I Am GOD : Synopsis

This film is based on Beloved Avatar MEHER BABA. MEHER BABA'S life reflects a great combination of divine & human perfection...His compassionate love, tireless service ,unlimited wisdom, delightful humor have made him the AVATAR of the Age.

Merwan Sheriar Irani was born on February 25, 1894, in Poona, India, into a Zoroastrian family. His father, a genuine seeker for God, was informed by the Spiritual Hierarchy that God Realization would come to him through his son. “Meher Baba” as he came to be called by his disciples was spiritually awakened by Hazrat Babajan by kissing him on the forehead. Almost immediately he entered into a transcendental state of mind out of touch with normal gross consciousness. He scarcely ate or slept for nine months.

Dazed and apparently insane, he made his way during the next year to Shirdi Sai Baba, the chief of the five Perfect Masters, who acknowledged him publicly as the Sustainer of the Universe, and sent him to Upasni Maharaj. As soon as that master saw the young man approaching, he picked up a stone and threw it at his face with great force. It struck him on the forehead exactly where Hazrat Babajan had kissed him. Thus began a painful five-year process of regaining normal consciousness while retaining his divine state.

During the 1920's he gathered and rigorously trained his inner circles of disciples while founding an active spiritual community in Ahmednagar, India, with schools, hospitals and other public service projects. In the middle of the decade he became silent and never again uttered a word. For 44 years he communicated by spelling words on an alphabet board and through hand gestures, including two important books, God Speaks and Discourses.

In 1931 he came to the West for the first time, traveling on the same ship that took Mahatma Gandhi to the Round Table Conference in London. During that voyage, he became Gandhi's spiritual adviser. In England and America he gathered a select group of western disciples, some of whom joined him in India later on. He visited his disciples in the West a half dozen times before the Second World War.

He established two places of pilgrimage outside of India during the 1950's, Meher Spiritual Center, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, U.S.A., and Avatar's Abode, near Brisbane, Australia. It was necessary to spill his blood in America, he said, and while there to dedicate his center, major bones were broken and his face severely smashed in a car accident. A few years later he suffered a similar fate in India.

He became well known in the West during the 1960's by opposing the use of LSD and other drugs in the quest for spiritual experiences. In the last years he largely withdrew from public life and intensified his work in seclusion, announcing in the fall of 1968 that his work was completed. On January 31, 1969, one month before his 76th birthday, he left his body, which now lies in the tomb near Ahmednagar, a place of pilgrimage for those who love him.