Conversations about Meher Baba Podcast By Angela Lee Chen - Baba Zoom cover art

Conversations about Meher Baba

Conversations about Meher Baba

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: ”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
  • Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”The Divine Qualities,” April 28, 2026, live Baba Zoom

    Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”The Divine Qualities,” April 28, 2026, live Baba Zoom
    Apr 30 2026
    Topic: The Divine Qualities, the link to the Soul Dear folks of Baba, “To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the benefit and guidance of others by expressing in the world of forms--truth, love, purity and beauty--this is the sole game that has intrinsic and absolute worth.” - Meher Baba As we surrender more and more of our interior to Baba, clearing out the strangers in our heart, we begin to create what Darwin calls “inner space.” With inner-directed awareness, we gradually see into the interior dynamics of our psyche, equivalent to lifting up the hood of our car to observe how the engine operates. We see on one side of this inner space our reactions to life linked directly to our impressions (sanskaras), the conditioning we’ve accumulated in all our lives. On the other, deeper side are our loving responses to life that are directly connected to our soul, to Baba Himself. A part of our essential work is to transmute our reactions into loving responses, through our divine qualities. This is the purification of the heart. As the heart is emptied of our sanskaric reactions, inner space is made for the divine qualities to naturally flow in from Baba. Giving our interior to Baba requires great effort on our part. As we gathered from Darwin, it involves focusing deeply on our reactions and emotional complexes, taking time to feel and delve profoundly into them and then give them energetically to Baba. In this way, these reactions and emotional complexes are gradually dissolved in Baba. Darwin would say, “The deeper the feeling, the deeper the healing.” The divine qualities can all be encapsulated in Baba’s words—truth, love, purity and beauty. For example, Baba says that the opposite of anger (a reaction) is patience and tolerance (our loving response). The opposite of greed (wanting, acquisition) is generosity. The opposite of lust (craving) is purity. The same is true of all our reactions; they have their counterparts flowing in from the soul: for example, retaliation is sublimated into forgiveness, self-centeredness into empathy and compassion, jealousy into appreciation of the qualities of others, suspicion into trust. Our reactions are experienced as a superficial (though sometimes very intense)aspect of our heart, whereas our responses have great substance and depth. In every situation, we are faced with a choice, whether to give in to our reactions or favor our loving responses. It is through the divine qualities coming directly from Baba that our consciousness moves its focus from our ego, with its self-centered reactions, to imbibing the universal love of our own soul. Baba’s divine impressions, as Darwin describes, “filter in through our heart center.” In fact, His Divine Love and Grace is radiating right now in this moment in each of us with full strength; we are mistaken if we think it only happens in His physical presence. I was truly heartened when I read where Baba says that the work we do in cultivating our divine qualities in this lifetime is carried over into our future lifetimes. Whatever progress we make with, say, patience in this life becomes our intrinsic capacity in the next life. We may lose our present material benefits in the next life, but the work we’ve done in cultivating any of the divine qualities is never lost. As our consciousness moves closer to our soul, Baba is then free to express the divine qualities through us. Our heart becomes a vehicle for the divine qualities rather than for our reactions. We are eclipsed by Baba. He becomes more and more the doer. As Darwin would say, we begin to “merge with Him.” Over time, Darwin assures us, “In His infinite, oceanic divine love radiation, we lose track of the little streams of our sanskaric currents. In their place, we experience a steady, sustained flow of truth, love, purity and beauty. We are meant to experience this coming in from Him within us, not in a sporadic or passing way, but continuously.” With our heart in this receptive state, a longing is naturally awakened in us to serve Baba in some way. What are we being called to do in our personal life? What type of service resonates with the unique nature of our heart? Baba says it is enough to be “in readiness” to serve and opportunities will then naturally arise, revealed to us in the needs in the world around us, especially where love is lacking. As Darwin says, “Each person who comes to Baba is put to work.” This may not require always some outward expression. Even just loving Baba within is service because through Him that love goes out to the world. “I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God sending a love letter to the world.” - Mother Teresa In His love, Jeff P.S. We are continuing on page 89.
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    1 hr and 17 mins
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