BABA ARRIVED at Los Angeles International Airport at 5:50 A.M., on Tuesday, July 31st, 1956. It was drizzling rain and the skies were overcast. Baba was greeted by three women of the Los Angeles Hospitality Committee, none of whom had met him before: Hilda Fuchs, Gladys Carr and Marguerite Poley. They placed a lei of red and white carnations around his neck. Marguerite Poley had been waiting to meet Baba for nine long years. She had painted several paintings of Baba on a white horse, one of which she sent to Meherazad in 1948. (One of her paintings was hung in Baba’s bedroom.)
When Baba embraced her, she later remarked: “I could not feel that he had a physical body. I felt that we were in the clouds together, and there was nothing else.”
Baba and the mandali were driven to the centrally located Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, at 7000 Hollywood Boulevard, where they had made reservations. Some of the group stayed at the hotel with Baba; the rest at the Wilcox and other hotels. Then, one by one, newspaper reporters from the Los Angeles Times and other papers interviewed and photographed him in his room.
When a reporter from the L. A. Mirror-News asked what message he had for the world, Baba stated:
Philosophers, atheists and others may affirm or refute the existence of God, but as long as they do not deny their very existence, they continue to testify their belief in God; for I tell you with divine authority that God is Existence, eternal and infinite. He is everything. For man, there is only one aim in life, and that is to realize his unity with God.
To another reporter, Baba repeated:
I have only one message to give and I repeat it age after age. My message to one and all is: Love God. One must love God with all sincerity to such an extent that one loses one’s self completely in love. And how does one love God? One can love God as He ought to be loved by trying one’s utmost to make others feel happy even at the cost of one’s own happiness.
Lord Meher, Original Publication, Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 14, pp. 5048 – 5049.