Meher Baba’s New Life
by Bhau Kalchuri
Reviewed by Kendra Crossen Burroughs
Just when you thought you’d read as much as you could of Bhau Kalchuri’s 20-volume, 6,742-page biography of Meher Baba, Lord Meher, here comes the indefatigable Bhau with a weighty 700-page tome on the New Life. In this book we have the most detailed account to date of this fascinating and mysterious phase of Meher Baba’s universal work, which took place between 1949 and 1952. It’s illustrated with many delightful photographs of Baba and his companions and lovers, as well as maps and photos of sites visited during the New Life.
There are some Baba-lovers who buy and read every book about Baba that comes out, while others are not so big on reading (and the time it takes) and unlikely to tackle a narrative of this scope and detail. For the second group, the book at least lends itself well to browsing, and you will find yourself getting absorbed in the stories that you find about the adventures and experiences of Baba, his mandali companions, and his lovers who stayed behind, living as best they could under Baba’s orders while believing, as he had told them, that they would never see him again. You will get a glimpse of what the “enjoyment of misery” means and why the New Life companions reported that although they suffered many hardships and discomforts, they were sustained by the joy of Baba’s presence and companionship.
The two and a half years of the New Life encompass an awesome range of activities and conditions. Some examples:
• giving up everything and becoming “hopeless and helpless”
• strict obedience to Baba’s orders (for some, this included no touching the opposite sex, no touching money, no correspondence or reading the newspaper, etc.), while at the same time regarding him as a companion rather than a master (which meant no darshan, no blessings, “no spirituality”), with punishments for disobedience such as having to slap Baba in the face
• the requirement to be cheerful under any circumstances and avoid expressing negative emotions (Baba said, “You have to be lords and masters of your faces”)
• the gypsylike wandering of Baba and his companions—a motley group of men and women pilgrims of various religions and castes, wearing strange clothing and accompanied by an odd array of animals, begging for their food and sleeping in cold, uncomfortable places
• labor and business endeavors such as the New Life ghee company, a business that failed because the ghee produced by the companions was too pure compared with the cheaper, adulterated products of their competitors
• contact with masts, saints, and sadhus
• seclusion work
• the construction of small models of religious structures (mosque, temple, stupa, church, fire urn) for some mysterious work of Baba’s
• “utter ruination” (satyanashi) and the “annihilation of the mind” (Manonash), which Bhau says means annihilation of impressions and individual life but not of the real ego merged in divinity
This book can be a valuable reference work, although unfortunately it lacks an index. I hope it will eventually appear online in a searchable format, as was done with Lord Meher. It could have also benefited from a chronology, because in such a long, detailed work, it is hard to keep an overview and remember what exactly happened when (which is why my little list above is in no particular order). Jeff Wolverton has written a good foreword; I wish he had made it longer, because again, with such a long work, it’s helpful to have an introduction that orients readers before they plunge right into the details. I also note that no clear explanation is given of what this account is based on, other than the vague notion that diaries and reminiscences were used. Such lack of documentation is disappointing for those who are concerned about scholarship. However, it’s understandable that providing it may have been beyond practicality. The team of people who worked so hard to produce this impressive volume already had enough to do and were probably not able to document the research in the conventional way, especially without delaying publication.
I say “team of people” because, not only do we see from the acknowledgments that many contributed their skills (and financial support), but also it seems rather obvious that Bhau didn’t literally write most of this book (unless much of it is drawn from his previous publications, but again, we aren’t told, and I didn’t try to check). If you didn’t know this just from the un-Bhau-like tone of the writing in many places, a giveaway is the appearance of the heading “Author’s Note” in various spots. How odd that this should be specified: don’t we assume that the whole thing is written by the author? But these headings do help by signaling that here you will get a commentary or interpretation by Bhau, something that is much appreciated when we read about the enigmatic events of Baba’s advent.
Finally, there is a valuable conclusion written by Bhau in which he discusses what following the New Life means for us today while living in the world, especially the significance of the three alternative plans that Baba outlined, and what it means to be hopeless and helpless. I won’t give away its content—you’ll have to get the book! But this 30-page supplement would make a wonderful article in itself if published separately for those who may not have access to this volume.
Afterword: After this was published in the Love Street Lamp Post, someone read my review to Bhau in India and asked him whether he had really written the book. He said he really had. I apologized to him. (This follow-up was also published in the Lamp Post.) What could I say? I usually don’t like to give critical reviews of my fellow Baba-lovers, but my editorial perfectionism got the better of me. I wish this book had been made more accessible. You just can’t inhale the New Life in one breath. Indeed it takes a “new life”-time. Perhaps a simpler version could be created by a skilled abridger, based on this longer work.