraphrase it.

Eruch was acting sort of down and moody. Baba had noticed it and asked him what’s going on. He said, “Nothing, Baba, it’s all right.”  He kept asking Eruch and finally Baba got it out of him. Eruch said, “Baba, you know, before I came to live with you, I was such a simple person and honest. Since I’ve been with you, I find myself well, upset, and have these negative thoughts, and even lying to people sometimes.”

And Baba said, “Yeah, that’s how it is.”

And then He said, “Do you know how sugar cane juice is produced?” Yes, Eruch said, the sugar cane maker cuts the stalks, and puts them in a vat and boils them, and then the scum rises to the surface, and he scoops off the top, right? And he boils it some more, and some more of it rises to the surface, and then the sugar cane guy scoops it off the top.

And Baba said, “That’s what I do with my lovers, bring all this to the surface, and it has to be faced, you can’t not face it.”

Not facing things is this term transpersonal psychologists call spiritual bypassing. You can’t bypass that. It’s nice to think that we’re special and loved by God and One with God, but we have to also face the crap. Self-effacement is not possible without that step.

The Center reminds us that as our master, Meher Baba’s guiding presence is always available in our hearts. Without a doubt, the most common currents, and the most common currency, at the Center are people talking about their experiences with Meher Baba, experiences in their lives, what Baba is doing, what He’s prompting, what He’s stirring up.