1930s

World Travel

 In the 1930s, Meher Baba began a period of extensive world travel.

He traveled on a Persian passport because he had given up writing as well as speaking and would not sign the forms required by the British government of India. Baba proclaimed himself "one with the infinite source of everything".

It was during this period that he established contact with his first close group of Western disciples. He traveled on a Persian passport because he had given up writing as well as speaking and would not sign the forms required by the British government of India.

On his first trip to England in 1931 he traveled on the SS Rajputana, the same ship that was carrying Mahatma Gandhi, who was sailing to the second Round Table Conference in London.

Baba and Gandhi had three meetings onboard, including one that lasted for three hours. The British press highlighted these meetings, but an aide to Gandhi said, "You may say emphatically that Gandhi never asked Meher Baba for help or for spiritual or other advice."

On 20 May 1932 Baba arrived in New York and provided the press with a 1000-word written statement, which was described by devotee Quentin Todd as his "Message to America".

In the statement Baba proclaimed himself "one with the infinite source of everything" and declared his intention to break his silence: "When I speak, my original message will be delivered to the world and it will have to be accepted." When asked about the Indo-British political situation he had no comment, but his followers explained that he had told Gandhi to abandon politics.

In the West, Meher Baba met with a number of celebrities and artists, including Hollywood notables Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton, Tallulah Bankhead, Boris Karloff, Tom Mix, Maurice Chevalier, Ernst Lubitsch and others. On 1 June 1932 Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. held a reception for Baba at Pickfair where he delivered a message to Hollywood. As a result, Meher Baba emerged as "one of the enthusiasms of the ‘30s".

In 1934, after announcing that he would break his self-imposed silence in the Hollywood Bowl, Baba suddenly changed his plans and boarded the RMS Empress of Canada and sailed to Hong Kong without explanation. The Associated Press reported that "Baba had decided to postpone the word-fast breaking until next February because 'conditions are not yet ripe'." He returned to England in 1936 but did not return to the United States again until the early 1950s.

In the late 1930s, Meher Baba invited a group of Western women to join him in India, where he arranged a series of trips throughout India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) that became known as the Blue Bus Tours. When they returned home, many newspapers treated their journey as an occasion for scandal. 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 [sic] Meher Baba" four years earlier.