MEHER BABA THE AWAKENER

Second Edition (1993)

By

Charles Haynes

An Avatar Meher Baba Trust eBook

June 2011

Copyright © 1989 by Charles Haynes

Source and short publication history: This eBook reproduces the second
edition (1993) of Meher Baba the Awakener published by The Avatar
Foundation, Inc (North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina).
 eBooks
at the Avatar Meher Baba Trust Web Site

The Avatar Meher Baba Trust’s eBooks aspire to be textually exact though non-facsimile
reproductions of published books, journals and articles. With the consent of the copyright
holders, these online editions are being made available through the Avatar Meher Baba
Trust’s web site, for the research needs of Meher Baba’s lovers and the general public
around the world.

Again, the eBooks reproduce the text, though not the exact visual likeness, of the original
publications. They have been created through a process of scanning the original pages,
running these scans through optical character recognition (OCR) software, reflowing the
new text, and proofreading it. Except in rare cases where we specify otherwise, the texts
that you will find here correspond, page for page, with those of the original publications:
in other words, page citations reliably correspond to those of the source books. But in
other respects—such as lineation and font—the page designs differ. Our purpose is to
provide digital texts that are more readily downloadable and searchable than photo
facsimile images of the originals would have been. Moreover, they are often much more
readable, especially in the case of older books, whose discoloration and deteriorated
condition often makes them partly illegible. Since all this work of scanning and
reflowing and proofreading has been accomplished by a team of volunteers, it is always
possible that errors have crept into these online editions. If you find any of these, please
let us know, by emailing us at frank@ambppct.org.

The aim of the Trust’s online library is to reproduce the original texts faithfully. In
certain cases, however—and this applies especially to some of the older books that were
never republished in updated versions—we have corrected certain small errors of a
typographic order. When this has been done, all of these corrections are listed in the
“Register of Editorial Alterations” that appears at the end of the digital book. If you want
the original text in its exact original form, warts and all, you can reconstruct this with the
aid of the “register.”

The Trust’s Online Library remains very much a work in progress. With your help and
input, it will increase in scope and improve in elegance and accuracy as the years go by.
In the meantime, we hope it will serve the needs of those seeking to deepen and broaden
their own familiarity with Avatar Meher Baba’s life and message and to disseminate this
good news throughout the world.
 MEHER BABA,
THE AWAKENER

Charles Haynes
AVATAR FOUNDATION, INC.
 Meher Baba, The Awakener
Copyright © 1989 Charles Haynes

Second Edition, 1993

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without

permission in writing from the author.
All of Meher Baba's quotes Copyright © Avatar Meher Baba
Perpetual Public
Charitable Trust, Ahmednagar, India, except quotes from
God Speaks, Life at its Best and Beams from Meher Baba on the
Spiritual
Panorama Copyright © Sufism Reoriented,
Walnut Creek, California.

Other persons quoted from Love Alone Prevails, The God-Man

and Treasures from
the Meher Baba Journals Copyright © Meher Spiritual Center.

Other persons quoted from The Wayfarers and Silent Word

Copyright © Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable
Trust.

Other persons quoted from 82 Family Letters

Copyright © Universal Spiritual League in America
.
Other persons quoted from The Glow Copyright © Naosherwan
Anzar.

All quotes from While the World Slept

Copyright © Bhau Kalchuri, Ahmednagar, India.

All quotes from Much Silence Copyright © Meher Baba Spiritual

League, Ltd.

All photographs of Meher Baba Copyright © Lawrence Reiter,

Myrtle Beach, S.C.
except for photograph at Narbada River, Jabalpur, (page 110)
Copyright © Jayne Barry Haynes, Myrtle Beach, S.C.

All quotes and photographs used by permission.

Printed in the United States of America.

Cover Design: Keith Sheridan Associates, Inc.

ISBN 0-9624472-1-8

Published by

THE AVATAR FOUNDATION, INC.

P.O. Box 1367 N. Myrtle Beach, S.C. 29598-1367
 Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Meher Baba's men and women mandali for

the insight and inspiration that made this book possible. I
am especially grateful to Eruch Jessawala for his loving
help and encouragement.

Since he first proposed this book in 1986, Ken Coleman has

worked tirelessly and selflessly on every aspect of the
project. Jeff Wolverton and David Carter made many valu-
able suggestions that greatly strengthened the book. David
also spent many hours checking the references and proofing
the text. Robert Love helped in many ways, great and small,
throughout the project. Marsha Forman graciously assisted
in the final stages of production.

Though it has been much revised, much of the original

manuscript was written for my doctoral dissertation at
Emory University. I owe much to John Fenton and Jack
Boozer for their guidance and support during that time and
throughout my academic career.

Elizabeth Patterson, a disciple of Meher Baba, first

introduced me to him more than thirty years ago. Her life of
service will always stand as a living example of Meher
Baba's love in action. This book is dedicated to her.

Charles Haynes
Throughout this book, with the
exception of the Supplement,
Meher Baba's words appear
in italics. All of the material in
the Supplement was given by
Meher Baba.
  
Contents
 
 
INTRODUCTION ……..1
 
1. THE DIVINE THEME ……..5
The story of consciousness; The Journey of
Consciousness;
The Divine Romance; The Avatar
 
2. THE LIFE STORY ...….35
Veiled Youth; Realized Divinity; Seeker of
God;
The God-Man
 
3. THE UNIVERSAL WORK ……65
Speaking in Silence; Mastery in Servitude;
Agents and Masts;
Seclusion Work; Universal Suffering; The
New Humanity
 
4. THE AWAKENING OF THE HEART ……85
The Path of Love; Knowledge of the Heart;
Love, Obedience
and Surrender; Remembrance; The Awakener
 
SUPPLEMENT
 
Meher Baba's Universal Message …...111
The Avatar …...112
The Master's Prayer …...117
How TO Love God …...118
The Seven Realities …...119
The Highest of The High …...120
 
FOOTNOTES …...128
Meherabad, 1927-28
 Introduction
"I have come not to teach but to awaken."
Meher Baba

The starting point for any discussion of Meher Baba is his

declaration that he is the Avatar, the manifestation of God
in human form who comes age after age to awaken all life
to the love of God. Because it is accompanied by a life of
extraordinary beauty and love, this declaration calls each of
us to open the ears of our hearts and to listen with great care.

If we are to listen properly, we should keep in mind that

Meher Baba intended for his real message to be given not in
words, but through an inner experience awakened by love.
We are thus challenged to look beyond words and
explanations to the real work of Baba as the Avatar. To that
end, I offer as little interpretation as possible in the pages
that follow and invite the reader to encounter Meher Baba
directly with nothing in between.

The sole aim of this book is to aid the listening of the heart
by allowing Meher Baba's awakening of love to speak for
itself. The reader should know, however, that the perspec-
tive I bring to this effort has been shaped by more than
thirty years of close association with Meher Baba and his
intimate disciples. From the time I first met him in 1958 to
the present day, Baba has been at the center of my life.

It may also be helpful to state at the outset Meher Baba's

assertion that God is the only Reality, the true Self of every
finite self. It follows, then, that the work of the Avatar is to
be understood as the story of God awakening the divine
Reality within each of us through love.

[1]
 INTRODUCTION

For nearly fifty years Meher Baba worked to accomplish

this awakening of love. Vital and active, Baba traveled
widely, met thousands of people, and served, among others,
the sick, the poor, and the mentally disturbed. Through it all,
he reminded those around him that his activities were only
to be taken as outer signs of the inner work that the Avatar
had come to do.

Baba's awakening of love springs from silence, for he did

not utter a word for the last forty-four years of his life.
When he found it necessary to use words, he gave
explanations and statements indirectly through hand
gestures and by spelling them out on a board with the letters
of the alphabet painted on it. He kept silence, he said, in
order to break his silence by speaking the Word of God
within every heart.

A few months before his physical death in 1969, Baba told

his close disciples that his work was now complete and the
results would unfold in time. Now, some twenty years later,
thousands of people have come to love him, accepting him
as the Avatar of our age. Their relationship with Meher
Baba is direct and personal despite his physical absence.

Though Baba stressed that his work of awakening is deeply

intimate and personal, it also has universal ramifications. He
indicated that the divine love he came to release will
transform consciousness, inaugurating an era of oneness. In
Baba's words, dictated from his silence:

I have come to sow the seed of love in your hearts so

that in spite of all superficial diversity which your life in
illusion must experience and endure, the feeling of
Oneness through love is brought about amongst all
nations, creeds, sects and castes of the world.

In this new humanity, Meher Baba promised that the world

will awaken to the unity of all life in the midst of diversity.
It follows, therefore, that Baba did not wish to found a
separate religion or prescribe a new creed, but rather to
renew the Truth that is at the core of all faiths:

[2]
 INTRODUCTION

/ am not come to establish any cult, society or organiza-

tion; nor even to establish a new religion. The religion
that I shall give teaches the Knowledge of the One
behind the many. The book that I shall make people read
is the book of the heart that holds the key to the mystery
of life. I shall bring about a happy blending of the head
and the heart. I shall revitalize all religions and cults,
and bring them together like beads on one string.

The dynamics of Meher Baba's awakening of love are the

central focus of all that follows. We begin in chapter one
with the story of the cosmos, the divine theme, given by
Baba from his silence. Here the reader is provided a
framework for understanding the ways of the Avatar,
insofar as they can be grasped by the mind. Chapter two
tells the life story of Meher Baba in light of his declaration
that he is the Awakener of divine love. The remaining two
chapters explore Baba's work of awakening in its two
fundamental dimensions: the universal transformation of
consciousness, and the personal relationship of the lover
and the Beloved.

One final note: the reader is asked to keep in mind that an

awakening of love is, by its very nature, an individual
experience that must come from deep within each person.
There are as many approaches to God as there are individual
souls. My only task here is to provide hints and clues so that
each seeker of God may find his or her own way to the
Truth, a way that is illuminated not by words but by love
alone. As Meher Baba has said:

Love has to spring spontaneously from within; it is in no

way amenable to any form of inner or outer force. Love
and coercion can never go together; but while love
cannot be forced upon anyone, it can be awakened
through love itself.

Charles Haynes
February 1989

[3]
Nasik, 1936

[4]
 Chapter 1

The Divine Theme

Once when asked "Have you a scripture, a Bible, a Koran,

an inspired book?," Avatar Meher Baba replied: "No, I
awaken. I am an awakener." The true message awaited by
the world, he said, is an inner experience of divine love, not
another explanation given in words:

Today the urgent need of mankind is not sects or

organized religions, but Love. Divine love will conquer
hate and fear. It will not depend upon other
justifications, but will justify itself.

I have come to awaken in man this divine love. It will

restore to him the unfathomable richness of his own
eternal being and will solve all of his problems.1

When Meher Baba did give explanations, it was only to

point beyond words to the inner transformation brought
about through love. As if to underscore the limitations of
words, he "spoke" from oral silence, reminding us that his
real "speaking" must be heard by the ears of the heart.

Keeping before us this vital distinction between words of

explanation and the real work of divine love, we explore in
this chapter the divine theme of creation as described by
Baba. The understanding gained by this exploration is
offered by Baba only to aid the seeker in stilling the mind
and thereby clearing the way for the heart to hear the
Avatar's Word of love when he speaks it.

[5]
 The Story of Consciousness

For Meher Baba, the Avatar's work of awakening is always

part of the larger story of awakening constantly taking place
throughout the universe. The central theme of the story is
love, evolving from very rudimentary beginnings and
ultimately culminating in universal or divine love. Seen in
terms of consciousness, the awakening is a movement in
Ultimate Reality, God, from a state of unconscious divinity
to one of conscious divinity. This movement in
consciousness is described by Baba in metaphorical
language as a journey through the multifarious experiences
of the illusory universe in which God ultimately awakens to
Himself.

In telling the story of consciousness Meher Baba "spoke" as

one who had absolute knowledge of the workings of the
universe; he appealed to no scripture or authority other
than his own experience of God. He did not, however,
consider his explanations to be without precedent; he saw
his words as contemporary revelations of ancient truths.

Baba's story of how Reality comes to know Itself through

the experience of the phenomenal universe may be likened
to a "map of consciousness" that serves to guide one's
thinking about the journey of consciousness. Baba's
description of the spiritual journey and the ultimate goal of
union with God, is like a map to a traveler. No matter
how much one memorizes the map, learning the routes and
places along the way, it is no substitute for the actual
journey. To believe in God and the path to Him cannot in
any way replace the actual experiences leading to
Realization. Unlike many existing explanations of the
spiritual journey, Baba places special emphasis on the
"consciousness" acquired during the course of the journey
to Infinite Consciousness.

How does God come to know His own Self? We begin the
overview of the journey by noting that, according to Meher
Baba, there is only one Reality, God, and all living things
are ultimately expressions of the Absolute Oneness that is
God. We can, however, speak of differences
of consciousness within

[6]
God, represented by all forms in creation and originating in
what Baba termed the "Beyond the Beyond" state of God.
There is only one Reality, which may be called the
Oversoul (Paramatma), that is only apparently differentiated
in creation. The development of consciousness that results
from this differentiation is what Baba described as the
purpose of the universe:

The sole purpose of creation is for the soul to enjoy the

infinite state of the Oversoul consciously. Although the
soul eternally exists in and with the Oversoul in an
inviolable unity, it cannot be conscious of this
unity independently of creation, which is within the
limitations of time. It must therefore evolve
consciousness before it can realize its true status and
nature as being identical with the infinite Oversoul,
which is one without a second. 2

According to Baba, what we term the individualized soul

(atma) is in relationship with and at the same time identical
to the Oversoul. To elucidate this paradox Baba employed
the ocean-drop metaphor:

Before the world of forms and duality came into

existence, there was nothing but God, i.e., an indivisible
and boundless ocean of Power, Knowledge and Bliss.
But this ocean was unconscious of itself. Picture to
yourself this ocean as absolutely still and calm,
unconscious of its Power, Knowledge and Bliss and
unconscious that it is the ocean. The billions of drops
which are in the ocean do not have any consciousness;
they do not know that they are drops nor that they are in
the ocean nor that they are a part of the ocean. 3

Here we are asked to imagine God as the infinite ocean, the

all-inclusive, all-absorbing Reality. And, in the countless
drops within the ocean, we can imagine ourselves latently
present in the beautiful, mysterious ocean, unconscious of
our true nature.

