(25 February 1894 – 31 January 1969)
Meher Baba was an Indian spiritual master whose name means “Compassionate Father.” He declared himself to be Avatar, the manifestation of God in human form, and said that he had come to awaken love for God in humanity.
Meher Baba was born in 1894 as Merwan Sheriar Irani to Zoroastrian parents in the west Indian city of Pune. He began his spiritual transformation at the age of nineteen and took his first disciples at the age of twenty-seven. He maintained silence from 1925 through his death in 1979, communicating by alphabet board and hand gestures.
After years of intensive training of his disciples, Meher Baba established a colony in western India near the city of Ahmednagar called Meherabad. At this retreat center, Baba operated a free school with an emphasis on spiritual training, a free hospital and dispensary, and shelters for the poor. Through the years, Meher Baba contacted hundreds of those known in India as masts—advanced pilgrims on the spiritual path who have become spiritually intoxicated from direct awareness of God. Other important spiritual work included the washing of the lepers, the washing of the feet of thousands of poor, and the distribution of grain and cloth to the destitute.
Meher Baba visited the West many times, including six visits to the United States, and his followers established a major spiritual retreat center in the United States several miles north of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He became well known in the 1960s for his opposition to the use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs, stating that these substances were physically and spiritually harmful. To others, he was known primarily for coining the phrase, “Don’t worry, be happy.”
There are numerous sources of biographical information about Meher Baba. Here are several: