Volume 14 Numbers 3 and 4 Page 52

One day the companion sitting next to me in the taxi asked, "What is that haze over the landscape? " I answered, "That's not haze; it's dust." I have been told that after the monsoons the dry haze vanishes and one with sharp eyes can see all the way from Meherabad Hill to Seclusion Hill. It must be quite a thing to see from the point of samadhi to the point of man-o-nash or vice versa. We Americans found ourselves engaged in the sport of shuttling back and forth from point to point with Ahmednagar as our badminton net. We would shuttle back and forth to see and be with and listen to and laugh with Baba's closest ones.

I could never pretend that this visit to India was like my first. It would not be truthful for me to say that travelling to see Meher Baba is the same thing as travelling to bow down to Baba 's samadhi and see His mandali. To meet Meher Baba is something so highly transcendent that it cannot be described. To come to meet His mandali is an experience far more easily described.

The opportunity and joy of being in the physical presence of Meher Baba passed away with the dropping of His physical form. Now is the time for being with His mandali, which was not so possible while Baba was in the physical body. The time is now, this golden opportunity to be with His people in such a leisurely and casual fashion. But this time likewise will pass away, when the world will no more have the opportunity to avail themselves of this experience.

Then, I suppose, after this time has passed, the time will come when the millions will come as Baba said they will come, simply to bow down to the feet of God the Most High in His infinite samadhi.

Let's face it; the time will come when people will not be able to come and sit and talk in intimate fashion with the intimate ones. And it will not be the same then, no one will be able to pretend that it is the same as it was.

The time to come to be with Baba, the man, has passed. Now is a new time full of gaiety and fun in spite of His physical absence. But this time will also pass, and then perhaps the sincerest of all will come, the most blessed, not the least. They will come across the world simply to bow down and for nothing else. Perhaps these ones of the future will be the greatest ones of all, whose purpose is most true and straight.

But greater even than these greatest ones will be those few who, without going anywhere at all, bow down in their hearts in love for Him. These are the ones in whom Meher Baba's long awaited breaking of the Silence will be broken. And out of those ones in that generation will bloom the New Humanity.

I was once told that Gertrude Stein when she lay on her death-bed asked of those gathered around her, "What is the answer?" and when no one replied, she asked, "Then what is the question?" and she died.

Here is a question, a typical question: Where did the first bird come from? The answer is in Baba's book, God Speaks. The first bird appeared in the world as "The consolidated mould of the impressions of the most-last species of fish form." In other words, the most-first species of bird form was the inevitable outgrowth of the most-last species of fish form.

But then, if fishes never made any sound, who taught the most-first bird to sing the most-first song? The answer to that is easy; it was the Avatar, Himself, who having reached, in His drive to become consciously one with Himself, the most-first bird form, rejoiced in song of triumph for having gained at last the wings for flight, wings wherewith to survey the earth before taking His stance upon the land as animal.

And where did man come from? He appeared on earth as "no other than the consolidated mould or cast of the impressions of the most-last species of animal-form."** But who taught the most-first man to sing the most-first song? Truly it