The Story of the Shrine
One man, a piece of desert three miles from the Mexican border, and a replica of Meher Baba’s Samadhi built by hand so that those who could not reach India would still have somewhere to come.
Earl the Pearl
Earl Starcher was born in Columbus, Ohio on 28 May 1930. He lied about his age to join the Air Force in 1945, served as a crew chief on a cargo aircraft during the Berlin Airlift, and badly injured his left calf in a fall. By 1958 he was an air traffic controller in Miami, working the western half of Florida’s airspace alongside his friend Jerry Seely, who worked the east.
Earl and Jerry’s wife Lois were both seekers. They went to Theosophical Society meetings and astrology classes and talked about spiritual things. One day in the winter of 1963, Lois asked him a question.
“Earl, what would you do if you heard that God was on Earth?”
“I’d get a flight and go to Him immediately.” — Lois Seely and Earl Starcher, 1963
Which is very nearly what he did. In 1965 Meher Baba called a Sahavas for his Eastern and Western lovers. Earl went to his chief at the centre and asked for leave to go to his Guru. He was refused. “Okay,” Earl said, “I quit.” Baba later called off the Western Sahavas, and Earl never went back to ask for his job.
What followed was about ten years of voluntary poverty. He was quiet, not forceful, and he simply accepted the life. He built library shelves at Pine Lodge at the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, cared for Mr. Delavigne in his old age, worked with Agnes Baron in California, and stayed close to friends like Frank Eaton, Ralph Hernandez, Walter Overcash and Mike Quinn. When the FAA offered early retirement in the mid-1970s, it took his friends’ urging to make him take it. With the money he took Kitty Davy to India — first class — and it was on that journey that Monty gave him the name he is still remembered by: Earl the Pearl.
Why Columbus
Around 1980 Earl moved out to the Village of Columbus, New Mexico with an Airstream trailer and a truck to haul it. He was not looking for a town. He was looking for a place that felt like Meherabad — the same high desert, the same dry light, the same air. Columbus sits three miles north of the Mexican border, about thirty-five minutes south of Deming.
Two things about the site he chose only came to light later. Ken Dennis worked out that its latitude and longitude put it very nearly halfway around the world from Mumbai. And in May 1932, Meher Baba and eight companions had travelled by train from Harmon, New York to Los Angeles on the Golden State Route — passing Columbus railway station between ten and eleven in the morning on Saturday 28 May. Whether the train stopped there is not known. The old depot is a museum now.
Earl knew none of this when he chose the place. He was asked about it afterwards, and said only that he had felt a spirituality there — that he felt the atmosphere of it.
Building it
In the late 1980s he began building a scale replica of Baba’s Samadhi. Anne Conlon travelled to India to bring him the exact dimensions and close-up photographs; blueprints were drawn from them. Lois Seely encouraged him and sent a signed copy of God Speaks to be kept there. Not everyone was sure — one friend asked him who would look after it once they were all gone. Earl’s answer, in effect, was the one from the film: if he built it, they would come.
He built it substantially. Cinder block rather than stone, with the upper structure and dome in poured and precast concrete, hoisted into place — something on the order of six tons. It is not a thing that will be easily moved. On the dedication wall he set plaques in English and in Spanish, so that his neighbours could read them too.
“Yo soy el Antiguo, llegado a redimir el mundo moderno.”
“I am the Ancient One, come to redeem the modern world.” — Avatar Meher Baba, on the dedication wall
He called it The Perfect Man Shrine. And he meant it to be more than a building to look at: a library and a place to learn about Meher Baba, for people who could not afford the journey to India or found it too difficult, so that they could come here and get a flavour of the Samadhi. A second building on the property held books and papers, and he posted material out from it to new Baba centres in the Midwest. His own house was laid out to become the museum. He ran a one-man organisation from there too — the Meher Baba Research Center for Evolution — writing to scientists and doctors around the world about Baba’s account of evolution.
Unfinished
In 1994 Earl was diagnosed with cancer. He called Jerry Seely to ask where he should go, and came east to the Baba Center at Myrtle Beach. He spent his last six months or so in his trailer at the Myrtle Beach Travel Park, and died there in November of that year, in hospital, in the evening.
“I am also happy for this opportunity to thank you for sending me the timely message about dear Earl, which enabled me to write to him before he joined Baba. We had a special closeness in Baba’s love for years, and I dearly appreciated his many kindnesses to our Kitty. He was remembered with much affection when we women mandali went to Meherabad for darshan last Tuesday, and offered a fresh flower garland on the beloved Samadhi for Earl the Pearl.” — Mani S. Irani, letter to Jerry and Lois Seely, 28 November 1994
The shrine was never finished. There is no front door. There are no windows. That is where he left it.
The name
Earl called it The Perfect Man Shrine, though he knew it was as often called the Avatar Meher Baba Shrine, or simply the Samadhi replica. The name it carries now came later: Bhau had taken an interest in the shrine, and Dean Mendoza and Misti visited it because of that interest. It was Bhau’s wish that it be called the Shrine of the Avatar.
The years since
Earl spent his last months trying to find a Baba lover to take on the property, and none came. In the end it went to Ken and Sheila Emery — he an archaeologist from New York State, who had come, as it happens, from Columbus, Ohio to Columbus, New Mexico, just as Earl had. They fell in love with the place. Ken painted the shrine and kept it in repair. Sheila kept it tidy, brought flowers, welcomed Baba lovers who made the trip, and hoped that one day there would be a fountain. Asked why she cared for it, she said:
“I can feel that he built it with such love.” — Sheila Emery
In early 2022 Ken Emery passed away, and left the property to the Village of Columbus. The structure is still standing. It still needs a door and windows. It still needs finishing — which is what this project is for.
The documentary
Baba lovers at Myrtle Beach recorded a talk on Earl’s life, with photographs of the shrine and readings from his letters. Much of what is written above comes from it.
Visiting
The shrine stands in the Village of Columbus, New Mexico, about thirty-five minutes south of Deming and three miles north of the border. Placeholder — add the street, whether visitors are welcome during the works, and anything they should know before making the trip.
Sources & thanks
This account draws on a recorded talk on Earl Starcher given by
Baba lovers at Myrtle Beach; The Glow, February 1995 (“Earl the
Pearl”); the Love Street Lamp Post, 1997 and 2nd Quarter 2001,
pp. 39–40; the White Horse Journal; the Meher News Exchange,
Myrtle Beach; and material from the estate of Ralph Hernandez, including Earl’s
blueprints and correspondence. With thanks to Don McBride for his updates, and to
everyone who has kept these papers safe. See also
The
Perfect Man Shrine at Meher Baba Thoughts.
Quotations here are transcribed from the recorded talk and should be checked against
the original letters before being reprinted.