Meher Nazar Collection

Dear Meher Center Family and Friends,

Much love from Meher Center. This weekend we celebrate the physical

birth of the Ancient One, who is always present and available in our hearts. Please click here for events planned on the Center.

On the occasion of His 60th birthday, in 1954, Meher Baba said the following:

“I am never born, I never die. Yet, every moment, I take birth and undergo death. The countless illusory births and deaths are necessary landmarks in the progression of man's consciousness to Truth—a prelude to the Real Death and Real Birth. Real Death is when one dies to self, and Real Birth is, when dying to self, one is born in God, to live forever His eternal life consciously.

“Although I am present everywhere eternally, in my formless, infinite state, from time to time I take form, and the taking of the form and leaving it is termed my physical birth and death. In this sense, I was born 60 years ago and I will die when my Universal work is finished.

"Your celebrating my 60th birthday today with all your love, enthusiasm and zeal has deeply touched me and makes me give you my blessings for the ultimate understanding that we all are one, that God alone is real and that all else is false.”*

In Meher Baba’s love and service,

Buz Connor

For Meher Center board and staff

*Lord Meher, Onine Edition, by Bhau Kalchuri, p. 3477

Shared previously, this original footage from 1937 allows us to partake in Meher Baba's birthday celebrations in the holy city of Nasik and Rahuri, where He also had His ashram. We see exquisite garlanding, dances, music, and a birthday feast for all. Many of the Eastern and Western mandali are present, along with Meher Baba’s mother, Shireen Mai.

Video, 9:07

With permission from the Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust

So many images come rushing to mind when one thinks of Baba’s birthday. When I close my eyes, I see a heavily garlanded and decorated Samadhi. I relive the goosebumps at the thought that Baba was a couple feet away, at the Tin Shed, celebrating His birthday. I picture the twinkle in the eyes of the mandali, especially the women, who, like Gopis, buzzed around Him with child-like, love-filled offerings. 

Standing in that long line to reach His tomb, amidst the glorious displays of love, I remember holding a single flower in hand and thinking of Mehera and her garden. Mehera would often say to Baba’s lovers, “Just a single flower, a single petal offered to Baba with love is enough. It’s not the flower. It is our love that He wants.” [1]

It was not every year that Baba let the mandali celebrate His birthday. Some years He was in seclusion and the mood was quiet and restrained. His wish was their command. But when He did allow festivities, the mandali left no stone unturned to celebrate the birth of their Beloved. Feasts, music, processions, ceremonial bathing and washing His feet, garlanding and more.

1925 was the first time that Baba allowed His mandali and lovers to wash His feet on His birthday. About Baba’s feet, Mani said, “Mehera always referred to Beloved Baba's feet as His lotus feet. When you are looking at a lotus flower, you are looking at a beauty and a purity which remind you of angels. Floating on the surface of a pond or lake, the lotus stands pure and untouched by its surroundings. It is for this supreme quality that in India the lotus is chosen to describe the feet of God in human form.” [2] That year, lovers came from Ahmednagar, Arangaon and Poona to Meherabad. Mehera said, “It is our tradition to make pretty designs with powdered colored chalk on the ground at the entrance of the house, and to hang freshly-made garlands over the doorway on special occasions. So, in the early, early morning I helped with the chalk designs and made the garland for the doorway.” Then, the men lovers washed His feet first. When the women were called, Mehera said, “So we girls, one by one, poured water on Baba's feet and lightly touched them. Some splashed the water that had touched Baba's feet on their faces and their eyes.” [3]

While Baba repeatedly reminded His lovers about the futility of ritualistic acts such as garlanding, in His divine sense of humor, He allowed for those very acts to become vehicles of sincere love and praise offered by the lovers. The Beloved in turn received them to please the lovers. 

Two years later, for His thirty-third birthday in 1927, once again lovers poured cups of warm water over Him. When the bath was done, Baba dressed in kingly robes to give darshan. A crown of flowers wreathed His head, a beautiful garland adorned His neck and a string of flowers bedecked His arms and wrists. With a flute in His hand, He resembled Lord Krishna. [4] The mandali found such joy in dressing Him up to look like He did in His previous advents!

Yet again, many people came from nearby villages and Ahmednagar. Many brought big garlands for Baba. Such was the reverential outpour that Baba’s body was covered in flowers from neck down! The darshan continued so gloriously that someone cried out, "Look at Baba; what a glorious countenance he has! His face is like a shining sun!" Another person remarked, "Baba's cheeks are like pink roses!" But all was not as it appeared to the ecstatic lovers. The glow on Baba’s face was not a demonstration of His spiritual stature but the work of a swarm of bees trapped in one of the garlands! Baba ruefully gestured, "My face is swollen and red from the bees' stings, not because of divine radiance. See what I must endure at the hands of my lovers. They always wish to garland me and I permit it for the sake of their happiness, yet how I suffer. Such is my fate." The menacing bees did not stop the rest of the program. Baba walked up Meherabad Hill beside a decorated palanquin for a music program. At the insistence of His lovers, He came down the Hill seated in the palanquin. [5]

To this day, birthday celebrations across the world are fragrant with Baba’s presence. For Baba’s seventy-fifth birthday, right after the dropping of His body, the celebration was at an awe-inspiring scale all over India. On Meherabad Hill, the whole village showed up, filling His tomb with garlands of jasmines and roses. "In short," as Eruch Jessawala wrote in a letter, "it is obvious that the lovers of Baba believe that Baba is in their midst, although His physical presence is out of sight. He seems to have come into their hearts more forcefully than ever before. They feel His presence without seeing Him, and I can quite believe that, because I too feel that way.” [6]

Happy Birthday, Beloved Avatar Meher Baba!

[1] “Gardening with Love,” by Kacy Cook, On Sacred Ground

[2] God Brother, by Mani Irani, p.62

[3] Mehera, by Mehera J. Irani, pp. 79-80

[4] In the company of Meher Baba, by M. R. Dhakephalkar, pp. 57-59

[5] Lord Meher, vol. 3, by Bhau Kalchuri, pp. 913-914

[6] 82 Family Letters, by Mani Irani, p.348

For many years, the Center has had a tradition of putting on a play for Baba’s birthday. This year is no exception, and members of the community have been working hard for months to prepare for the performance. “It’s a big collaborative effort,” shares Bryan West, one of the workers on the play. For example, a local artist painted beautiful murals for the stage, and others are in the process of making window dressings. Each character has had a costume selected and designed, and volunteers have gathered furniture and odds and ends to restyle the Meeting Place stage into a set. This will also be the inaugural use of the building’s new stage lighting system which will, as Bryan puts it, “help tell the story in lighting.” 

Then, of course, there are the rehearsals! Bryan explains that they started out once a week at the beginning of the year, then ramped up to twice a week, then three times a week, and now it feels like they’re almost constant! Many of the actors come to practice tired but keep on making sacrifices to create something special for Baba and His lovers. What has been Bryan’s lesson from Baba during the experience? “There are plenty of opportunities where the highs get high and the lows are low. My real lesson has been right along the lines of just stay in that middle zone … There’s something about theater that touches on a lot of different aspects of ourselves.” Bryan and all the others who have worked long and lovingly on this project look forward to sharing the fruits of their labors with Baba’s lovers for His birthday. 

In the spring of 1941, Meher Baba held a meeting with three of His key Western disciples, Countess Nadine Tolstoy, Elizabeth Patterson, and Princess Norina Matchabelli who had been living with Him in India for nearly six years. He asked them to return to the United States and collaborate to spread His message of love and truth. 

Returning to America, the three women, referred to by Baba as His “dear trio,” lived together in New York City working tirelessly in His Cause. Today, Norina and Elizabeth are familiar names in the Baba community due in large measure to their role as founders of Meher Spiritual Center. Nadine is less known, not only because she worked quietly behind the scenes supporting Norina and Elizabeth, but also because from 1943 until her death in 1946, she suffered from the debilitating symptoms of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Baba, however, made it clear that Nadine played a key part in His work, describing her role as “life’s surrender.” 

Nadine (Nadia, Nadezhda) Klimentevna Katulskaya was born September 3, 1883, in the city of Odessa in Ukraine, which was at that time under Imperial Russian rule. As a child, Nadine had experiences of God and “mystical longing.” After a series of life-altering events as a young adult – illness, a period of teaching children and adult peasants in a remote Russian village and travel to Switzerland – Nadine changed her course of study from science and transferred to a music conservatory. She studied at the University of Petrograd and the Moscow Conservatory. By all accounts, Nadine had a beautiful singing voice. When she later sang for Meher Baba at His ashram in Nasik, India, Baba called her “the nightingale in My garden.” 

Before meeting Meher Baba, Nadine was relentless in her spiritual search, oscillating between despair and discovery of sources that propelled her forward. She took up meditation, but something was always lacking: “I prayed to meet a Perfect, True Guide – a liberated One – a source of Pure Love to feed my heart – so thirsty for pure rays of True Love.” In 1920, after her first marriage, to Nickola Pershina, ended in divorce, Nadine married Count Ilya Lvovich Tolstoy (1866–1933), the second son of Russia’s greatest novelist, Leo Tolstoy. 

Nadine first met Meher Baba on November 19, 1931, at Harmon-on-the-Hudson in New York. She had been invited by her friend Malcolm Schloss, who with his wife Jean Adriel owned the North Node bookstore in Manhattan, specializing in spiritual literature. As was the case with many who met Meher Baba for the first time, Nadine had an immediate experience of familiarity, as though encountering the physical presence of one whom she had always known. Baba had “almost a boyish look, but gazing from high and afar, unfathomably deep, yet smiling with pure light in his shining eyes! He reminded me of something – of somebody I knew far off but could not catch the vision. I felt as if he were challenging my inner memory, and his whole posture and atmosphere was asking, 'Can’t you remember? Don’t you remember Me from the past?’” 

