Conversations about Meher Baba

May 8, 2022 Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton, special guest Vesta Clinton Part 4, live on Zoom

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But twice a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for spontaneous chat, more readings, songs, quotes, you never know what treasures will be uncovered! Our guest: Vesta ClintonDear folks of Baba, Vesta Clinton is our guest tonight, her fourth time of sharing her remembrances of life in India, especially of her times of staying overnight at Meherazad with the mandali. In case she is new to you, she was part of the migration of young Baba lovers from the West who came to Ahmednagar beginning in the early 1970s. Being a nurse, she had the rare good fortune to stay overnight at Meherazad, initially looking after Dr. Goher who was suffering from severe back pain. This experience gave her a intimate glimpse of the mandalis’ life at Meherazad during the evenings and overnight. Mehera adored her and took special care of her. As a nurse, she helped Dr. Goher in the Meherazad clinic, and she was very close to Arnavaz and the men mandali.In His love, JeffTo join the email list for Jeff's Chats, contact AngelaThis event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

May 1, 2022 Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton, topic: Controlling Anger, live on Zoom

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But twice a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for spontaneous chat, more readings, songs, quotes, you never know what treasures will be uncovered! Dear folks of Baba,He has said in His Discourses:Anger is the fume of an irritated mind. It is caused by the thwarting of desires. It feeds the limited ego and is used for domination and aggression. It aims at removing the obstacles existing in the fulfillment of desires.Baba has said that lust is connected to the gross body, greed to the subtle body and anger to the mental body. It is within the power of the aspirant to control the expression of lust and greed, but for anger it requires the grace and intervention of the Avatar or a Perfect Master. For this reason, don’t feel discouraged if you find that controlling anger is extremely difficult.Baba has also said that “anger is the opposite of tolerance or patience.” Have you found that as you have become more tolerant and patient, your anger has diminished?Bhau and Eruch, two of the mandali, talked about mock anger: expressing anger without being angry. When Bhau was asked how much of Eruch’s anger was mock anger, he said 100 percent. When asked about his own anger, he said 80 percent.Have you ever witnessed someone expressing anger that seemed not to hurt or shame others (that is, without a barb behind it)? That is what the mandali described as mock anger.To what extent do our own expectations of others’ behavior play in stirring up our anger? When others violate our cherished values, what we think is right, do we invariably react with anger? Could lowering our expectations of others enable us to better control our anger? Are others supposed to live according to our values?Have you noticed that some people's anger seems to evaporate soon after it is expressed, whereas with others, even though anger is not expressed it goes in and creates an attitude of resentment and negative feeling that persists long after the situation which caused it?How do you react to sarcasm from others? What methods have you developed in dealing with anger?To a friend who had trouble controlling his temper toward others, Eruch said that given he has lost his temper, he should apologize afterwards. The anticipated humiliation of having to apologize afterwards has actually helped curb his anger.In His love, JeffTo join the email list for Jeff's Chats, contact AngelaThis event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

Vesta Clinton informal chat April 26, 2022, live on Zoom

A spontaneous post-arti chat with Vesta.This event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

April 10, 2022 Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton, special guest Vesta Clinton Part 2, live on Zoom

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But twice a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for spontaneous chat, more readings, songs, quotes, you never know what treasures will be uncovered! Dear folks of Baba, By popular demand, Vesta Clinton is back to share more of her intimate times of being with the mandali at Meherazad. This time she will regale us with her exchanges and experiences with Eruch, Baba’s interpreter and closest of the men mandali. Eruch was able to share with all of us pilgrims the deepest understanding of Baba, which was always so vivid and personal. Vesta had a rare camera angle that few had at the time, staying overnight at Meherazad starting in the mid-70s and off and on for many years afterwards. She is full of humor and has many "far out", behind-the-scenes stories, such as flying saucers that used to hover near Meherazad in plain sight of her and the mandali. You won’t find her colorful and amazing stories in any of the books. She will be sharing her memories with us while she is recovering in bed from chemotherapy treatments. Vesta claims that she is affected by “chemo brain”, but to us what she says is very insightful and moving and evocative of the early times just after Baba dropped His body. Come and be touched and expanded in Baba’s love.In His love, JeffThis event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

April 3, 2022 Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton, special guest Vesta Clinton, live on Zoom

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But twice a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for spontaneous chat, more readings, songs, quotes, you never know what treasures will be uncovered! Topic: Vesta Clinton and the women mandali Our special guest is Vesta Clinton. She was among the many Baba lovers who migrated to India in pilgrimage beginning in the early 1970s. She had the great good fortune to spend much time with the mandali at Meherazad, especially with the women mandali, and she has many touching, humorous and colorful experiences from those times. From her, we will hear what each of the women mandali was like through the eyes of a young Westerner and how they lived their lives for Baba. Mehera loved and adored Vesta, and she was especially close to Dr. Goher and for years helped her run the medical clinic at Meherazad. She will begin with the story of her coming to Baba. Be ready with questions, which will help jog Vesta’s memory of those intimate times she spent with Baba’s close mandali.In His love, JeffTo join the email list for Jeff's Chats, contact AngelaThis event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

