In the late 1950s a young Iranian abandoned medical school in Jakarta and disappeared into the Mentawai Islands in order to bring a message of universal truth to some of the least accessible places on the planet. There, he nearly died of malaria. The islanders who nursed him back to life soon accepted his message and were empowered by it — 9,000 of them. Years later, among the peoples of Sarawak, the total had swelled to 14,000 or more. This was Jamshid Ma'ani, known to those who followed him as Sama’u’llah (The Heaven of God), and this was the life that he lived. He was a man that could walk into a jungle with only a sole companion at his side, and walk out with the hearts and souls of the whole island behind him.
He came from Khorasan, in the northeast of Iran, born at first light on the Persian New Year in 1936 into a family that followed the spiritual teachings of the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh. His childhood was marked by encounters most people never have in a lifetime; as a small boy he was brought into the presence of the pious Hassan Ali Nokhodaki Isfahani in the tomb of Imam Ali-Reza, and he would go on to meet several of the greatest saints and masters of his time. He grew up in Tehran, serious yet idealistic, caring deeply about the freedom and independence of others. After graduating high school, that youth went on pilgrimage : Shiraz, Baghdad, Damascus, Akka, Haifa, and on into India, seeking out holy places and wise teachers that might help him ascend the path towards the Truth.
The transformation of that young soul into the very Avatar of the Age occurred on a single night in 1963, after 2 long years of preparation. On January 31, 1963, Bahá'u'lláh appeared to young Jamshid Ma’ani in his sleep and ushered him to bring the light of truth to the world, and as such, the Avatar Sama’u’llah was born. He wrote it down in a book he called the Kitáb-i-Insán, the Book of Humanity, and he began to proclaim it boldly in the open, across Iran, then Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, even as far as California. In Lahore he debated clerics in public halls. In 1966 he underwent an ascent through heaven and hell, the likes of which only hardened the hearts of his enemies further against him — and he paid what such figures pay: he was interrogated and tortured in his homeland, had his family cruelly torn apart by decree of those claiming to hold the truth, to which end he lost a brother to such heartbreaking violence, and yet Jamshid Ma’ani still renewed his claims to the end. Sama’u’llah is said to have died in Tehran on June 21, 2009.
His followers hold that he was an Avatar: a manifestation of the one divine Self that has appeared to humanity again and again across the ages, this time coming in divine sequence through the personages of the Bab, Subh-i-Azal, Baha’u’llah and Meher Baba — and that his coming was named in advance in Zoroastrian, Christian, Hindu and Muslim prophecy along with others.
Many are awaiting the coming of the Saviour. Few realize they have walked the earth alongside the Saviour himself, who has returned across every time and place in order to bring continuous growth and enlightenment to all humanity.
