page_title: Meher Baba
section_title: 1940s – Masts and the New Life
hierarchical_section_title: Meher Baba / Life and works / 1940s – Masts and the New Life
caption_attribution_description: Meher Baba with a mast named Shariat Khan in the Bangalore Mast Ashram
context_page_description: Meher Baba was an Indian spiritual master who claimed he was an Avatar — God in human form.
  Merwan Sheriar Irani was born in 1894 in Pune, India, to Irani Zoroastrian parents. His spiritual transformation began when he was 19 years old and lasted for seven years. During this time he contacted five spiritual teachers before beginning his own mission and gathering his own disciples in early 1922, at the age of 27.
  From 10 July 1925 to the end of his life, Meher Baba maintained silence, communicating by means of an alphabet board or by unique hand gestures. With his mandali, he spent long periods in seclusion, during which time he often fasted. He also traveled widely, held public gatherings, and engaged in works of charity with lepers and the poor.
  In 1931, Meher Baba made the first of many visits to the West, where he attracted followers. Throughout most of the 1940s, Meher Baba worked with a category of spiritual aspirants called masts, who he said are entranced or spellbound by internal spiritual experiences. Starting in 1949, along with selected mandali, he traveled incognito about India in an enigmatic and still largely unexplained period he called the "New Life".
context_section_description: In the 1930s and 1940s, Meher Baba worked extensively with masts, persons "intoxicated with God". According to Baba, these individuals are disabled by their enchanting experience of the higher spiritual planes. Although outwardly masts may appear irrational or insane, Baba claimed that their spiritual status was elevated, and that by meeting with them he helped them to move forward spiritually while enlisting their aid in his spiritual work. One of the best known of these masts, known as Mohammed Mast, lived at Meher Baba's encampment at Meherabad until his death in 2003.
  During his journey in 1946, he went to Sehwan Sharif to meet a well known sufi saint and a successor of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, Murshid Nadir Ali Shah. Baba called him an advanced pilgrim.
  In 1949 Baba began an enigmatic period that he called the New Life. Following a series of questions on their readiness to obey even the most difficult of his requests, Baba selected twenty companions to join him in a life of complete "hopelessness and helplessness".
  He made provisions for those dependent on him, after which he and his companions otherwise gave up nearly all property and financial responsibilities. They traveled about India incognito while begging for food and carrying out Baba's instructions in accordance with a strict set of "conditions of the New Life". These included absolute acceptance of any circumstance and consistent good cheer in the face of any difficulty. Companions who failed to comply were sent away.
  Concerning the New Life Meher Baba wrote:
  This New Life is endless, and even after my physical death it will be kept alive by those who live the life of complete renunciation of falsehood, lies, hatred, anger, greed and lust; and who, to accomplish all this, do no lustful actions, do no harm to anyone, do no backbiting, do not seek material possessions or power, who accept no homage, neither covet honor nor shun disgrace, and fear no one and nothing; by those who rely wholly and solely on God, and who love God purely for the sake of loving; who believe in the lovers of God and in the reality of Manifestation, and yet do not expect any spiritual or material reward; who do not let go the hand of Truth, and who, without being upset by calamities, bravely and wholeheartedly face all hardships with one hundred percent cheerfulness, and give no importance to caste, creed and religious ceremonies. This New Life will live by itself eternally, even if there is no one to live it.
  Meher Baba ended the New Life in February 1952 and once again began a round of public appearances throughout India and the West.
caption: Meher Baba with a mast in Bangalore, 1940
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