The Year of the Monkey

In my last post I said that The Parvardigar Prayer is a prayer in which humanity beseeches God the Preserver and Sustainer to protect it and offers praise to God. Baba asked his lovers around the world to recite the prayer each day, along with the Prayer of Repentence, starting in late January 1968 and continuing until the end of July of that year. This period coincided with a period of deep seclusion by Baba and a time of world change so escalated that for a little while it seemed as if things were about to spin out of control. The following are some of the events that took place during that unique six months of Baba's seclusion work in which around the world Baba's lovers repeated the Parvardigar Prayer and Prayer of Repentence.

Events occuring between end of January and end of July, 1968.

Prague Spring, Czechoslovakia, 1968

My Lai massacre, March 16, 1968

Assassination of Martin Luther King,
April 4, 1968

1. Civil protests occur throughout all six months in Czechoslovakia in what became known as the Prague Spring.
2. The "Valle Giulia" student protest in Rome leads to a long period of violent disputes.
3. The Tet Offensive begins, as Viet Cong forces launch a series of surprise attacks across South Vietnam.
4. The first student protests spark the 1968 Polish political crisis.
5. Nerve gas leaks from the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground near Skull Valley, Utah.
6. My Lai massacre in Vietnam in which American troops, under order of Lieutenant William Calley, murder several hundred unarmed villagers. The story will first become public in November 1969 and will help undermine public support for the U.S. efforts in Vietnam.
7. Students at Howard University in Washington, D.C., signal a new era of militant student activism on college campuses in the U.S. Students stage rallies, protests and a 5-day sit-in, laying siege to the administration building, shutting down the university in protest over its ROTC program, and demanding a more Afrocentric curriculum.
8. Students occupy the administrative offices of the University of Nanterre, setting in motion a chain of events that lead France to the brink of revolution in May.



Assassination of Robert F.
Kennedy, June 6, 1968

9. Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot dead at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots erupt in major American cities for several days afterward.
10. A shootout between Black Panthers and Oakland police results in several arrests and deaths, including 16-year-old Panther Bobby Hutton.
11. German left-wing students blockade the Springer Press HQ in Berlin and many are arrested
12. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
13. Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.
14. U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy dies from his injuries the next day.

The following is from Lord Meher, 1986 ed. p. 6641:
Baba's exclusion work came to an end on July 30th, and from that day the reciting of the prayers was also stopped. That evening, Baba declared:

My work is done. It is completed one hundred percent to my satisfaction. The result of this work will also be one hundred percent and will manifest from the end of September[1968]. How I kept it going over the last stretch to its completion, I alone know. You cannot have a seed of an idea how crushing the pressure was, for it is beyond human understanding. On the final day, my body felt as though it had been through a wringer!