THE BOYS

The seed for The Boys: Life in the Prem Ashram of Meher Baba and Ever After was planted in mid-2015 with a re-reading of the book Sobs & Throbs, which tells the story of Syed Aga Ali and his association with Baba’s newly established free, all-faith, international ashram school that began in 1927. Aga Ali’s father initially begged Baba to take his son into the school, but soon after bowing to peer pressure from the Muslim community in Bombay, removed his boy from the school. Almost immediately, Ali escaped from Bombay to return to Baba. The escape would not be the last one for Ali, who over and over again ran away from his father to return to the ashram in Meherabad, India.

Initially, Baba established only the Meher Ashram, which offered a full academic curriculum as well as instruction in spirituality. Just months after the ashram began, a number of boys began to lean much more towards the spiritual offering, which on many days was being given to them directly by Spiritual Master Meher Baba. In a short time, a few of the boys developed a thirst for only God, losing interest in the academic subjects offered. This soon led Baba to established the offshoot Prem – Love – Ashram, which eventually would drop the Oxford University approved academic curriculum in favour of strictly spiritual daily instruction. Divine Love quickly took hold of a handful of youngsters.

The pages of The Boys looks at three of these lads – Esfandiar Vesali, Abdullah Pakravan (Chota Baba), and Syed Ali – our hero of Sobs & Throbs - their challenges, their agonies, and the unbounded ecstasies each achieved while under Meher Baba’s guidance and strict regime of spirituality at the Prem Ashram. Within six years, all three boys would separate physically from Meher Baba, and begin to pursue their very different adult lives in India and Persia. Esfandiar would maintain his physical connection with Baba throughout his long life; Abdullah, who achieved the sixth-plane of consciousness at the Prem Ashram, would physically separate from Baba in late 1929, never to see him again. And, Syed Ali, who would travel to the Western world with Baba in 1931, would never physically have contact again with his Spiritual Master after 1935. The different lifetime stories associated with our Prem Ashram trio in The Boys adheres tightly to the original Prem Ashram spiritual connection established; and how all three treasured and held fast to this precious Divine Love throughout their adult lives.

By Bob Mossman and Farshid Namiranian

Persian Translation by Shahin Khorsandi