Background
After Meher Baba dropped His physical form on 31st January 1969, the Trust began functioning actively. Since then, the Trustees of Avatar Meher Baba Trust have been carrying out their responsibilities to fulfil the objectives outlined in the Trust Deed by Meher Baba. Among these objectives is the maintenance and development of Trust properties. Over the years, several facilities have been constructed at Meherabad, including a Pilgrim Center, Dharamshala, hostels, Amartithi site, high school, hospital, Health Centre, staff quarters, Music and Arts Centre, Physical Education Centre and Archive building. Water, electric power, roads, and forestation infrastructure have also been developed.
In 1998, the Trustees recognized that the development of the Trust properties needed to proceed more rapidly due to the increasing number of pilgrims, so they created and began to execute a Development Plan. This Development Plan has already borne visible fruits. The Meher Pilgrim Retreat, accommodating 200 pilgrims, opened in June 2006. The Meher English School and Meher Health Centre have been expanded. A meeting hall for spiritual trainees and five more staff quarters have been constructed. Roads, water pipelines, and electrical lines have been completed to support this growth, which reaches into new areas of Meherabad. Also, thousands of new trees have been planted on Meherabad Hill itself. To accommodate the increasing number of pilgrims who come to Meherabad to commemorate 31st January, the day that Avatar Meher Baba dropped His human form, a new, expanded Amartithi site has been prepared. This site can accommodate several thousand additional pilgrims as overnight visitors.
MASTER PLAN
In 2021, the Avatar Meher Baba Trust approved a Master Plan for its estate’s long-term development, encompassing Meherabad, Meherazad, and Meher Nazar (sometimes known as the Trust Office or Khushru Quarters). The need for this plan is based on the expectation that these sites, and Meherabad in particular, would eventually become a major pilgrimage centre in the world, keeping with Meher Baba’s statements to this effect. Mandali and trustees have long been aware of the need to prepare for the large crowds and a continuous stream of pilgrims in the decades ahead and beyond.
The Master Plan establishes phased development that is gradated for three scenarios. These scenarios are based on an anticipated increase in pilgrims from the date of the plan’s publication—when there are twice as many pilgrims, five times as many, and twenty-five times as many. At the time of publication of the Master Plan, there were 40,000 pilgrims estimated at Amartithi. Hence, the current Master Plan accounts for up to 1 million pilgrims coming for Meher Baba’s darshan for Amartithi at Meherabad. The Trust will revisit this plan every 5-7 years to update it and ensure that development remains on track.
A draft of the Master Plan was shared with the worldwide Baba family through an extensive engagement effort that was conducted in the US, Australia, the UK, and throughout India in 2019. The final Master Plan incorporates or addresses much of the feedback received during that process.
The following provides a general overview of the anticipated development of the three major sites of the Trust Estate.
Meherabad
The Master Plan takes the development of Meherabad up to a point where 50,000 pilgrims will come for darshan daily, of which 25,000 will be accommodated in hostels and dharamshala accommodations at Meherabad. At Amartithi, which will be extended for seven days, 1 million pilgrims will come to Meherabad.
Upper Meherabad
Avatar Meher Baba’s Samadhi, located on Meherabad Hill, is and will always remain the focal point of pilgrimage. Surrounding this supreme seat of the Avatar of this Age will be an increasingly developed space in which pilgrims can absorb the unique atmosphere and presence of the Avatar and avail themselves of opportunities to learn about His life and message. These opportunities begin with access to the historic structures from His Advent both at Upper Meherabad and Lower Meherabad.
Performance of entertainment for the Beloved will take place at various locations and eventually at a newly created and expanded amphitheatre on the side of a hill adjacent to the Samadhi. Near the new amphitheatre, an expanded library will be available for pilgrims to access a wide range of resources and facilities for conducting research.
Pilgrim accommodations will continue to be developed as the need arises in areas that are removed from but accessible to the immediate area surrounding the Samadhi. Eventually, a major pilgrim activities area will be developed in the southwest corner of the estate, including an interactive museum dedicated to conveying Baba’s life and message, along with a greatly expanded space for performance arts such as music and plays.
Already underway, the plan calls eventually for six large pedestrian boulevards (in addition to the original path) that provide sight lines toward the Samadhi from various directions. Pavilions to be erected at various locations on the Hill will provide their small stages and video screens on which audiences can watch darshan at the Samadhi and activities at the main entertainment centre. By these means, the crowds will be dispersed over a wider area, ensuring a peaceful atmosphere at the Samadhi.
A fence with several entrances will gird the circumference of this entire hill zone. Vehicular traffic will not be permitted inside this fenced enclosure.
There will eventually be ample area around the Samadhi for large numbers of pilgrims to gather, especially during periods of peak demand such as Amartithi. This area will be landscaped, with amenities such as tea stalls and bathrooms.
The Trust Deed calls for the eventual construction of a superstructure over the Tomb, and in December 2023, planning for the design of the superstructure commenced. However, the timeline for the construction of the superstructure is not yet known.
Lower and Outer Meherabad
Lower Meherabad encompasses Mandali Hall, Baba’s Jhopdi, Baba’s Table House, Rahuri Cabin, the Dharamshala, and other buildings immediately to the east of the Ahmednagar-Daund highway, as well as the strip of land to the west of the highway as far as the railway tracks. This area is of significant historical importance since it was a major hub of Meher Baba’s activities from the early 1920s. This part of Meherabad will witness only limited development so that pilgrims and visitors in the future can savour the scene and atmosphere that Beloved Baba Himself created.
