Indian mystic and spiritual master Meher Baba began his silence until his death in 1969, only communicating by means of an alphabet board or by unique hand gestures.

Guru is a Sanskrit term for a "mentor, guide, expert, or master" of certain knowledge or field. In pan-Indian traditions, a guru is more than a teacher: traditionally, the guru is a reverential figure to the disciple or student, with the guru serving as a "counsellor, who helps mould values, shares experiential knowledge as much as literal knowledge, an exemplar in life, an inspirational source and who helps in the spiritual evolution of a student". Whatever language it is written in, Judith Simmer-Brown says that a tantric spiritual text is often codified in an obscure twilight language so that it cannot be understood by anyone without the verbal explanation of a qualified teacher, the guru. A guru is also one's spiritual guide, who helps one to discover the same potentialities that the guru has already realized.

Meher Baba was an Indian spiritual master who said he was the Avatar, or the total manifestation of God in human form. A spiritual figure of the 20th century, he had a following of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly in India, with a smaller number of followers in North America, Europe, South America, and Australia.