Latent within the Original Ocean, or God, before

consciousness sprang into existence, was the Divine Lahar,

[7]
defined by Baba as the "so-called whim" of God to know
Himself. At some "point" beyond reason and description
before the existence of time and space—the Lahar of God
expressed itself:

The unitarian Beyond is an indivisible and indescribable

infinity. It seeks to know itself. It is of no use to ask why
it does so. To attempt to give a reason for this is to be
involved in further questions and thus to start
an unending chain of reasons for reasons, reasons for
these reasons and so on ad infinitum. The plain truth
about this initial urge to know itself is best called a
whim (Lahar). A whim is not a whim if it can be
explained or rationalized. And just as no one may
usefully ask why it arises, so no one may ask when it
arises. "When" implies a time series with past, present
and future. All these are absent in the eternal Beyond. So
let us call this initial urge to know a "whim." You may
call this an explanation if you like or you may call it an
affirmation of its inherent inexplicability. 4

Baba then has us imagine the beginningless beginning,

when the Lahar (urge to know) first emerged from God:

A puff of wind then stirred the tranquil uniformity of this

ocean, and immense waves, countless drops of water,
and innumerable bubbles appeared from out of the
uniformity of the limitless, infinite ocean. The puff of
wind that set the ocean into commotion may be
compared to the impulse of the infinite, original urge-to-
know originating with the infinite, original whim of
God, surging in God to know Himself through His
infinite God State...5

This "disturbance" stirs the ocean and every drop within the
ocean. Note that there are no divisions in the ocean, yet the
image of drops presents the idea of latent individuality:

Thus Paramatma [Oversoul] in His infinitely

unconscious state ... being urged to know Himself,
simultaneously bestirs the tranquil poise of every
atma [soul] in

[8]
 Paramatma [Oversoul] with an urge to know itself.
This could only be understood when Paramatma is
compared to an infinite ocean and the atmas to the
drops of that infinite ocean. But it must also be well
noted that every drop of the ocean, when in the
ocean, is ocean itself, until the drops inherit
6
individuality through bubble formations over the
surface of the ocean.
The ocean-drop metaphor is given to help us grasp the
meaning of individual existence. Individual drops may be
viewed as separate centers of consciousness, each
undertaking a "journey" back to the ocean. But drops in the
ocean are not unique in themselves; as drops they are
identical to one another, and they are identical to the ocean
itself. The ultimate goal is not individuality, but rather the
individual experience of conscious oneness with the ocean.

Bestowal of individuality by the Lahar of God creates the

illusion of separation:

When this urge makes the still water move, there

immediately spring up numerous bubbles or forms
around the drops; and it is these bubbles which
give individuality to the drops. The bubbles do not and
cannot ... separate the drop from the ocean; they merely
give to these drops a feeling of separateness or limited
individuality.7

The drop-bubble experiences itself to be separate from the

ocean and asserts its separative existence as a drop. Rather
than identifying itself as the Ocean, the soul (drop-soul)
begins its journey in consciousness by identifying with
countless forms, beginning with the stone form, evolving
through plant and animal forms, and ultimately attaining the
human form after eons and eons of time. These forms
correspond to the many levels of ascending consciousness
(layers of bubbles). While such identification allows for an
ever-evolving development of consciousness, it also creates
a false notion of separateness, the ego, which eventually
must be overcome before there is the complete liberation of
the soul, for in the conscious experience of God there can be
no separateness.

[9]
Drawing further on the language of the metaphor, Baba
termed the false identification of the drop-soul with its
many forms the "bubble of ignorance." Ignorance, in this
instance, is not merely a state of unknowing; it is an
experience of separative existence which is inextricably
linked with ever-expanding consciousness. Once
gained, consciousness continues to identify itself with the
forms acquired during its development. The drop, so to
speak, believes itself to be a bubble when in reality it is the
ocean itself. In this sense, ignorance may be said to be
a turning away of God from Himself for the sake of
consciousness. And, as the image of a bubble on the surface
of the ocean suggests, the separation is only apparent and
temporary.

The drop-soul remains in ignorance as long as it identifies

with its separative existence as a bubble ("I am stone," "I
am animal," "I am human," etc.). Only the ocean is real,
lasting and unchanging. When the bubble bursts for the last
time and the drop returns to the ocean, real "knowledge" is
gained:

A drop in an ocean is not separate from the ocean. It is a

bubble over the drop that gives it an appearance of
separateness, but when the bubble bursts the drop is not,
and the indivisible ocean is. When the bubble of
ignorance bursts the self realizes its oneness with the
indivisible Self.8

In the beginningless beginning the drop in the ocean did not

know itself to be either a drop or the ocean. Through
apparent separation as a bubble the drop experiences itself
to be an individual drop until consciousness is fully attained
and redirected toward its reality as the Ocean itself. Then
the drop falls back into the ocean, no longer experiencing
separative existence ("I am a drop"), but knowing itself
to be one with the ocean ("I am the ocean"). Just as the
individual drop in the ocean experiences itself to be one
with the ocean, so the individual soul knows itself to be one
with the Oversoul.

The ocean-drop metaphor was used by Baba to direct our

attention to his description of God-realization as a return to
the Source of our being. It is, however, a return with
a difference:

[ 10 ]
 If salvation means reverting to the original state of the
Ocean, then all the trammels and travails of the bubble
(individual soul) through the long and laborious stages
of evolution have been to no purpose.9

The difference is that consciousness is gained, and this

achievement gives meaning and value to the entire divine
drama of Self-discovery. Thus the Lahar set in motion what
we call creation, which is best understood as God's lila, the
divine play of Self-discovery. God initially allows Himself
to be limited in order to ultimately experience Himself as
unlimited.

The ocean-drop metaphor as used by Baba offers a very

specific picture of the relationship between God and the
individual. God is One, and our notions of individuality are
false as long as they are rooted in our separative existence.
Nevertheless, the final realization of God, the "I am God"
state, is an individual experience which puts an end to all
previous states of false identity:

Thus, when each individual drop sheds its false

awareness of being other than the Ocean, it proclaims
itself as the Infinite Indivisible Ocean. At the instant its
falseness, its very own falseness is removed, the drop
asserts its Infinite Individuality.10

The Original Question ("Who am I"), according to Baba,

continually seeks the "Original Answer" ("I am God"), but
in the process the Original Question receives innumerable
false answers provided by the illusory forms of evolution (I
am stone, I am man, etc.) before the Original Answer is
experienced. Baba said:

Due to His own infinite whim God acquires the

consciousness of His reality and realizes His infinite,
eternal unlimited Self to experience His unbounded,
unlimited and infinite trio-nature [infinite knowledge,
power, bliss: sat-chit-ananda].11

[ 11 ]
The Journey of Consciousness

The process of acquiring consciousness was likened by

Baba to a journey which every soul (atma) must undergo
and complete. The journey is said to have three basic stages:
evolution, reincarnation and involution.

Evolution, as explained by Baba, is the first stage of the

journey, the "descent" of the soul from the original sound-
sleep state of God into creation. In evolution,
consciousness gradually evolves through successive
identification with stone, metal, vegetable, worm, reptile,
fish, bird, animal and ultimately human forms. This process
parallels in some respects Darwinian theories, though it is
a fundamentally different explanation of evolution:
evolution in Baba's view is necessitated by the development
of consciousness. Thus form follows consciousness and not,
as in Darwin's theory, the other way around.

The full flower of evolution is achieved in the human form

when full consciousness is attained. Then commences the
second stage of the journey, reincarnation, during which the
soul lives out the impressions (sanskaras*) gained
in evolution and acquires new impressions by experiencing
the countless varieties of human life. The old and new
impressions, both of which create a veil over consciousness,
gradually wear away, revealing an increasingly
clearer experience of God; that is, the soul wearies of the
world and is ready to begin the third phase of the journey,
involution, which may be seen as the "ascent" back to God.
Let us look at each stage of the journey more closely.

In evolution, consciousness expands by associating with

increasingly more complex forms. The impressions gath-
ered in each form push consciousness forward to the next
higher form:

* "Impressions" or "sanskaras" may be defined as

accumulated imprints of experiences acquired by each soul
in the journey of consciousness.

[ 12 ]
 Owing to the arising of the bubble, the drop-soul which
was completely unconscious is invested with
individuality (or a feeling of separateness) as well as
with very slight consciousness. This consciousness,
which has sprung up in the drop-soul, is not of itself nor
of the ocean; but it is of the bubble or the form, which
in itself is nothing. This imperfect bubble at this stage is
represented by the form of a stone. After some time, this
bubble or form bursts and there springs up in its place
another bubble or form. Now, when a bubble bursts, two
things happen: (1) there is an increase in consciousness
and (2) there is a twist or consolidation of impressions
or sanskaras accumulated during the life of the previous
bubble....the drop-soul is still conscious only of this new
bubble or form and not of itself nor of the ocean.12

Form after form arises as consciousness expands and seeks

the next most appropriate form for expression. The
impressions gathered in the stone form compel the
emergence of a higher form, metal, and the impressions
gathered in the metal form compel the emergence of a still
higher form and so forth.

As each individualized soul journeys through evolution it

gathers more and more impressions, and these impressions
create the various forms necessary for the development
of consciousness. "To view things in their right
perspective," Baba indicated, "we have to see all forms,
including human forms, as evolved for the fulfillment of the
one eternal divine life." The urge-to-know goes forward as
consciousness moves through the rudimentary stone and
metal forms in which energy is dormant, to the more
advanced vegetable forms:

In the vegetable kingdom, consciousness realizes itself

as half animate and half inanimate. The increased
consciousness of the vegetable-form asserts its existence
in the gross world through an upright or erect stand.
The vegetable forms have to take the help of some other
things such as earth or rock for maintaining an erect
position. They can

[ 13 ]
 neither stand by themselves nor move voluntarily from
place to place since they are rooted in one spot.13

Not only does the soul experience ever-increasingly

complex physical impressions, but also impressions having
to do with energy and mind:

Emergence of a still more developed form of

consciousness becomes possible when the Absolute seeks
manifestation through the instinctive life of insects, birds
and animals, which are aware of their bodies and
respective surroundings, which develop a sense of self-
protection, and aim at establishing mastery over their
environment. In the higher animals, mind or thought
appears, but its working is limited by such instincts as
those of self-protection and the care and preservation of
the young. So even in animals, consciousness has not its
full development, with the result that it is unable to serve
the purpose of the Absolute to attain self-illumination.14

These emerging impressions of energy and mind comprise

what Baba termed the subtle and mental bodies. The subtle
body consists of all impressions having to do with energy
and the mental body of all impressions having to do with
instinct, intellect, emotions and desires.

The soul is thus said to associate with three bodies

simultaneously: gross, subtle and mental. Though the soul
may associate and disassociate with countless physical or
gross forms, it can never separate itself (until God-
realization) from its subtle and mental bodies. It is these
latter two bodies that supply the soul with the continuity of
consciousness that runs through its entire journey.
Consequently, it may be said that there is only one life in
the journey, though there are innumerable births and deaths
in gross forms. Each of these gross forms is necessary for
the experiencing of impressions as consciousness evolves.

The subtle and mental bodies become the centers for

assimilation of the complex impressions garnered
in evolution. The fullest expression of all three bodies is
possible in

[ 14 ]
the human form, the crown of evolution. The taking of the
human form, therefore, completes the evolutionary stage of
the journey. There is no need for the development of
a higher physical form once full consciousness is attained as
exhibited in the self-consciousness of the human being.
However, though it has full consciousness, in the human
form the soul remains unaware of its true nature.

The impressions of evolution veil the soul from its true

identity as God causing it to associate itself with countless
human forms. The consciousness of the soul continues to
identify itself with the world of illusion, where
consciousness was gained. This is the second stage of the
journey, called by Baba reincarnation:

The soul with full consciousness is still unconscious of

its original infinite state because of the unwanted
(though necessary) burden of the gross impressions of
the human-form from which the consciousness of the
soul dissociates as that form drops dead. These
impressions, of the human-form now dead, still cling to
the full consciousness gained; and, as usual,
the consciousness of the soul centralizes itself in these
gross impressions of the human-form just dropped.15

Once the human form is attained the resulting self-identity

is rooted in the impressions acquired during evolution. The
soul attempts to eliminate these impressions through
the experience of opposite impressions (pleasure/pain,
good/bad, etc.), and this in turn gives rise to new
impressions. Baba described the cycle this way:

In trying to unburden consciousness of these impressions,

the gross consciousness of the soul tends the soul to
experience and exhaust these impressions through
innumerable opposite experiences taken through a series
of reincarnations. In this process of reincarnation the
consciousness of the soul, while trying to liberate itself
from the burden of impressions, gets still further
entangled at every stage of reincarnation. When a
complete balance of... opposite impressions is just about
to

[ 15 ]
 be attained, it is just then disturbed by the consciousness
of the soul associating itself with the next new human-
form. Absence of this association would otherwise have
neutralized the effect of the impressions by an equal
balance of respective opposite experiences and
would thus have liberated the consciousness of the soul
from all impressions of opposites.16

In seeking to achieve a balance, impressions create ever-

new impressions in a seemingly unending round of births
and deaths. Thus the soul repeatedly alternates between the
many opposites of existence (e.g., male/female) striving for
that final balance necessary for the liberation of
consciousness from the burden of impressions.

The process of working out the gross, subtle and mental

impressions of the soul is governed by the universal law of
karma. Baba has explained that karma is the spiritual law
of cause and effect in which the experience of every
impression creates the demand for the experience of its
opposite. The heavy load of impressions acquired
in evolution becomes a considerable karmic burden in the
human form.

The karma of each soul consists of the repository of

accumulated impressions which are organized around a
central identity or ego. In evolution, as consciousness
begins to differentiate and take on individuality, an
organizing principle emerges so that each soul has an axis
or center for the assimilation of impressions.
This organizing principle is called the ego:

Human consciousness would be no more than a

repository of the accumulated imprints of varied
experiences did it not also contain the principle of ego-
centered integration in the attempt to organize and
understand experience. The process implies the capacity
to hold different experiences together as parts of a unity
and the capacity to evaluate them by mutual relation.
The integration of the opposites of experience is a
condition of emancipating consciousness from the
thraldom of compulsions and repulsions which tend to
dominate consciousness irrespective of valuation; and
the early attempts

[ 16 ]
 at securing such integration are made through the
formation of the ego as its center.17

The ego is the "I" or false notion of individuality which

pervades both the conscious and subconscious mind of the
reincarnating individual. In evolution and in the initial
stages of reincarnation the ego functions as the necessary
integrating and stabilizing factor for consciousness. But the
continued identification of consciousness with the ego
prevents the soul from directing consciousness towards its
true Self. Because consciousness is gained in illusion, it
remains, through the ego, deeply and falsely attached to
illusion as "real."

