Beside the banner gracing the theater entrance.
EVERYTHINGWALLA: BEN LEET
Question: You've been here...?
Ben: Eleven of the fourteen days.
Question: What's it been like?
Ben: It's been a very peaceful experience.
People come in here and they float around. There are stages. You can
see them when they're curious and milling around and having kind of
a pleasant time. Not exactly light-hearted, but it's a very, sort
of, curious and pleasant sensation that they're having.
Then they go
in and watch the movie, they come out. Generally, in the best cases,
they're taking the beauty of the movie out with them, into the lobby
again, looking at the paintings, and the devotion just sort of emanates
out of the paintings, back into them. The quality of the room changes,
really, when they come back here, so that the room fills up with these
people who are sort of receiving Baba's Love again, from the
paintings, after getting it in the movie.
It's charming.
It's just lovely to see it. And they're generally hooked into it,
and getting a lot from the images that they're seeing. That's the
best part of the event, for me, is to watch them milling around and
to take it in and out.
When the Sufis
were here, I wasn't here those days, but I hear that Baba came with
them, and that it felt really wonderful when they were here. But for
myself, I have not seen these paintings before, so to see them all
here, there's such an array of beautiful Baba images! I mean,
they're museum quality paintings, and it creates a unique kind of
atmosphere. The hall has a very high ceiling. It's a beautiful place!
And, you know, Baba has been here the two weeks, and I even guess
I felt it more the first week than the second week. I could feel Baba
in the people the second week, and the first week the art and
the movie were exerting a definite Baba charm."
Question: Can you share an experience, a story
of maybe one memorable interaction?
Ben: Hold on a second, let me think...
Yes. One fellow didn't
have a hundred dollars for the video. (note: currently, the video
is only available for a $100 donation, as part of fund-raising.) He
wanted to post-date his check, and we took his post-dated check. But
he was going to take it to his spiritual advisor, or his guide. Whatever
they call it.
A lot of people
come in with these different programs that they're following, so it's
really interesting that they would really go out of their way to get
something to show it to somebody else. And this guy, he didn't have
a hundred dollars in his account, but he still, you know, wrote a
check and post-dated it a week ahead of time.
He's the one I remember.
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