Frederick "Rick" Martin Chapman Jrn.

1966

Among the birthday greetings, cards and cables was a poem from an American college student at Harvard named Rick Chapman, a friend of Robert Dreyfuss in Boston, Massachusetts. Hearing the poem Baba was touched by it and cabled Rick this message on February 27th: "The music of my love singing from your heart made me happy. Let your heartbeats be my song. I send my love to you and Robert."

http://mandalihall.org/talks/speakers/Rick_Chapman/

Rick surrendered his time in India at his “Master’s lotus feet,” and Baba gave him some specific instructions.

As the time for Rick’s visit came to a close, Baba stated, “My time (for the breaking of my silence) is fast approaching. The most important thing for you is to hold fast to my daaman. What does ‘holding the daaman’ mean? To do exactly what I say, to obey me implicitly. I am God. I am Truth.”

Baba called Rick to embrace him again, and then sent him out of the hall with Eruch; Rick’s forty-five-minute meeting had come to an end. Baba also sent Francis, Nariman and Adi Sr. out to talk with him. Before anything else, however, Eruch sat with Rick as they together recounted Rick’s interview with Baba, which Eruch jotted down detail by detail. Baba also sent two mangoes, from the mast’s trees in Meherazad, to Rick through Manu, which Rick was to eat as his prasad.

Every day before Baba retired to his room, he would salute the mandali in a joined-handed namaste, which the mandali would reciprocate. On this day, Baba called Rick back to the hall for a final glimpse of him. The only words Rick could muster, as he himself joined his hands in namaste before his Beloved, were “Thank you.” Baba then departed for lunch.

A Boston man named Bob Dreyfuss and later Jim McGrew, went to see Baba. Baba was in seclusion, but he agreed to see Dreyfuss when he learned that Dreyfuss had worked his way to India in time to arrive in Poona for the December Sahavas we were scheduled to have, but which Baba had meantime canceled, and Dreyfuss did not know it. Baba told him to stop taking LSD and to go back to Boston and tell everybody else also to stop. Two boys he talked with, Rick Chapman and Allan Cohen became interested in Baba — and the Master put his will behind them, using me as a sort of central bureau for the work, and they got into magazines, newspapers, television and radio. It was fantastic. Rick went off to India on a Fulbright scholarship and eventually Allan came out here and is working on the campus of the University of California in Berkeley.

Rick Chapman arrived in Poona about a week later in April and stayed in makeshift quarters at the Poona Center, where K. K. Ramakrishnan also stayed in a small room as the Center's caretaker. But although he would occasionally call Ramakrishnan concerning certain work, Baba did not call Chapman during this time to have darshan. Not wishing to disobey Baba's order that no one should disturb his seclusion, Chapman, likewise, did not seek Baba's darshan before returning to America on May 6th. When Eruch casually suggested that Baba might call Chapman, Baba remarked, "No, that one visit was enough for him."

The following is an excerpt from a letter from Rick Chapman to Allan Cohen, dated May 11th, 1967:

1967

July 1967

(1)  There is one very important point: that none of the mandali should disturb Baba until November end with any sort of correspondence or news received through telegrams, however important the letters or telegrams may be, EXCEPT important letters which are received from Maharani Shantadevi, Nariman Dadachanji, Don Stevens, Allan Cohen, Rick Chapman, Robert Dreyfuss and Louis Van Gasteren, and these letters are to be read to Baba only on Saturdays at 9:00 A.M.

There were 3 further points that refered to other people.

Lord Meher Volume 20, Page 6521

Robert Dreyfuss met Van Gasteren through a mutual friend in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in June of 1965. In September 1966, Dreyfuss stayed with Van Gasteren for a week in Amsterdam and during that visit spoke to him at length about Baba. The filmmaker and his wife had been guests of Rick Chapman in California the previous August. Van Gasteren told Dreyfuss about his plans to make a 35mm color film entitled, "Nema Aviona Za Zagreb" (translated from the Croatian, "There Is No Plane for Zagreb" – Zagreb is a town in Yugoslavia). Van Gasteren said he wished to include Baba in it but had no money to finance it. Later financing was arranged.

