MEHER BABA

Meher Baba

                         Since the last article - Prayer As a Wild Goose Chase – by Meher Baba was posted ,                           

      many email-requests were received to elaborate on his life and works ; And thus this piece followed :

     The Mystic Lady

Hazarat Babajan was the most long-lived lady of the world. She was a dynamic soul. She was born in Baluchistan. Like Rabia of Basra, she spent her days in prayer and meditation and ran away from home to India where she got the light of spiritual guidance. She realized herself in her thirtieth year and like Byazid and Al Hilaj ( the sufi mystics ) declared “ANAL HAQ” ( I am God ). She visited Mecca and came to Poona in 1904 and sat under a margosa tree. Her trellised Manzil is still there.  In a thatched hut under that tree, she sat and sat looking for a proper instrument into whom she could pour her power. She herbinged the advent of a Master who could awaken humanity to spiritual consciousness. And there he comes !

      Kiss of Bliss

It was in May 1913, she was watching a tall fair youth going in his bicycle to the Deccan College. She set her clairvoyant eyes on him and he was magnetized to her. She beckoned him and smiled into his heart. The blooming face of the youth met the phosphorescent gaze of the white-haired old lady of 110 years. One day she embraced the lad affectionately and settled upon his forehead the Kiss of Spiritual Bliss. ‘Merwan’ as the youth was called, felt polarized by the vibrant Cosmic energy ever alive in Baba Jan.

    Spiritual Rebirth

Merwan was reborn in the spirit. It was a turning point in his life. He meditated with her and she imprinted into him, her saintly soul. He was dazed, stunned and dumbed by the psychic radiation of Baba Jan. He began to wonder, alone, silent and ingathered. His parents were afraid of his crazy manners and tried their best in vein to keep him tied to home life.

      Bright Student

The parents were Zoroastrians. The father Mundagar Irani left Persia wandered with Darvishes and came to India with a wooden bowl and a staff. He married Shirin Bans ( 25 years younger than him ) and lived by opening a tea stall. Merwan was their second child. He was born in the auspicious peace of the crimson dawn at 5 A.M. on the 25^th February 1894. He had dawn-fair face and binocular eyes focused within. As a child he played with a cobra. As a boy he haunted grave yards and Dakmas alone and sat self immersed. His small home in Poona was too little for his free universal soul. The tinny drop sought the omniscient ocean, the spec of spark was flying for the flame ! He was intelligent and intuitive. He passed his Matriculation from Saint Vincent School in 1911 and continued his study I n Deccan College. He developed a taste for English and Persian poets especially the poems of Hafiz and with Hafiz he sang –    “ We are one, soul to soul ! When we are one, we are all. “ He was a good cricket and hockey player. He reveled in Shelly. All loved and liked him in college.       

       God-Hungry Youth

But destiny quickly changed by the contact of Baba Jan who told his parents and friends – ‘ He is my child, he will create a great sensation in the world and do immense good for humanity.’

The God-hungry Merwan ran in search of Saints and spiritual masters. Sai-Baba of Shirdi ( Maharastra ) blessed him and hailed him as “ PARVARDIGAR “ (Incarnation). Upasani Baba aimed a pebble at his pituitary centre where Baba Jan kissed him and at once he returned to normalcy. He remained with Upasani Baba for six months doing hard ‘Tapasya’ in his garden hut and reached the stage of total annihilation in God . Upasani called him MEHER BABA and hailed him as a God Man. His life was a polarity of human ascent and God’s descent. Narayan Maharaj and Taj Din Baba declared him as a fountain of Divinity.

     The Awakener

After perfecting himself thus, Meher Baba began his work of spiritual awakening. He met trials and persecutions and humiliations at the hands of rude scandal mongers. But he was equanimous  and self-balanced in dynamic silence. Enemies aimed at his life but his cosmic love own them too. His life was a terrible sacrifice of self-interest at the altar of universal compassion. He consumed himself to illuminate mankind. He went round India, met all saints and God-man ‘fakirs’ and went round the world nine times to Persia, England, France, Italy, China, Japan and America. He awakened hundreds of devotees to self-realisation. Even Gandhiji met him in the ship on his way to the round table conference. He had many followers in America, like Mrs. Alexander Patterson who consecrated her fine garden to his work. He conducted schools, Ashrams for saints, leper homes and hospitals. Since 1925 he became silent. He left off all reading and writing, and his inner exuberance expressed itself in mystic gestures; And all his works came out of hand wavings. He remained in utter solitude at Pimpalgaum near Ahmednagar and gave ‘sahavas’ to seakers rarely two or three times in a decade.  

    Calm, Warm, Silent Soul

In this age of rumbling mechanical noise and atomic missiles and nuclear Ramjets and factory smokes, a calm warm silent soul walked the earth spreading seeds of blessedness wherever he went. His mind was a laboratory of intuitions radiating mystic dynamism. East and West sat before him in serene silence. He embraced one and all without any difference and poured his psychic love to them.

       Light of Hope

Baba was the silent light of the universe. He was like the noiseless current that moved hundreds of machines. People in his presence ,drunk deep his nectar-bliss. He had the distinction of touching one’s soul with his divine love – so sweet, so delightful. He had the prophetic vision of the future. When China invaded India, Baba said – ‘ India shall remain undaunted’; Once the ‘ Yoga Samaj’ was looted by thieves; Next morning came Baba’s words – ‘ None can steal the God in you, everything shall come by my love.’ An ardent devotee’s knee got fractured seriously by a motor accident; But Baba’s cable flashed – ‘ You will walk to me soon and dance in joy.’ He was light of hope to his lovers; ‘Do not worry yourself ‘ – he would often say and many used to be healed and elated by his touch.

      His Teachings

His teachings are not from books; They are from his inner looks. Baba often spoke about his physical death and got his own tomb up the Meherabad hills where his body is interred now. But he is beyond physical body. His words are seeds of eternity –

 “ I have come not to teach or preach any religion, but to awaken souls.”

“ We are all One. Everyone of you has the infinite within you and because of ignorance everyone feels some kind of helplessness.”

“ Real living is dying for God. One who dies for God lives for ever. God does not listen to the language of the tongue which consists of Japa, Zikra, Mantras and devotional songs. He does not listen to the language of mind which constitutes meditation, concentration and thoughts about God. He listens only to the language of the heart which constitutes LOVE. The book of the heart holds the key to the mystery of life. God can not be theorized, discussed, argued about, explained and understood. God can only be lived by losing ourselves in Him through LOVE”

“The Practical way for the common man to express this love is to think lovingly, speak lovingly and act lovingly towards all mankind irrespective of caste, creed and position – taking God to be present in each and everyone.”

“Religion must be from the heart; If instead of creating churches, fire-temples, mandirs and mosques, people were to establish the house of God in their hearts for the Beloved God to dwell in, My work will have been finished. “

Baba comes before us with these luminous Truths sparked out of Supernal Silence.

  Blaze on, O Light Divine 

  Removing dark despair, 

  Swallowing the I-and-mine

  Shine, shine, O smiling fire.

     

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