Sometimes I wonder:

1. When Meher Baba comes back, what will he look like? Will he be different than he was this time? Maybe tall and redheaded and blue-eyed? Not that I’ll care.

2. How are the sanskaras we build up counted? Is there a point system, where murder counts for a whopping 100 points and sticking your tongue out at someone counts for 1? And is the same point system in play when we’re unwinding them? And who keeps the scorecard?

3. Does it really matter if we’re not all “God Speaks” scholars? To hear some people tell it, you’d think so. But my hunch is that it doesn’t. Check out the supplement where it says it was written to “satisfy the convulsions” of man’s mind. If your mind isn’t having convulsions, you’d probably enjoy other books better. And if your mind is having convulsions, you should probably keep reading it over and over. I expect it sort of works like aspirin; you have to keep taking it.

4. When Baba tells me to make sure I come back when he returns in 700 years, does that mean that will be my next lifetime, or will I have five or six more lifetimes in between? I’m betting on five or six more; skipping 700 years seems too easy.

5. Where will the next Avatar have his Meherabad and Meherazad? He seems to be partial to desert-like locations but I’d sure like to see him just once choose something like Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. And will Meher Baba’s Meherabad and Meherazad still be drawing pilgrims? Will we all recognize the next Avatar and flock to his center instead?

6. What will the world be like when the Avatar returns in 700 years? If he lives in the East and we’re in the West, will we be able to fly there in an hour or two, instead of 16 to 24? And if we’re still going to Meherabad and Meherazad, will there be a superhighway between Mumbai and Ahmednagar? Or, as Aloba was fond of predicting, an airport at Meherabad? Will Ahmednagar be a huge city surrounding Meherabad? Will millions of people be trying to get to Meherabad?

7. When will we see the generation that will be able to follow the Discourses implicitly, as Baba’s sister, Mani, predicted? It’s not here yet, that’s for sure.

8. Will Meher Baba as the next Avatar come again to the Meher Spiritual Center? I have real hope for this one. He said it would be a place of pilgrimage for a thousand years; that someday, it would be, like Central Park, the last green space in the midst of a huge city; and — most promising of all — that it should be kept in “100 percent repair,” ready for his return. I’m going to take him at his word on that one.

9. Will we meet again all the people — friends and family — who enlivened our lives this time? Is it true that in each lifetime, we look for the ones we have loved in previous lifetimes?

And finally, if Meher Baba were still here, what would he have to say about us and what we’re doing? I probably don’t really want to know the answer to that one.