Lord Meher Volume 20, Page 6528

1968

On November 3rd, 1968, Allan Cohen, Rick Chapman and Robert Dreyfuss were written by Eruch that Baba wished them to convey a message from him to about twenty of his chief young lover-workers in America and England who had taken the responsibility of starting projects in Baba's name. The letter from Eruch read:

Here is an important task but a pleasant one which Beloved Baba has set for you. Baba wishes you to convey his message as given hereunder to all his chief young lover-workers in the U.S.A. and England – those who have taken the responsibility of starting Baba projects and have inspired others to rally around them – you are to send the following message from their Beloved Avatar Meher Baba:

"YOU ARE DEAR TO ME AND I AM PLEASED WITH THE WAY YOU HAVE COME FORWARD IN MY NAME AND WORK. THE TIME IS HERE AND SOON THE WORLD WILL KNOW THAT I AM THE ANCIENT ONE."

Of course the message applies equally to you three. I will appreciate it if you will please send me a typed copy of the names and addresses of these fortunate young lover-workers of Baba.

1969

In Adi K. Irani's words: "It takes time for Meher Baba's Word to penetrate the universe."

Several thousand people arrived during this week, from near and far. The first to arrive among the Westerners was Don Stevens. Soon after came Harry Kenmore, Adi Jr. and Delia De Leon. Rick Chapman, Allan Cohen and Aneece Hassen arrived on the 4th of February, and Irwin and Edward Luck arrived at Meherabad three days later on the morning of the 7th. They were all accommodated at Sarosh and Viloo's home.

BOOKS PUBLISHED

http://www.curledup.com/godhuman.htm

From the back cover:
"A 'how-to' book about following the Lord of Love? No way! He is above and beyond all the machinations of the mind, all the doctrines and creeds, all the tenets and laws that characterize not only all the religions of the world but also the countless 'spiritual paths' that all eventually must, however circuitously, lead to the One Infinite Reality. This book is rather a collection of thoughts about what transpires when a seeker happens to come into the orbit of the Love of the Ancient One - God in human form as the Avatar, the Christ, the God-Man. What are the contours of the Divine Romance; which is the quickest, the easiest, and the most joyous path to Realization? What can you expect of the Divine Beloved, and what might He expect of you?

Love is, of course, a game all to itself, and the lover-Beloved relationship between the smitten heart and the Divine Beloved is a Divine Game beyond all description. Yet some of the wisdom shared by the Kalki Avatar and His closest disciples may be of interest to the cunning lover: for who would not wish to know more about how to curry the favor of the One Who has stolen your heart? Who would not be desperate to try to learn what pleases and displeases that most lovely Beloved of all beloveds, so as to help insure your certain passage to His inner court? Open this book, then, to find my side of the conversation about what 'following Meher Baba' is all about. May it begin to provoke a deeper longing in us all to discover and live the life of the true lover of God."
- Rick M. Chapman
Published 2015.

A Review of Rick Chapman's Book, Adventures in India with Meher Baba, 
by Mickey Karger. 

There isn't a Baba lover in the world who couldn't, with very little effort, relate intimately and intensely to this most unique of all adventures, unique because the adventure is both an inner and outer one, the outer one not without some of the risks and daredevil hazards associated with most worldly adventures. There also isn't a Baba lover in the world who won't find himself or herself wishing that it could have been their adventure as well. But this book does more than just make me envious, because in so many ways it takes me on that adventure vicariously. 
In 1966 Rick had left the comforts of life in America to travel to Ahmedabad, India, on a Fulbright Scholarship to teach English to some of the most intractable, lazy and uncooperative students any teacher would give a painful tooth removal to avoid. 
While in Ahmedabad Rick was in constant contact with Adi K. Irani, Eruch Jessawala, and sometimes Mani by Baba’s direction. Baba’s strict seclusion and Universal Work made the chance that Baba would give Rick the once-in-a-few-million-lifetimes opportunity to meet Him seem highly unlikely, so Rick essentially pushed that idea out of his mind, more or less resigned to the fact that no, he would not meet Meher Baba, though Baba was not only living in the same country, but was just a day or so’s journey to His Heart and Home. 
That Golden Opportunity came, however, in August of 1966, when Rick was suddenly summoned to Meherazad to meet Meher Baba for no more than just a few minutes, which invitation couldn't have come as a greater shock or surprise to Rick. The date and time had been set, and now Rick found himself being driven by Adi to Meherazad to meet the Avatar of the Age, God in Human Form, Meher Baba. At Meherazad Rick was greeted by Eruch, tried vainly to calm his beating heart, took off his shoes and entered Mandali Hall and…well, what happened next you'll have read for yourself. 
That handful of minutes' meeting with Baba turned into the better part of an hour, during which infinitely small slice of time Baba gave Rick what can only be described as the very core of all His messages, whether written or given personally to one or five thousand-and-one of His lovers. 
It's as though, knowing this would be Rick’s first and last visit with Him, the Avatar of this Age condensed everything any aspirant would need to know to love and please Him, a sort of cut-to-the-chase, jump-to-the-head-of-the-class, jettisoning-along-the-way-all-detours, rest-stops-and-every-possible-distraction sling shot into the very Heart of the God-Man Himself. What was that amazing message? Ah, once again you'll have to read it for yourself, for it is too precious to try to excerpt…but I'll give you a hint. Baba’s message to Rick and to all His lovers can be summed up in just one word: longing. 
This part of the story alone would make its own volume, and in fact it did. You can read the full account in Rick’s previously published book describing that first trip to India and his meeting with Baba, a book entitled Meeting God in Human Form. 
But there's a great deal more to ADVENTURES IN INDIA WITH MEHER BABA than just the summary of Rick’s meeting with the Avatar. Following that meeting Baba mapped out for Rick what could only be called a whirlwind, India-wide tour of almost every place in India that Baba had ever visited, and He asked that he not only tour each place but also contact the Baba-lovers living in those places, many of which, as you'll read, amounted to little more than dust-dimmed villages or small out-of-the-way towns that had been blessed by His footsteps. At the conclusion of those tours, Beloved Baba also asked Rick to write up his experiences so they could be printed and widely distributed to Baba’s lovers around the world, and those accounts, read out word-for-word to the Avatar, make up a significant part of this book. 
ADVENTURES tells the story of those tours and visits with verve, economy, and a down-to-earth humor that's often hilariously graphic. And speaking of graphics, what makes this book even more enjoyable is the variety of type fonts and sizes suited to each story or passage; the book is also liberally laced with color and black-and-white photographs and images of notes and letters that had been typed or hand-written at the time, so that, nearly fifty years later, one gets a feeling of time-traveling back to the Sixties. 
For those of you who still remember the worldwide upheaval that was the Sixties, you'll recall only too well the huge (and ultimately self-destructive) role that LSD played in the lives of millions of young people around the world at the time, but especially in America, where a great many spiritually starving kids were "tripping" on LSD under the misconception that they could attain enlightenment, or even become God Himself, through the ingestion of this sometimes thrilling or terrifying, but enormously powerful and often dangerous substance. 
Baba had asked Rick, as well as Allan Cohen and Robert Dreyfuss and others of His Baba kids, to spread the word about the dangers of LSD, marijuana and other hallucinogens, and to make absolutely clear that continued use of these substances, especially LSD, would be mentally, physically, and spiritually harmful and could potentially end in madness or death. This direction by Baba led to Rick & Co. giving many talks at colleges, universities and other places, as well as on the leading TV and radio shows of the day, while also seeing that the Avatar's warning got published in as many magazines as possible. Now, half a century later, Baba's message about drugs is particularly pertinent once again, as marijuana is now legal for recreational use in Alaska, Oregon, Colorado, and Washington, with more states to soon follow. 
In the end, ADVENTURES is well worth reading because, from what I know of him, what Rick experienced in less than an hour under the Sun of Meher Baba’s Love seems to have left him still Sun-burned more than fifty years later. Truly, Rick's Baba-inspired story is unique from every Baba perspective. It's not only one hell of an adventure, but it's also an inspiration. 

Adventures in India with Meher Baba can be purchased from Meher Baba Information (www.MeherBabaInformation.org) and from Sheriar Books (sheriarbooks.org).

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