Meher Baba's Life
“I am equally approachable to one and all. Big and small, to saints who rise and sinners who fall, through all the various paths that give the Divine Call."
-Avatar Meher Baba
Meher Baba Is Born in Pune, India, in 1894
Merwan Sheriar Irani, later called Meher Baba, meaning “Compassionate Father,” by His early disciples, was born in Pune (formerly Poona), India, on February 25, 1894.
AVATAR MEHER BABA meets with the press in Los Angeles in 1956 just before His visit to Meher Mount. (Los Angeles Times photo on August 1, 1956.)
He passed through a normal childhood, attending St. Vincent High School and later Deccan College, both in Pune.
His Divinity Is Revealed to Him
His true identity was unveiled to Him through a kiss to the forehead by Hazrat Babajan, a very old Muslim woman and one of the five Perfect Masters of the age whose task it was to remove the veil concealing His Godhood.
Eventually, Meher Baba was drawn to the Hindu Perfect Master Upasni Maharaj.
At their meeting, Maharaj threw a stone striking young Merwan at the same spot on His forehead where He had been kissed by Babajan.
"That was the beginning of my present infinite suffering in illusion which I experience simultaneously with my infinite bliss in reality," Meher Baba said.
During the next seven years, Merwan’s contact with Maharaj brought Him back down to normal consciousness of the world while He kept simultaneously His undiminished consciousness as God.
Meher Baba Has Followers From all Faiths
By 1921, Meher Baba started to gather His first close disciples (mandali). “None should hesitate to come to Me and embrace Me with love,” He said.
After several years of intense training of His disciples, Meher Baba established a community near Ahmednagar, India, called Meherabad, which became a permanent center of His activities.
To His disciples at Meherabad, who were of different castes and creeds, He gave a training of moral discipline, love for God, spiritual understanding, and selfless service.
Meher Baba made no distinction between high and low castes and untouchables (the lowest caste in Hinduism), and all there mingled with common fellowship through His inspiration.
“I am equally approachable to one and all. Big and small, to saints who rise and sinners who fall, through all the various paths that give the Divine Call. I am approachable alike to Saint whom I adore and to sinner who I am for, and equally through Sufism, Vedantism, Christianity, or Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, and other ‘isms’ of any kind and also directly through no medium of ‘ism’ at all.”
Meher Baba Begins Keeping Silence
MEHER BABA used an alphabet board until 1954 to communicate His discourses and messages.
On July 10, 1925, Meher Baba began observing complete silence, which He maintained for the rest of His life, a period of more than 44 years.
His silence was not undertaken as any sort of spiritual exercise, as He was perfection itself. Rather, it was a suffering He took upon Himself for the benefit of all creation.
His many spiritual discourses and messages were dictated by means of an alphabet board, which He discontinued using after 1954. Thereafter, His communications were in gestures, unique and beautiful in their expressiveness.
Work with God-Intoxicated Souls
An important part of Meher Baba’s work through the years was to personally contact and serve thousands of those known as masts – God-intoxicated souls who received a spiritual push from their contact with Meher Baba. For this work, He traveled extensively throughout all of India.
AVATAR MEHER BABA in India cutting a the hair of a mast - a God-intoxicated soul.
“Masts are those who become permanently unconscious in part or whole of their physical bodies, actions, and surroundings, due to their absorption in their intense love and longing for God.”
Meher Baba’s other vital outward work was the washing of lepers, washing the feet and bowing down to thousands of poor, and distributing grain, cloth and money to the destitute. He said:
“I will bow down to the saints whom I adore, the ‘masts’ whom I worship, and the poor to whom I am wholeheartedly devoted. Nothing makes Me more happy than to bow down to God in all these forms. I like bowing down to people rather than being bowed down to. To serve and worship God all around me is most at My heart."
Meher Baba also held many large mass gatherings throughout India. There He gave increasingly of Himself to the thousands who came for His darshan (His blessing) and to receive prasad (a gift of love) from His own Hands.
Said Meher Baba:
“I am the one so many seek and so few find. No amount of intellect can fathom Me. No amount of austerity can attain Me. Only when one loves Me and loses one’s self in Me am I found.”
Meher Baba Travels to the West
AVATAR MEHER BABA at Meher Mount on August 2, 1956. Caretaker Agnes Baron is taking Him on a tour of the property. Close disciple Eruch Jessawalla is holding the umbrella. (Photo: Darwin Shaw, (c) Meher Nazar Publications)
Meher Baba traveled to the West many times – first in 1931, when he contacted the early Western disciples in England and America who later came to stay with him in India for varying lengths of time.
On His 1956 trip, He visited Southern California including Meher Mount on August 2, 1956.
During His life, Meher Baba met with two serious automobile accidents. The first in 1952 was near Prague, Oklahoma, during a planned across-the-country drive to Meher Mount in Ojai, California, from Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
The second was in 1956 in Satara, India. Meher Baba indicated that both accidents were necessary for His work.
Meher Baba Drops His Physical Body in 1969
After the last accident, Meher Baba placed Himself in ever stricter seclusion for His purpose and what He called His “universal work.” This intensive work, which He did inwardly, took a great toll on His health.
In July 1968, Meher Baba announced that He had completed His work 100% to His satisfaction.
But His health was shattered, and a few months later on January 31, 1969, He dropped His physical body, having given His all out of the great love he had for the creation and of which, all His life, He was the perfect living example.
His Tomb Shrine (Samadhi) at Meherabad has become a place of pilgrimage for His many lovers from all parts of the world. Places where Meher Baba visited, such as Meher Mount, have also become places of pilgrimage for followers of Meher Baba.
“I have only one message to give,” said Meher Baba, “and I repeat it age after age to one and all: Love God.”