The nature of the ego symbolizes the plight of human

existence: consciousness rooted in a false idea of self. On a
cosmic scale this false valuation is called maya, that power
which causes the world of forms to appear as real. On a
personal level maya is the principle of ignorance which is
exemplified by ego-centered consciousness.

In the reincarnating individual, the ignorance of the ego is

far more than an intellectual misunderstanding; it is a
fundamentally incorrect orientation of the human
mind. Once needed for the development of consciousness,
the ego now is the source of suffering. The life of the ego
becomes a prison for the infinite consciousness of the true
Self.

Ultimately the ego weakens through endless expression of

itself in many lifetimes of experience, finally disappearing
completely in full Self or God-realization:

The ego is implemented by desires of varied types.

Failure to fulfill desires is a failure of the ego. Success
in attaining desired objects is a success of the ego.
Through fulfilled desires as well as through
unfulfilled ones, the ego is accentuated. The ego can
even feed upon a comparative lull in the surging of
desires and assert its separative tendency through
feeling that it is desireless. When there is a real
cessation of all desires, however, there is a cessation of
the desire to assert separativeness in any form.
Therefore real freedom from all desires brings about the
end of the ego.

[ 17 ]
 The ego is made of variegated desires, and the
destroying of these desires amounts to the destruction of
the ego.18

Until the goal is reached, the separative existence of the ego

is affirmed by expressions of craving, hate, anger, fear and
jealousy. The misery caused by the desires and emotions of
the ego arises from the fact that the life of the ego feeds on
impressions, especially those which tend to strengthen the
feeling of separateness:

Every thought, feeling or action that springs from the

idea of exclusive or separative existence binds the soul.
All experiences—small or great—and all aspirations—
good or bad—create a load of impressions and nourish
the sense of the "I."19

Ultimately, the only antidote to the separative existence of

the ego is divine love. Love alone breaks through the
barriers of the ego-mind, awakening the soul to its
true nature as one with God. Through an ever-deepening
experience of real love, the soul gradually frees itself from
the suffering caused by bondage to the desires of the ego.
(More about the role of divine love later.)

Meher Baba emphasized that all human suffering is rooted

in the false idea of self perpetuated by the ego-mind.
Attachment to the world of illusion or maya and craving for
that which is impermanent, chains the individual to the
limitations of illusory existence:

Man does not seek suffering, but it comes to him as an

inevitable outcome of the very manner in which he seeks
happiness. He seeks happiness through the fulfillment of
his desires, but such fulfillment is never an assured
thing. Hence in the pursuit of desires, man is also
unavoidably preparing for the suffering from their
nonfulfillment. The same tree of desires bears two kinds
of fruit: one sweet, which is pleasure, and one bitter,
which is suffering. If this tree is allowed to flourish it
cannot be made to yield just one kind of fruit.20

[ 18 ]
The life of the ego is bound by karmic determination. Every
experience is binding and generates impressions that must
be worked out at some future time. Through our actions we
determine the shape of our future:

The pleasure and pain experienced in life on earth, the

successes or failures that attend it, the attainments and
obstacles with which it is strewn, the friends and foes
who appear in it—all are determined by the karma of
past lives.21

The operation of karma is the moral law of the universe,

holding each individual accountable for his or her actions. It
follows, then, that the fabric of the universe has an
inherent rationality, and the law of karma is not an
oppressive law, but the self-created condition of
responsibility.

Tied to the karmic wheel, each individualized soul moves

through countless lifetimes spending past impressions and,
in the process, accumulating new ones. Eventually, however,
the impressions are loosened as the individual begins to tire
of the endless round of births and deaths. The aspirant is
overcome by a profound dissatisfaction with illusory
existence, and is thus ready for the spiritual path:

As the fish out of water longs for water, the aspirant who
has perceived the goal longs for God. In truth, the
longing to return to the source is present in each being
from the time it gets separated from the source by the
veil of ignorance; but the longing is unconscious till the
aspirant enters the Path.22

This vital inward turn inaugurates the last stage of the

journey of consciousness, called by Baba "involution". Just
as in evolution when impressions are wound tightly
around what emerges as the ego, so in involution the
impressions are unwound as the soul gradually ceases to
identify with the gross, subtle and mental bodies:

During this process of unwinding, the sanskaras

[impressions] become fainter and fainter; and at the
same time, the consciousness of the drop-soul gets
directed more

[ 19 ]
 and more towards itself; and thus, the drop-soul
passes through the subtle and mental planes till all the
sanskaras disappear completely, enabling it to become
conscious of itself as the ocean.23

The inward turning of involution is marked by the

experience of seven levels or planes of consciousness. The
first three planes, Baba explained, are of the subtle
world (world of energy), the fourth links the subtle and
mental, and the fifth and sixth are of the mental world. The
experience of the seventh plane is God-realization.
Advanced souls (saints, yogis, walis) are those who are on
the higher planes of consciousness and, consequently, they
have a more direct experience of God.

Traversing the planes results in the diminishment of ego-life

and an ever-increasing awareness of divine love as the
aspirant breaks away from identification with the false
idea of self rooted in the gross, subtle and mental worlds:

The soul has to emancipate itself gradually from the

illusion of being finite by liberating itself from the
bondage of sanskaras and knowing itself to be different
from its bodies—gross, subtle and mental. It thus
annihilates the false ego (that is, the illusion that "I am
the gross body," "I am the subtle body" or "I am the
mental body"). While the soul thus frees itself from
its illusion, it still retains full consciousness, which now
results in Self-knowledge and realization of the Truth.
Escaping through the cosmic Illusion and realizing with
full consciousness its identity with the infinite Oversoul
is the goal of the long journey of the Soul.24

There are, of course, many approaches to the spiritual path,

and many ways to attain the Ultimate Reality. All
approaches, however, have as their common goal the
effacement of the limited ego. All practices, austerities,
meditations and strivings are for the sole purpose of
eliminating the false self, thus freeing the soul from the
bondage of ego-desires. This freedom is the ultimate aim
and goal of all life in creation.

[ 20 ]
Through the various practices and with the aid of genuine
masters, the aspirant may travel far through the planes of
consciousness. Finally, however, Baba has said that
the journey cannot be completed without the intervention of
a God-realized master. No matter how far the aspirant may
travel without the aid of a Perfect Master, even to the sixth
plane, the final step of entering the seventh plane
requires the touch of one who has already completed the
journey. The enormity of the final adjustment in the process
of ego elimination is such that the soul must receive help,
the divine grace of a Perfect Master or the Avatar.

With God-realization the journey of consciousness comes to

an end; the drop-soul falls back into the ocean to experience
with full consciousness the "I am God" state. Because it
is beyond the ego-mind, and therefore radically different
from all other states of consciousness, God-realization
defies description. What can be said is that the soul at last
discovers its true nature:

After the attainment of God-realization, the soul

discovers that it has always been the Infinite Reality, and
that its looking upon itself as finite during the period of
evolution and spiritual advancement was an illusion.
The soul also finds that the infinite knowledge and bliss
that it enjoys have been latent in the Infinite Reality from
the beginning of time and that they became manifest at
the moment of realization. Thus the God-realized person
does not become different from what he was before
realization. He remains what he was; the only difference
that realization makes in him is that while previously
he did not consciously know his true nature, he now
knows it. He knows that he has never been anything
other than what he now knows himself to be, and that he
has been through a process of self-discovery.25

According to Baba, not all souls leave their bodies

immediately after God-realization. Some remain in
the gross body and experience a constant state of infinite
bliss, wholly unaware of the world. Others, called Sadgurus
or Perfect

[ 21 ]
Masters, remain in the body and are simultaneously
conscious of God and the illusory universe. There are
always five living Perfect Masters on earth. They
continually experience the state of God (infinite power,
knowledge, and bliss). They may be viewed as the
presence of God in the world, and, as such, they are a
source of unending aid to all those who remain in bondage:

The Sadguru knows himself to be infinite and beyond all

forms. He remains conscious of the creation without
being caught in it. The falseness of the phenomenal
world consists in its not being understood as an illusory
expression of the Infinite Spirit. Ignorance consists in
taking the form as the thing. The Sadguru is conscious of
the true nature of God, as well as of the true nature
of creation without consciousness of duality, because for
him creation is the changing shadow of God. The
Sadguru, therefore ,remains conscious of creation with-
out loss of God-consciousness. He continues to work in
the world of forms for the furtherance of the primary
purpose of creation, which is to create self-knowledge or
God-realization in every Soul.26

Meher Baba referred to many spiritual teachers from

various traditions as Perfect Masters including Rumi
and Hafiz from Persia, Ramakrishna, Tukaram, and Kabir
from India, Milarepa from Tibet and Francis of Assisi.

The Divine Romance

For Meher Baba, the best way for the heart to grasp the
meaning of the soul's journey is to view it as a divine
romance in which the lover (soul) seeks union with the
Beloved (Oversoul).

God as Infinite Love first delimits himself in the forms of

creation and then recovers his infinity through the
different stages of creation. All the stages of God's
experience as a

[ 22 ]
 Lover culminate in his experiencing himself as the sole
Beloved. The sojourn of the soul is a divine romance in
which the Lover, who in the beginning is conscious of
emptiness, frustration, superficiality and the chains of
bondage, attains an increasingly fuller expression of
Love and finally merges into the unity of the Lover and
the Beloved in the supreme and eternal Truth of God as
Infinite Love.27

God's lila, then, is a love-drama that comes into existence so

that divine love may be consciously expressed and
experienced. The romance begins with the Lahar, the
stirring of the Ocean of Love to experience Itself as love.
The urge-to-know is the urge-to-love:

God is love. And love must love. And to love there must
be a Beloved. But since God is Existence infinite and
eternal there is no one for Him to love but Himself. And
in order to love Himself He must imagine Himself as the
Beloved whom He as the Lover imagines He loves.28

This apparent separation caused by the Lahar gives meaning

to all life in existence:

It is for the sake of Love that the universe sprang into

existence, and for the sake of Love that it is kept going.
God descends into the realm of illusion because the
apparent duality of the Beloved and the Lover
is contributory to his conscious enjoyment of his own
divinity. Although the entire world of duality is but an
illusion, it has come into being for a significant
purpose.29

The impersonal images of the ocean-drop language come to

life in the more personal images of the lover-Beloved
metaphor. Love as expressed in duality is defined by Baba
in the broadest possible terms:

Life and love are inseparable. Where there is life, there

is love. Even the most rudimentary consciousness is ever
trying to burst its limitations and to experience unity
with others.30

[ 23 ]
Love is the foundation of all life, the universal magnetism,
as it were, holding the cosmos together. The movement of
consciousness as it strives to achieve unity or wholeness is
a movement of love.

The reflection of this movement toward oneness may be

seen on all levels of consciousness:

At the inorganic stage, it [love] is expressed in the form

of cohesion or attraction. It is the natural affinity that
keeps things together and draws them to each other. The
gravitational pull exercised by the heavenly bodies upon
each other is an expression of love. At the organic state,
love becomes self-illumined and self-appreciative, even
from the amoebae to the most evolved human beings.31

When consciousness becomes full in the human form, love

becomes a self-conscious activity with possibilities for
complete expression. Baba distinguished between lower
and higher stages of human love, measured by the relative
degree of ego entanglement. In the lower stages love is self-
centered and possessive as in infatuation and lust; the object
of love is obscured by ego-craving. As the soul advances
spiritually, the lower forms of love give way to higher
expressions in which the object of desire is appreciated
more for itself and not merely for the gratification it may
give.

The diminishment of ego involvement is seen as the road to

higher love. This may be understood as the way to ever
greater detachment in the sense that it is nonattachment of
the false self to the world of illusion or maya. According to
Baba, however, this nonattachment does not mean lack of
concern for suffering humanity. On the contrary, only one
who has begun to be free of ego-attachment can begin to
offer real service and love to others.

All human love inevitably contains elements of both lower

and higher expressions of love. Eventually, our love must
be purified through the aid of a Perfect Master or the Avatar
who, having realized God, is the embodiment of divine love:

[ 24 ]
 Human love is so tethered by limiting conditions that the
spontaneous appearance of pure love from within
becomes impossible....When pure love is first received as
a gift from the Master, it is lodged in the consciousness
of the aspirant as the seed in a favorable soil, and in the
course of time the seed develops into a plant, then into
the full-grown tree.32

Once awakened by love, the aspirant as the lover becomes

more and more conscious of a longing for union with the
divine Beloved. This longing leads to self-forgetfulness
in remembrance of the Beloved, a process during which the
ego gets consumed in the flame of love. We will return to
this theme in more depth later.

The goal of all life and the fulfillment of all love is divine
love, the conscious realization of God. This love is
qualitatively different from all expressions of love in
creation, including the highest forms of human love:

Even the highest type of human love is subject to the

limitations of the individual nature, which persists until
the seventh plane; but Divine Love arises after the
disappearance of the individual mind and is free from
the trammels of individual nature. In human love, the
duality of the lover and the Beloved persists; but in
Divine Love, the lover and the Beloved are one. At
this stage, the aspirant has stepped out of the domain of
duality and become one with God—for Divine Love is
God. When the lover and the Beloved are one, that is the
end and the beginning.33

Apparent separation, therefore, is the necessary condition

preparing the way for the conscious realization of love, the
state of absolute oneness. Or, to put it another way, God's
love for Himself in duality eventually results in the non-
dual state of God's conscious enjoyment of His nature as
divine love. This final state is incomparably greater than all
other states of love; it is pure love.

In Meher Baba's divine theme, the metaphor of the divine

romance indicates the meaningfulness of the universe.

