The spiritual teacher Meher Baba stated that " or the aspirant a life of strict celibacy is preferable to married life, if restraint comes to him easily without undue sense of self-repression.

The spiritual teacher Meher Baba described dualism as consisting of the opposites of experience, which must become balanced before one can go beyond them: " Evolution from the standpoint of the Creator is a divine sport, in which the Unconditioned tests the infinitude of His absolute knowledge, power and bliss in the midst of all conditions.

* 1969 – Meher Baba, Indian guru ( b. 1894 )

* 1925 – Meher Baba begins his silence of 44 years.

* Silence Day ( Followers of Meher Baba )

Other guests included George Bernard Shaw, Albert Einstein, Elinor Glyn, Helen Keller, H. G. Wells, Lord Mountbatten, Fritz Kreisler, Amelia Earhart, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Noël Coward, Max Reinhardt, Baron Nishi, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Austen Chamberlain, Sir Harry Lauder, and the Indian spiritual teacher Meher Baba.

Meher Baba ( 25 February 1894 – 31 January 1969 ), born Merwan Sheriar Irani, was an Indian mystic and spiritual master who declared publicly in 1954 that he was the Avatar of the age.

The name Meher Baba means " Compassionate Father " in Persian and was given to him by his first followers.

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.

In 1931, Meher Baba made the first of many visits to the West, where he attracted many followers.

Throughout most of the 1940s, Meher Baba worked with a category of spiritual aspirant called masts, whom he said are entranced or spellbound by internal spiritual experiences.

" On 10 February 1954, Meher Baba declared that he was the Avatar ( an incarnation of God ).

Meher Baba was an Irani born in Pune, India to a Zoroastrian family.

His early followers gave him the name " Meher Baba ," meaning Compassionate Father.

In 1922, Meher Baba and his followers established " Manzil-e-Meem " ( House of the Master ) in Bombay ( now Mumbai ).

A year later, Baba and his mandali moved to an area a few miles outside Ahmednagar that he named " Meherabad " ( Meher flourishing ).

In 1924, Meher Baba created a resident school at Meherabad that he named the " Prem Ashram " ( in several languages " prem " means " love ").

From 10 July 1925 until his death in 1969, Meher Baba was silent.

Meher Baba said that his silence was not undertaken as a spiritual exercise but solely in connection with his universal work.

From 1925 until 1954 Meher Baba communicated by pointing to letters on an alphabet board.

Meher Baba often signaled the moment " that he would ' break ' his silence by speaking the ' Word ' in every heart, thereby giving a spiritual push forward to all living things.

Meher Baba said that the breaking of his silence would be a defining event in the spiritual evolution of the world.

On many occasions Meher Baba promised to break his silence with an audible word before he died, often stating a specific time and place when this would occur, but according to all contemporary accounts, Meher Baba remained silent until his death.

Meher Baba at Paramount Film Studio, London, April 1932

Between 1938 and 1943, at the request of Princess Norina Matchabelli, one of his earliest Western devotees, Meher Baba dictated a series of discourses on his alphabet board for the Meher Baba Journal.

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.

In September 1953, at Dehradun, Meher Baba declared that he was " The Highest of the High.

In September of that year, Meher Baba gave a " men-only " sahavas at Meherabad that later became known as the " Three Incredible Weeks.

In 1956, during his fifth visit to the US, Baba stayed at New York's Hotel Delmonico before traveling to the Meher Center at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

He then traveled to Meher Mount at Ojai, California before continuing on to Australia.

Meher Baba's body was laid out for public viewing at his samadhi ( tomb-shrine ) at Meherabad.

Three prayers written by Meher Baba, " O Parvardigar ", the " Prayer of Repentance " and the " Beloved God Prayer ," are recited morning and evening at his samadhi in India and are often recited at gatherings.

" For a time, at the beginning of her career, Melanie was a follower of Meher Baba and this influenced some of her songs ( such as " Love to Lose Again " and " Candles in the Rain ").

Pir Meher Ali Shah of Golra Sharif is recognised by some as the person at the forefront in striving to bring Ghulam Ahmad and his movement down.

Ahmad's followers claim that he had categorically vowed in Anjam-e-Atham not to engage in any more debates, as he judged them ineffective at convincing the religious clergy to reform ( the reason why he had challenged Meher Ali Shah to such a decisive contest in the first place and not to a debate ); rather, he would invoke God for divine intervention by holding such contests or " prayer duels ", which he called Ejazi-Muqabala, or " miraculous contest ", between him and his opponents, primarily Christian missionaries and Muslim scholars and divines.

The album is a critical, perhaps satirical look at Townshend's own life: the dedication of his music to Meher Baba's teachings, and his Lifehouse project, which closely resembles the Gridlife project the Ray High character is working on.

Meher Baba designed Sufism Reoriented as a universal spiritual school which recognizes a central core of divine love at the heart of all spiritual systems.

In the 1930s, this recording was given to the Indian spiritual teacher Meher Baba, who later asked that it be played seven times at his tomb when his body was laid to rest, which occurred a week after his death on 31 January 1969.

Wadia's wife died in Kashmir in the mid 1930s and he married Meher Gustadji K. Medivala at Colombo in 1940.

Time Magazine's 1936 review of God is my Adventure describes the US's fascination with the " long-haired, silky-mustached Parsee named Shri Sadgaru Meher Baba " four years earlier.

According to Meher Baba the Avatar appears on Earth every 700 – 1400 years and is ' brought down ' into human form by the five Perfect Masters of the time to aid in the process of moving creation in its never-ending journey toward Godhood.