Coins on the Mountain
By Sam L. Ervin
Fire strips away much of nature’s camouflage and reveals the unexpected.
On December 12, 2017, just eight days after the Thomas Fire swept through parts of Meher Mount, five of us including Buzz and Ginger Glasky, Cassandra Bramucci, and Margaret Magnus walked the property marveling at the fire’s path and the fire’s targets.
Surprisingly, Cassandra noticed a small pile of 21 coins, unearthed by the fire, under one of the pine trees at Avatar’s Point. We had no idea how they got there.
21 COINS were unearthed at Avatar's Point next to a pine tree after the Thomas Fire. (Photo: Sam Ervin, December 12, 2017)
The coins were so blackened, we could not determine their age at that point. We thought they might be old, so we took them home and cleaned them. What we found were mostly nickels and dimes from the 2000s.
How did the coins get to Avatar's Point? We speculated that someone thought it would be like throwing coins in a wishing well. Or, perhaps, they were compelled to offer up all their worldly wealth to the One Who says, “I am eternal in nature and infinite in resources.” Maybe they followed Meher Baba’s heed to “leave all and follow me,” and the coins represented his or her all.
The coins were returned to Meher Mount on the Winter Solstice, December 21, 2017. They were buried where the mysterious person left them at Avatar's Point, so the offering and the intent of the giver are no longer disturbed.
TWO OF THE PINE TREES at Avatar's Point in 2017 before the Thomas Fire on December 4, 2017. The pine trees are still standing. The Avatar's Point sign is blackened. The two chairs on the left are completely gone, and the two chairs on the right are charred and burned. (Photo: Stephanie Ervin)
Related Quotes
The phrase "leave all and follow me," is part of a longer statement given by Avatar Meher Baba at Guruprasad in Pune (Poona), India, in January 1959. One man taking darshan expressed his desire to follow Meher Baba.
"You want to follow me? Do you know what it means? It means to leave all and follow me. And you know what it is to leave all? It is to leave everything, even your self, behind you. Mind, you have to follow me and not run ahead of me. This is so very simple, yet so very difficult." [1]
The phrase "eternal in nature and infinite in resources" was mentioned several times by Meher Baba. In 1932 at Pickfair, the Hollywood home of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Meher Baba gave a short discourse on the role of films and their value in turning people toward spiritual goals.
"Man has to be stripped of his material possessions in order that he may realize through actual experience that his true base is spiritual and not material.
Then will he be ready to receive the Truth which I have come to bring.
This Truth consists of the knowledge that man, instead of being a limited, separate individual completely bound by the illusion of time, space and customs, is eternal in his nature and infinite in his resources." [2]
In that same discourse speaking of the role of marriage, Meher Baba repeated the phrase:
"The self, in fact, is a limitless, indivisible, spiritual essence — eternal in its nature and infinite in its resources." [3]
Sources
[1] Bhau Kalchuri, Lord Meher: The Biography of the Avatar of the Age Meher Baba, Online Edition, pg. 4484, accessed December 26, 2017. (c) Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust.
[2] Kalchuri, ibid., pp. 1434-1435.
[3] Kalchuri, ibid., pg. 1436.