Baba replied, "I am happy to hear this. Remember the duty I have given you. If I fill you with love, you and I won't remain separate. Then there will be no question of performing the duty that I have assigned to you [to tell the world that Meher Baba is God]. If you are as you are at present, you can carry out my order."
To another lover, Baba asked, "Do you love me more than your wife or your own self?"
He replied, "If I love anybody, I love you, Baba."
Baba then wanted to hear a joke. One man told this one:
Once a man visited a boys' school. He asked the boys a riddle: If a train 300 yards long crosses a railway platform in three minutes, what is my age? All the boys were dumbfounded.
One boy suddenly raised his hand and when asked the answer to the question he replied, "Forty-six years, sir." The man was quite perplexed at the answer for that was his correct age. He asked the boy how he had calculated his age. The boy replied, "My uncle who is 23 years old is only half mad, sir!"
Those present enjoyed the joke, and Baba responded that he would now tell a joke. He began: "During the East-West Sahavas in 1962, there was the Chinese aggression against India. During this sahavas, there is the Pakistani disturbance. All are alike to me, whether they be Chinese or Pakistanis. But the fact remains that I have taken birth in India, so don't feel nervous. This is my joke. My joke means your suffering in ignorance. This suffering of yours I take upon myself."
Baba asked someone, "How could you get leave from your job to come to Poona?"
The man replied, "My leave problem was not serious."
Baba quipped, "Nothing is serious in the world. The only thing serious is that you cannot see me as I am!"
Although Baba was giving unstintedly of himself each day, his health during the darshan was far from strong. Every morning and afternoon, before coming out of his room, he would be overcome with weakness, and Bhau would be called to give him a massage.
One morning Baba was feeling particularly weak and he asked Bhau, "Will I be able to go there [to the dais] this morning?" Every now and then Baba would ask the time. He tried to stand but his legs shook so badly Bhau asked him to lie down again.