The Memoirs of a Zetetic: My Life with Meher Baba
by Amiya Kumar Hazra. Revised & expanded 2nd ed.
Hyderabad: Meher Mownavani Publications, 2001
Reviewed by Kendra Crossen Burroughs
Professor Hazra’s memoir is one of the most enjoyable collections of reminiscences of Meher Baba that I have ever read. The book was first published in 1987 by Dr. H. P. Bharucha, but now it has been reissued in a good-quality revised and expanded edition, with editing by Keith Gunn, wonderfully large, readable type, a few illustrations (facsimiles of letters), and a gorgeous cover painting of Baba by Nadia Wolinski.
The good professor (of English literature)—who was born into a Bengali brahmin family in 1931--has an endearing way with words. This is not “Indian English”; it is a skillful and animated use of language with a charming Indian flavor and a delight in words such as “zetetic,” which I challenge you to find in an average dictionary, unless you have one of those big Oxford monsters. It means a skeptic and a seeker, and that describes the young Amiya, an intellectual with a great curiosity about truth but a doubting mind. His story is the journey of a “head” that became pure “heart” after falling into Baba’s love-snare. Along the way we read of many entertaining autobiographical details, not to mention the touching and amusing encounters with Baba, correspondence with the Beloved (his first letter to Baba began with the salutation “My Surgeon-Lover!”), and a number of marvelous spiritual experiences.
If you missed this book the first time around, now is the time to grab a copy and let Professor Hazra share with you the thrills of his love affair with God in human form:
In His letter, Meher Baba had asked me to "love Him more." Now, I had a photograph of Meher Baba in my hotel room. His beautiful face shone, His lovely eyes looked at me, His lips concealed a secret smile of affection. I looked and looked at Him and then one day suddenly I seized the photograph of Meher Baba and kissed the lips. I put the photograph on my bosom and pressed it onto my heart. What was I doing? I looked at Baba's face again. Did it shine brighter, was the smile more bewitching? I did not know, I understood nothing. I just madly kissed the photo again and again, hugged it to my heart repeatedly and still felt dissatisfied with all those adora-tions. Oh God, what was happening? That night I did not lie on my bed alone. Meher Baba's photograph was with me and first I kept it on my heart and then by the side of my pillow. I had the most intimate experience of companionship and the sweetest sleep that night. Morning came, and with it the un-ebbing conviction that this was the preliminary experience of that longing for the pure, the good, the sublime and the dear-est entity--the love--that saints have called "love for God."