My 50th Anniversary

The Ott house in Woodstock

This Spring (not sure the exact date) marks the 50th Anniversary of my hearing about Meher Baba from my father. It was in the Spring of 1964 that my parents first began to ask questions about Meher Baba from Tom and Yvonne Riley in Woodstock, NY. In this five minute video of my father, made in California in 1983, he describes his telling me about Baba. The exact section begins at 3:32 on the video timeline.



My parents used to go to Monday night meetings at the Rileys house, and there the two couples would read books of Baba's. One of the first they were reading was Stay With God by Francis Brabazon, at that time only a five year old book.

Me with my Dad about the
time we heard of Baba

I remember going to the meetings and wanting to go, but then my mother got a plan to pay me not to go. She had to bribe me to stay home with my sisters. Not sure why I wanted to go. There was nothing to do there but climb around on the chairs. When she would go, she would write me a check for $1.00, and I would take it down to the general store at the bottom of the hill we lived on and cash it for candy (bubble gum cigars, candied cigarettes, wax lips, and baseball cards).

LSD Guru, Timothy Leary

I was at the meeting in 1964 that happened to be the first Baba meeting Timothy Leary ever attended, who came up to Woodtock with friend Allan Cohen to hear a talk given there by Darwin Shaw - who had come from Scinectody to speak to the Woodstock "group" (i.e. the Ott family and the Riley family). Baba was aware of the meeting.

Anyway, That's my whole Hoorah! Hope you're impressed!! I am.

This is of course not the only anniversary this year. It was 100 years ago this year that Hazrat Babajan of Poona kissed Meher Baba on the forehead, thereby revealing to him his real state of Godhood.

It was also 50 years ago this month that the Beatles first played on the Ed Sullivan show. I watched with my sisters upstairs on our 13 inch very fuzzy black and white television set.

And, of course this is the year of the Horse in the Chinese calendar -- and by some fancy mathematics, a couple of alchemically minded Baba lovers have estimated that this is the end of a cycle of cycles of years of the Horse (which they equate with the Kalki White Horse Avatar) and thus marks the year of Baba's manifestation. Of course that is above the pay-grade of this website to delve into. But here we ARE!!

Just to get back on the topic of Meher Baba -- here's the maestro himself. Beyond all this self-flattery about where I was and when.

Meher Baba on a hammock chair in the 1930s