March 27, 2022 Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton, focus on ”Self-Effacement,” live on Zoom

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But twice a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for spontaneous chat, more readings, songs, quotes, you never know what treasures will be uncovered! Meher Baba has said, "The way of My Work is the way of effacement, which is the way of strength, not of weakness and through it you become mature in My love." What does Baba mean by self-effacement? Is it having a negative view of oneself? Does it mean having low self-esteem, feeling ourselves as being small? Do such attitudes lead to self-forgetfulness and effacement?Is it possible to have high self-esteem without egoism? Baba has said we have to efface our lower self. What is the lower self? He defined it as... "That which makes you think you are small, that which makes you feel that you are not satisfied, not happy, that which makes others see you as small. So, the meaning of going against the lower self is to transform this in quite the opposite direction. Be that which makes you look big and makes others see you as big. Remain pleased and contented, happy and satisfied. When you are displeased, unhappy or upset and moody, it is your lower self asserting itself.” Therefore, according to Baba, thinking of ourselves as small is not self-effacement, but it would seem that a high self-esteem is what He is encouraging. What are some of the ways that lead to self-effacement?Baba has said that by expressing a self-giving love rather than venting our ego with all its negative emotions of pride, lust, greed and anger, the negative emotions gradually begin to be effaced by the divinely human qualities within us.For example, Baba has said that lust is gradually replaced by purity; greed is replaced by generosity; anger by tolerance and patience. Baba also gave supreme importance to saying His name as a means to self-effacement: Meherwan Jessawala, Eruch’s brother, has said that taking Baba’s name is like introducing termites into our interior: the inner space is eaten away until it is hollowed out, making more and more room for Baba to live in us! Remember the game of Pac Man?Does self-effacement mean giving up even our spiritual experiences? Rick Chapman, in his meeting with Baba at Meherazad in 1966, was told by Him, "In fact, pay no attention whatsoever to the spiritual path, the planes of consciousness, or to any spiritual experiences—they are all nothing but toys for children, because they are nothing but illusion.” Is Baba implying, therefore, to even renounce our "spiritual potential" in favor of self-effacement? How many spiritual teachers would recommend this?Darwin Shaw used to say with an enigmatic smile on his face, “Sooner or later we discover we are nobody, and that is not an unhappy discovery!”Let’s hopefully lose ourselves in this topic, in His love, Jeff To join the email list for Jeff's Chats, contact AngelaThis event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

March 20, 2022 Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton, focus on love versus emotion, live on Zoom

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But twice a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for spontaneous chat, more readings, songs, quotes, you never know what treasures will be uncovered! Dear folks of Baba, This is a very subtle topic about a distinction that has serious implications in maintaining harmony at the inner level with Baba. With most people, feelings are often conflated with love, but this can be very misleading. Emotions, feelings and desires come from the heart, our conditioning, our sanskaras. We know this. But have you been able to see that love flows in from another dimension, from the innermost dimension INTO the heart, from beyond our sanskaras? Baba has said: “Feelings and emotions are only the creation of mind and energy. Love is the creation of the soul.” The mandali have said that feelings are a great vehicle for love, but they are also a great vehicle for the darker emotions such as jealousy, hatred, vindictiveness, and greed. Have you seen this in your own life? Have you ever noticed that what you thought was loving turned out to be predominantly done with an ulterior selfish motive? When Arnavaz, one of the women mandali, said to Baba that she wasn’t feeling Him, Baba replied “I never asked you to feel me. I asked you to love me.” Have you ever witnessed yourself doing something loving in spite of being in a bad mood? How is it that your mood was not able to prevent you from being loving? Baba refers to the divinely human qualities in us—of generosity, empathy, forgiveness, humor, honesty, courage, creativity—all our best qualities. Have you noticed that emotions and desires are excitement-based, and that love with its divine qualities is tranquil-based: they are quiet, even when they give rise to enthusiasm and action? Baba has said, " Amidst intense activity, if there is absolute calmness of mind, that is the highest love." Have you ever encountered someone who is very very good, expressing positive emotions, and yet you somehow felt very little love from them? When you wake up and check in with how you’re doing, do you consult your feelings, your emotions and thoughts, or do you consult the love you share with Baba? We receive light from the moon, but the moon is not the source of its light. Its light comes from the sun.Similarly, we receive love from the feelings, but feelings are not the source of Baba’s love. The hidden stream of love that is ever-flowing into us begins in purity, but as it flows downstream through us, it often picks up impurities, pollutants, mixed motives. Is it possible to receive love further upstream before the mind and emotions enter into it? I hope this is a provocative and interesting topic, in His love, JeffTo join the email list for Jeff's Chats, contact AngelaThis event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

