In February 1922 in Pune, Meher Baba’s birthday was celebrated simply by His earliest disciples. There was singing, a delicious meal, arti, and a spirit of festivity and love. One disciple, Gulmai, gave Baba a thin gold chain with Zoroaster’s portrait in a locket. 

At that time, Baba had not said He was the Avatar, the same God who came as Zoroaster. But a year later, in 1923, He arrived at the house of a dear lover, Sohrabji Desai, whose sister Baimai had been bedridden for years due to a severe leg fracture. When she saw Meher Baba for the first time, she “rose to meet [Him] and, with tears in her eyes, stood for the first time in years.” After that, she gradually regained her ability to walk. During that visit, Baba said to the family, “I am your Zoroaster!”[I]

But Baba was not only Zoroaster. A few years later, in 1928, the women Mandali celebrated Baba as Krishna. Traditionally on Krishna’s birthday, His lovers rock a picture of Him in a small, decorated cradle. The women decided to rock Baba instead! They made a large makeshift cradle—out of a sheet they hung from the rafters and adorned with a cascade of flowers. Baba gamely agreed to get in and let His gopis swing Him—but because the sheet was old and worn (like most possessions in the ashram), slowly Baba began sinking. “What is this?” He asked, and he laughed with the women as He distributed prasad and greeted them one by one.[II]

Others, too, recognized Baba as Krishna, although sometimes not so readily. In 1942, lawyer and politician Kishan Nigam was given a few books and photos of Baba by one of His lovers. In disgust that Baba claimed to be Krishna, the Lord of Nigam’s heart, Nigam threw the photos into the mud of the street to be trampled on by passers-by. But over the next two years, Nigam felt compelled to follow some of Baba’s orders, and then to read the book Avatar which Meher Baba personally sent to him. Nigam came to recognize Baba as that same Lord, “my only Divine Beloved who had been conducting my life unknown to me.”[III]

But Baba was not only Krishna and Zoroaster. For His birthday in 1934, He fulfilled the ardent request of His devotee Sampath Aiyangar to spend His birthday in Madras.[IV] His Madras lovers were ecstatic, celebrating the day with music, artis, and darshan programs, delighting in Baba’s company. Aiyangar had two daughters who joined the festivities. One of them asked for Baba to be dressed as Lord Shiva, and He agreed. The other daughter then asked that He be dressed as Lord Krishna, Christ, and Prophet Mohammed as well. And He was.

Lovers of these forms of God, too, found them in Baba. Back in 1927, a young Muslim boy named Abdulla Rokneldin Pakravan arrived to see Baba but refused to bow down to Him because of Abdulla’s orthodox beliefs. Soon after, Abdulla described his change of heart during an ecstatic experience: “The visions of [Baba’s] glorious face made me hear a voice within me declaring, ‘Remove your shoes; you are on holy ground.’"[V] Years later, on Baba’s last visit to America in 1958, another boy, eight-year-old Charles Haynes, stood outside of the Lagoon Cabin waiting to meet Baba with no idea who Baba was or what to expect.[VI] Curious, he leaned around the person in front of him and peeked into the cabin. And Jesus was there, looking back at him.

During His birthday in 1934, Baba said this: “Where there is love there is Oneness and there can be no question of any particular religion or caste or system, superiority or inferiority, and touchability or untouchability. But to realize this natural quality permanently, one has to submit to the greatest law of God, which is love ... ”[VII]

Baba’s last birthday in His physical form was on February 25, 1968. In Ahmednagar as in so many parts of the world, it was celebrated with a torrent of happiness, love and devotion for God in our midst. A great parade with over 30,000 people took place, complete with “25 decorated bullock carts, two bands, three drumming parties, two groups of lezim dancers, a party of sword acrobats, a prancing white horse, fireworks, several bhajan groups ... a qawaali group ... and a flower-covered open jeep that carried a lighted life-size painting of Baba.”[VIII]

And, for that final birthday, Baba’s brother Adi was inspired with the determination that people of every religion take part in the procession. So that last crush of celebration while Baba was in physical form was just how it should have been: Muslims singing with Hindus singing with Zoroastrians singing with Buddhists singing with Christians, all celebrating the birth, the eternal existence of the everlasting and ever-coming God. 

[i] Lord Meher, Online Edition, by Bhau Kalchuri, p. 443

[ii] Mehera Meher, by David Fenster, p. 213

[iii] My Life Story with Avatar Meher Baba, by Keshav Narayan Nigam, p. 14 

[iv] Lord Meher, Online Edition, by Bhau Kalchuri, p. 1590

[v] Lord Meher, Online Edition, by Bhau Kalchuri, p. 898

[vi] Video of Charles Haynes, 1970s, Irwin Luck Interview Series

[vii] Meher Baba Calling, Eighth Edition, Copyright Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust

[viii] Lord Meher, Online Edition, by Bhau Kalchuri, p. 5321

Meher Baba’s Tiger Valley Cave is located in Panchgani, sixty miles from Pune, 12.5 miles from Mahabaleshwar, and was built especially for Meher Baba in the spring of 1930. Once Baba selected the site for the cave and approval was given by the Maharaja of Savantwadi, who owned the property, excavation began. Hewn into the cliffside, the cave, as measured by Walter Mertens, “is about 2 ½ by 4 meters and 2 ½ meters high and brushed with mortar.”[I] Today, 93 years later, the cave continues to be a place of pilgrimage. 

Huts were built in close proximity to the cave where His party of over twenty men could be housed. Once the cave was completed, Baba retired there on May 15 and stayed in seclusion, fasting on water and weak tea. Others who participated in the fast, both in Tiger Valley and other locations, were allowed one cup of milk twice daily and the length of their fast varied. After departing Panchgani on May 26, Meher Baba continued His fast, subsisting on milk alone for three months. 

In the ensuing years, Baba often returned to His cave. From time to time He would direct Mandali members to stay in the cave, some for days, others for months at a time, subsisting on milk and at times only water. Walter Mertens described one of Baba’s disciples who spent considerable time in the Tiger Valley Cave, “Pleader, His favorite disciple, the one tested to the utmost (lived 6 years only on milk, 2½ years in a dark room without reading and talking, 8 months in Baba's cave, 1½ years traveling through India without means, poverty, sickness, then caring for possessed people, getting to know well the play of the world, now living in Baba's cave in Panchgani in Tiger Valley) is supposed to come with Hedi and me, show us everything, we to sleep in a hotel, he in the cave.”[II] Walter and Hedi were directed by Baba to each spend a night in the cave in December 1938.

In March 1938, Meher Baba temporarily moved His quarters from Meherabad to Panchgani, where He had taken two bungalows near His Tiger Valley cave. Panchgani provided cooler weather and an escape from the heat of Meherabad.  

Twenty-two year old Eruch Jessawala spent the night of April 29, 1938, in the cave and had an excellent night's sleep after agreeing earlier in the day to leave everything and commit his life to Meher Baba. Baba said to Eruch, "If I were to ask you to leave everything behind—your studies, your friends, your property, your family—and come and stay with me, what would your answer be?" Eruch replied, “By your grace, anything is possible.”[III]  

Kitty Davy, under Baba’s order, wrote to Will and Mary Backett: “This is a wonderful spot, you would both love it. I am reminded constantly of Devonshire. Masses of trees, shrubs, flowers, forests, valleys, hills are the background for the surroundings. ... Elizabeth is having a very special privilege of sleeping there one night—we will all take her there and Baba will lock her in.  

“The view from the cave is wonderful. Range upon range of mountains, each with varying colors, and below the big Tiger Valley stretching for miles. The cave was especially made for Baba and hewn out of rock—not big, just like a tiger’s cave at the zoo. There are tigers, snakes and monkeys in our valley.”[IV] 

Twenty-year-old Arnavaz Dadachanji was exhausted both mentally and physically when, at Baba’s invitation, she joined the women mandali in Panchgani. She wrote, “Another incident that impressed me deeply was Baba's keeping Elizabeth in a cave the whole night. Elizabeth was safe because the cave had an iron gate at the opening, but it was situated in absolute wilderness and tigers' pawprints had been found there. I was so filled with my new love for Baba, and my yearning for renunciation was so great, that I wished He would keep me in that cave. But of course I was not prepared for an experience like that, and Baba gives only what one is prepared for. My urge was premature, but it didn't feel that way to me; I wanted to climb to the heights for Baba, not understanding that I was still on the first rung of the ladder.”[V]  

Elizabeth Patterson asked Baba to allow her to spend a night in the Tiger Valley Cave. She waited until He said the time was right and at 6 p.m. on May 6, 1938, Baba and the women disciples accompanied her to the cave. Baba locked her in for the night and handed her the key to the iron gate. He then instructed her to concentrate, keep her eyes open, try not to sleep, to light a lantern at 6:50 p.m. and then lay down. Close to midnight she checked her watch, intent on not falling asleep; she focused on her Beloved.  

Elizabeth wrote, “...Unexpectedly a shock, like electricity, passed through my body from head to foot; feeling it particularly along the spine. It continued in waves of varying currents and became so strong, two or three times, that it seemed to lift me—as would a rush of wind. Soon I felt swinging into space, the bedding unevenly swaying beneath me. I felt that if only I could remain on it, as on a ‘magic carpet,' I would be carried safely; but it rocked so much that I then remembered to call out Baba’s name and immediately the ‘troubled waters’ were stilled. Coming out of a kind of daze, I found my arms folded across me, as they cross the arms of the dead and they were so numb that it took a while before I could move them. Whatever the state was which I passed through, I was consciously unconscious during it. …”[VI]

Meher Baba had instructed Elizabeth not to leave the cave until 6:00 a.m. sharp. At one point, she heard the voices of her friends who seemed to be calling from nearby saying it was 5:00 a.m. and that they had been sent to fetch her. But Elizabeth remembered Baba’s order: “At that moment Baba glimmeringly appeared in the entrance and light flooded the cave with unusual brightness. He smilingly answered my mental inquiry by saying: ‘Do as I said; leave only at six.’”[VII]

Following Baba's order, Elizabeth stayed in the cave until 6:00 a.m. and when she returned to the bungalow, she asked Baba: “Was I dreaming?” Baba replied, ‘‘No it was more like a daze; you were neither awake nor asleep. You actually experienced these things physically.’’ Then Elizabeth inquired: ‘‘Was it symbolic?’’ Baba answered, ‘‘Yes, in the future, you will know in detail its full meaning.”[VIII]

[I] "Letters from India 1938-1939," by Walter Mertens, Awakener Magazine Online, Vol. 21, No. 2, p. 25

[II] Ibid.

[III] Lord Meher, Online Edition, by Bhau Kalchuri, p. 1918 

[IV] Love Alone Prevails, by Kitty Davy, p. 233

[V] Gift of God, by Arnavaz Dadachanji, p. 35

[VI] "News about the Master, An Experience in a Cave Overhanging Tiger Valley," by Elizabeth Patterson, Meher Baba Journal, Vol. I, No. I

[VII] Ibid.

[VIII] Ibid.