[ 25 ]
Duality is pictured as resulting from the urge of the divine
whim to experience love, the essence of Ultimate Reality.
The original separation gives rise to the seemingly infinite
variety of forms striving on all levels of consciousness
towards a greater and more complete realization of love,
the unifying principle of all life. The suffering of the
universe is rooted in this separative existence, described by
Baba as the pain of the lover longing for the beloved. "The
entire creation," he said, "is a game of love or 'lila' which
God enjoys at His own cost." In the end, Baba assured us,
all that we must suffer and endure in this divine romance is
infinitely worthwhile:

When true love is awakened in the aspirant, it leads him

to the realization of God and opens up the unlimited
field of lasting and unfading happiness. The happiness of
God-realization is the goal of all creation. It is not
possible for a person to have the slightest idea of that
inexpressible happiness without actually having the
experience of Godhood. The idea that the worldly have
of suffering or happiness is entirely limited. The real
happiness that comes through realizing God is worth all
the physical and mental suffering in the universe. Then
all suffering is as if it had never been.34

The Avatar

We come now to the Avatar, the fullest expression of divine

love in God's divine drama (lila). Since this is who Meher
Baba declared himself to be, it is essential that we take
careful note of the God-man's role in the story of
consciousness.

To grasp how Baba used the term "Avatar" we must again

begin at the beginning and recall the Lahar of God. When
the divine urge-to-know first manifested itself, infinite
consciousness ("Is-ness"; "I am God" state) and infinite
unconsciousness ("Other-ness") simultaneously emerged,
inaugurating the journey from unconscious divinity
to conscious divinity. The first soul to complete this journey
of consciousness

[ 26 ]
through evolution, reincarnation and involution realized
infinite consciousness. As the first to realize God, Baba
explained, this soul functioned from that time forward as the
Avatar:

The Avatar was the first individual soul to emerge from

the evolutionary and involutionary process ... and He is
the only Avatar who has ever manifested or will ever
manifest. Through Him God first completed the journey
from unconscious divinity to conscious divinity, first
unconsciously became man in order consciously to
become God. Through Him, periodically, God
consciously becomes man for the liberation of man-
kind.35

According to Baba, the first soul to realize God had a

unique experience resulting in the Avataric or Christ-
conscious state within God. In this state God remains
eternally conscious of everything in illusion, and from this
state God periodically becomes a human being for the
benefit of all in creation. Though every soul eventually
realizes God, only this "first" soul functions as the God-man
or Avatar. And only the Avatar returns to the world; after
death all other God-realized souls merge in the divine
Reality forever. The Avatar maintains a conscious working
link with creation for 100-200 years after leaving his
physical form, though the Avatar's love and mercy are
always available to help seekers of God.

From the point of view of the human intellect these

distinctions appear to indicate some sort of division within
Ultimate Reality. According to Baba, however, in God's
Being there are no divisions though it can be said that there
are various states and functions of consciousness within the
One Reality. One such state, Avataric or Christ con-
sciousness, emerged when the first soul realized God. For
descriptive purposes, it may be said that the states of God
function differently and the Avatar is one such function. It
is thus eternally part of the cosmic lila for God to "return" to
the illusion by taking human form:

The Avatar is always one and the same because God is

always one and the same. This eternally one and the
same Avatar repeats His manifestation from time to time
in different

[ 27 ]
 cycles. He adopts different human forms and
different names, coming to different places to reveal
truth in different clothing and different languages. This
He does to raise humanity from the pit of ignorance and
help free it from the bondage of delusion.36

In the Avatar, God becomes fully human; infinite

consciousness chooses to limit Itself as a finite human being.
The process of limitation begins with the birth of the Avatar.
It is, Baba has said, always a normal birth and the Avatar
comes into the world veiled to his true identity. At the right
moment, his veil is removed:

The veil with which the Avatar descends in the human

form is placed upon him by the five Perfect Masters who
bring him down from his formless being. In the Avataric
periods, the five masters always put this veil upon the
infinite consciousness of the Avatar, because if he were
to be brought without such a veil into the world of forms,
the existing balance between reality and illusion would
be profoundly disturbed. However, when the five masters
think that the moment is ripe, they remove this veil which
they have placed on the Avataric consciousness. From
that moment the Avatar consciously starts his role as the
Avatar.37

To live as a human being the Avatar must take on a

personality and a pattern of life in order to carry out his
mission. According to Baba, special impressions are given
the Avatar by himself, and the unfolding of these
impressions constitutes the life of the God-man in the world.
In this way, the Avatar voluntarily limits himself and
his work becomes subject to the laws of time, space and
causality.

The self-imposed limitations of the Avatar in no way alter

his true nature as being one with God, no more than the
limitations of any soul disturb its essential unity of being.
The Avatar willingly returns to the world of illusion to
awaken God in those who remain bound by ignorance. All
the while he retains the awareness that the creation is
illusory, and God

[ 28 ]
alone is real. This act of compassion enables the Avatar to
give a spiritual push or transformation to souls at every
level of consciousness. As he is one with God, the Avatar is
consciously alert to the needs of all animate and inanimate
things. Consequently, he works not only for the benefit of
humanity, but also for the benefit of souls still in evolution:

It would be more appropriate to say that the Avatar is

God and that God becomes man for all mankind and
simultaneously God also becomes a sparrow for all
sparrows in Creation, an ant for all ants in creation ...
etc., for each and everything that is in creation.
When the five Sadgurus effect the presentation of the
Divinity of God into Illusion, this Divinity pervades the
Illusion in effect and presents Itself in innumerable
varieties of forms—gross, subtle and mental.
Consequently in Avataric periods God mingles with
mankind as man and with the world of ants as an ant, etc.
But the man of the world cannot perceive this and hence
simply says that God has become man and remains
satisfied with this understanding in his own world of
mankind.38

As the periodic advent of the Avatar must be carried out on

every level of consciousness, Baba asserted that it is
necessary for God to consciously involve himself in the
workings of the universe. In the sphere of human
consciousness, which is all we can say much about, the
actions of the Avatar are said by Baba to have
universal ramifications because he is consciously one with
all life:

At each moment in time He is able to fulfill singly and

together the innumerable aspects of His universal duty
because His actions are in no way constrained by time
and distance and the here and now of the senses.
While engaged in any particular action on the gross
plane He is simultaneously working on all the inner
planes. 39

The actions of the Avatar are transformative; they create

new possibilities for the further development of conscious-
ness.

[ 29 ]
The outward example of the Avatar is only the visible sign
of his work; the inner changes he brings about are his real
work. Yet this inner work must be accomplished by taking a
physical form so that God can fully identify with the
consciousness he has come to change. For these reasons he
must work on the gross plane:

Unlike the actions of ordinary men, the Avatar's every

action on the gross plane brings about numberless and
far-reaching results on the different planes of con-
sciousness. His working on the inner planes is effortless
and continues of itself, but because of the very nature of
grossness His work on the gross plane entails great
exertion.40

The God-man, then, becomes human by fully identifying

with the finitude of human existence, an identification
which causes the Avatar to take on suffering. The suffering
of God for humanity is thus inherent in the lila as the
highest expression of the nature of divine love.

Speaking of himself as the Avatar, Baba described the God-

man's suffering this way:

As the eternal Redeemer of humanity, I am at the

junction of Reality and Illusion, simultaneously
experiencing the infinite Bliss of Reality and
the suffering of Illusion.41

From this statement it follows that the Avatar suffers

because he experiences himself to be eternally free in
himself, and at the same time, eternally bound in those still
in ignorance. In critical periods of history (the history of
consciousness), the suffering of God becomes a necessity
for the further movement of consciousness into what
humanity calls a new age. Baba explained how the Avatar
can be God-realized and yet suffer as a human being:

This is because God incarnates as Man and goes

through universal suffering and helplessness in order to
emancipate mankind from its ignorance of suffering and
helplessness. If the Avatar were to use His Infinite
Power, how could He

[ 30 ]
 experience helplessness? If the Avatar were to use His
Infinite Bliss, how could He suffer? He therefore does
not use either His Infinite Bliss or His Infinite Power.
Such is His Infinite Love and Compassion for His
Creation! Jesus Christ, Who had Infinite Power, let
Himself become helpless and suffered the humiliation of
letting the people spit on Him and jeer at Him. He
suffered crucifixion on the cross, but did not help
Himself with the Power and Bliss that were His. 42

The Avatar is also fully human in the sense that physically

he is subject to illness and pain, and spiritually he allows
himself to become identified with the suffering of the world.
His suffering is said by Baba to be redemptive inasmuch as
the Avatar takes upon himself the suffering of the world.
The Avatar does not alter the world's karma, except in
extraordinary circumstances, nor does he take the karma of
the world on himself, his suffering is the suffering of the
world that results from the world's karma. In this sense, he
enables the world to pass through destructive and critical
periods and enter into a new era with a changed level of
consciousness.

According to Meher Baba, every seven hundred to fourteen

hundred years, God takes human form as the Avatar. Called
by many names—Zoroaster, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus,
Mohammed—he is the same Ancient One who comes again
and again:

The Avatar appears in different forms, under different

names, at different times, in different parts of the world.
As His appearance always coincides with the spiritual
regeneration of man, the period immediately preceding
His manifestation is always one in which humanity
suffers from the pangs of the approaching rebirth. Man
seems more than ever enslaved by desire, more than ever
driven by greed, held by fear, swept by anger. The
strong dominate the weak; the rich oppress the poor;
large masses of people are exploited for the benefit of
the few who are in power. The individual, who finds no
peace or rest, seeks to forget himself in excitement.
Immorality increases, crime flourishes, religion is

[ 31 ]
 ridiculed. Corruption spreads throughout the social
order. Class and national hatreds are aroused and
fostered. Wars break out. Humanity grows desperate.
There seems to be no possibility of stemming the tide of
destruction.

At this moment the Avatar appears. Being the total

manifestation of God in human form, He is like a gauge
against which man can measure what he is and what he
may become. He trues the standard of human values by
interpreting them in terms of divinely human life.43

In spite of the fact that the teachings he gives and the

circumstances of his life vary greatly from advent to advent,
Baba asserted that the primary mission of the Avatar,
to release divine love in the world, is always the same:

In those who contact Him, He awakens a love that

consumes all selfish desires in the flame of the one
desire to serve Him. Those who consecrate their lives to
Him gradually become identified with Him in
consciousness. Little by little their humanity is absorbed
into His divinity, and they become free. 44

In answering questions about the differences between the

Avatars Baba explained that it is necessary for the Avatar to
adapt to the time and place in which he appears. Thus his
work is oriented to the particular needs of the world in each
age, and his message is couched in language that can be
understood by the prevailing attitudes and cultures to which
it is given. Baba repeatedly stated that these differences are
not essential, and that underlying them all is the same
message of divine love. The next three chapters will explore
the nature of this message of love in our own age as
expressed by the life and work of Avatar Meher Baba.

[ 32 ]
Meher Baba in Alwar, Rajasthan, Fberuary 8, 1938

[ 33 ]
Meher Baba bathing a leper in Pandharpur,
November 7, 1954

[ 34 ]
 Chapter 2

The Life Story

Everything in the life and work of Meher Baba must be seen

and understood in light of his declaration that he is the
Avatar of this age. The life of the Avatar is always, in Baba's
words, a "divinely human example" that demonstrates the
"possibility of a divine life for all humanity." In the Avatar's
actions, concepts of love and service become living realities,
giving new hope and inspiration to suffering humanity.

As the living embodiment of the truth that he brings, the

Avatar has a transforming impact on all life. According to
Baba, because the Avatar is one with all living things, his
actions reverberate on every plane of consciousness:

An ordinary physical action of the Avatar releases

immense forces in the inner planes and so becomes the
starting point for a chain of working, the repercussions
and overtone, of which are manifest at all levels and are
universal in range and effect. 1

Meher Baba's declaration of Avatarhood, then, causes him to

be measured by the highest of standards. This is exactly as
Baba would wish, for he did not come to give a new creed or
to establish a new religion; he intended for his life itself to
speak his message of divine love. "You have asked for and
been given enough words," he said, "it is now time to live
them." 2

Meher Baba described his life as the Avatar as having four

distinct periods:

[ 35 ]
 The role, which God has willed for me, has had several
phases. The pre-realization ordinary state, the old life
state of realized Divinity, the new life state of perfect
humility and intensive seeking of God as Truth through
the achievement of manonash ... and the tripartite Free
Life ...The consuming of freedom and bindings ... means
that there is a complete blending of the God-state and the
man-state... 3

Seen as a whole, these four periods of Baba's life, veiled

youth, realized divinity, seeker of God and God-man,
describe the work of awakening undertaken by Meher Baba
as the Avatar.

Veiled Youth (1894-1921)

Merwan Sheriar Irani, who came to be called Meher Baba,

lived his youth unaware of his identity as the Avatar. As
noted in chapter one, Baba explained that a veil is always
placed on the Avatar until the time is right for him to begin
his work.

The veiling and unveiling of the Avatar occurs when God

takes human form at critical junctures in history, periods
when a new awakening of divine love is desperately needed.
Divine Reality periodically subjects itself to the limitations
of duality out of love for those souls still enmeshed in the
world of maya. With every advent, a profound revolution in
consciousness is inaugurated: God acts directly to awaken
love by identifying with and working through the laws of the
universe. In short, God becoming human is that outpouring
of love that eventually enables all living things to realize
God.

With the birth of the Avatar, the existing balance between

Reality and illusion is not disturbed because God takes form
within the laws of the universe and not in some unnatural
way. The Avatar takes on certain impressions which are the
basis for the human personality needed for his work in the
world. These impressions are given, not produced;

[ 36 ]
they are not of the limited ego-mind. God enters the world in
human form with human impressions, but the Avatar is
never bound by the limitations of the ego.

Meher Baba explained that his birth as Merwan Sheriar Irani

on February 25, 1894 was a natural event. Raised in Poona,
India, to Zoroastrian parents, as a child Merwan remained
unaware of his true identity. During this period, he
developed the human personality that would later become
part of his work as the Avatar. The parentage, childhood and
youth of the Avatar shape the human side of God, enabling
the God-man to establish an intimate relationship with
humanity.

Merwan's personality, therefore, was not incidental to the

work of the Avatar; it was an essential part of that work.
After his unveiling, Merwan retained many of the traits that
marked his youth: compassion for the welfare of others, a
mischievous sense of humor, an enthusiasm for games and a
love of poetry and music. He was a natural leader, admired
by his peers and teachers alike.

