(May 1958) Baba signaled for a break. Some remained clustered around his chair, especially the children. On resumption, he asked:
Have you all heard of Saint Mira? In India, everyone knows her. People sing the bhajans sung by her in praise of Krishna. Mira was a very beautiful girl. She was the wife of a royal prince of a wealthy family in north India, who later became king. She loved Krishna with all her heart, but did not live at the time of Krishna, who lived five thousand years before. Mira lived about three hundred years ago. Her husband did not like the way she was going about in the streets, for she was the queen, and queens did not mix with the crowd. She would enter the huts of the poor with the name of Krishna on her lips as she sang. She suffered many trials and threats to test her love for Krishna. She was locked up in a room, her food was poisoned, a cobra was concealed in a bouquet of flowers. She accepted all as the gift of her Lord Krishna, and nothing happened. Krishna protected her. She refused to have anything to do with anyone but her Lord Krishna.
Finally, the king drove her away into exile. She said: “If the king drives me out, I have a place. But if the Lord of the universe is displeased, I have no place.” The people, too, turned against her.
As years passed, she looked radiant in her rags. Then the king came and fell at her feet. For a man in India to bow down to a woman is a sin, and to his wife, unforgivable. Yet, he fell at her feet because she was sincere. When she died, all revered her, and now people repeat her bhajans.
I am Krishna. I want all of you to love me as Mira loved me. Mehera’s love is different and cannot be compared with Mira’s. (1)
(1) As Meher Baba’s chief woman disciple, Mehera J. Irani represented the divine female counterpart of the Avatar. She was not a saint like Mira (the medieval holy woman of the Vaishnava sect founded by Sadguru Chaitanya devoted to Krishna during the 1500s), but played a divine role in the Avatar’s circle representing Original Maya. In this sense, Mehera played the same divine role as Sita did with Ram, or Radha did with Krishna thousands of years ago.
[Baba’s beloved Mehera, dropped her body on May 20, 1989].
Lord Meher, Original Publication, Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 15, p. 5432.