There are currently five Collections in the Mandali Hall Talks archive library of audio recordings, they are the:
Returning to mandali hall, Baba distributed toffees and custard apples to all. When he retired to his house, Hoshang accompanied him with the umbrella. On the way, Hoshang said, "Baba, four days of our stay are already over ..." Baba looked at him with love and gave him a kiss.
In the hall the next morning, Monday, 19 October 1959, Baba asked Eruch to read out a few passages from different books. One was a passage by the Perfect Master Sankaracharya on nirvikalp samadhi. At the end of it, Baba stated, "All this has been explained in God Speaks." Then a passage was read from The Imitation of Christ, by the Christian mystic Thomas à Kempis.
In the afternoon, during a game of La Risque, Baba remarked, "I am weighed down by the burden of my work, and so I come here to play cards with you in order to get some relief."
On one occasion, Harry Kenmore was sitting outside the hall talking to Padri. He did not know Baba had come back. Baba walked up to where the two were sitting.
Kenmore was telling Padri, "It seems the Old Man [his affectionate phrase for Baba] has not been for a walk in ages." Just then, Baba patted him and motioned, "Come for a walk." Kenmore was startled to find Baba standing next to him. During the walk, Baba remarked, "I am infinitely restless today." Baba had instructed Kenmore to fast that day without water until 8:00 P.M. At 7:00 P.M., Baba composed this poem and sent it to him:
One hour more
Then open your tummy's door,
And with eatables galore,
Your energy restore.
With God's name in your heart
With maya wage a war,
And taking Baba's name
Make maya lick the floor!
Baba came to mandali hall at 8:00 A.M., on the 20th, and the above poem was read aloud.
Andy Muir Collection
Bevan Robinson, Hettie Johnson and James Meyer "rescued" this collection from Andy Muir's home after he passed. It remained in Bevan's care until she passed it to me in May of 2010, prior to moving to India, for the purpose of preserving and sharing it. Betty Grant, a friend of Andy Muir, had earlier made a copy of the entire set or a large portion of it, and has used those copies to listen to personally or to share with other Baba-lovers. Betty told me she had given some of these copies to various people.
A few of the original tapes from this collection were donated by Bevan to the Sheriar Foundation, most notably those in which Meher Baba was present in 1956.
Many, but not all, of these recordings are also to be found in the Meher Center archives.
Note in particular that the entire James May series of recordings from 1972 is included, in physically pristine form on reel-to-reel tapes, in this collection, including possibly, one in this series that is missing from the Center collection. No documentation of conditions or restrictions has been found connected with this series in the Muir collection as of 10 May 2010; however, severe restrictions are noted for the Center collection.
Stephen Sakellarios,
Avatar Collection
The AVATAR COLLECTION, a truly amazing treasury of talks is now yours for the taking - listening, reading along and downloading. We invite you to explore the AVATAR COLLECTION at your leisure. In the approximately 340 entries in this collection, donated by Keith Gunn, you will find talks by many women and men Mandali and close ones, including: Mehera, Mani, Elizabeth, Kitty, Rano, Arnavaz, Adi, Mansari, Pukar, Kumar, Eruch, Bal Natu and many, many others. Recording were made at Mandali Hall, at Meherabad, on walking tours with Eruch, at Hardiwar, at Oceanic and Delia DeLeon’s apartment in London, and at other locations. Interviewers include Dara Irani, Peter Townsend and Brad Gunn and contain original material from the early 1970s through the late 1990s. Keith Gunn has written transcriptions of many of these talks and reading these transcriptions while listening to a talk is an invaluable aid in helping put the listener into Mandali Hall, or whatever location, at the very moment the person is speaking.
As an aid to explore the talks, key words (as available) are listed for each talk under the Contents column. To access the transcriptions, simply click on the “TEXT” button under the Transcript column to the far right of each Audio file. A pdf file will then open that you can read while listening. Keith’s painstaking transcriptions of the contents of so many talks capture the details of a speaker’s presentation and enables the listener to follow the talk more closely and with increased comprehension. In some cases, a given talk has been transcribed verbatim, yielding special enjoyment for the listener. In other cases, the transcription consists of a detailed list of major topics for that talk. Some talks have only minimal or no additional information — if you would like to volunteer to transcribe those talks please let us know as we would be very grateful for your participation. Along with us, we know that you will deeply appreciate Keith Gunn’s generosity in making these first hand audio tapes available by donating his collection to Mandali Hall Talks.
Awakener Collection
The 40 talks in this collection were all recorded in the 1980s. The first 5 talks have detailed transcription available, accessible upon clicking the “TEXT'“ button alongside the talk’s description.
The person who recorded these talks first saw a photo of Meher Baba at Pete Townshend’s studio in London where the students at the Arica school he was enrolled in were invited to experience a lecture on Meher Baba. He reported being so moved by Baba’s photo that he would reenter the room on several occasions to catch another glance, although at that moment in time he did not accept him as anything more that a spiritual teacher or perhaps a mystic or “just another Indian guru”, as he often would describe his first impressions of hearing of Meher Baba.
It wasn’t until a few years later in his Manhattan apartment during a quiet moment while looking at the sun’s rays shining into the room that he said “…it hit me instantly.” He stated that at that point he knew, simultaneously, in both his heart and his mind, that Meher Baba was exactly who he said he was: “The Avatar of the Age”. From that moment on he was passionately compelled to absorb like a sponge as much on Meher Baba as he could and devoted his life to loving Meher Baba and seeking “Baba” in ALL things.
Beloved Collection
This extensive collection originates from Mehera's firsthand narrative gathered from over 200 hours of tape recordings made by David Fenster, from the years 1974 to 1982. The recordings were made in an effort to gather material for the three-volume book set, Mehera-Meher: A Divine Romance.
These interviews feature Mehera J. Irani, Avatar Meher Baba's foremost woman disciple, and all available men and women mandali members from those years, including: Eruch, Mani, Meheru, Rano, Kitty, Darwin, Mansari, Padri, Goher, Arnavaz and several others. The recordings were made primarily at Meherazad and Meherabad in Maharashtra, India but also include locations in the UK, Europe and the USA.
“One morning at Upper Meherabad in the kitchen, I was standing in the corner near Baba. I had given him something. I looked at him to see what he was doing. I saw him seated so quietly. Baba looked so dear and beautiful to me. His smooth cheeks looked so lovely after shaving, so smooth & silky. I came near. I didn’t know how to embrace him. I felt so much love that I put my cheek on Baba’s cheek and pressed my cheek against his for quite a few seconds. Baba just sat there. I looked up in his eyes. He looked straight at me with such a tender, loving look in his eyes. There was a very sweet and tender expression in his eyes. It was very beautiful. Sometimes, when you felt that way, you wanted to kiss and embrace Baba. I still remember that. It has remained in my mind all this time.”