The unveiling that awoke Merwan to his true nature began

suddenly and unexpectedly, interrupting his normal life as a
student at Deccan College in Poona. One day, while cycling
home from college, he had a dramatic encounter with an old
Muslim woman known as Hazrat Babajan, accepted by many
as a Perfect Master. Baba later described the moment this
way:

Babajan called me one day as I was cycling past her tree;

she kissed me on the forehead, and for nine months, God
knows, I was in that state to which very, very few go. I
had no consciousness of my body, or anything else. I
roamed about taking no food. My mother thought I was
mad, and called the doctor. My father understood, but
said nothing. The doctors could not do anything ...I took
no food but tea, which my elder brother Jamshed, who
loved me very much, gave me. 4

The process of Merwan's unveiling lasted from Babajan's

kiss in 1914 until the end of 1921. During this period, five

[ 37 ]
masters, Hazrat Babajan, Sai Baba, Upasni Maharaj,
Tajuddin Baba and Narayan Maharaj worked with Merwan
to make him aware of his Avatarhood.

Who were these five masters? According to Meher Baba,

there are always five Perfect Masters or Sadgurus in the
world. The Perfect Master is an individual soul who achieves
God-realization and simultaneously retains consciousness of
the world in order to help others. As individuals who have
achieved God-realization, these Sadgurus represent the
conscious presence of the divine in the world at all times.
When one leaves his or her body to merge in God, another
individual becomes a Perfect Master.

When God takes human form as the Avatar, it is the function

of the five Perfect Masters of that age to unveil him when
the moment is right. For Merwan, this unveiling process,
beginning with his encounter with Babajan, awakened him
simultaneously to infinite bliss and immeasurable agony.
Years later, Baba explained that the experience of infinite
consciousness limiting itself within the realm of finite
consciousness entails great suffering:

Although the infinite bliss I experienced in my

superconscious state remained continuous, as it is now, I
suffered agonies in returning towards normal
consciousness of illusion... In reality there is no suffering
as such—only infinite bliss. Although suffering is illusory,
still, within the realm of illusion, it is suffering... My
reality, although untouched by illusion, remained
connected with illusion. That is why I suffered in-
calculable spiritual agonies. 5

The suffering of unveiling was so great that Merwan

attempted to relieve it by banging his head on the stone floor
of his room. For long periods, he refused to eat or drink.
After the kiss of Babajan, he was inwardly drawn to contact
four other Perfect Masters, the most significant of whom
were Sai Baba of Shirdi and Upasni Maharaj of Sakori. On
seeing Merwan for the first time, Sai Baba looked at him and
shouted "Parvardigar" which means "preserver and protector
of all."

[ 38 ]
Immediately following this encounter, Merwan went to
Upasni Maharaj who was living nearby:

When I came near enough to him, Maharaj greeted me,

so to speak, with a stone which he threw at me with great
force. It struck me on my forehead exactly where Babajan
had kissed me, hitting with such force that it drew blood.
The mark of that injury is still on my forehead. But that
blow from Maharaj was the stroke of dnyan (...divine
knowledge).

Figuratively, Maharaj had started to rouse me from

"sound sleep." But in sound sleep man is unconscious,
while I, being superconscious, was wide awake in sound
sleep. With that stroke, Maharaj had begun to help me
return to ordinary consciousness of the realm of illusion.
6

During the next seven years, under Upasni Maharaj's care,

Merwan was brought down to complete awareness of the
"world of duality" while retaining consciousness of his
divinity. At the end of this period, in December of 1921,
Upasni declared that Merwan was the Avatar, saying: "This
boy will move the world. Humanity at large will be benefited
at his hands."

In 1922 Merwan Sheriar Irani began his mission as the

Avatar. Though he retained the human attributes of Merwan,
he now experienced himself as one born to live the divinely
human life of the God-man. Many who encountered him
during this period, including former schoolmates and friends,
witnessed a profound transformation in Merwan that inspired
them to leave everything and follow him. One of these early
disciples later recalled Merwan at this pivotal juncture:

He was fair, but looked tanned with the tremendous force

of having to contain the fire of Absoluteness of God in
the limitedness of human nature. He was sharp, quick,
forthright and vibrant. His eyes were penetrating and
aglow with divine fire. His body was lean and wiry, but
strong and active. There was an air of deep drunkenness
of spirit—the

[ 39 ]
 intoxication which was ever conscious, that flashed out in
his lightning words of knowledge and wisdom and acts of
deep, affectionate and tender love. The selflessness that
pervaded his doings and words was simple and
unsophisticated. Inwardly, he seemed to live as God for
God's work; and outwardly, he lived as man for all men
except for himself. 7

Realized Divinity (1921-1949)

Deeply touched by his loving ways, the first disciples of

Merwan began to call him "Meher Baba" meaning
"Compassionate One" or "Compassionate Father." They
accepted him as one who had realized God. Gradually, those
around Baba began to see him as not only God-realized, but
also as the Avatar of the age. Although Baba's circle of
disciples had long known him as the Avatar, it was not until
the 1950s that Meher Baba publicly declared his Avatarhood.
Their understanding of "Avatar" was gained through many
years of witnessing Baba in action. For those who love
Meher Baba, all of the roles he assumed during the course of
his nearly seventy-five years— veiled youth, realized Master,
seeker of God, and God-man—combine to reveal God
becoming human as the Avatar.

From 1921 until 1949, Meher Baba took on the role of the
God-realized Master. We can gain insights into his work of
"awakening" by examining a number of significant aspects
of his life during this period: gathering of disciples; silent
communication; acts of service; world travel; and contact
with the God-intoxicated.

Meher Baba called those who lived close to him his mandali,
a Sanskrit word meaning a group or company. Living near
Baba required strict obedience including, in the early years, a
list of orders concerning work, diet and even play and
exercise. The men and women Baba drew to him were from
a variety of religious and social backgrounds. Though
allowed to

[ 40 ]
follow the practices of their respective faiths, the mandali
were expected to live in close harmony and cooperation with
people of all religions. Everyone was required to work hard,
often at a job in the world as well as in the ashram with Baba.
They joined with Baba in providing services for the sick, the
poor and others in need.

For Baba, the gathering of the mandali was the gathering of

what he called "the circle." Baba explained that the Avatar is
always surrounded by a circle of disciples who have deep
past connections with him. Because the Avatar works for the
benefit of all people, the circle is representative of many
personality types which are useful instruments in his
universal work. Consciousness being fundamentally one, the
Avatar's work with a few affects all.

In July of 1925, Meher Baba told the mandali that he would

remain silent for a period of time. On July 9th he gave
instructions concerning the school, hospital and thriving
colony that had grown up around the ashram. He ended by
telling them, "Think of others more than of yourselves; use
up your bodies in service. This is absolutely necessary if you
want to realize God." 8 After going over a few points
pertaining to the life of the ashram, he retired to his room for
the night. He remained orally silent for the rest of his life.

In the first months of the silence Baba wrote on a chalk slate

and used gestures to convey his words. Soon the slate was
replaced by a wooden board with the letters of the English
alphabet painted on it. Pointing to the letters, Baba rapidly
spelled out what he wished to say. In 1954, Baba ceased to
use even the alphabet board and relied solely on hand
gestures.

Meher Baba's silence extended to writing as well. In 1927,

he stopped writing except to sign his name (M.S. Irani). All
writings published under his name were dictated through the
alphabet board and gestures. The one book written prior to
1927 by Baba's own hand has not been read by anyone, and
its present whereabouts is unknown.

By not communicating orally, Baba would have us focus

more on what he did than what he said. "If my silence cannot

[ 41 ]
speak," he said, "of what avail would be speeches made by
the tongue?" 9 He indicated that his silence was not to be
taken as a spiritual vow or discipline, but rather as part of his
universal work of transforming consciousness, a subject
dealt with in greater detail in chapter three.

Silence did not inhibit Meher Baba's extremely active life, a

fact that constantly amazed those around him. One of the
mandali describes Baba's actions in silence this way:

Many men have remained silent for even a lifetime but

under special conditions of solitude and seclusion, taking
no part in worldly affairs. But who except God Almighty
could engage in all the activities he [Baba] had taken part
in: the detailed supervision of the ashram and the colony
surrounding it, bathing the boys and washing their clothes,
writing a book, grinding flour, giving darshan to tens of
thousands, and interviews to hundreds, as well as
dictating more discourses than the previous year when he
was speaking, dispensing justice and healing the villagers'
quarrels, helping the untouchables to stand up as human
beings, playing cricket and football and other boys'
games; and in the midst of all this, assuming anger,
displeasure, joviality, seriousness, mirth, pity and sorrow
without once being heard to utter a sound. 10

Meher Baba's activities in the 1920s centered around

institutions of service he established at Meherabad, his
headquarters for many years and now the site of his tomb-
shrine. At various times there were schools for students of
different ages, castes and nationalities, facilities for the
mentally ill, free hospitals and dispensaries for the poor and
a special prem (love) ashram school for training a number of
young boys in the spiritual life.

Baba often indicated that, as the Avatar, he worked on the

problems of the many through direct contact with the few.
Since the Avatar is consciously one with all life, every act of
the Avatar may be seen as transforming for all living things.
To take one poignant example: Baba worked universally to

[ 42 ]
break down the caste system by personally bathing the
untouchable boys attending his school and cleaning their
latrines. When a number of Brahmins (who are forbidden by
caste practice to come in contact with untouchables) came
for Baba's blessing, he had them join in the work saying, "I
am bathing untouchable boys. It is no use thus having
darshan (blessing) unless you are prepared to do the work I
do." 11

The primary aim of Baba's work was not to establish

institutions of service, though such institutions have been
founded in his name. The Avatar's service aims to liberate
the individual from the enslavement of illusion. This, Baba
explained, is true selfless service:

Those who are inspired by the spirit of selfless service

are quick to render unto humanity all possible help
through the provision of the necessities of life like clothes
and shelter, food and medicine, education and other
amenities of civilization... All these types of service are
great and good; but from the ultimate point of view, the
help which secures Spiritual Freedom for humanity,
surpasses them all; and it is insuperable in importance...
Regardless of whether a man is wealthy or poor, highly
educated or illiterate, the only real help is to give him the
perfect hope that everyone has a really equal opportunity
to achieve everlasting freedom from all bindings. There is
no gift greater than the gift of spiritual freedom and there
is no task more important than that of helping others to
attain it... 12

Meher Baba's many acts of service, therefore, were meant to

awaken humanity, individually and collectively, to spiritual
freedom. For this work of awakening he needed no
permanent institution or organization. The institutions he did
establish he compared to the scaffolding temporarily erected
in order to construct the real building that must be built in
the consciousness of humanity. Once the inner change has
been accomplished, the scaffolding is dismantled. For this
reason, Baba frequently opened and closed various ashrams
and places of service. He meant them only as outward aids to
the actual inner work he came to accomplish.

[ 43 ]
During the 1930s, Baba traveled throughout the world,
visiting Europe, North America, China, Africa and the
Middle East. On most of these trips, he would travel
incognito, silently "laying cables" for his work. At times he
consented to meet with those who expressed an interest in
him, including members of the press. On occasion, he would
issue a public statement such as the following:

I am not come to establish any cult, society or

organization; nor even to establish a new religion. The
religion that I shall give teaches the Knowledge of the
One behind the many. The book that I shall make people
read is the book of the heart that holds the key to the
mystery of life. I shall bring about a happy blending of
the head and the heart. I shall revitalize all religions and
cults, and bring them together like beads on one string. 13

Meher Baba indicated that he traveled in order to carry out

his inner work of awakening. He gave no importance to
founding any organization in his name, and he advocated no
particular method of spiritual practice. Most of the press
stories about him were favorable, but when unfavorable or
sensational reports appeared in newspapers, he did not
respond nor was he disturbed. He moved about as one who
had a particular timetable, requiring him to visit certain
places and people at appointed times known only to him.

A good number of those Baba contacted during his visits to

the West became his lifelong disciples. Many who met him
felt an immediate familiarity and warmth. The following
report typifies the responses of many:

My most outstanding impression of the first meeting is

one of peering into bottomless pools of infinite love and
tenderness, as my eyes met his. My heart pounded with
tremendous excitement and for a while I could not speak.
I felt that in an inexplicable way he was the reason for my
very existence; that I had never really lived until this
moment; that he was deeply familiar and precious to me,
even as I was no stranger and very dear to him. 14

[ 44 ]
Those traveling with Meher Baba came to realize that all of
his external activities were crucial for his inner work. In
many places he simply wished to work by silently walking
through crowds as the following account of Baba in
Shanghai suggests:

Immediately we had tea, Baba said that he wished to go

round the city and mix with the Chinese crowds. I had
very little experience of Baba's ways and was still rather
awkward in his presence. I took them along the Bund,
and from the French settlement by tram through the
British to the war-stricken districts near the North station,
thinking it would interest them. Not at all. There were not
enough people. We took a tram back and saw Nanking
Road, the now brightly lit Chinese stores... The streets
were densely packed with long-gowned clerks and short-
coated coolies... Baba was delighted ... 15

In other places Baba wished to contact those he called his

agents, advanced souls who, unknown to the world, silently
worked for him in every part of the globe. Though they had
not met him physically, Baba stated that these agents
recognized him as the Avatar and received internal
instructions from him. One of many examples of this contact
between Baba and his agents took place in New Mexico in
1934:

Baba has explained that this is one of the very rare direct
agents; he is the direct agent of America. In 1934, when
Baba and a few of his disciples were on their way to
California, the train stopped at Albuquerque for a short
time. Baba spelt out the word "Indian" on the palm of his
hand, and went with Ruano away from the station into a
small street near by. At a street corner they noticed two
American Indians; one was selling bows and arrows, and
he walked away as soon as Baba approached. The other, a
tall, impressive figure with a red band tied round his head,
stayed where he was, and for a few moments Baba and he
stood facing one another, each looking intently into the
other's eyes. Baba then abruptly walked back to the
station. 16
 [ 45 ]

Meher Baba once summarized the work of awakening

accomplished through agents and travels this way:

His [the Avatar's ]...work is executed for the good of

humanity by the means of his spiritual body and Divine
will—on the spiritual and the subtle planes directly, or
through the intermediary of His agents. The exterior
work is accomplished through His physical body by
personal contact with individuals. By passing through
different countries He turns their minds towards
spirituality; He enhances their progression towards the
subtle planes and from these towards the spiritual
[mental] planes. 17

The esoteric aspect of Baba's work as Avatar is nowhere

better highlighted than in his work with the God-intoxicated
or masts (pronounced "must"). For many of his seventy-four
years Baba searched for, contacted and worked intensely
with these highly peculiar individuals. The statistics alone
are staggering: from 1941 until 1946, the years of his most
extensive mast "tours" in India, Baba personally contacted
some 20,000 people while traveling altogether over 75,000
miles.

