Beyond Words

Beyond Words
Screenshot from Beyond Words
Directed by	Louis van Gasteren
Starring	Meher Baba
Cinematography	Jan de Bont
Production company	Spectrum Film
Distributed by	Sheriar Foundation
Release date	1997, 2008
Running time	28 min.
Country	Netherlands
Language	English

Beyond Words is a 1997 documentary film directed by Louis van Gasteren.

Shot in India partly in 1967 in 35mm film and partly thirty years later in 1997 in video, Beyond Words is one of only three or four films ever shot of the silent master Meher Baba that include synchronized sound and the only film shot of him in color 35mm. In the film Van Gasteren interviews Meher Baba on finding God within the self, and questions him on drugs and cinema. Meher Baba's silent gestures are interpreted in English by his disciple Eruch Jessawala. It was one of the last films and by far the most professional ever shot of Baba, with cinematography by Jan de Bont.

The Meher Baba footage in Beyond Words was originally shot for a feature film Van Gasteren was making in the 1960s, titled Nema aviona za Zagreb. The film stalled in 1969 and remained unfinished for decades. Although Gasteren did not show the 1967 footage of Baba for 30 years, he allowed Pete Townshend of The Who to include two still frames from it inside the gatefold of his 1972 Meher Baba tribute album Who Came First. Gasteren finally decided to release the unseen footage of Baba in the shorter film Beyond Words in 1997. The full-length film Nema Aviona Za Zagreb, for which he shot the footage, was eventually completed and released in 2012.

The film begins in 1967 with extremely exotic and unusual scenes of a mast (a kind of Sufi God-intoxicated person that Baba worked with), followed by a scene of Baba washing the feet of lepers. Next the filmmaker greets Baba with a bougainvillea branch and proceeds to interview him on God-realization, drugs, and cinema. The film ends with a much older Van Gasteren returning to India three decades later in a reunion with Eruch Jessawala who originally interpreted Baba's gestures. Meher Baba has long died as the now more mature men exchange words and photos. Also in the final scenes, Louis van Gasteren dons a red turban that Meher Baba had given him during their meeting in 1967 and which he had not worn for 30 years. The turban was later donated to the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach.