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Conversations about Meher Baba

Conversations about Meher Baba

Written by: Angela Lee Chen - Baba Zoom
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Different hosts, different topics, sometimes featured guests: but always about loving Meher Baba in the present tense.

Conversations are held live on Baba Zoom at various times. If you want to join the conversation, visit babazoom.net for more information: the calendar of events, and login information is available under the ”Virtual Meetings” page.

Copyright 2026 All rights reserved. Spirituality
Episodes
  • Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”Loving Baba in Others,” May 18, 2026, live Baba Zoom

    Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”Loving Baba in Others,” May 18, 2026, live Baba Zoom
    May 19 2026

    Dear folks of Baba,

    Baba said that for this advent “the path is through people.”

    Baba once said, “All differences between one another are merely superficial and cannot affect the love we feel for each other deep down.” I take this to mean that the love we have for each other doesn’t grow; it is already complete; the challenge is to remove the impediments, the veils, that prevent us from seeing the truth of Baba’s words. In fact, asserting this loving truth inwardly to others sometimes actually awakens a more favorable attitude toward us from those who otherwise might be inclined to dislike us and withhold their love. Why? Because in some small measure, we are reflecting their own loving soul back to them, a truth that we all have been unconsciously longing to experience.

    Ideally, it is best for us to allow the love in our soul to flow continuously toward everyone and everything, and it is the heart that is our primary vehicle in relating personally to others. Baba once said to the mandali, “Not too near, not too far.” I take this to mean that we have a responsibility to know where to position our heart with its love in relation to others. If, for example, we know a person is prickly or abrasive, we may have to position our heart at some distance so as that it is not unnecessarilyhurt and shut down. In this way, we can continue to send them love safely from our heart. In another example, if we let our heart flow out too intimately to someone, we might inadvertently signal to them that we have a romantic interest and they may feel hurt when we don’t reciprocate. Or, sometimes our own heart is hurt because we have misjudged someone by getting too close, and we may react by withdrawing our heart too far and put up a wall. There are other times when we might be too warm to someone and they feel that we are extending a lifelong friendship to them, something that due to circumstances we may not be able to follow through with. Sometimes it is even wise to keep a polite distance with our heart. In all these examples, it is important that at the level of the spirit our love continues to flow from wherever we position our heart. It is not that the heart is always positioned in relation to others in a fixed place. Even during the course of a conversation, as we are getting to know someone, we may have to adjust our position a number of times depending on the signals we are getting. It is important to be flexible about where we place our heart. Unfortunately, some people, without realizing it, position their heart “too far” from others and miss out on the joy of the give-and-take of love. At times it may be important to position our heart in a very firm yet loving place when we have to be entirely direct with someone who is being inappropriate. Usually over time, our intuition positions our heart spontaneously and fluidly in relation to others without our conscious involvement. Throughout our life, we all have been engaged in this process at one level or another; it is making this more conscious.

    All this for me has been a work in progress, keeping the heart flowing with love in all circumstances, and through such efforts, a greater sensitivity is developed over time. The main purpose is that we don’t want to let our heart shut down completely toward any circumstance or anyone. This is a tall, tall order. I have come to see it as my responsibility to be aware and sensitive to where I place my heart in relation to others, and if I am deeply hurt by someone, I do not take it as their fault really (even though their behavior may be unacceptable), but as a mistake on my part for having left my heart unnecessarily vulnerable. Over the years, in holding myself accountable rather than in blaming others for hurting me or making me uncomfortable, I have learned from my mistakes. I don’t mean to imply that when someone is very abusive to us that we don’t distance ourselves from such persons, but we hold them accountable when they are truly inappropriate. Many of us have been taught to be “pleasant” with others, even martyrs, and accept and overlook the abusive and cruel behavior of others. We can get ourselves unnecessarily hurt. It’s important that the heart remains inwardly open, but not necessarily open to all others at an external level. That is, we remain radiating love invisibly to others, but we sometimes have to withhold expressing it when faced with an abusive and negative situation.

    “To love one soul is like adding its life to your own, and your life is, as it were, multiplied and you virtually live in two centers. If you love the whole world, you vicariously live in the whole world.” - Meher Baba

    In His love, Jeff

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    1 hr and 10 mins
  • Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”A Glorious Culmination,” May 11, 2026, live Baba Zoom

    Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”A Glorious Culmination,” May 11, 2026, live Baba Zoom
    May 12 2026
    Dear folks of Baba, There was a woman who came to the Center who had lost the person most dear to her in this life. She was still in grief. In talking with a fellow Baba lover, he felt she was indulging in her feelings and urged her to get over it. She was deeply hurt but didn’t say anything. He had the mental conviction from Baba’s writings that this world is just an illusion, all its happenings a mere dream, but he did not really have this conviction through experience. If he had, he would have had more empathy for this woman. Within a year, someone who was very dear to him passed on and he suffered the loss profoundly. He found out that his idea that it is all an illusion did not protect his heart from great pain. It is through such experiences that Baba in a natural way awakens in us His empathy for others. Knowing with the mind is not the knowing of the heart. Similarly, some Baba lovers claim to have faith that Baba is in charge of this present war, and why are people worrying about it? After all, they assert, everything is in Baba’s hands. But there are people in our community who have family and friends in this war whose lives are being completely disrupted and even some who are being killed. Isn’t it possible to have genuine faith that it is all in Baba’s hands and still “suffer in the sufferings of others?” The mandali, who more than anyone knew the illusion of life, nevertheless showed such deep compassion and care for us through all our troubles and heartache. For myself, this more universal sensitivity has been very slow and painful to awaken in me. Darwin would say that the mind in collusion with the ego is so powerful that it can convince us that we already know the truth about things. The ego has found a way to keep us from dropping down into our heart where true wisdom resides. Those of us around Darwin often pondered what he actually experienced in his inner life with Baba. It was possible to infer from the things he shared with us what his experience was, but that was all. He was not forthcoming on this subject. But then one day, I said to him, “Darwin, you have a lot of rare wine in your cellar [speaking metaphorically] and if you die, it will only go to your relatives! I think we should bring it up and enjoy it now! You have been focusing on Baba for the last seventy years, year after year, day by day, moment to moment. What is your experience now?” He was amused by this lead-in, and so, at the ripe old age of 96, Darwin shared this with us: “Just as when we breathe all day, we don’t have to say, now it’s time to inhale, now it's time to exhale. This all happens automatically. Eventually life just unfolds. We are no longer trying to get things to go this way or that. We’ve let go. Consciousness is then freed at the level of the world. It goes up to the level of the spirit and out to the far corners of the universe, and we live in and through everyone and everything.” That is, when we’re let out of the prison of our finite identity, our life and consciousness expand infinitely in all directions. Looking across the table where he sat relaxed in Baba’s home in the West, who would have thought that this wizened old gentleman contained such a sublime experience! This was the glorious culmination of a lifetime of loving effort in living for Baba. The inner life that Baba spoke of was relatively unknown to us in our youth, but Darwin kept encouraging us to go deeper into Baba, inviting us to move from the monkey mind down to the unspeakable treasures of the heart. Years later, we discovered there was another side of Darwin that he rarely spoke of, and that was his compassion for this world of ours, the many hours he spent alone working inwardly at great depths to send Baba’s love to all those in need who inhabit this fair earth. In this inner work, he would first send love to his family and when he had enveloped them sufficiently with Baba’s love, he would flow out to the city of Schenectady, and then on to New York state and out to the Baba family scattered throughout the country, and then on to the whole world. He would not proceed to the next stage until he had enveloped that stage with Baba’s love. This was a part of the major inner work that Darwin did with Baba. It’s no wonder that such souls seem to us larger than life! I once asked him, “What is the biggest mistake the Baba lovers are making?” Not critically but as an encouragement to us, Darwin replied, “They think of themselves as small and they remain small. Think big! Think outside even the traditional spiritual box. They could open up to a much larger world and would be much happier." One of the lines from Baba's discourses that Darwin would most often quote was: “All finiteness and limitation is subjective and self-created.” The poignant prayer of Mother Teresa expresses all of this so well: “Dear Lord, break my heart so completely that the whole world falls...
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    1 hr and 18 mins
  • Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”Completeness in Baba,” May 5, 2026, live Baba Zoom

    Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”Completeness in Baba,” May 5, 2026, live Baba Zoom
    May 5 2026
    Most people feel incomplete, that there is something profoundly missing in their lives. It is not their fault if they think that such a fulfillment lies in fame, recognition, a soul mate, material success, expertise in some field or producing a great work of art. And unfortunately, even when pursued, these goals are never fully secured. In the partial satisfaction of what they think is missing, the goal post keeps getting moved farther away. There is always much more that is needed! That is why eventually everyone turns to God who is Completeness Itself. The divine incarnations are the very embodiments of wholeness, and the feeling that there is something missing is dissolved when in their Presence. Unfortunately, everything on this side of the Divine is incomplete. That is why the focus on the Divine is regarded as the highest pursuit, which is our own completeness, and it cannot be attained at the level of the world. In focusing on Baba in any way, shape or form, we are moving toward completeness, toward our own wholeness. When our wanting the things of this world ends, wholeness can appear. There are many efforts we can make from our side that will help Baba awaken the experience of completeness in us. Two such methods are to cultivate self-acceptance and self-compassion. We are a mixture of love and selfishness, and we are going to witness ourselves falling short of love time and again. We will one day have to accept these shortcomings in ourselves and remain in the present and not be so self-critical. Baba has said that God-realization is the simultaneous experience of the extreme opposites. We have to one day become aware of life in its totality, including the opposites of good and bad, rather than accepting only its good side. This means being aware of both sides in ourselves and in the world, but without acting out the extremes. At the same time, we must remain sensitive and not become indifferent toward the pain and suffering of others. Such efforts lead to wholeness. Another requirement for attaining wholeness or completeness is to stay in the present and not live in the past or future. I once quoted Baba’s words to Meherwan Jessawala, one of the mandali, “Live more and more in the present which is ever-beautiful and stretches away beyond the limits of the past and the future.” I asked him what these words meant to him. He replied, “You won’t find Baba in the past or the future. You will only find Him in the present.” To stay in the present with Baba is to imbibe His oneness and through this, our own wholeness. We must build up an increasing tolerance for mental discomfort, because if we don’t, we will always be trying to escape into the past or future or to some distraction in the present. There is another challenging requirement for experiencing our intrinsic wholeness. Most of us find it easier to experience "the oneness of Baba within” in themselves, but find "the oneness within” in the company of others is a much greater challenge. Baba has said in this Advent that “the path is through people.” This requires experiencing Baba in others, tuning into their essence which lies behind the personality self. It requires a huge expansion of who we experience ourselves to be—that is, to include all others in the experience of our “self”. We have to become more detached from the likes and dislikes of our personality self, to rise above our attitude of approval and disapproval of others, and to penetrate beyond the external level to Baba within others. This oneness, when achieved, is permanent and is untouched by the ups and downs of our reactions to others and the world. When we respond to Baba in others, this does not mean that they will necessarily reciprocate. We have to share Baba’s love with no strings attached. It is enough to offer love from our side, so to speak, and if they respond with love, that is icing on the cake! The results are left to Baba. There are some occasions when we may have to keep an external distance from someone (as in the case of a person who is abusive), but not at the level of the heart; our heart should not close at the inner level because that would deny the truth of our innate completeness. All this requires tremendous work on ourselves, but Baba will make it happen one day in each of us. Our soul is meant to include all, not just those who please our small personality self. "A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “the universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thought and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of our understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty." - Albert ...
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    1 hr and 13 mins
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