So important was this mast work in Baba's life, we must be

clear on just who or what a mast is. The term mast was
coined by Baba from the Sufi term "mast-allah" which may
be translated to mean "one who is overpowered by God or
God-intoxicated." The masts are very advanced souls,
stationed on the higher planes of consciousness. Because
they have become absorbed in the experience of bliss or
divine love, a "spiritual push" is needed by the Avatar to
move them forward on the path.

Seen on the streets of India, these masts are to most

observers indistinguishable from mad-men. In Baba's view,
however, these strange men and women are not only sane,
but they are more sane than people with so-called "normal"
consciousness. Masts, according to Baba, deviate for a
number of reasons from the usual development in the
spiritual search. Their deviation is pronounced because they
have not received

[ 46 ]
direct guidance from a spiritual master. For this reason a
mast takes to "unconventional patterns of life." Baba
outlined what then happens:

The result is that the person often lands himself into

confusing side-tracks and by-paths, and sometimes into
regressive channels of life. Once the average pattern of
life is surrendered, it makes room for infinite varieties of
self-created and provisional patterns of life and action.
These patterns may deviate considerably from normality,
and the ways of life that follow from such patterns may
even seem to be insane, to the extent to which they
deviate from the average mode of life. But they do not
necessarily mean real insanity, or even retrogression on
the path of inner search.

Such a person is often, in his own individual way, in

earnest search of God, or Truth, as the unfailing inward
directive power. In and through his waywardness, there
is a logic of his own; and all his idiosyncrasies and
aberrations can be understood only if they are viewed in
the light of the inner motive power... They are sincerely
and wholeheartedly devoted to Truth as it comes to them;
they are divinely mad in search of eternal values. They
have decided to take stakes in their desire to realize God.
Such persons are not mad in the ordinary sense; they are
desperately in love with God, and are known as Masts. 18

"Ordinary" insanity, as defined by Baba, is the inability to

adjust to the world; God-madness is the refusal to do so. The
mast in his "madness" is closer to the divine Reality, and in
this sense, is actually more sane than others. Baba has said
that the closer one gets to stilling the mind, the nearer one is
to God-realization. Masts, having slowed down the working
of the mind through their absorption in God, are close to the
God-state. This point was summarized by Baba this way:

Mind stopped is God.

Mind working is man.
Mind slowed down is mast.
Mind working fast is mad. 19

[ 47 ]
In his typology of spiritually advanced souls, and
particularly in his understanding of masts, Baba challenged
accepted notions of spirituality. In The Wayfarers, a detailed
account of Baba's work with the masts, Dr. William Donkin
put it bluntly:

Are these ragged and eccentric men and women

spiritually advanced, who pass their lives in filth and
squalor; who talk nonsense; who often roam about naked;
who may abuse others and strike them; who do no
worldly work; who smoke, drink tea, and chew pan and
tobacco in unnatural quantities; who have, it seems,
perverted tastes in anything and everything—are we to
believe that these people are closer to God than
intelligent, cultured, civilized, normal men and women?
20

Baba answered with an emphatic "yes":

Compared with the ordinary man of the world, the mast

may seem to have less balance of mind; but is important
to remember that the average man himself has not really
any balance of mind. The average man of the world has
only an appearance of balance, because he can often
effect a provisional adjustment between the warring
elements in his mind... This working compromise enables
the average man to bring his outward behavior into
conformity with the established conventions of society;
and because he fits into the average pattern of responses
and reactions, he gives the appearance of balance... The
mast is seeking a higher and a more lasting balance of
mind, that would be securely based upon true values. He
has taken in his own hands the task of intelligent psychic
readjustment and new experimentation. This task is very
different from the theoretical manipulation of ideas. It
involves the courage to face oneself with unfailing
honesty of purpose. It involves also the necessary intense
ardour for bringing about the practical overhauling of
the contents of the mind. The spiritual yearning for
lasting Truth brings about in masts a complete
unsettlement of the working balance of compromise that
is characteristic of the average man of the world. 21

[ 48 ]
Though the mast has attained a certain spiritual advancement,
he or she has done so without proper guidance. Baba did not,
therefore, endorse the path taken by masts for those who
seek to enter the spiritual path. As we will see further in
chapter four, Baba encouraged love for God in and through a
practical life in the world. While affirming and praising the
intense love for God found in the masts, Baba worked hard
to focus and channel their love for the benefit of others.
Baba exempted no one, not even those who have achieved
great heights spiritually, from helping the world through love
and service. With the help of the Avatar or a Perfect Master
the mast can continue to advance spiritually through a
reintegration into the affairs of the world:

The Master has a direct and unerring insight into the

exact working of the minds of masts. He knows the true
genesis and the nature of the unusual mental state in
which the mast has landed himself... He gives masts
effective guidance and a spiritual push, and he facilitates
their onward march on the path, so that they become
more and more fit as vehicles for the expression of the
Divine Will... When masts receive the right sort of help
from a Perfect Master, they emerge into a supra-normal
state of new integration and harmony... The mast states
have in them an immense potentiality for contacting and
releasing divinity, with an ever-increasing thoroughness
and fullness, but they need to be delicately handled by
one who has attained spiritual perfection. 22

To awaken the masts to their responsibility to love and serve

others, Baba worked with them in various ways. Several of
the mandali were expert "mast-finders" who would scour
remote areas of India for masts. Frequently Baba would then
visit these places, making his inner contact through an
external meeting. The mast might also be brought to a
special mast community or ashram established by Baba for
that purpose. In the ashram setting, Baba saw personally to
the needs of masts, washing, feeding and shaving them. It
should be noted

[ 49 ]
that Baba also worked with other advanced souls, the poor
and those he termed "the ordinary mad" during these mast
trips and at his ashrams.

Masts are not easy to locate, nor are they easily coaxed into
abandoning the comfort of their situation (physical and
spiritual) for an unsettling jolt from the Avatar. Often they
avoid or even fear such an encounter—a difficulty that
constantly plagued Baba and his men. This was always
complicated by the fact that Baba insisted on remaining
incognito during much of the mast work. To make matters
even more difficult, Baba had everyone, including himself,
give in to every whim of the mast in order to create the right
atmosphere and conditions for the inner work.

In spite of the trials and tribulations of mast work, Baba

appeared to be happiest when with them. He called them his
special children, and he loved them deeply. As the following
description suggests, no effort was too great in the work to
contact each mast:

And in the evening, after a shave, a bath, a meal, and a

few hours of rest, you see Baba join the mandali, and you
listen to the witty and fascinating review of the tour just
completed. It is now that you hear of the incredible
hardships; of the sleepless nights; of the tedious vigils in
trains, tongas, and bullock carts; of the rides upon
camels, ponies, and asses (and once, to cross a river, of a
ride upon an elephant!); of the treks on foot over leagues
of dust or mud; of the vicissitudes of rain and sun, cold
and heat—in short, you hear something at least of what
Baba and his men went through, and of the qualities and
oddities of the best of the masts whom they met, word
pictures of the brief encounters between Baba and these
strange, God-intoxicated souls.

And when the mandali who went with him add their
tribute of description, you hear how, throughout all these
hardships, Baba remained the freshest of all, and how,
after each contact with a really good mast, he seemed
particularly radiant, as if some great work had been
achieved, or some heavy burden lifted. 23

[ 50 ]
Though Baba made extraordinary efforts to keep his identity
hidden, he was invariably recognized by the mast. Baba's
meetings with the masts provide a unique record of reaction
to him through direct encounter. It appears that the masts
saw something in Meher Baba that not even the mandali
could see. Their vision of Baba sprung from something other
than familiarity with his life and teachings (of which they
knew nothing). It is worth quoting a few examples recorded
by Dr. Donkin:

Azim Khan Baba: When Baba contacted him, he (Azim

Khan Baba) said, "You are Allah; you have brought forth
the creation, and once in [a] thousand years you come
down to see the play of what you have created."

Dada Mian: Chhagan tried to bring this mast to Baba in

Jubbulpore. He refused to come, and said, "He (Baba) is
the Emperor, how can I come?"

Gulab Baba: When Baba entered the room Gulab Baba

told Kaka, pointing to Baba, "He (Baba) is God Himself,
and you have tricked me." A few moments later, when
Baba asked Gulab Baba to sit beside him, he protested, "I
am not fit to sit beside him." 24

Of the inner work Baba accomplished with the masts, little

can be said. In particular cases it is possible to measure
outward change in behavior, though the inner changes are
difficult to comprehend. Mohammed, one of Baba's favorite
masts, is an example of outward change:

No one would maintain that the Mohammed of today is

normal, but there is, nevertheless, a radical change in his
behaviour. In the old days, his explosive and irritable
temperament gave one a feeling that he was wrestling
with some inner problem, and that when you tore him
away from his preoccupation with this problem, he
became so confused that he burst into an uncontrollable
tantrum... Every day when Baba came, it was as if a
brilliant flame were kindled in the depths of Mohammed's
being, that for a moment lit up the dark and tangled ways,
and slowly these fleeting

[ 51 ]
 moments of inner radiance have grown more and more
sustained, so that Mohammed today is, for the most part,
a harmonious and agreeable inmate of the ashram. He
now radiates something unusual and charming, he has a
perspicacity that misses little of what goes on in the
ashram, and he adopts a kind of avuncular interest in
everyone's welfare. 25

While aiding the masts spiritually, Meher Baba was

simultaneously enlisting these strange, but beautiful souls in
the Avatar's universal work. The mast, once awakened by the
Avatar, breaks out of the self-sufficiency of his state and
becomes a channel of love and service for the benefit of the
world:

The Master knows all the stages of the journey, with its
traps, dangers, and opportunities for speedy
advancement. He gives masts effective guidance and a
spiritual push, and he facilitates their onward march on
the path, so that they become more and more fit as
vehicles for the expression of the Divine Will. They
become more efficient agents for the promotion of God's
plan on earth. 26

Seeker of God (1949-1952)

In 1949 Meher Baba's life as the Awakener took a significant

turn as he entered into a period he called "the New Life." He
declared that it was now necessary for him to live a life of
helplessness and hopelessness as an ordinary seeker of God.
All ashrams were disbanded and all but a handful of the
mandali were dispersed. The New Life became a dramatic
example of Baba's assertion that in the Avatar, God must
become fully human in order that humanity can once again
seek God. For Baba this required that the One who is sought
become the one who seeks, thereby clearing a new path in
consciousness for others to follow.

Not surprisingly, those connected with Meher Baba were

startled by his sudden new course. They were told that Baba

[ 52 ]
would soon be leaving and that they might never see him
again. In announcing this, Baba warned that he was serious
about this New Life, and that they must be prepared for a
complete change:

All of the proceeds from the sale of my properties are to

be used in paying off promised sums and to provide for
the immediate needs of those whom I have myself made to
depend upon me. Nothing is required for me and those
who will go with me. The question about spiritual benefits
does not arise... Do not get misled on account of my
apparently eccentric habits up to now. For example, I
have definitely decided to give up Meherazad in October,
yet I have given instructions to Padri to fix the lighting as
early as he can. That is because of my custom of
maintaining an old order of things up to the moment that
I start upon anything new. It may be madness, it may be
method, but that has been my habit. Now I am also going
to put an end to my habits and customs. Therefore when I
say the 'end' it will mean nothing but an end. Do not
remain any more under the impression that it will be
otherwise. I want to be absolutely free from everything
and everybody. There will be no compromise now about
anything. I am becoming ghutt (hardened), naffat (cal-
lous) and penniless. Remember the proverb Nanga-se-
Khuda bhi darta hai (even God is afraid of the 'naked'). 27

All those who loved Meher Baba were given the opportunity
to join him in the New Life. Several plans were developed
by Baba that provided various alternatives of living the life
Baba envisioned. A small number of people were given the
choice of saying yes to a list of very stringent conditions and
thereby were permitted to accompany Baba personally.
These companions were to share directly in Baba's daily
work by becoming helpless and hopeless with him. This
meant that they were to give up everything, relying only on
God in all circumstances.

The companions were prohibited from approaching Baba

[ 53 ]
as a God-realized Master. No homage could be paid Baba
and no spiritual help could be sought from him. At the same
time, the companions had to agree to obey Baba
wholeheartedly as the "elder brother" or chief companion.

Those who said yes to the conditions and were selected by

Baba agreed to take full responsibility before God for
whatever might happen to them. Baba insisted that in this
New Life he would not be responsible for their spiritual or
material welfare as he had been in the past. Baba also
emphasized that there would be no spiritual gain or benefit
for those who chose to accompany him. One hundred
percent cheerfulness was expected of all companions; moods
would not be allowed. Baba summarized the trials of the
New Life by saying in part:

It is not merely a question of hardships and difficulties

such as those encountered in mast trips. The most
difficult thing now is the need to control emotions and
feelings and to have absolute readiness for split-second
obedience to whatever I ask you to do or not to do. I do
not expect anyone of you to be free from your respective
reactions of good or bad impulses such as anger,
displeasure, likes and dislikes, but I expect you not to
give any direct or indirect expression to feelings and
reactions. I shall be free in every way and you will be
bound in every respect. I shall live amongst you as one of
you like a brother. I may even fall at your feet and ask
you to spit upon me. That is why I have been saying that
the conditions will be such that very few would remain
with me to the end. 28

On October 16, 1949, Baba and twenty companions set out

on what was to be an extraordinary journey across India. The
change in Baba's work was made apparent by the prayer he
uttered to initiate the New Life:

May God help Baba to definitely make this step, which he

is taking to give up everything and to go away,
irrevocable, so that from 16 October when he enters the
new life, there will be no turning back. 29

[ 54 ]
One of the mandali wrote:

This was the first prayer for help ever before heard from
Baba to God during the past twenty-eight years, and the
mandali [were] so taken aback and confused that no one
could think of saying, Amen! 30

Baba did indeed become a companion in the New Life. All

who left with him joined together to share the work of
sweeping, cleaning, washing and cooking. Everyone,
including Baba, had his or her duties. No thought was given
to spiritual life or religious discussions. Spontaneous living
in the present moment was emphasized. During certain
periods of the New Life, Baba and his companions had to
beg for their food, walk great distances (totaling thousands
of miles) in severe weather and with little sleep. There were
times when they had no place to sleep but in the open.
Whatever the circumstances, all were required to remain
cheerful and detached. Indeed, many who were unable to do
so were instructed to return to their homes and
responsibilities in the world, but to continue living the New
Life of relying solely upon God.

