Waiting for the Christ

In 1952, when Baba first traveled to His home in the West, He asked that only a few close disciples meet Him in New York and take the train with Him to South Carolina. However, when He arrived at Penn Station on the evening of April 20, high above Him on the uppermost balcony, two women were hiding. They peeped out at Him, and one of them described what she saw as a sort of “living freeze”: the Avatar surrounded by His entourage, the pristine beauty of His form, the way He almost floated rather than walked.[i]

Filis Frederick and Adele Wolkin had learned about Meher Baba nearly ten years before that night; Filis had seen Baba in a vision at a meeting at the Ramakrishna Center in New York before she ever heard of Him, along with a voice that said, “He is your Christ.”[ii] Soon after, she and Adele, who she had met through a classmate, attended a meeting about Meher Baba at the home of Elizabeth Patterson, Nadine Tolstoy, and Norina Matchabelli. Filis found the face from her vision, and Adele expressed that she was “overtaken by a sense of unusual comfort and upliftment.”[iii] They soon moved in with the three women to help them prepare for Meher Baba’s eventual coming to the West. But nearly ten years had gone by, and though Elizabeth and Norina went to spend time with Baba in India, Filis and Adele still hadn’t seen Him in person.

They weren’t the only ones who had been waiting. On May 17, after Baba had arrived at the Center at long last and began seeing visitors, Baba’s sister Mani expressed her amazement at the rush of lovers desperate for the presence of the God-man:

I have a list of about 110 people who had written to say they were coming to see [Baba] today; but more and more people kept coming, till by now they have added up to about 300. They came from places far and near… Really, the love of all these people here in America for Baba even before they see him is very touching. Their love and devotion is so great that it isn’t a wonder Baba came here in spite of all the difficulties.”[iv]

But as far as we know, Filis and Adele were the only ones hiding nearby that first evening in New York before He even reached the Center. They told themselves that they weren’t breaking His orders since they weren’t trying to meet Him, and they were completely unnoticeable anyway: Margaret Craske even walked nearby and didn’t see them. But then, suddenly, Meher Baba Himself looked up in their direction, His eyes brushing their faces for the first time. He pointed to them and gestured to one of His companions: “Filadele.”

Baba didn’t let Filis and Adele come greet Him at that time, just noted their presence—and soon after, asked that they be personally invited to the Center. So a few days later, along with the rush of other lovers, they journeyed to Myrtle Beach. It was May 10 when they finally found themselves in the Lagoon Cabin, standing directly in front of Meher Baba for the first time. And in the midst of the overwhelming beauty of that moment, He made it clear that He knew them already, loved them already. “I heard you from within,” He told Filis, “… I love you because you love me so much.”[v]

They spent a divine week with Baba and His lovers, and then, just as Baba had invited them, He told them to go home. About going back to New York, Filis said, “You feel like Adam and Eve leaving Paradise.”[vi] But some part of the visit didn’t leave her. In a talk over twenty years later, she described, “It’s like the eternal now when you’re with Baba, and then when you look back, it’s so present to you, those moments with Baba, that it doesn’t seem like a memory at all; it’s really just there forever … those moments with Baba, they seem to have another dimension besides time.”[vii]

Filis and Adele arrived at the bus station after departing the Center, and from the juke box next to them came the sound of “Begin the Beguine,” Baba’s favorite song. Like all the lovers upon whom Baba had lavished His love during His visit to the Center, He was with them: He had been with them throughout nine years of yearning in New York, he had been with them during those bright days in Myrtle Beach, and, as He conveyed to Filis one morning in the Lagoon Cabin, “I’ll be with you to the very end.”[viii] [i] Talk given by Adele Wolkin at Meher Center, 1995
[ii] “Remembering Filis,” by Linda Zavala, The Awakener Magazine
[iii] “Adele Wolkin: A Life of Love and Service,” edited by Irma Sheppard and Karl Moeller, OmPoint International Circular
[iv] The Joyous Path, by Heather Nadel, p. 557
[v] Lord Meher Online, p. 3055
[vi] Lord Meher Online, p. 3087
[vii] Talk given by Filis Frederick at Meher Center, 1974
[viii] Lord Meher Online, p. 3057