“Being around the mandali was supreme, so much beyond what I was experiencing with meditation”
Rich Blum’s Baba story is rich with quietly dramatic events. They include a brief stint in an iron lung as a foreign exchange student and, much later, building a successful software business only to lose it all. He first heard Meher Baba’s name when he was a 17-year-old high schooler while watching the David Susskind Show in his living room in Pittsburgh. He describes his early introduction after that as a series of “one chance in a million” experiences. They include being in a high school in the late 1960’s where four other students had not only heard about Baba, but had also been to Myrtle Beach. Then in college, the student in the dorm room next to his had also heard about Baba, but his grandmother had actually met Him in 1952. And that’s just for starters.
Video, 59:30
Dilruba Reading Room, Meher Spiritual Center
April 11, 2026
Meher Center Archives
Uploaded July 17, 2026