Under Baba's direction, one of the companions, Dr. Ghani,

wrote a song to express the spirit of the New Life:

Listen to the silent words of Meher Baba

The life of all lovers of God is in these words.
You who are serious to follow the New Life
Will renounce your ephemeral existence.

We leave taken to this life in which we rely only upon God;

Our will is strengthened by our oath.
We merrily sing the song of hopelessness;
We invite all calamities and difficulties.

We neither wail over lost hopes, nor complain about

Promises.
Or covet honor, or shun disgrace.
Backbiting is ended and we do not fear anyone;
This is the tenor of our New Life.

[ 55 ]
No confusion in the mind now; neither are any ties left;
Pride, anger, lust and greed are sloughed off.
No religion for any of us, nor care for physical and mental
Aims.
The Sheikh and the Brahmin are now in the same boat.

There is for us all no small or great.

Neither disciple, master, nor Godhood exist.
Brotherliness is the link,
And our common enjoyment of suffering.

This world or the next, hell or heaven, we are no longer

concerned with.
Shaktis and siddhis, occultism and miracles, we are no
Longer plagued with.
All false impressions have been purged from the mind;
Now we live in the active present.

Dear ones, take seriously the words of Baba.

'Although now I am on the same level with you,
Yet all orders from me, good, bad, or extraordinary,
You should carry out immediately, leaving the result to God.

'Even if the heavens fall,

Do not let go the hand of Truth;
Let despair and disappointment ravage and destroy
the garden of your life;
You beautify it by contentment and self-sufficiency.

'Even though your heart be cut to bits, let a smile be on

your lips.
Here I divulge to you a truth:
Hidden in your empty hands is treasure untold;
Your beggarly life is the envy of kings.

'God exists indeed, and true are the Prophets,

Every cycle has an Avatar, and every moment a wali.
For us, however, it is only hopelessness and helplessness,
How else can I describe to you what our New Life is?' 31

[ 56 ]
An important aspect of the New Life was the contact Baba
made with masts, sadhus and the poor. In his role of
"servant" Baba sought out thousands of these individuals so
that he could wash their feet, bow down to them and give
them a gift of money. During this work Baba was referred to,
by his mandali, as "elder brother" and the name "Meher
Baba" was not mentioned.

Meher Baba's New Life wanderings as a seeker of God

culminated in a four-month period he called "manonash" or
the annihilation of the ego-mind. In this manonash phase
Baba indicated that he had taken the journey to God to its
ultimate conclusion. Just as the New Life cut a new path to
God in human consciousness, so manonash opened the way
for realization of God by future seekers.

While the full implications of Baba's efforts to transform

consciousness are hidden to us and will only become known
in time, it is clear that in the New Life and manonash Baba
worked to chart fresh avenues for spiritual life. The New
Life and manonash are living symbols of the inner work
Baba has said that all must eventually do: renounce the life
of the ego for the new life of loving God and finding God as
one's true Self.

In the companionship of the New Life, marked by one

hundred percent honesty, cheerfulness, love for one another
and total reliance upon God, Baba laid the groundwork for
the new humanity he said that he had come to bring as the
Avatar. He created the conditions for inner renunciation, a
way of life that helps seekers of God to be in the world but
not of it. And he promised that the New Life he established
in consciousness will be available for all time:

This New Life is endless, and even after my physical

death it will be kept alive by those who live the life of
complete renunciation of falsehood, lies, hatred, anger,
greed and lust; and who, to accomplish all this, do no
lustful actions, do no harm to anyone, do no backbiting,
do not seek material possessions or power, who accept no
homage, neither

[ 57 ]
 covet honor nor shun disgrace, and fear no one and
nothing; by those who rely wholly and solely on God, and
who love God purely for the sake of loving; who believe
in the lovers of God and in the reality of Manifestation,
and yet do not expect any spiritual or material reward;
who do not let go the hand of Truth, and who, without
being upset by calamities, bravely and wholeheartedly
face all hardships with one hundred per cent cheerfulness,
and give no importance to caste, creed and religious
ceremonies.

This New Life will live by itself eternally, even if there is

no one to live it. 32

Having now lived both the life of a God-realized Master and

of an ordinary seeker of God, Meher Baba emerged from the
New Life to declare publicly that he was the God-man, the
Avatar of the Age.

The God-Man (1952-1969)

The last phase of Meher Baba's life as the Avatar was

characterized by an unprecedented release of love that
inspired many thousands of followers to strive in a
very practical way to express the highest love in their
everyday lives. He entered into what he termed the "Free
Life"—the give and take of love without obligation or
condition. He made clear to all who approached him that he
was the Avatar, the living Christ, who has come only for the
sake of love. In an important message, given to his lovers
in 1953, Baba explained his role as the "Highest of the
High" and stated how he wished to be understood by those
who love him:
I declare to all of you who approach me, and to those of
you who desire to approach me, accepting me as the
Highest of the High, that you must never come with the
desire in your heart which craves for wealth and worldly
gain, but only with the fervent longing to give your all—
body, mind and possessions—with all their attachments.
Seek me not

[ 58 ]
 to extricate you from your predicaments, but find me in
order to surrender yourself wholeheartedly to my Will.
Cling to me not for worldly happiness and short-lived
comforts, but adhere to me, through thick and thin,
sacrificing your own happiness and comforts at my feet.
Let my happiness be your cheer and my comfort your rest.
Do not ask me to bless you with a good job, but desire to
serve me more diligently and honestly without
expectation of reward. Never beg of me to save your life
or the lives of your dear ones, but beg of me to accept you
and permit you to lay down your life for me. Never expect
me to cure you of your bodily afflictions, but beseech me
to cure you of your ignorance. Never stretch out your
hands to receive anything from me, but hold them high in
praise of me whom you have approached as the Highest
of the High. 33

In the Free Life, Meher Baba made himself available to

many thousands of people, in the East and in the West, who
came seeking his blessing. He indicated that this outer
contact, even when very brief, was part of his inner
awakening, planting the seed of love in each heart. He
stressed repeatedly that he had not come to give them words
or messages, but rather to awaken them to the love of the
Avatar in their midst:

I want you to feel that I am one of you and that is why I

am now sitting here on the ground with you all. I am on
the level of each one of you. Whether poor, rich, small,
big, I am like each of you, but I am approachable only to
those who love me.

Only those who can lose themselves in my love will find

themselves in me. This is not an idle talk, but an
authoritative statement that eternally I have been, and
will be, always the slave of my lovers. 34

During this period Baba made three trips to the United States
staying at the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, South
Carolina, a place he called his "home in the West." In
Australia, he resided at Avatar's Abode in Woombye,

[ 59 ]
Queensland. He indicated that both these centers would one
day become places of world pilgrimage.

The release of love during Baba's Free Life was also given
through his suffering. Baba had often stated that the
manifestation of the Avatar's love necessitates that he share
in the suffering of the world. In the 1940s he spoke to the
mandali of a "personal disaster" that would befall him and
said that he would have to spill his blood in the East and in
the West before he left his body.

Baba's outer suffering took the form of two automobile

"accidents," one in the United States (1952) and one in India
(1956). The American accident occurred in the middle of the
U.S. while Baba was being driven across the country. The
entire left side of his body, from head to foot, sustained
injury. The accident in Satara, India was also serious,
causing damage to Baba's right side, again from head to foot.
In both accidents mandali members were also hurt, and there
was one fatality.

Meher Baba explained that his physical suffering was part of

the Avatar's universal suffering, for the Avatar must suffer
for "one and all beings and things" as part of his love for the
world. "You are Bliss itself," he remarked on one occasion,
"to make you aware of it, I come amongst you and suffer
infinite agony."

The last period of Meher Baba's physical life was marked by

an urgency to complete his work as the Avatar. For the
purposes of this universal work he entered into what might
be called a deeper silence. In 1954 he gave up the alphabet
board and began to rely solely on hand gestures when he
wished to communicate with words. Seclusions, which had
always been a feature of his work, became more frequent.
When Baba's lovers around the world expressed alarm at the
closing of external contact, Baba issued a statement through
one of the mandali. It read in part:

There is no reason at all for any of you to worry. Baba

was, Baba is, and Baba will also be eternally existent.
Severance of external relations does not mean the
termination of internal links. It was only for establishing
the internal

[ 60 ]
 connection that the external contacts had been
maintained until now. The time has now come for being
bound in the chain of internal connections. Hence,
external contact is no longer necessary. It is possible to
establish the internal link by obeying Baba's orders. I
give you all my blessings for strengthening these internal
links.

I am always with you and I am not away from you. I was,

am, and will remain eternally with you and it is for
promoting this realization that I have severed external
contact. This will enable all persons to realize Truth by
being bound to each other with internal links. 35

For Baba, seclusion was not isolation, just as silence was not
simply ceasing to speak. In seclusion Baba worked with
great energy and urgency to finish what he repeatedly termed
his universal work. His followers all over the world were
often asked to participate in this work by carrying out
specific instructions, frequently involving maintaining
silence or remembrance of God's name. Though he rarely
explained much about this work in seclusion, it clearly had
to do with his mission to awaken. In a 1968 message to his
lovers, Baba indicated the significance of his work in
seclusion:

None can have the least idea of the immensity of the work
that I am doing in this seclusion. The only hint I can give
is that compared with the work I do in seclusion all the
important work of the world put together is completely
insignificant. Although for me the burden of my work is
crushing, the result of my work will be intensely felt by all
people in the world. 36

The strain of Baba's last seclusion in 1968 took a tremendous

toll on his health. Nevertheless, he was pleased with the
results, saying: "My work is done. It is completed 100% to
my satisfaction. The result of this work will also be 100%
and will manifest from the end of September." 37 That was
November 1968. In January 1969 Meher Baba "dropped his
physical body."

[ 61 ]
In the last few months of his life, Baba suffered as he had
not suffered before. "This is my crucifixion," he told the
mandali. The doctors could do nothing as they had a difficult
time reaching a definite diagnosis. According to Baba, his
condition had "no medical grounds at all; it is due purely to
the strain of my work." Severe spasms shook his body in the
last days. At 12 noon on January 31st, he joked with the
mandali about all the medicine he had been given and the
little effect it had. At 12:15 a great spasm shook his body,
his pulse rate fell to nothing, and breathing ceased.

Meher Baba's body was carried from Meherazad, his home

during the last period of his life, to Meherabad some
seventeen miles away. There his body was placed in a crypt,
in keeping with the instructions Baba had given many years
before. For seven days Baba's body remained uncovered so
that thousands of his lovers could have a last glimpse of
him.*

Today the tomb-shrine at Meherabad is a place of pilgrimage

where thousands of people from every part of the world
come to pay homage to the one they accept as the Avatar of
this age.

* It is interesting to note that during these seven days

newspapers reported an unprecedented occurrence at the
Kaaba in Mecca, the holy shrine designated by Muhammad
as the destination of pilgrimage (hajj). Rains flooded the
Kaaba, making the traditional circumambulation of the holy
shrine impossible. Muhammad, Meher Baba said, was the
last appearance of the Avatar before Baba

[ 62 ]
Meher Baba’s tomb, Meherabad, India.

[ 63 ]
Meher Baba feeding a mast in Bangalore, 1939

[ 64 ]
 Chapter 3

The Universal Work

Meher Baba described his life as the universal work of the

Avatar, the unfolding of the divine plan for this age. In all
that he did, Baba pointed to a transformation of
consciousness that would be brought about through the
awakening of divine love in the world.

The question naturally arises, how did Meher Baba intend

for his silence, his many acts of service, the periods of
seclusion, and his physical suffering to usher in a "New
Humanity"? While a full answer to this question may only
emerge in time, a partial understanding can be gathered from
Baba's actions, his own statements and from those who knew
him best.

Speaking in Silence

For Meher Baba, silence is a direct form of communication.

"Things that are real," he said, "are given and received in
silence." He indicated that it is only by coming in silence
that the God-man can be heard in the twentieth century:

I have come not to teach but to awaken. Understand

therefore that I lay down no precepts.

Throughout eternity I have laid down principles and

precepts, but mankind has ignored them. Man's inability
to live God's words makes the Avatar's teaching a
mockery. Instead of practicing the compassion He taught,
man has waged

[ 65 ]
 crusades in His name. Instead of living the humility,
purity and truth of His words, man has given way to
hatred, greed and violence.
Because man has been deaf to the principles and
precepts laid down by God in the past, in this present
Avataric Form I observe Silence. 1

From this and similar statements, one may conclude that

Meher Baba kept silence in order to speak. Through silence
the Avatar speaks in at least two significant ways. First, his
silence points away from reliance on mere words, calling
humanity to awaken to the voice of God within. And second,
his silence reminds humanity that the actions of the Avatar
speak a divinely human example that is more eloquent than
speeches given by the tongue.

The silence of the Avatar has another even more significant

dimension as well: Meher Baba often indicated that he
would "break" his silence by speaking the "Word" in every
heart, thereby giving a spiritual push forward to all living
things:

When I break My Silence, the impact of My Love will be

universal and all life in creation will know, feel and
receive of it. It will help every individual to break himself
free from his own bondage in his own way. I am the
Divine Beloved who loves you more than you can ever
love yourself. The breaking of My Silence will help you to
help yourself in knowing your real Self. 2

In tones reminiscent of Jesus' proclamation of the coming

Kingdom, Baba conveyed an urgency in his statements about
the breaking of his silence. He repeatedly linked the giving
of the Word with the release of divine love he had come to
accomplish:

I have come to sow the seed of love in your hearts so that,

in spite of all superficial diversity which your life in
illusion must experience and endure, the feeling of
oneness, through love, is brought about amongst all the
nations, creeds, sects and castes of the world.

[ 66 ]
 In order to bring this about, I am preparing to break My
Silence. When I break My Silence it will not be to fill your
ears with spiritual lectures. I shall speak only One Word,
and this Word will penetrate the hearts of all men and
make even the sinner feel that he is meant to be a saint,
while the saint will know that God is in the sinner as
much as He is in himself.

