Merwan Sheriar Irani

 Meherabad,Maharashtra, India

History

Merwan Sheriar Irani was born in 1894 in Pune, India to Irani Zoroastrian parents. At the age of 19, he began a seven-year spiritual transformation. During this time he contacted five spiritual masters before beginning his own mission and gathering his own disciples in early 1922, at the age of 27.

From 10 July 1925 to the end of his life, Meher Baba maintained silence, communicating by means of an alphabet board or by unique hand gestures. With his mandali (circle of disciples), he spent long periods in seclusion, during which time he often fasted. He also traveled widely, held public gatherings and engaged in works of charity with lepers, the poor and the mentally ill.

In 1931, Meher Baba made the first of many visits to the West, where he attracted followers. Throughout most of the 1940s, Meher Baba worked with a category of spiritual aspirants called masts, who he said are entranced or spellbound by internal spiritual experiences. Starting in 1949, along with selected mandali, he traveled incognito about India in an enigmatic and still largely unexplained period he called the "New Life".

After being injured as a passenger in two serious automobile accidents, one in the United States in 1952 and one in India in 1956, his ability to walk became severely limited. In 1962, he invited his Western followers to India for a mass darshan called "The East-West Gathering". Concerned by an increasing use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs,[18] in 1966 Baba stated that they did not convey real benefits. Despite deteriorating health, he continued what he called his "Universal Work", which included fasting and seclusion, until his death on 31 January 1969.

Meher Baba gave numerous teachings on the cause and purpose of life, including teaching reincarnation and that the phenomenal world is an illusion. He taught that the Universe is imagination, that God is what really exists, and that each soul is really God passing through imagination to realize individually His own divinity. In addition he gave practical advice for the aspirant who wishes to attain Self-realization and thereby escape the wheel of births and deaths.

He also taught about the concept of Perfect Masters, the Avatar, and those on the various stages of the spiritual path that he called involution. His teachings are most importantly recorded in his principal books Discourses and God Speaks.

His legacy includes the Avatar Meher Baba Charitable Trust he established in India, a handful of centers for information and pilgrimage, as well as an influence on pop-culture artists and the introduction of common expressions such as "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Meher Baba's silence has remained a mysterious issue as much among his followers as with the rest of the world.

On the 31st of January, 1969 at 12:15 in the afternoon after having his favorite poet Hafiz's couplets recited, Meher Baba died. His body was brought to the samadhi at Upper Meherabad by an ambulance from Meherazad and was interred on February 7, 1969. The ambulance had been sent by Dr. Brieseman from Booth Hospital. Afterwards, the ambulance itself died; it went out of commission and had to be replaced. The trip it made to Meherabad was its last. The stretcher which carried Baba's body is still preserved in his tin seclusion cabin on the hill. During those seven days, in compliance with Meher Baba's wish, Cole Porter's song Begin the Beguine was played repeatedly on a record player. During this time people came from all over India and a few from the west to take darshan and to see his physical form for one last time. During these seven days Mecca was flooded and closed for this exact period of Meher Baba's darshan after he dropped his physical form. True to Meher Baba's words, in death he gave darshan in a reclining position during the summer of 1969 in what became known as The Last Darshan.

Additional Info

His samadhi (shrine/tomb) in Meherabad, India, has become a place of international pilgrimage. Located about six miles (10 km) south of Ahmednagar, the samadhi structure itself was completed in August 1938, more than 30 years before Baba's death in January 1969. Today the samadhi is a place of pilgrimage for the followers of Meher Baba from around the world, drawing its largest crowds at Amartithi celebration, the date commemorating Baba's death.

  How to Reach: From Pune airport Meherbaba's tomb is 115 KM, from Ahmadnagar railway station it is 6 KM and from Arangaon 1.1 KM.,

Nearest City : Ahmadnagar
Nearest Bus Stop : Arangaon
Nearest Airport : Pune
Nearest Railway Station : Ahmadnagar
Contact Person Name : Not Available
Contact Person Phone: Not Available
Website : www.avatarmeherbaba.org
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