After listening to several speakers, we took lunch in the cafeteria. After getting a tray of food, I looked for a place to sit, preferably by myself. I spotted a empty table. What a stroke of good luck!
No sooner was I seated, then I was surrounded by three moustached hombres who took the remaining chairs. There was total silence. Un oh! I am sitting at the table of the head honchos, reserved for the Mullah. I was getting looks. Alas, the silence was broken;
“What do you do to look like Baba?”
I put down my fork, chewed my food, and replied;
“Every night before I go to bed I strap on my Baba mask that molds my face to his image. How about you?”
I thought I heard a chuckle. But – nay – for I had gotten cute with Rick Chapman, the foremost follower of Baba in America.
The next morning, I attended a meeting in a rose garden on forming a religion around Baba, the God-Man. Rick was manning a camera. He told us to speak from our divine intuition, not to worry, for Baba may speak through one of us.
I was the first to speak. I talked about Baba forbidding a religion, that he was bringing the gift of intuition that would unite us to a higher understanding. Baba said if you have the need for more words, go to the established religions that have many words – but you do not listen.
When I returned to my trailer on the McKenzie, my kin Michael Dundon told me he had a present for me. He handed me a new Bible, and was handing it to me. For a long five seconds, I did not take it. Then I heard Baba’s words, then my own. “How can you refuse words you have not read? Is there a message from Baba in this book.
A week later, I read all of Luke, and was in the light. When I emerged from that trailer at four in the morning, these bright stars and crescent moon had gathered in this pine tree. It was like Christmas. I was reborn; for I had read these words before, in another life, and someone had tampered with them.
Jon the Nazarite
After Robert returned to the States, Richard Alpert also wrote to Baba. An excerpt of his letter reads:
I am confused and would value your counsel. In 1961, as a professor at Harvard, I had the opportunity to ingest a chemical derived from the Mexican mushroom, which has been treated as a sacrament by the Mexican Indians through their recorded history. For my colleague, Timothy Leary, and I it appeared to pierce the veil of illusion that our limited reality was indeed the only reality and show us, albeit briefly, the possibility of man’s true identity. Because we were social scientists interested in helping our fellow man, we set about a systematic exploration of psychedelic chemicals, including LSD.
At first it appeared as if the chemical would do it all–truly and everlastingly bring one to God. With time, however, we realized that the chemicals but showed one a possibility experientially when previously there appeared to be no possibility, or at best only an intellectual one. …
Recently Allan Cohen, one of my past students from Harvard, visited us. Because you are present in such a real sense in our home, he felt at home with us. Yesterday we received a letter from him reporting the message Bob Dreyfus was bringing from you–No drugs! We called and spoke with Bob, but I, for one, felt the need for a little additional clarification.
Inside of me I feel that LSD has been a major influence in my own life of a positive nature and that the work I have been doing in the United States is humanly good. I also hear your message and understand that you probably do know.
At first I entertained the possibility that you did not understand that LSD is quite different and, in fact, quite opposite from the opium derivatives. But reflection and communing with you via your written word, has failed to support my initial reaction. Thus, at present, I feel you do understand. I should like to understand also. Can you help me?
Baba replied, through his secretary, Adi K. Irani: “Your letter and the book sent by you to Meher Baba have been received and brought to his attention and he sent the following telegram to you: “Your letter made me happy. I know you are a sincere seeker of Truth. My love will help you. My love blessings to you and those with you. Letter follows. Meher Baba”
The letter stated:
No drug, whatever its promise, can help one to attain the Spiritual Goal. There is no short cut to the Goal except through the grace of the Perfect Master, and drugs, LSD more than others, give a semblance of ‘spiritual experience,’ a glimpse of the false reality.
The experiences you elaborate in your letter and book are as far removed from Reality as is a mirage from water. No matter how much you pursue the mirage you will never reach water and the search for God through drugs must end in disillusionment. …
To a few sincere seekers such as yourself, LSD may have served as a means to arouse that spiritual longing which has brought you into contact with Meher Baba, but once that purpose is served further ingestion would not only be harmful, but have no point or purpose. Now your longing for Reality cannot be sustained by further use of drugs, but only by your own love for the Perfect Master, which is a reflection of his love for you. …
Meher Baba has pointed out that the experiences derived through drugs are experiences by one in the gross world of the shadows of the subtle planes and are not continuous. The experiences of the subtle sphere by one on the subtle planes are continuous, but even these experiences are of illusion, for Reality is beyond them. And so, although LSD may lead one to feel a better man personally, the feeling of having had a glimpse of Reality may not only lull one into a false security, but also will in the end derange one’s mind. …
Only the One who knows and experiences Reality, who is Reality, has the ability and authority to point out the false from the real. Hence, Meher Baba tells those who care to heed him that the only real experience is to see God continuously within oneself as the Infinite Effulgent Ocean of Truth, and then to become one with this Infinite Ocean and continuously experience infinite power, knowledge and bliss.”(26)
A later communication added:
Meher Baba indicated that medically there are legitimate uses of the drug LSD. LSD could be used beneficially for chronic alcoholism, for severe and serious cases of depression, and for relief in mental illnesses. Use of LSD other than for specific medical purposes is harmful physically, mentally and spiritually. LSD is absolutely of no use for any kind of spiritual awakening. Use of LSD produces hallucination, and prolonged use of this drug will lead to mental derangement, which even the medical use of LSD would fail to cure. Proper use of LSD under the direct supervision of a medical practitioner could help to cure insanity. It could lead to insanity if used for purposes other than strictly medical.(27)
Rick Chapman, who had graduated from Harvard in June of 1966, was granted a Fulbright scholarship to teach in India. He had applied for this particular grant accepting that he would not be able actually to meet Meher Baba, who was in very strict seclusion at this time, but with the aim of meeting Indian Baba-followers who had met Meher Baba and who could share their experiences with him. As it turned out, however, Baba did invite Rick to meet him in the midst of his seclusion, and Rick described the first moments of that meeting as follows:
As I leaned over to lay my heart onto my ‘Heart’ I glanced into his light-flashing eyes–moment of Sun-brightness, moment of wordless joy, moment of moments in the arms of God!
Afterwards, he wrote:
I did not clearly recall for about two weeks that Baba had kissed me on the forehead–it was so gentle, so natural. I had just embraced him for the first time in this life, though it was as if he were my oldest friend, beaming, radiating joy as I entered his arms.(28)
By Baba’s expressed wish, Allan Cohen, Robert Dreyfus and Rick Chapman became the three principle spokespersons to spread Baba’s message via articles, talks and appearances on radio and television shows, that drugs are “harmful physically, mentally and spiritually” to the West, and they continue in this work today.
In 1970, Pete Townshend, guitarist for the rock group The Who, wrote an article entitled “In Love With Meher Baba” which was published by Rolling Stone Magazine, including a full-page photograph of Baba on the front cover. This article was responsible for bringing Baba to the attention of large numbers of young spiritual seekers. In a brief sampling from the article we read:
After about six months of Baba following, Baba was still alive then, I met a guy in San Francisco who had met Baba in India called Rick Chapman. Rick lives in Berkeley and runs Meher Baba Information from Box 1101 at the Post Office there. He is the man responsible for the glut of DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY cards that you must have seen if you live in San Francisco. As we sat in a shared hotel room in San Diego I rolled a joint, spouting some high flown guff about being a happy Baba lover. Rick took it very calmly considering that he spends a good part of his time lecturing on the spiritual side effects of “soft” drugs and what Baba had said about them. Anyway, that day was my last stoned day in the normal sense. …
Baba washed the religious preconception from my heart with my own tears. I love Jesus far more now than I ever did at infants school as I sang, “Yes, Jesus loves me.” Now I know he really was the Christ. Remorse came naturally through Baba, so does love, it can’t be forced and it can’t be limited. …
Rosamond Press 
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