The Quiet of February 25th

During the late 1960’s, Meher Baba’s birthday was celebrated lavishly and lovingly across the world. Thousands of poor people were fed. Multiple buildings were dedicated. There were endless parades and performances and prayers. In 1965, Hyderabad celebrated for seventy-one days—one day for each year of Baba’s life. In 1967, the New York group’s public gathering was broadcast by radio to 125 different countries.

On Baba’s birthday in 1966, a husband and wife from Andhra Pradesh unexpectedly arrived at His home in Meherazad. The couple had experienced the festivities in their own state, and couldn’t imagine how much greater they must be right there in Baba’s physical presence.

They walked into the epicenter of that worldwide love and celebration, and everything was quiet.

Meher Baba Himself had spent that birthday as He usually did the last few years of His life. At 5 a.m., the hour of His birth, His close disciples came to His bedroom. They shouted, “Avatar Meher Baba ki Jai!” together seven times—proclaiming His presence, His victory. They said His prayers, voicing the attributes of God, asking for forgiveness and love. And then they got a hug or a greeting from Him, and spent the day together, quietly: reading the cards received from His lovers throughout the world, enjoying a poem or skit under the homemade decorations that festooned the hall.

I think those mornings are one of the reasons I’ve so loved the celebration of Baba’s birthday on the Center these past few years: the sleepy-eyed walk from Dilruba with other pre-dawn stragglers; the bright welcome of Baba’s house and moving together into His room; saying the prayers shoulder-to-shoulder by His bed; singing Happy Birthday. And, in that quiet, receiving our own greeting from Him.

But there are few external forms that stayed the same throughout Baba’s life, and His birthday is no different. From 1937, when He served 10,000 poor people and fed His Eastern and Western lovers; to 1939, when He rose at 2 a.m. to seek out a few God-intoxicated souls; to 1958, when hundreds of love-drunk sahavasees formed an impromptu procession around His car; to the times when He forbade any of His lovers to recognize His birthday at all. After those few consistent years of celebration in Meherazad in the 1960’s came the ultimate change: when in 1969, on His birthday according to the Zoroastrian calendar, His body was seen for the last time, covered in His tomb to the same cry of “Avatar Meher Baba ki Jai!”

That day at Meherazad in 1966, Baba welcomed the couple from Andhra Pradesh, though He was seeing very few people. But then Eruch told them, “Although Baba is residing at Meherazad, He is actually with all His lovers, presiding at His programs wherever they are held. That is why Baba sent them the message: ‘I shall be present among you all who gather in my love.’ Therefore, you should hurry back to your hometown, so as not to miss being in His presence!” *

Those final years, Baba created an external atmosphere of simplicity, of familiarity, of intimacy around His physical form on His birthday. But as always, the form was just the shell of the truth. What Eruch told this couple is the same thing that Baba said in His cable to Myrtle Beach on His birthday in 1967, during one of those mornings at Meherazad: “I am wherever my lovers are.”** And so this year, like every year, wherever we are on the 25th of February, we can celebrate the birth of Baba’s real presence: His constant, quiet intimacy in our hearts.

*Lord Meher Online, pg. 5209
**Lord Meher Online, pg. 5263