By Cassandra Bramucci & Margaret Magnus

As unimaginable as Meher Baba’s 44 years of unbroken silence may seem, the beauty and grace of His unique hand gestures – coupled with the extraordinary expressiveness of His face and eyes – conveyed some of the most profound messages ever given to humanity.

Without uttering a sound, He captured the hearts of many thousands of lovers around the world, demonstrating repeatedly that so much of His expression could not be contained by the spoken word alone.

From Chalk Slates to the Alphabet Board

When Meher Baba first stopped speaking on July 10, 1925, He began communicating by writing on a stack of chalk slates. As soon as He filled a slate, it was quickly whisked away by His attending disciples (known as mandali), copied down by one (or several) scribes, then washed clean and rushed back for reuse. 

This nonverbal performance is portrayed in the Introduction to Meher Baba’s Tiffin Lectures, which covers the period of Meher Baba’s discourses in 1926-1927:

“Meher Baba is seated on a chair or stool in the Family Quarters, or perhaps in the Makan-e-Khas (the men’s dormitory) in Meherabad. A stack of slates has been placed beside him. His disciples are spread out in a semi-circle, seated cross-legged on the cow-dung flooring. Most of them…are still young men in their early twenties or thirties.

“All are watching intently as Baba, who had been keeping silence since 10th July 1925, gesticulates with his silent hand signs and facial expressions, nonverbal communication interspersed with writing as he turns to the slate and jots down words with chalk in English and Gujarati.

“Meanwhile an interpreter… is reading out Baba’s gestures, and these spoken words give explicit articulation to a meaning that is made so much more vivid by Baba’s own eloquent and fluent enactment of it though face and body language.

“Baba pauses and looks up at the interpreter, nodding in confirmation or perhaps correcting an inaccurate phrase, glancing around the room to make sure that the men have grasped his sense, sometimes repeating a thought or singling out one of the disciples to mark a point, now and again cracking a joke, and in general, engaging the attention and driving home what he wanted to convey to this group of intimate associates. [1]

Meher Baba Makes Sure His Disciples Fully Understand

Meher Baba began training His close ones to read His unique lexicon of signs early on by interspersing them with writing on slate and later while using the alphabet board. Not only was Meher Baba’s communication style colorful, it was very thorough as well.

“And these deeper explanations were never scribbled out [nor] conveyed by a few signs in a general way! In spite of the silence Baba never looked non-plussed, ill at ease, or hesitating. Every member of the mandali ([who were] fond of the explanations) were made to grasp fully the complicated significance with repetitions and many side explanations and examples.” [2]

The Alphabet Board Emerges

Beginning on January 2, 1927, Meher Baba relied heavily on the use of an alphabet board, which started out in the simplest fashion:

“From Sunday, 2 January, Baba ceased writing completely and began conveying his thoughts and feelings through hand gestures or by pointing to different English alphabet letters in the newspaper. Up to this time, because of Baba’s animated nature, the mandali had almost forgotten that he was silent. But when Baba stopped writing, they became keenly aware of it once again.“ [3]

Finding newsprint too difficult, Meher Baba’s secretary in those early years, Framroze Hormusji Dadachanji (known as Chanji) typed out the alphabet in capital letters on a piece of paper, but that also proved too small. 

Eventually, block letters were painted on a small board, and that served as the primary medium for Meher Baba’s verbal communication for the next 27 years.

Finally, Only His Gestures Remained

Meher Baba gave up the use of the alphabet board completely on October 7, 1954 and continued to communicate using only gestures.

As Francis Brabazon (a disciple from Australia) explains, Meher Baba “communicated by signs, gestures and expression… this was the most eloquent way of all — for he was the master of expression and the perfection of mime. [4]

The mandali and many others who have shared their stories of meeting and being with Meher Baba say they never felt He was silent. “Such flowing gestures that while you were listening [sic] to His gestures, you really never felt that Baba was silent,” said Mani S. Irani, Meher Baba’s sister and interpreter of His gestures. [5]

To help understand Meher Baba’s gestures, Mani and Eruch Jessawala (close disciple and interpreter of Meher Baba’s gestures) were filmed demonstrating and describing His gestures.

In identifying individuals, Meher Baba would pick a characteristic of that person to signal whom He was referring to.

For example, Baba’s gesture for Elizabeth Patterson was to imitate the movement of hands on a car’s steering wheel because Elizabeth often would drive Baba both in India and during His travels in the West.

And His gesture for Aloba (Ali Akbar Shapurzaman) was to twitch one shoulder up and down the way Aloba often did, and everyone knew who He meant.  As Mani said, “It would be so perfect…, and suddenly we would realize that person really was doing that!” [6]

Eruch and Mani also emphasized how context was so very important. “Of course, it always went to facial expressions. Just a slight look or a change of expression would completely change the shape of the gestures…of the meaning of the words,” Mani explained. [7]

Eruch summed up the beauty of Meher Baba’s gestures: “His elegance was such grace. It was incomparable. The flow was so beautiful.” [8]

Footnotes
[1] Meher Baba’s Tiffin Lectures: As Given in 1926-1927, Introduction, pp. xix-xx. (c) Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust.
[2] Meher Baba, Infinite Intelligence, Appendix 6, pg. 601. (North Myrtle Beach, SC: Sheriar Foundation) (c) Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust, 2005.
[3] Bhau Kalchuri, Lord Meher: The Biography of the Avatar of the Age Meher Baba, Online Edition, pg. 759, accessed July 6, 2020. (c) Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust.
[4} Francis Brabazon, “The Silence,” The Awakener Magazine Online, Vol. 17, No. 2, pg. 4, accessed online July 9, 2020.
[5] Mandali Moments: Meher Baba’s Gestures, filmed by Steven Hein, Minute 53:09, accessed online July 9, 2020.
[6] Ibid., Mani S. Irani & Eruch Jessawala, Minute 15:39.
[7} Ibid., Mani S. Irani, Minute: 53:25.
[8] Ibid., Eruch Jessawala, Minute 43:25.

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