When he approached her, she kissed him on the forehead, causing him to enter a nine month-long trance which he described as "divine bliss", with a lack of consciousness of his body. He was cycling past a tree that she had made her abode, when she called to him. At 19, he met Hazrat Babajan, an elderly Muslim saint. His spiritual transformation began when he was 19 years old and lasted for seven years. Fluent in several languages, he was especially fond of the poetry of Hafez, Shakespeare, and Shelley. Īs a boy, Baba formed the Cosmopolitan Club, which was dedicated to remaining informed on world affairs and donating money to charity.
Sheriar Irani was a Persian Zoroastrian from Khorramshahr who had spent years wandering in search of spiritual experience before settling in Poona (today known as Pune).
He was named Merwan Sheriar Irani, the second son of Sheriar Irani and Shireen Irani. Meher Baba (as Merwan Irani) at 16 years old in 1910īaba was born to Irani Zoroastrian parents in 1894 in Pune, India. Regardless, Baba's Sufi influence is said to have drawn from Sai Baba of Shirdi, and it was he who designated Sai Baba with the specifically Sufi status of Qutb. He was a self-identified Sufi, and considered a leader of the Californian branch of Western Sufism, though his version of Sufism shared very few similarities with the Sufi Movement, apart from universalism and anti-dogmatism. However, other commentators have suggested that the size of the movement has been underestimated because public proselytising is uncommon among Baba's followers, and that in 1975, the movement was larger than the more visible Hare Krishna movement.
In 1971, Baba's following in the United States was estimated at 7,000. Among his followers were well-known musicians like Melanie Safka and Pete Townshend, as well as journalists like Sir Tom Hopkinson. This was used in Bobby McFerrin's hit 1988 song of the same name. He has had influence on pop culture creators and introduced the common phrase "Don't worry be happy". His legacy includes the Avatar Meher Baba Charitable Trust he established in India, a handful of centers for information and pilgrimage. This practice of abstinence has remained a topic of discussion among some of his followers. The works by him regarded as most important were his books God Speaks and Discourses.įor decades, he declined to speak, and, later, also refrained to communicate via written language. His other teachings included discussion of Perfect Masters, the Avatar, and those on the various stages of the spiritual path which he termed involution. He presented advice to followers wishing to attain God-realization, and thereby escape the wheel of birth and death. He taught that God alone exists, and each soul is God passing through imagination in order to realize its own divinity. He described the phenomenal world as illusory, and presented the idea that the Universe is imagination. Meher Baba's teachings concerned the nature and purpose of life.
Īt the age of 19, Meher Baba began a seven-year period of spiritual transformation, during which he had encounters with Hazrat Babajan, Upasni Maharaj, Sai Baba of Shirdi, Tajuddin Baba, and Narayan Maharaj. He taught that the goal of all beings was to gain consciousness of their own divinity, and to realise the absolute oneness of God. Meher Baba's map of consciousness has been described as "a unique amalgam of Sufi, Vedic, and Yogic terminology". A major spiritual figure of the 20th century, he had a following of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly in India, but with a significant number in the United States, Europe and Australia. Meher Baba (born Merwan Sheriar Irani 25 February 1894 – 31 January 1969), an Indian spiritual master, claimed to be the Avatar, or God in human form, of the age. Hazrat Babajan, Sai Baba of Shirdi, Upasni Maharaj, Tajuddin Baba, Narayan Maharaj