Baba spelled out on His board: "It is long since you are waiting for Me. I will help you." When Nadine began to tell Baba about herself, He interrupted, saying "I know all," and simply repeated, "I will help you." Nadine “felt His deep seeing eyes beyond that which we can see, reading that open book of me – working within me. He was my Master.”

After traveling with Meher Baba in America and Europe in the early 1930s, Nadine was called by Him in 1936 to live in the newly expanded ashram in Nasik, India. During her time with Baba in India, she often carried paper and pen to record what He said in her presence. So frequent was her notetaking that Baba once joked that if she died on their journey to Quetta, she would be buried with her notebook. On one occasion while in Dehra Dun with Baba, Nadine was quickly taking down whatever Baba said, but after a few minutes He stopped her because at times, He did not wish the mandali to be distracted by notetaking. “Why do you need words? Just be with Me. Sit before Me. Absorb.” Fortunately for posterity, however, Nadine and others recorded many of Baba’s words as He gave them on the alphabet board.

Nadine’s transcripts of these discourses are among the most precious parts of her archives, and we present one example here. On February 9, 1937, Baba gave the following discourse to the group in the Manzil Bungalow, Nasik ashram. We cannot know how much of this discourse was recorded by Nadine as it was being dictated. We do know that a typed manuscript of the discourse is in Nadine’s papers with her name, Nadia, handwritten at the top. She notes at the end of the discourse that this version consists of excerpts from the full text.  

DETACHMENT IN ACTION

What a great difference it would make if you dreamt and while dreaming felt yourself aloof from it as a mere witness to your actions in the dream. 

Now, if continually in full consciousness, you were a witness to all your actions, all would appear as Illusion. As mere witness, results don't bind you. There would be no misery, no worry, no waste of time because energy would not exist. Nothing but you as the witness would exist. Clear? You understand but you don't experience. 

The question arose: “Would we ever experience it?" Baba replied: Yes. Is it really clear?

The personal self is an illusion. Only the Unlimited Self exists, and you experience yourself as the Universal Unlimited Self. That is the Goal.

One moment you feel happy, then the other moment you feel miserable. Now happiness then misery. The active life did not give you the Infinite Bliss. You try to escape from the very thing that would give you the Infinite Bliss. It is both very easy and very difficult, because you yourself have become the veil that lies before your eyes. The veil is on yourself. You yourself bind yourself. The Self is not something to be given, because it is already there within. It simply needs to be uncovered.

A question was asked: “What can we do to uncover it?” Baba replied: You cannot do anything. I will do it. But you can help me by doing what I say, not by creating difficulties and hindering.

Yesterday a thought came to me, to send you all over India, Tibet, Nepal, to visit the Holy places and to see the Holy men. To stay in that atmosphere and then come back. Then you would follow me without questioning. I did that to Pleader. He went on Pilgrimage to visit Holy men and Holy places. Now he feels that what he wants is to be with me. I can really rely on him now. He no longer has any uncertainty. These Holy men are very advanced souls, and they would point you to me. 

Later Baba said: Big hearts always ‘give’ and 'give in.’ Small hearts 'take' and 'take in.’

Nadia asked: “What if we want to obey, but for some reason are not able to physically or mentally?” Baba replied: If you want to obey, then it is not disobedience. If for instance I say "fly" and you cannot, it is not disobedience, but you must try to fly. Not say "I cannot", but just try. 

There are three types of obedience. 

1. The first kind is all faith; complete blind obedience.
2. The second kind is literal obedience, but not blind.
3. The third kind is obedience with common sense and discrimination, still not with complete faith or conviction.

The first type is very rare. The second type is also found among a few. The third type is found among more, but only a few more. 

“Dabakay khan" means colloquially "eat heartily." Literally translated it would mean “eat after pressing the food."

Here is a type of literal obedience yet not complete: type second. Once Dr. Ghani, while in Manzil-i-meem in 1922, after having just eaten his meal, was given by me some food to eat, and I told him: “Dabakay khan” (eat more). He had already eaten so much; he could not eat any more. Now “Dabakay” has two meanings, the one to eat heartily, the other to “press” (such as dahl and rice together). So, Dr. Ghani interpreted it the second way. He was full. He knew I meant to eat more, but he took the other meaning and started pressing the dahl and rice. He obeyed literally, but not spiritually, as I wanted him to eat, and he knew this.

Hafiz says: “If you are the chosen one, don't say why and wherefore, but only obey the word of the Master with heart and soul.” 

It is very difficult. In one sense it is easy to obey, but to do it with heart and soul is difficult. Complete obedience is rare, very rare.

Complete blind obedience, the outcome of complete faith is very very rare.

Meher Baba

* The private papers of Nadine Tolstoy will be published in our forthcoming book about her life with Meher Baba. The book will include unpublished material from Nadine’s private papers, including notes she kept while living with Baba in India, discourses given by Him during that period, and correspondence between Nadine and Baba from when she met Him in 1931 until her death in 1946.