I Love Baba-Lovers

“I am a potato.”

—Bhau Kalchuri

Sometimes I have heard people complaining about Baba-lovers—and Baba-lovers are as likely to be the complainers as anyone else. They say we are not very spiritual people, because we behave no better than worldly people. We talk about someone behind their back even though Baba told us that backbiting is the worst thing you can do. We hurt the hearts of others. We fail to control our desires. We may misbehave sexually, drink or eat too much, freely express anger, or even commit crimes. We walk around repeating “Jai Baba,” but we do not remember Baba as we should or act like a true Baba family toward one another.

I am not particularly surprised by any of this. The Avatar has come for one and all, and that means anyone can approach him with love and the longing to receive his grace. No qualifications are necessary. Sinners as well as saints are among his lovers. Maybe we are even in the majority. As many times as the so-called sinners offend you, they are offering you the opportunity to forgive and forget. One who recognizes this opportunity and takes advantage of it is not a saint but is on the way to being a lover.

The same people who are sinners one day may, on the next day, be the first to go out of their way to help you at the cost of their own comfort or to be kind to you when you are in trouble; and when you are sick or at the end of your life they will even be ready to wipe your bottom (try to stop them), repeat Baba’s name in your ear, and put your ashes to rest in places they are not supposed to. When you call on Baba for his help and guidance, a lover of Baba—visible or invisible—will come out of the woodwork and meet your need. Then they crawl back in and continue to be “bad Baba-lovers” as before, because we are all imperfect unless we are Perfect.

In a well-known message, Meher Baba indicates that those who would live the New Life should “believe in the lovers of God.” I believe in Baba-lovers—which does not oblige me to be close friends with every single one of them, or even to like them as individuals, but I have my connections and internal links that Meher Baba has established for me.

Baba said his lovers are really great. They love him—often without ever having met him or received any worldly blessing or spiritual advancement from him—not for what he gives them but because he is worthy of being loved, as God in human form. They have conviction that "he is who he says he is" for no reason that they can explain. And even if this conviction gives them no advantage whatsoever, and they cannot demonstrate any self-improvement to the world—looking like fools, idiots, failures, or potatoes—they continue to love him, without earning any special holiness thereby.

This is why I love Baba-lovers.