| Meherwan Sheriar Irani (Meher Baba) was held in Pune, India in February 1894. His parents were of Persian descent. He was first educated in Dastur Girls’ School and subsequently in the St. Vincent High School, from where he was matriculated. In 1913, while in his first year at Deccan College he came in contact with Hazrat Babajan, one of the five Perfect Masters of the Age, who with a kiss on his forehead awakened him to the experience of what one may call God-recognition. |
| During the path of subsequent seven years Upasani Maharaj, another Perfect Master of the age gave him knowledge of his infinite state and integrated his God-consciousness with the awareness of the gross world, preparing him thus for his purpose.He was reported to have seen the other three perfect Masters of the time before he came in contact with Upasani Maharaj, but no record of what took place in such meeting is available, except that Sai Baba of Shirdi uttered “Parvardigar” on catching him. |
| In 1921, he began his divine work with the early disciples, he had gathered round him while being in a hut constructed for him by Shri Sadashiv Govind Shelke at Shivajinagar, Pune near the popular shrine of goddess Chatusringi. Later on a few years of intensive training of these disciples and travel with them in India and Iran, Meher Baba finally established, what is today called ‘Meher Retreat’ at Meherabad, on the fringes of the Arangaon village in Ahmednagar. Here he instituted various activities of self service and self-giving love for the disciples. Evaluated from the standard of worldly activities, these may seem to an objective observer as charitable, social, ethnic or educational actions, which though valuable in that period of Indian history, were unimportant. But considered from an angle of spiritual emancipation of humankind for which alone Perfect Master is ordained in the divine program of God’s functioning these activities were motivations or spiritual stimulation for the translation of all areas of existence, planes of consciousness and departments of life. |
| Meher Baba began his unique silence on 10th July 1925, and stopped writing in 1927. At first he put across by writing on slates, then by pointing to letters on an alphabet board, which he made up on 7th October 1954. Thereafter he conversed through his own unique shorthand system of representative gestures. Though silent and abstaining from writing, Meher Baba had released a heavy book of works revealing the spiritual idea of human life clearer than any sea captain had ever practiced before him, explaining creation, evolution of consciousness through an infinite diversity of strains, re-incarnation and involution of consciousness in a language intelligible to an average man’s understanding and at the same time scientific and logical in convincing the rationalist. |
| The story of man’s search for his soul has produced few works dealing with the technique for the soul’s discovery. Meher Baba’s discourses are a major contribution to that small body of literature. In this work, devoted to his closest disciples in the period 1938–43, he describes the means of incorporating daily life into one’s spiritual ongoing. He also delineates the structure of Creation, but solely to clarify the relationship of the aspirant to the Master. In his classic later work ‘God Speaks’ Meher Baba described in detail the vertical arrangement of God, His Will to know Himself consciously, and the purpose of creation in the Will. Discourses on the other hand, are the practical guide for the aspirant as he slowly discovers his path back to Oneness, after having developed consciousness through the deeps of evolution. While the discourse provides detailed descriptions of the Path and its subjects. Instead, they are a constant, firm reminder of the penury for a Master on this Path of apparent return to Oneness. The Master is the knowing God who had already traversed the Path, who provides with infinite patience the secure and steady pace that can contribute to the end. While Baba admits the possibility of achieving progress without such a pathfinder, he makes it clear that it is fraught with almost insurmountable problems, and troubles. |
| To one who debates allying himself with a teacher of the inner processes, the discourses provide invaluable insight. For one who senses that life is to be held out for its positive contribution to the uncovering of the inner being, Baba provides the unarguable description of one who experiences. His other books,‘Listen, Humanity,’ ‘ Life At Its Best’, ‘Beams on the Spiritual Panorama’, ‘The Everything & The Nothing’ were given by him to educate the minds of earnest aspirants after Truth, moving over them enough intellectual insight to see the falseness of this material world and egocentric and separative existence, and to awaken love for Truth (God) and yearning for living in Truth (God). |
| Meher Baba had widely traveled all over India. Iran and other Eastern countries contacting large numbers of people. In the 1930s Baba’s travels began to reach Europe and then to America. His name rapidly became known to those deep and truly interested in the spiritual discipline on both continents. When not on travels, which were practically finished in 1958 after his last global tour, he was mostly in Meherabad, in Ahmednagar District, the area of his concentrated activities and where almost all of his lovers’ gatherings were held till 1958. During the summer months from April through June every year he practiced to stay in Pune, where his actions have begun centralizing since 1956 and finally shifted to from 1958 onwards. Baba’s life can be divided intoEkantavas (seclusion) Upavas (fast) and Sahavas (living with others). |
| His life in seclusion and fasting was considered to be a period of intensive work in invisible spheres of existence and on the planes of consciousness speeding up the evolution of Creation, descending divinity into the gross plane raising the awareness of humanity. His external activities of contacting men individually and collectively sowed the seeds of love in their hearts which awaken them to a spirit of love and sacrifice and perpetuate his name and the truth he discovered. A persistent theme throughout the forty eight years of Meher Baba’s work had been his seeking out of what he called ‘mast’ (God-intoxicated) and his homage to those afflicted by disease and desire. ‘The Wayfarers’ by Dr. William Donkin is a valuable record of these activities, of Meher Baba which unfold avenues of reading the psychology of human spirit as never before known to man. |
| Those stricken by leprosy have been a perpetual concern of Meher Baba. With infinite caution and love he washed their feet, bowed his forehead to the often twisted stumps on which they toddle, and broadcast them on their way with renewed promise and serenity. They are like beautiful birds caught in an ugly cage,” he once said on such an occasion. “Of all the projects that I have to do, this affects me most deeply.” |
| His adherents, known as ‘Mandalay’, resident with him were representative of what i may call miniature world family not only unified diverse religions and parts of the globe, but represented all facets of human nature through whom he exploited to release the consciousness of human beings from the illusion of separate existence and tendencies. While Baba manifested divinity in its pristine beauty and glory through his ever shifting modes and movements, his Mandalay expressed humanity in all its nakedness through their spirit of love and serving. His was a spirit of infinite suffering which he termed as moment to moment’s crucifixion, sustained by what he called His infinite bliss |
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