I first met Baba, a spiritual master from India, in St. Paul in June of 1971. After leaving Carleton, I completed my master’s degree in library science at Rutgers and then worked as a librarian at Harvard. Five years later I returned to St. Paul, where I was fortunate to meet Baba again. He invited me to come to India to visit him. Within twenty days I was on my way to India. And so began my life of dedication to Baba and his work.
In 1962 Baba made a lifetime vow of silence; he did not speak with his mouth, but communicated eloquently with his unique, self-created, sign language. He taught me his sign language and I became his primary interpreter whenever he was in the West, which was often.
I also worked for the Minnesota State Law Library, then the Minneapolis Public Library. At the end of my career, I joined the Hennepin County Center for Innovation and Excellence, serving as an innovator, providing proposals for service improvements and innovations across county departments. I retired in August 2016.
I enjoyed my work as a librarian and innovator, but what mattered most to me was my life and work with Baba. He was a spiritual master of universal importance, but without an organization or any religious affiliation. He helped people of all walks of life, asking for nothing in return. He said that organizations become hierarchical and political, so he made himself accessible to everyone who desired his guidance, support, or friendship. He had no disciples or followers, only close ones whom he called his family. Politicians, celebrities, academics, prostitutes, clerics, attorneys, doctors, businesspeople—anyone who came to him received his love or guidance and often a beautiful meal.
For me, one of Baba’s most significant undertakings in the U.S. was his work with gangs and gang leaders during the 1980s when drive-by shootings were rampant in Los Angeles and other urban areas. We often went to Los Angeles to meet leaders of the Bloods, Crips, Vice Lords, and other gangs…Baba was the stimulus behind the creation of a national peace summit of gang leaders. He wanted to transform them into peacemakers in their communities.
During the summit, held in St. Paul, Baba invited gang members to our home for meals he prepared. He fed them and offered wise and compassionate advice. Upon receiving a hug from him, a leader of the Bloods was in tears; he said he had never felt such love from anyone. Apart from food and shelter, Baba said, people need love, justice, and peace.
Baba died in 2010, but I have continued to go to India annually, covid restrictions permitting. I am in Kerala now, probably into mid-March. At his request, I am working with a lawyer to form a trust to preserve and protect his forty-acre estate here in accordance with his vision and values. He wanted people from all over the world, from all faiths, to be able to go there to enjoy a garden-like paradise of natural beauty and international harmony. His marble tomb is there, as is his unique, hand-carved cave called the Shrine of Silence, where people can, without rituals or words, experience the presence of a higher power and the blessedness of silence. As Baba said in his last oral speech before beginning his vow of silence, “Blessed is silence. In silence, you can rise from thought to the fullness of Pure Knowing and rest in your own true being.”