By Jean Adriel.
4th edition, published 2026.
Softcover, 410 pages.
In the late 1960s, there were only two biographies of Meher Baba's life available. One was The God-Man by Charles Purdom, published in 1962. It was a classical biography of Meher Baba's life up to that time. The other was Avatar by Jean Adriel, published in 1947. This book was written both as a first-person account of the author's spiritual preparation to her meeting with Meher Baba in 1931, and a biography of Meher Baba using sources available to her in the mid-1940s.
Avatar is quite personal, vividly revealing the inner challenges in one's relationship with Meher Baba, and an intimate biography of Meher Baba written by one who had a deep background in Western Metaphysics and Depth Psychology. Jean had an extensive inner life even before she heard of Meher Baba. She and Princess Norina Matchabelli were close friends, and each had numerous spiritual experiences before meeting Baba.
I first met Jean in Los Angeles in 1970 when she was 78 years old. We hit it off instantly and had a deep mutual recognition of an old loving relationship rekindled. I had read her book Avatar and was fascinated by her first-person description of life with Meher Baba. Jean and I spent a great deal of time with each other on weekends as I was working as a Montessori teacher. After suffering a stroke in 1976 she lived with my wife and I for about 6 months in Altadena, California.
And now, some 40 years after Jean's passing, we have decided that this book is too important for it to not be available in print. We have reproduced it in its original form, with only a few corrections in punctuation and grammar to make it more consistent to the modern reader, while taking care to preserve the flow of the book and Jean's original prose.
--John Page
February 2026
