"Love needs to flow, and it needs someplace to flow to..."

Your Friday photo…

Avatar Meher Baba said of His work contacting masts in India, "the God of love meets the God-intoxicated." This 1936 photo is of Avatar Meher Baba (right) and Mohammed the mast (left) embracing.

The following explanation of Avatar Meher Baba’s love for masts is from Befitting a Fortunate Slave: Meher Baba's Eruch by Davana Brown. Eruch Jessawala (1916-2001) was one of Meher Baba’s closest disciples who often interpreted Baba’s hand gestures and use of the alphabet board. Davana Brown is a resident volunteer at Meherazad and was Eruch’s assistant for 20 years after Meher Baba dropped His physical body.

Thank you to long-time visitor Martha Aubin for suggesting this passage.

“Love needs to flow, and it needs someplace to flow to, and the masts are the channels through which His love flows. ”

— Eruch Jessawala, Close Disciple of Avatar Meher Baba

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One of the most common questions, Davana Brown writes, that came up during pilgrim sessions in Mandali Hall (Meherazad, India) was: “Why did the Avatar go on mast hunts?”

Eruch Jessawala explained about Meher Baba and His travels all over India to make contact with these masts:

“The whole purpose is so beautiful: it is the outpouring of love from the very source of love.

“Love needs to flow, and it needs someplace to flow to, and the masts are the channels through which His love flows.

“He is like a huge reservoir of love that just wants to flow out, and they are the channels most beloved to Him, so He wants to adore them. He wants to worship them, and they want to worship Him.

“He says that He is the slave of the love of His lovers, and these masts are the ones who have become overwhelmed with love for the Lord.

“So He hunts them down and becomes the slave of that love, trying to serve that love. That is what He has told us.”

~Eruch Jessawala, Close Disciple of Meher Baba

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Masts (pronounced ‘must’)

According to Meher Baba, the word mast refers to advanced souls on the spiritual path who have an overwhelming experience of God’s presence and who are not conscious of their worldly surroundings. Totally absorbed in God, they no longer are able to function in the world. They are overcome by an agonizing love for God and are drowned in their ecstasy. Only love can reach them. Meher Baba called them God-intoxicated.

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• Sources
  Davana Brown, Befitting a Fortunate Slave: Meher Baba's Eruch, Volume I: By Your Grace Anything is Possible, pg. 418. (Myrtle Beach: Sheriar Foundation) ©2024 Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust, Ahmednagar, India.

• Bhau Kalchuri, Lord Meher: The Biography of the Avatar of the Age, Meher Baba, Online Edition, pg. 4003, accessed September, 2025. ©Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust, Ahmednagar, India.

• Photo: Avatar Meher Baba with Mohammed the mast in 1939. ©Meher Nazar Publications, Ahmednagar, India. Used with permission.

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"Sometimes that is the only solace for loss."

Your Friday photo...

Visitor Stephanie Ervin shared a memory and the perspectives gained from a photo she took at Meher Mount many years ago…

“I took this photo of a tree trunk on a misty day at Meher Mount in April 2013. A few months later I came back to find it was gone.”

“Loving something, appreciating it, enjoying it while it is present means that when it is no longer close to us, we have the comfort of knowing we did what we could with the time we had together. Sometimes that is the only solace for loss.”

— Stephanie Ervin, Visitor

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“There are times when the lessons I’ve learned at Meher Mount feel like a microcosm of the larger world. So much lives, thrives, is pared back, and then lost.

It is taken away by people, by time, by natural events, but all ultimately by God. 

This bare trunk was an ode to the tree that existed before.  

This particular photo captures a feeling that nothing is permanent. But for me, that is a reason to love it all the more: because it is impermanent. 

We never know how long we’ll have anything, how long we’ll be next to someone, how many days we will have in any one space.

Loving something, appreciating it, enjoying it while it is present means that when it is no longer close to us, we have the comfort of knowing we did what we could with the time we had together. Sometimes that is the only solace for loss.”

~Stephanie Ervin, Visitor

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"True love gathers power and spreads itself..." - Avatar Meher Baba

Your Friday photo in honor of Valentine’s Day...

This heart stone under Baba’s Tree at Meher Mount marks the spot where Avatar Meher Baba sat alone in 1956. It is a touchpoint for many visitors.

For Amartithi 2025, Martha Aubin decorated it with flowers. Later that day, Margaret Magnus took this photograph and was reminded of the following from Meher Baba on love.

“Essentially, love is self-communicative: Those who do not have it catch it from those who have it, for one cannot absorb love without making a response.

The secret of true love is that it is unconquerable and irresistible. True love gathers power and spreads itself until it transforms everyone it touches.

Humanity will attain a new mode of life through the unhampered interplay of pure love, as it spreads from heart to heart.”

— Avatar Meher Baba

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Source

D. E. Stevens, editor, Listen, Humanity, (c)Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust, Ahmednagar, India.

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