Outer Meherabad which extends to the east of Lower Meherabad, has been designated as the primary site for charitable activities, particularly educational and medical. At present, the education building (housing the Meher English School) and the hospital are located in this zone. There is also the Music and Arts building and most of the staff quarters. In the future, the master plan for Outer Meherabad calls for additions to the education building, the construction of a Meherabad Music and Arts College facility, expanded medical facilities, and expanded facilities for residents and volunteers.
Meherazad
A year or two before Baba dropped His physical form, Eruch recalled a very striking comment from Baba on the relationship between the two major sites of his work in this Advent. Meherabad and Meherazad, Baba had said, were like His two eyes: they exist independently of each other, yet they function jointly to create one image—the image of Him.
In Meherabad, Baba is God in His unbounded aspect. Baba’s Divine Love permeates the landscape, and His Glory as the Avatar of the Age is witnessed in the multitude of His lovers who come to His door. Crowned by the Samadhi on Meherabad Hill—the great site of world pilgrimage—its spaces are public, expansive, inviting and encompassing the seas of humanity to come.
Meherazad, by contrast, is Baba’s home, a place for intimacy with Him. Baba first visited there in 1943. For most of the next quarter century, its simple buildings and gardened walkways, bordered with flower pots and shaded with babul, frangipani, tamarind and gulmohur trees, provided the environment for much of His universal work and His association with close ones in the later years.
Today, as in years past, an atmosphere of peace and timelessness pervades the beautiful rural landscape of Meherazad. As you walk into the garden and towards the house that Mehera designed with simplicity and care for the comfort of her Beloved Baba, you experience a sense of utter peace and harmony with nature – the sense of having arrived home.
Formation of a Master Plan
During Baba’s lifetime, Meherazad was primarily a place of residence. But immediately after He dropped His body in 1969, pilgrims from around the world began to pour in, availing themselves of treasured moments in the company of the Avatar’s disciples, or mandali, and partaking of Baba’s matchless atmosphere there.
But as the years wore on and many of His mandali returned to Him, those remaining felt that provision should be made for the posterity of this “sanctified site,” as Eruch once called it, for the benefit of generations to come.
A series of meetings on this subject in 1999 resulted in the Meherazad Master Plan, a 200-page document signed and approved by the mandali outlining a roadmap for Meherazad’s future. At the heart of the plan is the care and preservation of the original Meherazad of Baba’s time, in all its timeless, simple beauty.
The essence of the Meherazad Master Plan has been incorporated into the overall Master Plan of the Trust.
Meherazad Zones
Under the Plan, Meherazad is divided into inner and outer zones. The inner or historical Meherazad is comprised of those properties that Baba Himself resided in and used. It has three sections: the core residential property, Seclusion Hill, and the mile-long approach road.
Inner Meherazad will never be developed or modified but will be kept as it was in 1969—or, in the case of some spaces like Mandali Hall, as in 1999. In centuries to come, the buildings, structures, grounds and sites at Meherazad where Avatar Meher Baba stayed for the latter part of His life, and the things still kept there that He touched or used or wore, and all other objects and materials used by or for Him, will bear the personal imprint of His humanity and will serve as irreplaceable, tangible links to His physical Presence and for remembering His life as Man.
So that visitors and lovers of God in the future can enjoy this experience of intimacy with Him in His Home when the masses come on pilgrimage, access will be limited to a few at a time.
Outer Meherazad will provide a buffer zone to inner Meherazad and will have centres where visitors can gather to watch films and videos, listen to tapes, read literature, converse, eat, sing songs, and engage in other activities that enrich their pilgrimage at Meherazad. Pilgrims can walk through extensive gardens, woods, and landscaped grounds here.
Charitable activities like the Meher Free Dispensary and other medical and educational facilities, helping the poor, sick, and needy, will be concentrated near the west and southwest border of the Meherazad Estate.
In time, Seclusion Hill, where Baba did major portions of His universal work, will be available to pilgrims through a path that allows them to circumambulate the Hill. Given the restricted number of visitors allowed inside Meherazad, a park will eventually be created outside Meherazad and opposite Seclusion Hill, allowing many more pilgrims to come and enjoy the unique atmosphere surrounding Meherazad in a beautifully landscaped environment.
Meher Nazar
Much of Meher Baba’s and mandali’s activity centred around Khushru Quarters, now known as Meher Nazar. Not only did Baba spend time here in the early days, but Upasni Maharaj also visited this place, and several of His close mandali, including Mehera, lived in the Trust compound for brief periods.
It evolved into and continues to be a hub of Baba’s Trust work – endearingly called God’s Office – with the mandali, the first Trustees, attending the office every day. All correspondence from and to Baba flowed through this office, and the mandali checked daily with the office for any official work and news or correspondence from His lovers all over the world. Located in the centre between Meherabad to the south and Meherazad to the north, the Trust office was always a conduit and a stopover for Baba and the mandali.
Given the historical significance of Meher Nazar, the master plan has designated it to be primarily preserved as a pilgrimage site. Though it will function as the center of official trust-related activities in perpetuity, some of its functions will be moved to nearby locations, Meherabad and Meherazad. A few volunteer residences will remain on-site, while future housing developments are planned along Kings Road in the vicinity of the Trust Office.
A pilgrim reception area will be established outside Meher Nazar’s gates, and a larger meeting hall will eventually be created near Meher Nazar to accommodate programs for pilgrims. The Ahmednagar Meher Baba Centre that Baba established will remain within the historic compound area. However, it will have access to other spaces for meetings and programs as the number of participants increases.
Summary
While the above captures the significant elements, the master plan contains more detail. The Trust will review this plan every 5-7 years to update it and plan for incremental stages of development. As noted earlier, the plan has no fixed timetable, and its implementation will unfold in Baba’s time.
May 2024