Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2006, Page 90
Although thankful to finally be able to leave Meher Baba‘s Ashram in Ahmednagar in India,
where her parents had taken her when she was seven, Ms. Brown is not engaged in a
crusade against Baba worship. She seems to view her religious involvement as an ordeal of
her childhood, which she had to go through, and which she now looks back on as something
alternately tedious and amusing. Readers may be somewhat reminded of other writers‘
accounts of their strict upbringing in Orthodox Jewish, Roman Catholic, or Protestant
Evangelical families. In any case, the author does not view her quirky upbringing as a cause
célèbre. She appears to view it as primarily an opportunity for a literary exercise. Her
narrative is quite entertaining.
For those readers who are not among the cognoscenti, Meher Baba was an Indian spiritual
master who claimed to be the ―Avatar of the Age.‖ Baba died, or rather ―dropped the
physical body,‖ in 1969 yet, according to the author, he still has about a hundred thousand
devotees worldwide. Meher Baba, the author notes, became ―moderately famous for
keeping a vow of silence for forty-four years and for coining the insipid motto ‗Don‘t worry,
be happy.‘‖ Ms. Brown does not inform us that Baba first became familiar to the American
counterculture of the 1960s through his denunciation of the spiritual pretensions of some
early psychedelic drug users. Baba‘s influential critique was embodied in his pamphlet, ―God
in a Pill?‖
I ought to acknowledge that from the mid-1960s until the mid-1980s, I was a sort of
hanger-on of the Meher Baba subculture. I never really connected with Baba on a deep
experiential level, but I envied the connection that some of my friends seemed to
experience. I lived for more than a half-decade in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where there
were many ―Baba-lovers,‖ and I paid several visits to the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle
Beach, South Carolina. When, decades later, I moved to the Midwest, I gradually lost
contact with all but two Baba-lovers.
Rachel Brown seems to view religion as a powerful but ultimately arbitrary psychic
obsession. ―We all have mental magnets for obsession,‖ she comments. ―[We‘re] waiting to
encounter an idea or person or practice of the opposite charge.‖ Her mother‘s ―magnet was
an exceptionally strong one, and it attracted her to Baba.‖ But her daughter can only
understand such an obsession by analogy for example,
...when I was a child, I was obsessed with animals. Now I‘m obsessed with
martial arts ...some people are obsessed with Star Trek, ferrets or a person
they‘re stalking. I can understand the fascination even if I can‘t understand
its object.
Rachel Brown has no idea ―why Baba‘s followers picked him over the other thirty flavors of
God‖ or why, when she was three years old, she became fixated on rabbits ―rather than
ponies or parakeets or Komodo dragons.‖ It may be rebellion, she speculates, but she‘ll
never know for certain why she can‘t share her parents‘ connection to Baba, ―why I lack the
God magnet.‖
Rachel Brown‘s ruminations seem to suggest that many of us possess intrinsically obsessive
personalities, and many persons who are not obsessed with religion or involved in a ―cult‖
may have other fixations which are ultimately just as intense, arbitrary, and seemingly
irrational. It should be noted, however, that Brown actually never had the experience of
being a true believer or convert, although she has been in a position to observe numerous
believers and conversions. Growing up in a devout, Baba-loving family, ―I sped toward the
Baba-magnet with everyone else, but I only followed their lead. I never felt the pull.‖
The author describes life at Baba‘s Ashram at Ahmednagar near Pune (Poona) in India. She
is aghast at some elements of life at the compound, such as the inadequate toilet facilities.
Initially taken by her parents to Baba‘s Ashram when she was only seven years old, Rachel

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2006, Page 91
Brown manages to depict the Ashram through the eyes of a clever but puzzled child. She is
introduced to the ―Mandali‖ (Baba‘s chief disciples), who pinch her cheeks. ―It was like being
introduced to some annoying ancient relative at Thanksgiving, except that there were
twenty of them, and they were not going to go away when the holidays were over.‖ She has
a somewhat traumatic experience when she is accosted by a ―Mast‖ or ―God-intoxicated‖
saint. A Mast, she has been told, may act like a madman, but he is really ―drunk on God,‖
and he is thus very spiritually advanced. Rachel realizes that, back home in Los Angeles, her
mother would grab my hand and run across the street if she saw a smelly old man talking to
himself. But here in Ahmednagar, they gave crazy people jobs and places to live and said
they were close to Baba. It was confusing.
When she was a child at the Ashram, Rachel decided that the idea that Baba was God was
an abstract notion, which she assumed she might one day come to understand. As an adult,
she now cannot accept Baba‘s divinity, but neither is she fiercely antagonistic to Baba. She
doesn‘t think that Baba can be dismissed ―as yet another charismatic con man.‖ She notes
that Baba ―did not amass wealth or stockpile weapons or use his followers for sex…‖
Moreover, ―a lifetime of self-imposed silence bespeaks sincerity.‖Rachel did not come to
accept the idea that Baba was God, ―but I believed that he believed it.‖
Unlike some apostates from esoteric religions, Rachel Brown is not on a fervent crusade.
She does, however, depict some Baba-lovers, principally her mother, as rather silly. ―At the
Ashram, Baba‘s name was on everybody‘s lips at all times. It was used as punctuation, as a
greeting, as an exclamation, as a goodbye or as a prayer.‖ The author‘s mother used Baba‘s
name as a sort of ―all-purpose conjunction, ‗Oh Baba, what a nice sunny day‘ ...‗Oh Baba,
the train‘s late again.‘‖ She even ―followed burps and sneezes with a trailing sigh of ‗Oh,
Baba, Baba, Baba, Baba, Baba, Baba, Baba.‘‖ Portraits like this may give readers an overall
negative impression of what it is to be a Baba-lover, although a careful reading will reveal
that not all devotees are as fatuous as the author depicts her own devout mother.
In fact, the author seems to be rather obsessed with her mother. She wants to discover
whether, as she strongly suspects, her mom was abused as a child by her father. (The
author reports receiving an actual sexual advance from her maternal grandfather.) Rachel
speculates on how childhood abuse has affected her mother‘s life and how it might relate to
her mother‘s spiritual apotheosis. Her mother, like other Baba-lovers, believes that one‘s
goal in life should be to work toward the extinction of one‘s illusory façade of self. Did her
abusive childhood ―make her wish she didn‘t exist?‖ Did the entire world now seem to
Rachel‘s mother to be treacherous? What can offer her ―more certainty, more pure and
sexless love ...and drive bad memories away than God Almighty? What could be less
threatening than a celibate God who didn‘t speak?‖
Of course, these are mainly tentative suggestions by the author. She realizes that
throughout history ―some people have always abandoned everything to go knocking on
God‘s door.‖ It seems likely that not all devotees are disturbed or neurotic.
Rachel Brown‘s memoir is particularly insightful in places. She may have a point in
attributing part of Meher Baba‘s appeal to his ambiguity. ―Baba-lovers often have widely
varying ideas of what Baba-loving is all about...‖ Moreover, ―many philosophies can find
support somewhere in the mass of Baba‘s writing.‖ The author treats Baba and his devotees
with skepticism but generally not with intense contempt. Nevertheless, some Baba-lovers
may have problems with the volume, as did the author‘s mother, who was not pleased with
a manuscript of several early chapters that she received. Satire and jocular ribbing will
sometimes present a more potent challenge to a faith than will strident denunciation.
This volume did, however, disappoint me in a few respects. Although the author doesn‘t
provide dates, which would have been helpful, it seems likely that Rachel Brown‘s sojourn in
Ahmednagar transpired a decade or more after my own marginal Baba involvement. She