I know, my dears, how hard it will be for those who love me as you do, to be separated so long, but rest assured, dearest, I will always be with you. If you only try to realize how I have to do it all, simply for the sake of the work in which I wish you all to participate, you, mine own, would take it all so willingly, so lovingly. I know you love me too deeply to need telling you this. This is my first Xmas in the West and how I wish you all dearest had been with me here. I miss you so, but I am and will always be with you.

Sam Cohen, who had met Baba in Hollywood two years before, was living about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco among remote high sand dunes, near the town of Oceano. Baba was to have visited Gavin Arthur's community at the sand dunes in 1932 and a special cabin had been built for him, but that visit never occurred. After meeting Baba again during the 1934 visit, Sam sent a telegram inviting Baba to visit him and his fellow "Dunites" — a few other like-minded, sincere individuals who had given up the world to seek something higher than acquiring material possessions and who lived in primitive cabins built from salvaged lumber in separate coves among the dunes. Baba cabled back that he would visit soon and would be bringing eighteen people. Cohen's small cabin was not large enough for everyone, but fortunately he was able to arrange accommodations a mile and a half away in Moy Mell (a group of cabins in one of the coves) at the cabin of Gavin Arthur, who was out of town.

On 26 December Baba, with the mandali, Norina, Elizabeth, Ruano, Nadine and the others, made the almost four-hour drive to Oceano in three cars, arriving at 3:30 in the afternoon. A physician, Dr. Rudolf W. Gerber, lived in Oceano with his family. Baba stopped first at his home and the doctor accompanied the party to the dunes. Baba and the men mandali occupied Gavin's cabin and the others stayed in other nearby ones. It was quite cold at night but one of the inhabitants (George Blais), whose habits resembled a sadhu's, merely wrapped a shawl around himself and covered himself with a blanket of newspapers when he slept.

Baba and the mandali passed an uncomfortable night in the cold, with no heaters in their cabin. (They had been told not to burn the kerosene lanterns for long, lest the poisonous fumes accumulate in the closed cabin.)