March 13, 2022 Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton, Special guest Jimmy Khan, live on Zoom

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But twice a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for spontaneous chat, more readings, songs, quotes, you never know what treasures will be uncovered! *Note - the record button was pressed 10 minutes into the talk, apologies! *Dear folks of Baba, Once again, we have Jimmy Khan as our guest to share his many intimate times with Baba during the 1960s. Along with his mother, Khorshed, Jimmy first met Baba in 1961 at Guruprasad, a palatial bungalow in Pune where Baba would stay during the summer months. Jimmy was a teenager at the time. His mother had first heard of Baba from Sam Patel, a family friend and long time follower of Baba. Roda Mistry was the one who urged her to come to Guruprasad to meet Baba. She was one of the Dadachanjis, a large extended family devoted to Baba since the 1930s. Roda had reached out to Khorshed in kindness after Khorshed's husband had died, leaving her with three children. After his first meeting with Baba, Jimmy had the rare good fortune to be with Him many times, sometimes on intimate occasions at Guruprasad and also once in Meherazad. He will share how his life with Baba unfolded over the years and how Baba took such intimate and personal care of his whole family. Come with questions to ask Jimmy about his life with Baba. He always welcomes them. This will be a special glimpse of Baba through the eyes of a teenage boy as he entered young adulthood.In His love, JeffTo join the email list for Jeff's Chats, contact AngelaThis event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

March 6, 2022 Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton, live on Zoom

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But twice a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for spontaneous chat, more readings, songs, quotes, you never know what treasures will be uncovered! Dear folks of Baba, I had thought that Jimmy Khan would share on this Sunday his times with Baba in the 1960s, but instead he will be with us the following Sunday. This weekend, he is taking a large bus with over 60 people from Mumbai to Meherabad. So, at the last moment, we have no particular topic. Someone said, why don’t we just see where the discussion goes, and as a back-up, we thought it would be enjoyable if people would bring something to share, a favorite poem, quote, a song, a touching story, a Baba anecdote, or even how you felt about life just before hearing of Baba. Something to entertain Baba.In His love, JeffTo join the email list for Jeff's Chats, contact AngelaThis event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

Feb 20, 2022 Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton, focus on ”Accessing Inner Vitality,” live on Zoom

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But twice a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for spontaneous chat, more readings, songs, quotes, you never know what treasures will be uncovered! TOPIC: Accessing our inner vitality through BabaOne of the greatest challenges facing all of us today is accessing the vitality and enthusiasm to carry out what we have to do in this life. As a result of this pandemic and its disruption in our lives, many of us are turning to Baba more deeply for inspiration and adopting daily practices that open us up to our inner resources. There are many approaches to accessing our inner vitality through Baba. In one approach, Baba has said,Before beginning anything, the aspirant thinks that it is not he who is doing it, but the Master who is getting it done through him. After doing it he does not tarry to claim the results of action or enjoy them, but becomes free of them by offering them to the Master. By training his mind in this spirit he succeeds in creating a new ego which, though provisional and working, is amply able to become a source of that confidence, feeling, enthusiasm and "go" which true action must express.Baba has also said, Modern psychology has done much to reveal the sources of conflict, but it has yet to discover methods of awakening inspiration or supplying the mind with something that makes life worth living…The most important requirement for the satisfactory resolution of conflict is motive power or inspiration, which can only come from a burning longing for some comprehensive ideal. Analysis in itself may aid choice, but the choice will remain a barren and ineffective intellectual preference unless it is vitalized by zeal for some ideal appealing to the deepest and most significant strata of human personality.In highlighting this proactive approach, Baba has said, "A new line in the divine picture is sketched only when some individual takes life forcefully in his hands, breaks up the old patterns and insists on creating something new by his own inner vision."Ongoing work on our ideals, which over time may have lost some of their dynamic effect in our lives, requires that we sometimes revisit and redefine those ideals in order to meet our present circumstances. What methods or practices have you discovered that re-ignite your inner vitality?There are other invaluable ways of accessing our inner vitality with Baba, among them:Repeating Baba’s name and saying the PrayersThe determination to please Baba in all that we do, which taps into His unlimited vitalityDarwin Shaw’s practice of focussing on our flowing invisible currentThe practice that Baba spoke of: "Dress your soul with Baba”Overcoming worry, which Baba said is one of the greatest drains on our psychic energyIn His love, JeffTo join the email list for Jeff's Chats, contact AngelaThis event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily