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CHAPTER 1

Meeting Meher Baba

Meher Baba was of medium height. As a young man he was of slender build, and films show him moving with a graceful, floating walk – with which he would often cover thirty miles a day for days on end, so that even the strongest of his companions found it hard to stand the pace. Later, following two severe car accidents, any form of movement became painful and his body grew thick. But when you put your arms around him – for Baba would often embrace his followers or allow them to embrace him – he appeared to be at the same time firm and insubstantial, as though having solidity but little weight.

As a rule Baba wore Indian dress, with sandals or else with his feet bare and, since they were never confined in shoes, his toes stood out separate and strong. His hands looked powerful enough to crack stones, but he moved his fingers with astonishing delicacy, as though playing some invisible musical instrument, to convey his unspoken message. While doing so he would often look up at his interpreter with a humorous, trustful glance. His expression changed continually, but it was through his eyes that the pattern of thought and feeling was conveyed. Intensely black, they would in a few seconds lovingly greet his audience, sparkle with laughter, or contemplate some situation with a sternness there was no escaping or resisting. At different periods Baba wore his black hair at varying lengths, down to his shoulders and below in early life; later, short and brushed back from his high square forehead, or else braided into a pigtail. He had a powerful hooked nose, giving him in one or two photographs the look of a 'Kurdish brigand'. His skin – which was neither dark nor fair but something in between, as might be expected from his Persian origins – was unusually sensitive.

Simply to come into Baba's presence was for most people a profound experience. Some, on first seeing him, burst into tears. Some flung or tried to fling themselves at his feet, an attempt which those about him were always ready to forestall. One or two laughed hysterically. Many found themselves smiling with a happiness they could not explain, but which to their own astonishment they did not try to hide. Almost all, whatever the anticipations with which they had approached him, found it difficult, even painful, to leave his presence.

What made the experience memorable, and any description of it difficult, is that Baba had not – like royalty or most political and religious leaders – a set reaction, even a gracious and dignified reaction. He responded to every individual afresh, giving himself in immediate contact. So it was as if, to each man or woman who approached him, he embodied something that person had been waiting for throughout a lifetime. What is it we have all, each one of us, been waiting for throughout our lives? An intense experience of love. Meher Baba radiated love, so that it appeared to even a casual visitor as though Baba loved him or her in some quite special way.

Once over the first reaction to his presence, it was noticeable that Baba seemed far more alive than anybody else. In a crowd, however large, he was invariably the centre, and everyone in it was governed by the same impulse, to draw close enough to make contact with him. A film, made in the 1950s in the USA, shows Baba in a crowded dining room of men and women seated at small tables. Moving from group to group, he has the effect of a lamp carried round a darkened room. As he approaches a table, the sitters raise their heads, gaze up, animate, smile – and then, as Baba moves on, they dwindle down, relapsing after he has passed, into the zombie-like condition normal to us human beings.

Mani (Manija S. Irani), Baba's younger sister, has described the reaction of Indian villagers to Baba's presence, though they had no idea who he was:

When we were on the road walking, mile after weary mile, sometimes passing through villages and towns on the way, or walking on lonely stretches of country roads, passers- by would somehow not be unduly distracted by the rest of the party in robes and turbans, but when their eyes fell on Baba they would stop their chatting and stand quite still, just looking at Baba as he went by, then turn round and follow him with their eyes till he was out of sight.

(And of his effect on children Mani related:) Wherever Baba was and where there were any children they somehow always came to Him. I remember in 1952 on the plane to the US – of course, nobody knew who Baba was – the children would walk down the aisle and constantly stop where Baba was sitting and caress his coat or look up at Him. And their mothers would be after them, "Don't disturb that gentleman!" Then Baba would smile, the mothers would relax and forget to scold.

Baba was never frivolous or flippant, but he disliked needless solemnity and loved jokes and entertaining stories which those about him would save up for his enjoyment. At the 1958 gathering of his followers at Myrtle Beach in the US, following some profound discourses, Baba said: "Now, what do you want? One more discourse, or music and jokes? Personally, I want jokes, but let's keep your wish. I want you all to be happy ..." And among those close to him, Baba kept a special place for one Kaka Baria whose flow of inconsequential chatter, expressed in a confusion of languages created by himself, provided entertainment and distraction.

An aspect many found surprising was Baba's utter absence of self-importance and refusal of special treatment. He lived austerely, took only the plainest food, invariably travelled by the cheapest class. Except on the rarest occasions, he would never allow outward signs of reverence such as bowing or kissing his feet. In November 1962, when the whole mandali, or group of close companions, bowed solemnly before him, they recalled with astonishment that this was the first time for twenty-two years they had been permitted to do this. Baba himself, however, frequently bowed down, and those he bowed to were the poor, the afflicted such as lepers, and the unappreciated. During a visit to the United States in 1952, it was noticed that Baba remained seated as he always did when people were brought to meet him. But each time a black family or person entered, he stood up.

An immense dignity surrounded Baba, and an authority which could in a moment overawe aggression or hostility, but in general his manner was disarming, and even while remaining seated, he came out to welcome you. Unlike those spiritual leaders who cultivate aloofness and permit contact to be effected through a haze of condescension, Baba would often express a childlike candour and simplicity, against which the armour of the sophisticated offered no protection. "When I am with sadhus" (holy men), he said once, "no one is more serious than I. When I am with children, I play marbles with them. I am in all, and one with all. That is why I can adapt myself to all kinds of people, and meet them where they are."

Baba's sister, Mani, in her Family Letters tells of a man who came to see Baba with a long list of questions he was determined to have answered. Baba motioned the visitor to sit beside him, and he sat there quietly taking in Baba's presence – and only on leaving did he confess the reason for his visit which till now he had entirely forgotten.

Quentin Tod, an actor who was one of the first Westerners to attach himself to Baba, described his meeting with him in London in 1931.

What impressed one most was his rather wild quality, as of something untamed, and his truly remarkable eyes. He smiled and motioned me to sit beside him. He took my hand and from time to time patted my shoulder. We sat for several minutes in silence and I was aware of a great feeling of love and peace emanating from him; also a curious feeling of recognition came to me, as if I had found a long-lost friend.

Before going to meet Baba, Tod said he felt unprepared and shaken, "as though about to undergo a major operation."

A similar sense of awe was experienced by two young men, a dancer and an artist, living together. They were anxious to meet Baba, but in view of all they had heard about him and the reverence with which he was surrounded, they approached in a state of inner trepidation. As they came towards him, Baba held out his arms and with a twinkle in his eye addressed them through his interpreter with the one-word enquiry, "Chums?"

It was in 1952 that the writers of this book first met Meher Baba. The unlikely venue was the Charing Cross Hotel, just off Trafalgar Square in the middle of London. Baba was on his way back to India after a visit to the United States during which he had suffered severe injuries in a motor car accident he had foretold long before. Dorothy and I (Tom) had only recently settled down together, and though Dorothy had been in contact with Baba for ten years, I knew little more of him than his name and that Dorothy was devoted to him.

After waiting for a while in a corridor, we were called into a room of the kind used for small business meetings. On a settee at the far side of the room sat a figure in loose white clothes, with one leg raised and enclosed in a plaster cast. Behind him and to the sides I was aware of a number of Indian faces, but once we had entered I could look at no one but Baba and Dorothy, and for Dorothy I was soon in deep concern. She had been placed in a chair a few feet from Baba, facing him as he sat sideways on the settee, and I had been motioned into another chair by his feet. I thus found myself in the situation with which every journalist is familiar, that of spectator at someone else's drama. In the present case it was proving to be a silent drama. Baba, as I knew, never spoke, and Dorothy was so overcome at being finally in his presence, that she was finding it impossible to speak. Her lips opened, her eyes gazed pleadingly at Baba, but not a word came out. She was quite paralysed.

Baba's hands fluttered in gesture, and a soft voice behind him asked: "Why do you not speak?"

Struggling, Dorothy finally managed to stammer out, "Because I c-can't s-speak."

Baba smiled benignly. His hands moved again, and the voice replied, "Neither do I speak."

Encouraged, Dorothy was able to bring out: "But you, Baba, don't speak because you don't want to speak ... I'm not speaking because I c-c-can't speak."

Baba's hands moved again, and the voice said reassuringly, "I will help you."

As I followed the drama, and the effect Baba's presence had on all about him, I was already trying to find words for the scene and for Baba himself. Sentences were piecing together in my mind, the mind of an observer, interested but not personally involved.

Suddenly Baba turned and looked into my eyes.

"And what have you come here for?" asked the voice in the background.

Caught off my guard, I uttered the first words that came into my head. "I only wanted to see you."

Baba flung up his arms with a delighted smile, and the voice enquired, "And do you like me?"

The words entered me like a bullet. I found myself struggling to bring out the reply, "I love you, Baba." For a moment I thought I might achieve it, but, inhibited by nationality, upbringing and journalistic detachment, the most I could manage was, "Yes, Baba, I like you."

"And I like you," came the voice, as Baba smilingly leaned forward.

In these contacts, as in thousands of others, Baba revealed his power to cut through the artificial personality we all create for self-protection in our everyday lives, and to touch that inner self which lives on somewhere in each one. The sense Baba conveyed was of loving acceptance without criticism or reproof. Soothed by such acceptance, the timid cease to feel exposed; the worldly, the resentful and the self-absorbed, instead of guilt, experience relief; the desperate sense a trickle of new hope, because for the first time someone is seeing us, as in our heart we long to be, and as – with the help of such love and understanding – we feel we may yet become.

Early Life

Meher Baba means 'Compassionate Father', Meher being an adaptation of the name Merwan which formed a part of Baba's full name – Merwan Sheriar Irani. He was born at Poona in India of a Persian family on the 25th February 1894, at 5.15 a.m.

At that time Baba's father, Sheriar Mundegar Irani, was already in his middle forties. From the age of thirteen Sheriarji had been a seeker after spiritual truth, roaming the country as a monk or dervish, in Persia first, and then in India. Failing to achieve the enlightenment he sought, he visited the home of his sister in Bombay, who urged him to marry and bring up a family. It is said that in a dream an inner voice assured him that one of his children would achieve what he had not, by becoming a great spiritual leader. "There was none like him," Baba said. "It was because of him that I was born as his child." Sheriarji followed his sister's advice and took a wife, a girl in her teens, Shireen Dorab Irani (also known as Shirinbanoo and later Shirinmai), settled down and set himself to earn a living. As a child he had received no education but he now started to educate himself. Even while working as a gardener, later as an estate manager and teashop owner, he learned to read and write four languages and gained a reputation as a poet and singer.

Shirinmai, unlike her husband, was an educated woman; "as intelligent as she is fair," said one of her friends. Merwan was her second son, born when she was only sixteen years old.

Before his birth, (it is recorded) Shireen had an unusual dream. She had dreamt being led into a wide open area where she was surrounded by a large number of alien faces, a multitude that extended on all sides to the horizon. The faces stared at her steadily and expectantly till she woke up ... The dream was interpreted as symbolising the birth of one who would be loved and esteemed by large multitudes.

Merwan was born in the Sassoon Hospital in Poona, where a slab in the wall commemorates the event. The house to which Shireen brought her baby was a small one with two main rooms, plus kitchen, bathroom and garret, which her husband had bought and repaired. It was known as the 'Pumpkin House' because of a large round stone beside the entrance. For a couple of years the family moved into a flat, but then came back to a larger house in the same street as their first home. This house, visited today by many Baba-lovers, is No. 765 in the section of Poona once known as Butler Mohalla but now renamed Meher Mohalla. Here Baba grew up with an older brother Jamshed; three younger ones – Jal, Behram and Adi; and his sister Manija (Mani), another sister having died at the age of six.

Shirinmai called Baba her "most beautiful child", and would later talk of her many worries over her precocious son.

Merwan has been my problem even as a child ... he was very active and mischievous from the time he was able to toddle, and would walk out of the house when my attention was distracted. This often compelled me, when I was especially busy with housework, or had to go for my bath and there was no one in the house to look after him, to tie one end of my sari to his waist and the other to the bedstead. Even then I could not always keep him out of mischief. Once (this was about January 1895, when Baba was not yet one year old), I had left him playing on the floor. Returning to the room some minutes later I was horrified to see him playing merrily with a big black snake (a cobra) ... I rushed forward, but the snake slipped quickly out of the house and was never seen again.

To English people the name 'Poona' suggests an India of garden parties and polo-playing officers, but in fact this city stands on the junction of two rivers and is an important cultural and educational centre. It had been chosen as the seat of the then Bombay government because, though not more than 120 miles distant, it offers a far pleasanter climate during the hot season, being 2,000 feet above sea level. Here from the point of view of schooling, the family was extremely well placed.

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Excerpted from "The Silent Messenger"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Tom & Dorothy Hopkinson.
Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
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