"I speak more eloquently through gestures..." - Avatar Meher Baba
Meher Mount
In this montage of images, Avatar Meher Baba is using hand gestures and an alphabet board to communicate after He started keeping silence.
About His silence, Meher Baba said:
“If you were to ask me why I do not speak, I would say I am not silent, and that I speak more eloquently through gestures and the alphabet board.
“If you were to ask me why I do not talk, I would say, mostly for three reasons.
“Firstly, I feel that through you all I am talking eternally.
“Secondly, to relieve the boredom of talking incessantly through your forms, I keep silence in my personal physical form.
“And thirdly, because all talk in itself is idle talk. Lectures, messages, statements, discourses of any kind, spiritual or otherwise, imparted through utterances or writings, is just idle talk when not acted upon or lived up to.”
Meher Baba’s Silence
Avatar Meher Baba began His silence on July 10, 1925. He said that His silence was not undertaken as a spiritual exercise, but solely in connection with His universal work.
After Meher Baba started His silence, He communicated by writing on a chalk slate board. After that, He pointed to letters on an alphabet board to spell out words. Later, He used a series of unique hand gestures that were interpreted by His close disciples.
Meher Baba kept silence for 44 years until He dropped His body on January 31, 1969.
He asked His followers to keep silence each year for 24 hours on Silence Day, July 10.
Credits
Quote: Charles Purdom & Malcolm Schloss, Three Incredible Weeks with Meher Baba, Part 1, pp. 5-6. 1979©Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust, Ahmednagar, India. Used with permission.
Images: Photographer: Faredoon (Padri) Driver. December 1950, Mahabaleshwar, India. MSI Collection, Ahmednagar, India. Used with permission.
Video Design, Editing & Production: Stephanie Ervin, Meher Mount Communications Team