Mehera: Baba’s Radha

How could one explain who Mehera is? Lovers of God strive to emulate her love, and philosophers expend their intellectual prowess to understand her love. But who better than Meher Baba to explain her so simply, “She is the very breath without which I cannot live.”

Whenever God takes the human form, he has a beloved, a divine counterpart, a being who personifies one-pointed love for Him. She is absolute purity. She was Sita for Ram, Radha for Krishna and Mary for Jesus. And in this advent, she was Mehera.

In Mani’s words, “This love between Baba and Mehera is in an inner realm which has nothing to do with ‘love’ as defined in the world’s dictionary … the keynote of our life with Baba was purity, and Baba was very, very particular and strict about it. He never allowed the slightest compromise in this regard, so our relationship with Baba and with each other was always totally innocent of physical involvement.”

One can say Mehera’s love was the demonstration of the model love, an ideal for all of us, His lovers, to aim toward. And one can also say that because she is Baba’s beloved she gave Baba the opportunity to play the perfect lover to exhibit the eternal oneness of the lover and his beloved. Once, Mani asked Baba, “Baba, if Mehera were to say that the world is square, would you agree?” Baba looked at her solemnly and nodded, “Yes I would.”

Mehera and her mother Daulatmai were the very first women disciples to stay at Meherabad with Baba starting in 1924. Mehera’s tasks were usually helping in the kitchen, cleaning the fireplace, washing the dal and rice, peeling the garlic. She did anything that needed to be done. It was soon after Baba’s silence in 1925 that one day Baba called the 15 women living at the Post Office building at Meherabad. “Can you guess who my Radha is?” Some guessed it was Babajan, some said Gulmai and someone even said Gustadji! But then Baba turned to Mehera and wrote on His slate, “She is my Radha”. At another time Baba told Mehera in private, “From the first time I saw you I recognized you as my Radha.”

That very year in December of 1925, Mehera’s birthday (by the Zorastrian Calendar) was celebrated for the first time. She turned 18 that year. Baba distributed jalebis (sweets) and tea. Years later, buried in her trunk in Meherazad, Mani found a picture of Baba behind which she had written, “Happy birthday to my dear Aunt Mehera. Forget me not.”

How can we forget a soul such as Mehera? As long as Meher Baba’s name shall exist so shall Mehera’s.