Late Night Chat with Jeff: the Role of pets, Sep 29, 2024, live on Baba Zoom

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But once a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for conversation, more readings, songs, quotes - you never know what treasures will be uncovered!

Topic: The Role of Pets with Baba

Dear folks of Baba,

As you know, I have invited suggestions for topics recently, and surprisingly, this past week, three of you suggested this same topic: the role of our pets in this life with Baba. Even though I haven’t had a pet since childhood, I have observed how intimately pets have entered into the adult life of many Baba lovers and their children. The love they have for their dear pets, and the very touching love their pets have for them, is something precious to behold.

Mehera once wrote, “Animals have played a special role in our life with Baba, not only as His pets, receiving His personal touch and contact, but also, it seems, as a channel of His work, reaching out to all the animal world and the whole of creation … He is the Perfect Caretaker of all animals, big and small, beautiful and ugly … He shared with us His sweet love of nature and all forms of life.”

I was surprised on my first trip to India to see beside Baba’s tomb and the graves of His close women mandali, a nearby place devoted to the gravestones of Baba’s own dogs that He loved so dearly. There are numerous stories of Baba with His many pets, ranging from monkeys to peacocks to the white horse that had belonged to Mehera as a child. At the tombs of other Masters or saints, I have not witnessed the graves of their pets. In my early trips to Meherabad, Naju Kotwal, the daughter of Baba’s nightwatchman, used to give several of us a tour of the large stone-walled compound of Upper Meherabad where the Eastern and Western women stayed during the late 1930s through the 40s. Naju lived among the women as a child. She would show us where all the different stalls had been where the wide variety of animals were kept. It was a veritable zoo! Baba’s work with animals was not covered in detail in most of the biographies of Him. Among His animals, there were deer, goats, English bulls, monkeys, parrots, mynah birds, horses, a donkey, a mongoose, a pet snake, and a wide variety of dogs.

Eruch, Baba’s close disciple, once said out of the blue in Mandali Hall, “You Americans need to go back to your roots.” Someone piped up, “You mean our Judeo-Christian roots?” “No,” Eruch replied, “The American Indian!” I took this to mean that Christianity and Judaism, as they’ve come down to us through the centuries, primarily emphasize our treatment of other people and not of the other kingdoms. The American Indian has been taught a profound reverence for all living beings as well as for the inanimate world.

Just as Baba loved the company of all his pets, the lives of so many Baba lovers are enlivened by the presence of their pets: dogs, cats, gerbils, hamsters, rabbits, horses, goldfish, koi, birds and many more. The loving devotion of pets is one of the most precious experiences to be the recipient of. How have your pets entered into your life with Baba? Are there any experiences from your childhood with pets that were part of the growth of your love? For those of you who have pets now, what role do they play in your life? What places do they fill in your heart? Many Baba lovers drew great comfort from the company of their dear pets during the isolation of the pandemic. How have you have managed over the years to recover from the loss of these intimate companions?

In His love, Jeff

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