by Kendra Crossen Burroughs
Published in Glow International, Spring 2017
Meher Baba says:
Never has there been a female Avatar, nor will there ever be one. The Avatar has always been a male and will always be in a male form.1
Women can become saints and Sadgurus [Perfect Masters], but the Avatar always appears in male form.2
Modern feminism has long questioned why men should monopolize positions of spiritual leadership in institutional religion. Conservative religions deny women such roles as priests and other clergy, as well as participation in forms of worship and practices reserved for men. Even “spiritual but not religious” people are often puzzled by the fact that the recognized enlightened ones of the world are predominantly men.
The dearth of women acknowledged by the world as Masters is often blamed on patriarchal oppression. Do men somehow prevent women from advancing on the Path? The notion of men’s deliberate oppression of women has been challenged by the philosopher Ken Wilber, who says, “This picture necessarily paints women basically as sheep, as weaker and/or stupider than men. Instead of seeing that, at every stage of human evolution, men and women co-created the social forms of their interaction, this picture defines women primarily as molded by an Other. … [But] men are simply not that piggy, and women not that sheepy.”3
Amid the flourishing of feminism in the 1960s, Avatar Meher Baba won the hearts of a generation preoccupied with liberation movements of all kinds, including the ultimate liberation, God-realization. While some Baba-lovers evaluated Baba’s teachings with a discriminating intellect, others instantly accepted everything he said as God-given Truth. Whatever subject was raised, the question was always “What did Baba say about that?” If you were puzzled or displeased by anything Baba had said, it was, in the words of Hafiz, “due to your own incapacity to understand” the Master. “Whatever the Master says, accept it with all your heart without thinking.”4 Perhaps it is for this reason that I have rarely heard Baba-lovers who are otherwise feminist-leaning complain about Meher Baba’s assertion that the Avatar always appears in male form.
Meher Baba’s Definition of “Avatar”
Meher Baba’s unique definition of the term “Avatar”—as the same Ancient One who returns again and again in different human forms to bring salvation to humanity and a push to all evolutionary forms—is one of the distinctive teachings of this advent. The Avatar and his role are described in Meher Baba’s Discourses and his masterwork, God Speaks: “According to the divine law … at the end of every cycle, when God manifests on earth in the form of man and reveals His divinity to mankind, He is recognized as the Avatar—the Messiah—the Prophet. The direct descent of God on earth as Avatar is that independent status of God when God directly becomes man without undergoing or passing through the processes of evolution, reincarnation and involution of consciousness.”5
The traditional Hindu concept of avatāra is simply a direct descent of any deity, such as Vishnu or the Divine Mother, into a physical form. But Baba uses “Avatar” (which we capitalize as an English proper noun) to mean a single, unique divine incarnation. While Christians believe that Jesus Christ is God’s “only begotten Son,” the Avatar in Baba’s sense returns again and again throughout the ages with different names and in different forms, but he is “always one and the same, because God is always One and the Same.”6 Meher Baba declared himself to be that sole Avatar for the present age.
While some traditions might accept a variety of divine incarnations existing simultaneously, in Baba’s sense there can only be one Avatar at a time. This frequently gets him into trouble—or rather it gets us in trouble when we tell people about Baba, because it’s not acceptable in current new age circles to place one man at the top of a hierarchy, like some sort of spiritual dictator. Hierarchical ranking is widely rejected as judgmental. It is sad that many people decline to learn more about Meher Baba because they react negatively to his declaration of Avatarhood, as if his being the Highest of the High automatically means oppression of the lower by the higher.
Baba’s definition superficially appears exclusive (as if he were saying, “I’m the Avatar and you’re not”), unless one grasps his message that we are all avatars, or embodiments of the Divine—even the ant and the sparrow—but we just don’t know it yet.7 In addition, when people draw the inference that if Baba is THE Avatar, then no other great contemporaneous teacher can possibly have been an avatar, this contradicts their assumptions about equal “access” to spiritual roles, and so they are alienated. Even worse, when it is said that the Avatar “can’t” be female, many minds and hearts snap shut, because this goes against prevailing ideas of gender equality and the wish to have more female spiritual leaders. The truth that Meher Baba brings is a fresh dispensation of the perennial wisdom, which can appear old-fashioned to the modern sensibility even when it is in fact ahead of its time.
The idea that there could be advanced saints, both male and female, who are hidden from the public is one of the revelations of Meher Baba’s that have not caught fire. Spiritual-minded people today are in some respects worldly-minded: they want to see visible, tangible results. They assume that the greatest spiritual personalities are those who receive world renown, such as the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa. How many people today, especially outside of India, are aware of spiritual agents, mastanis, and Masters such as Upasni Maharaj, who trained his female disciples to perform Vedic rituals traditionally reserved for the male priesthood?
When the world at large comes to know who Meher Baba is (as he predicted will occur as a result of his breaking his silence),8 the role of the God-Man will finally be understood in a new way. The explanations that Meher Baba gave about the Avatar and the spiritual hierarchy are among the special aspects of the dispensation of Truth in this age that have yet to take the world by storm.
God Is Father and Mother
One of things Baba has revealed about the Avatar is that within his circle of close disciples is an indispensable feminine counterpart. Sita-Rama, Radha-Krishna, Mary-Jesus, and Mehera-Meher are pairs that Baba has identified. The Avatar’s Circle consists of ten circles with twelve members in each, and two female “appendages.” Mehera was one of these special women, Mani the other. Bhau Kalchuri expressed Mehera’s unique place in the Beloved's circle in this way: In the beginning, when creation took place, the first drop [the Avatar] got God-realization, then became the first Perfect Master. He worships Maya, because Maya was and is the medium for Realization of God. Therefore, when he comes down on earth, age after age, he brings someone to represent the whole of creation, which has all the opposite attributes of God. Mehera was that one.9
One evening many years ago, a newcomer came to Meher Baba House in New York and asked us staffers questions about Meher Baba. Someone told her about the importance of Mehera to Baba, and she commented, “Oh, so Mehera is the Divine Mother.” A Baba-lover named Govinda immediately corrected her: “No, Baba is the Divine Mother.”
I and my husband, Jonathan Burroughs, once I watched an interview with the TV producer Norman Lear in which he described the role of the U.S. president as that of a father: he said, “The country needs a father, in every sense of the word. And a father helps you understand your own humanity … who you are as a human being.” Jonathan immediately said, “He’s talking about Baba!” How true; more than ever, the entire world needs a Father—a Compassionate Father.
Meher Baba said, “All religions of the world proclaim that there is but one God, the Father of all in creation. I am that Father.”10 But interestingly, Baba also said that his advent is unique because “in this incarnation of the Avatar, God has the chance, as it were, to play the part of both Father and Mother.”11 So the Avatar is always male, yet in Meher Baba he plays the part of the Mother for all creation.
What’s the Explanation?
I do not know of any detailed explanation given by Meher Baba about why the Avatar is always male. A number of anecdotes show that Baba often was annoyed by his lovers’ request for explanations. Baba explicitly told Elizabeth Patterson that “Avatars, Sadgurus, and Masters never reveal their way of working. If they do so, it entails more work for them”12 Baba came not to answer questions but to do his work, which was not to teach but to awaken.
Meher Baba told Delia DeLeon: “You may use your intellect, but not at the cost of disbelieving my words or disobeying my orders. You may think, for as long as you have a mind, you have to think. Your mind never stops thinking! It will tell you that it could not be night when your eyes see sunlight. So remember not to let the mind lead you to disbelieve in the Master's words. You must think and understand that there is some important reason and purpose behind whatever the Master says or does and that he always does it for the benefit of others. Whatever he does is always for the best. So do as the guru tells you and let the mind think as it likes, but never obey it”13
If a sincere person simply wants to know more about a topic as part of a quest for truth, rather than because of political motivations, there can be benefit in contemplating any point that Baba has raised. I feel that my approach to the question “Why does the Avatar come only in a male form?” should be accompanied by nonattachment to gender and physical body, and guided by looking at the big picture, the role of human existence in the advancing stream of life.
The Archetypal Masculine
The fact that the major world teachers were men does not imply that women are “not allowed” to become Masters. I think the reason why the Avatar is always male (unless Baba was pulling our leg) could be due to archetypal qualities that are intrinsic to the male form. For one, Baba did say, “God-realization is usually obtained while living in a human form, as with the human form comes authority. But there is a special authority that comes with the male human form.”14 He did not say what was special about male authority. I think it’s clear that many of the strengths associated with masculinity are also found in women, but not in exactly the same way.
Some people resist assigning qualities to the masculine and feminine principles because they think it leads to stereotyping. The masculine principle is usually seen as active and the feminine as passive or receptive. In Indian philosophy, however, the masculine Purusha is the serene, unmoving Spirit, while the feminine Prakriti is the ever-active force of Nature.
In most mythologies, the first being who emerges from primordial unity is masculine. The Whim that spontaneously blossomed into Creation is an active initiative. Sky deities tend to be masculine, and the sky is perceived as the highest or most supreme. But the sky god, or God the Father, seems distant and remote to many people, and it’s necessary for His Son to come down and be active on earth as a Savior. This idea of “descent,” is intrinsic to the meaning of the Sanskrit avatāra—the fact that the Avatar “comes down” into human form already fully realized instead of gradually ascending into God-realization by going through the stages of the Path as does the Sadguru (Perfect Master), who may be male or female.
Baba says, “The difference between the divine status of a Qutub or Sadguru and the Avatar of the Age is that a Qutub, after having gone through the whole process of cosmic evolution, enters and lives the life of God as Man-God, while the Avatar does not have to go through the process of evolution at all because the Avatar is that highest status of God where God directly becomes man and lives on earth as God-Man.”15 It is important to remember that the Avatar is not a male who was chosen to “become” the Son of God. Rather, when God descends into human form, that form naturally manifests in a male body. Why this should be so is something worth thinking about rather than dismissing as unjust. Male and female are two sides of the same coin. Baba has said, in his discourse on marriage, that in parenting there need not be any injustice in the roles shared between man and woman. The same principle could be applied to other aspects of male-female relationships, if we could remember that “he and she are not them, but us.”
Meher Baba writes about “the special prerogative that even the Sadgurus and the Avatars have to be born through the female form. The male form has the prerogative that the majority of the Sadgurus appear in male form.”16 Cynics might deem it sexist to associate women primarily with the role of motherhood. Our secular age is so degenerate that it fails to truly appreciate the sacred significance of motherhood, or even of the human being itself, let alone God in human form. At the same time, most people agree that “the mother who is willing to sacrifice all and to die for her child” is one of the two highest forms of human love, along with soldiers willing to die for their country. In modern society, we know that fathers sacrifice for their children and women soldiers die for their county. But all such loves are far from the “pure love which is born through the grace of the Master.”17
The Last Word
Even if I were a great scholar or sage capable of giving expert answers to the question of male Avatarhood, I could not prevent people from continuing to argue exceptions or objections to my line of thinking. So although I cannot give a “last word” even in terms of my own opinion, I can offer a compelling speculation.
At a New England Baba meeting I once attended, Steve Klein offered an insightful comment that has stuck with me for years, and I recently confirmed it with him. Steve half-jokingly said that he wouldn’t be surprised if the Avatar came back the next time as a woman. What? A female Avataric advent, when Baba has emphatically stated that the Avatar only comes in male form?
The explanation must lie in more than just Meher Baba’s love of a good prank. Baba has said that the Avatar is recognized by very few during his own lifetime. Even those who have been with him in past incarnations may fail to recognize him if, in their present life, they adhere too rigidly to the expectations of a particular belief system—much like Christians who would not accept Meher Baba as Jesus come again because he did not literally fulfill all the biblical prophecies. Whatever form the future Meher Baba following may take, we can imagine that in 700 years there could be Baba-lovers who, awaiting Meher Baba’s reappearance in male form, would reject a woman who proclaimed herself the Avatar of the Age.
People coming from a place of attachment to dogmas would fail to recognize her, whereas those coming from the heart would be among the fortunate few who accept and surrender to a future advent of the Divine Beloved in female form. But the real point of this speculation, as Steve Klein explained, is that if you follow Baba’s words exclusively, instead of your heart, you will miss him next time.
Charles Haynes, in a Meher Center talk in 2007, put it this way: “He is not his Discourses, the mandali, the Center, India … he is none of that, he is not even Meher Baba. It will be what we experience in our hearts—not what he says or looks like—that will give him away next time when he comes again. Only that recognition—‘It’s You!’”
A woman, of course, has to have the last word. Mehera tells us:
“Love Baba dearly, so the next time, when Baba is physically present, you all will be near him to serve him in his physical form, to love him, to be near him, to look in his beautiful eyes, and see his lovely smile.”18
Notes
1. Lord Meher, 1620 (1934).
2. Discourses (1967), “Reincarnation and Karma: IV,” vol. 3, p. 75.
3. Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, pp. 10–11.
4. Hafiz, quoted by Meher Baba, Lord Meher, 3848.
5. God Speaks, pp.148–49 check
6. “The Highest of the High,” 1953 message, Lord Meher, 3392.
7. “… not only is the Avatar God, but also the ant and the sparrow, just as one and all of you are nothing but God.” In “Meher Baba’s Call,” 1954 message, Lord Meher, 3554.
8. “When I break my silence the world will come to know that I am the Avatar of this age.” Lord Meher, 5157 (1965).
9. Bhau Kalchuri, Bhau’s, “May 20th ‘Awakening’—How Can a
Shadow Be Killed? (The Opposite Attributes of God),” 20 May 2001, http://www.jaibaba.com/mandali/bhau/bhau_5_20.html.
10. “My Dear Children,” 1962 message, Lord Meher, 4863.
11. 1958; see Lord Meher, 4282–83 (quote given below).
12. Mehera-Meher, digital ed., vol. 2, p. 101.
13. “Playing with Illusion,” 1953 message, Lord Meher, 3434.
14. Lord Meher, 1536 (1933).
16. Lord Meher, 678 (1926).
17. Discourses (6th ed., 1967), “Reincarnation and Karma: IV,” vol. 3, p. 75.
18. Discourses (6th ed., 1967), “The Types of Meditation: II,” vol. 2, p. 123.
… the Beyond-God … is both the Father and Mother in one. During cycles of cycles of time, after ages, when God descends as the Avatar on this material plane, he always takes a male form. He is never born as a woman. Avatars are the Sons of the Father in the Beyond state. All the past Avataric periods witnessed the presence of the Avatar as the healthy, bright, intellectual Son of the God-Beyond. This means in my previous advents I always remained the Beloved Son of my Father.
I was like the six sons of the worldly parents.
But in the past, the Beyond-God did not have the occasion of playing the part of God the Mother. In this Avataric period, God the Father is very pleased with me at my being infinitely bright, infinitely intelligent, infinitely brilliant, ustad [masterful], and so forth. I give promises and never fulfill them. I am bright and shrewd, as my Father wants me to be, and I am the Beloved Son of my Father.
At the same time, in this form, I am physically disabled. In America in 1952, I broke the left side of my physical frame from head to foot. Now in India, the right side has been completely shattered in the recent auto accident. Besides being physically disabled, I am infinitely bhola [innocent], guileless and easily duped. Therefore, I always listen to all that you say and yield to your wishes. I have not the strength to say no to any of you, nor refuse any of your requests, despite my plans, instructions and circulars. Thus, I am the well-beloved Son of God as the Mother also. In this incarnation of the Avatar, God has the chance, as it were, to play the part of both Father and Mother.
—Meher Baba, quoted in Lord Meher, 4282-83