A Brief Talk About the Books We Have By and About Meher Baba

Meher Baba signing front pages of his principal book
"God Speaks" on 18th March 1955 in Satara, India. 

The provenance of written materials we have on Meher Baba's life and teaching bears little resemblance to that of the scant direct evidence we have about the life and teachings of Jesus.

The gospels of Jesus that we have were based on oral tradition and not written down until at least 35 – 40 years after his crucifixion. 

In contrast we have many contemporaneous publications about Baba's life and teaching. These include three biographies of Baba that were actually written during his own lifetime and approved by him. These were The Perfect Master: the life of Shri Meher Baba by Charles Purdom (1937), Avatar by Jean Adriel (1947), and The God-Man by Charles Purdom (1964). In addition, Lord Meher: The Biography of the Avatar Meher Baba, the most exhaustive biography of Baba's life comprising 20 volumes was begun by Baba's close disciple Bhau Kalchuri almost immediately after Baba's passing. Kalchuri began the project by gathering and compiling stories of Baba's life from witnesses all over India, a task that took him over two years. From these notes he began composing the massive biography, and, by working continually was done in the Summer of 1972, just 2 1/2 years after Baba's passing. The entire 20 volume biography was serially published from 1986 – 2001.

Of Baba's teaching, the major books of his teachings were written, copyrighted, and published in his lifetime and by his own management. He even signed them. These include:

God Speaks: The Theme of Creation and Its Purpose, published by Dodd, Mead in 1955. Baba signed 498 copies.

God to Man and Man to God : the discourses of Meher Baba / edited by C.B. Purdom. — London : Gollancz, 1955.

Discourses (numerous editions from 1938 – 1987)

The Everything and the Nothing (1963)

Beams from Meher Baba on the spiritual panorama (1958)

Listen, Humanity (Dodd, Mead, 1957)

Life At Its Best (1957)

Baba filmed while giving a discourse on drugs in 1967

So what is the relevance of this difference between what we have of Christ's life and teaching and what we have of Baba's? In the past it has been a chore for scholars to determine what early Christianity was like, and what parts of it could be attributed to Jesus. 

Recently these kinds of uncertainties have become so great that many have begun to doubt Jesus ever even lived, or if he did if he said any of the things attributed to him in the Bible.

These will not be legitimate concerns for people in the future wondering about what Baba did or said. His is one of the most thoroughly documented lives of a religious leader in history.

In the past, textual scholars were needed to determine what parts of the Bible were truly in the original texts, and of what there was theologians were needed to interpret its meaning. None of this is true with Baba. All that is required for Baba to have the impact he meant to have is for people to read what he left behind and to think about it carefully.

You don't need a textual scholar or a priest to do that for you. It's a much more democratic time.