4359WESTERN SAHAVAS, 19581958
Something in her voice got through and Jane went. Baba had arrived at the Lagoon Cabin at 10:00 A.M. Jane entered the room. "I thought: I've never seen anyone so beautiful as him. I thought I would be nervous and afraid, but I was not. I felt very much at ease. Baba was so full of love and understanding. He seemed to accept me as I was."
Baba was seated and beckoned her to sit beside him. She said, "You look so well. They have told me you have not been so well." Baba, without glancing at her, looked past her beyond the door. A look of great suffering appeared on his face and, making a hand gesture, he conveyed, "No one understands my suffering." Baba noticed her looking at his feet, hands and body and remarked, as he touched her hand, "Don't look at this form. This is not Baba."
Elizabeth was called in to join them. Baba teased her, "All Baba has received is letters about Jane."
The meals for those attending the sahavas were being catered by Muriel Houston's Driftwood Restaurant, and Jane had earlier remarked to a friend, "I don't know about what a Master is, but I've heard the food is going to be good."
Suddenly Baba asked her, "Have you eaten?" When she said no, he told her with a twinkle in his eyes, "Go and have something nice to eat." She left the Lagoon Cabin, but hardly had she sat down in the kitchen with Toni Roothbert when Kitty came running in and said, "Baba says you must sit next to him. He has decided to let everyone come, and that you are to sit by him."
Jane walked back to the Lagoon Cabin, where Baba was welcoming each new arrival or group as soon as they entered the Center. Jane sat next to Baba, watching the unfolding panorama of new faces coming before their Lord and Master. Some laughed, some cried, some knelt down, and some simply said hello to him.
When Beryl Williams, a black devotee from New York, came in, instead of embracing her on one side only, Baba embraced her on both sides and asked her to sit next to him on the sofa. As he did so, he glanced at Jane who, at that instant, felt her deep-rooted Southern racial prejudice against Blacks dissolve forever.
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