When I speak that Word, I shall lay the foundation for

that which is to take place during the next seven hundred
years. 3

We know, however, that Meher Baba uttered no audible

"word" before he dropped his body. In light of this fact, what
can be said about his promise to break his silence? Has the
silence been broken? Is there some "event" still to occur?
Just as Christians still debate what Jesus meant by the arrival
of the Kingdom, so it may not be possible to give a definitive
answer about the mystery surrounding Meher Baba's silence.
Nevertheless, one can explore the meaning and significance
of Baba's promise to give the Word by examining his own
statements and actions.

Let us first take note of what Meher Baba means by the

"Word" that he will give from his silence. According to Baba,
all forms and sounds are from the "primal sound" (Brahm-
Nad) that produced the universe. Thus God's "speaking"
brought forth the universe, and, in our own time, God's
"speaking" as the Avatar will bring about a universal
awakening:

Because all forms and words are from this Primal Sound
or Original Word and are continuously connected with It
and have their life from It, when It is uttered by Me It will
reverberate in all people and creatures and all will know
that I have broken My silence and have uttered that
Sound or Word. 4

Did Baba intend for the speaking of the Word to be equated

with uttering an oral sound? Clearly not, as the following
incident illustrates:

I was once told by Ramjoo that years ago Baba informed

some of the mandali that he proposed to speak, and
brought

[ 67 ]
 a number of them to a distant place, which they reached
after days of strenuous walking. When they arrived he
made each stand around him at a distance of fifty feet or
more with their backs to him, he standing in the centre; at
the clapping of his hands they were to turn to him and he
would speak. He clapped his hands, they turned, but
heard nothing. He smiled and beckoned them to him.
Why had he not spoken? they asked. He said, 'Do you not
know I am always speaking?' 5

The giving of the Word was meant by Baba to be a speaking

in the heart, awakening us to the voice of God that is always
speaking within every living thing. To his lovers, Baba put it
this way:

It is not through words that I give what I have to give. In

the silence of your perfect surrender, my love which is
always silent can flow to you—to be yours always to keep
and to share with those who seek me. When the Word of
my Love breaks out of its silence and speaks in your
hearts, telling you who I really am, you will know that
that is the Real Word you have always been longing to
hear. 6

It might be said, therefore, that Meher Baba's external

silence symbolized his work of creating internal silence in
each heart. By working to silence the ego-mind, the Avatar
makes it possible for the human heart to hear once again the
inner speaking of the divine voice:

External silence helps the inner silence and only in

internal silence is Baba found, in profound inner silence.
I am never silent. I speak eternally. The voice that is
heard deep within the soul is my voice. 7

Meher Baba's promise to "break" his silence was a promise

to reconnect humanity to God who dwells within. God is
always present, Baba explained, always speaking the Word
of love. But the modern predicament is that humanity has
lost the ability to know and feel the constant presence of God.
We have been cut off from the source of divine love, from
our true Self.

[ 68 ]
The divine Word given from silence, Meher Baba declared,
can only be heard by the ears of the heart. To open our hearts,
the Avatar must work to still our ego-minds. Then, and only
then, are we able to hear the Word when he speaks it.
"Drown all sound in my silence," he said, "to hear my Word
of words."

Has Meher Baba given the Word? Or is there some event

still to come that will signal his public manifestation? Many
who love Baba feel that he is giving the Word. That is to say,
all that he accomplished in his physical life is now
reverberating in hearts everywhere and will continue to
gather force with each passing year. As evidence that this is
so, some of Baba's mandali cite the thousands of people who
have come to love Baba after his physical death as examples
of the Word "breaking out of its silence." This, they believe,
is the beginning of the universal awakening of divine love by
Meher Baba as the Avatar.

Mastery in Servitude

Meher Baba's life of love and service was symbolic of the

inner work of awakening he came to accomplish. Baba has
explained that every action of the Avatar, who is one with all,
has a profound impact on all life.

As a rule each action of an ordinary person is motivated

by a solitary aim serving a solitary purpose; it can hit
only one target at a time and bring about one specific
result. But with the Avatar, He being the Centre of each
one, any single action of His on the gross plane brings
about a network of diverse results for people and objects
everywhere. 8

According to Baba, God periodically brings about a forward

movement of consciousness by personal participation in the
world as the Avatar. His every action has a universal impact.
When, for example, Baba cared for the untouchable boys and
cleaned their latrines, he indicated that he was

[ 69 ]
working in human consciousness to break down the caste
system. For Baba, his many hours bowing down to the feet
of the poor and lepers, distributing cloth and grain, were not
simply acts of charity benefiting a few; they were acts
initiating inner changes that will eventually benefit the poor
and helpless everywhere. Similarly, gathering disciples from
many races and religions, and travels throughout the world,
symbolize the inner transformations that characterize the
Avatar's universal work.

From this perspective, Baba's simplest action could be

interpreted to be of great import for the world. This can be
illustrated by citing an incident that occurred during Baba's
1952 visit to Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, South
Carolina. On the day Baba opened the Center to the public, a
large number of people came from the town to meet him,
entering the room individually or in family groups and then
leaving by another door. The mandali present noticed that
whenever a black person or family entered the room, Baba,
in an unusual gesture, stood and walked across the room to
greet them. Baba did not explain this or similar gestures, but
many around him felt that this action was an outer sign of
Baba's inner work on behalf of American blacks, work that
has been manifested in the American civil rights movement.

Baba indicated that by working with a few representative

people, he was working for large segments of the world's
population. For this reason, it was crucial for him to have
around him people of diverse personality types, nationalities,
races and religions. He brought together, for example,
Eastern and Western women to live in his ashram. As one
observer has expressed it, he appeared to be working through
these women to reshape the role of women for the future:

He was sowing the seeds of a unity between East and

West. He was stressing the importance of woman for the
coming age; and he was helping to develop a pattern of
what kind of woman she would be—one in whom the
talent, the energy and practical capacity of the Westerners
would be blended with the devotion and spirituality of the
women mandali. 9

[ 70 ]
In whatever he did, whether in the midst of intense activity
or in deep seclusion, Meher Baba appeared to have a specific
timetable and a definite plan for his work. As noted earlier,
he frequently arranged to be taken incognito to places where
large numbers of people congregated in order to move
silently through the crowds. Often he went out of his way, at
times traveling great distances, to visit a specific spot or
contact a particular individual unknown to all save Baba.

There are countless stories about Meher Baba illustrating

how his apparently random actions or sudden changes in
plans turn out to be a part of some inner purpose. Typical of
these accounts is an incident that occurred in Hamirpur
during Baba's first visit to that remote district in India. After
Baba agreed to visit Hamirpur, the people prepared for his
coming by building roads and bridges so that his car could
reach the rural villages. While walking through one such
village along the route carefully prepared for him by his
hosts, Baba suddenly halted and asked to be taken another
way. At first his hosts objected, pointing out the many
preparations along the planned route. Baba insisted, however,
and began to lead the crowd to a remote area of the village.
There he found and embraced an old couple who had
faithfully readied their hut for days in order to make it
worthy to receive the Avatar. Although mocked by their
neighbors and told that Baba would come nowhere near their
hut, they had steadfastly maintained that he would find them.
Overjoyed, they had Baba as a guest in their simple hut that
had been so lovingly prepared for him.

Agents and Masts

Meher Baba was aided in his universal work by those he

called his "agents," advanced souls with a history of past
connections with the Avatar. We know little about these
agents as Baba rarely indicated who they were and said little
about the exact nature of their role in his work of awakening.
According

[ 71 ]
to Baba, these agents, although unknown and hidden, carry
out the directives of the Avatar. When asked how they knew
that they were working for him, Baba replied:

Only those who are on the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th planes,
and who are conscious of me, know under and for whom
they are working physically, and this knowledge they
have through the medium of their subtle and mental
bodies... For example, while I am sitting here, my agents
are working in India, Persia, Africa and so on. This very
moment, they see my subtle body, all at the same time, in
the different planes... 10

On rare occasions, the mandali glimpsed a direct contact

between Baba and one of his agents:

One day, when in Zurich ...Baba said suddenly that he

must reach Marseilles before midnight the following day,
since he had a spiritual appointment there. As soon as the
party arrived in Marseilles Baba asked to be taken to the
city park, and, when he came to a particular part of it, he
began walking to and fro on a gravel path with Norina
and Elizabeth on either side of him. Norina and Elizabeth
[two of the women mandali] both noticed that, on the
other side of a small lawn, there was a young man sitting
on a park seat. Baba eventually took a loop round the
lawn and walked straight past the young man who, as
Baba passed, stood up and bowed his head in a
reverential way to Baba. Baba then walked off,
explaining that the man was one of his agents. 11

As we discussed in the last chapter, masts also play a key

role in the universal work of the Avatar. Living in filthy
surroundings, and behaving in unpredictable and seemingly
insane ways, the masts were, in Baba's eyes, pure and
indispensable channels for his universal work. One of the
mandali described the usefulness of the masts this way:

The lila of God (Divinity in full play) is primarily

concerned with the spread of His purity and love for the
benefit of the world as a whole. For the expression and
manifestation of His infinite power, bliss, knowledge,
light, and love, God

[ 72 ]
 needs the purest mental channels. And the purest minds
are those of the masts, who, having drowned themselves
in their love for God, have gone beyond lust, anger, greed,
avarice, and all other weaknesses that invariably stick
round the mind of every man, in greater or lesser amounts,
and in one shape or another, until man is awakened to his
true nature and to his real life. 12

Baba's work with a particular mast, therefore, went far

beyond aiding the mast's spiritual growth; masts assisted
Baba with his work of awakening:

Because of his being stationed on the inner planes, which

are free from the limitations and handicaps of the gross
world, a mast can be, and often is, in contact with a far
greater number of souls than is possible for an ordinary
person. Mast mind is a nucleus of conscious formations,
with innumerable and far-reaching links. A mast can
therefore be a more effective agent for spiritual work
than the most able persons of the gross world. The mast
mind is also often used directly by the Master as a
medium for sending his spiritual help to different parts of
the world. 13

Meher Baba spent many hours alone with the masts,

allowing no one to disturb this work. In the ashram, he often
washed and shaved them, going to great lengths to see that
each mast was cared for meticulously. It was noted that Baba
was especially happy when with the masts, some of whom
he called "the gems on my crown." The masts, too, loved
him very much, sometimes responding only to him.

We have only hints about the inner dynamics of Baba's work

with the masts. One indication of how they helped him in his
work is an incident involving Chatti Baba, a mast who lived
at Meherabad with Baba in the 1940s. Although he did not
read and appeared outwardly to be oblivious of world events,
Chatti Baba began one day to tell the mandali caring for him
that the people of Europe were suffering greatly. One of the
mandali relates what happened next:

[ 73 ]
 On the night of 9th June, 1940, Chatti Baba became
suddenly violent, noisy, and abusive, and emerged in a
state of disorder and frenzy from his little room. He went
directly to Baba's room and declared that his house had
been utterly destroyed, and that he had come for shelter
to Baba. If that remark were literal it made no sense at all,
since his little room was as it always had been, small and
bare, but neat and whole, a place where he was usually
happy to sit alone for hours. Baba at once gave orders for
the two to be left alone together, and Chatti Baba for
some hours was heard chattering and expostulating with
Baba. Eventually he became quiet and spent the rest of
the night alone with Baba. 14

The next day Baba, in a rare comment on the significance of

mast behavior, told the mandali that Chatti Baba had a
spiritual connection with France and had felt very deeply the
fate of the French people. It was, of course, during that
period that the German armies overran France, entering Paris
on June 13.

Seclusion Work

Throughout his life, Meher Baba alternated periods of

intense activity with times of deep seclusion. These
seclusions would vary in length from a matter of days to
months, and even years at the end of his life. As with silence
and fasting, Baba did not go into seclusion as a personal
exercise or discipline. He explained that his seclusions were
a necessary part of the universal work of awakening:

I am really the only one who is not in seclusion. It is the

rest of humanity that is in seclusion; I have come to
enable it [humanity] to emerge into Eternal Freedom. 15

Baba's seclusions usually took place in a small space and

were often accompanied by a fast. The atmosphere around
the

[ 74 ]
seclusion area was invariably highly charged. At times, for
reasons known only to Baba, a mast was needed for
seclusion work. Another incident involving Chatti Baba
reveals something of the intensity of Baba's times in
seclusion:

Baba has never, as far as I know, explained why, when he

sits with a mast, he insists upon the rigid exclusion of
anyone else. It is, however, possible, from an experience
related by Eruch during this period of Chatti Baba's stay
at Bangalore, that there is a tangible, physical danger in
interrupting him at such a time...

The two were closeted in silence in Baba's room for about

two hours, and at the end of that period, Eruch, hearing
Baba's movements to open the door, got up and released
the clasp from the outside. Chatti Baba then emerged, and
brushed past him on his way to his own room. As he went
past, Eruch tells how he felt a palpable and excruciating
shock pass through his body, similar, he says, to an
electric shock. 16

Every seclusion was planned with care as to timing, location

and scope. The mandali had to be on constant guard to
prevent intrusion and to maintain silence near the seclusion
site. During some of his seclusions, Baba asked his lovers to
share in the work by spending a period of time in silence,
prayer, meditation or fasting.

The exact nature of seclusion work, like the universal work

itself, cannot be known beyond Baba's own indication that
he worked during these periods on all levels of
consciousness. He suggested that the results of his seclusions
would unfold in the future. In 1932, for example, Baba made
one of his few comments about the nature of a seclusion.
After spending twenty-four hours in a cave associated with
St. Francis of Assisi in Italy, Baba stated:

A meeting was held... when all the Saints and Masters

from the sixth and seventh planes of consciousness saw
me and we mapped out the spiritual destiny of the world
for the next two thousand years. 17

[ 75 ]
During some of his seclusions Baba continued to direct other
aspects of his work, sometimes "speaking" through a small
window in his room. As previously noted, seclusions were
frequently accompanied by prolonged fasts:

At the time of his Meher Ashram activities in 1927-28,

Baba lived on a little milk and a few cups of milkless
weak tea for 5 1/2 months. In the midst of this prolonged
fast, Baba remained for 69 days in the crypt-like double
room, built one upon the other on the Meherabad Hill
which now is known as his future tomb. He used to retire
in the six feet deep, four feet wide and six feet long
underground crypt during the nights and supervised the
Meher Ashram activities throughout the day time from a
window of the room built above and all round the crypt.
During the seclusion of 69 days, he also lived on plain
water for 28 days. 18

Momentous changes in Baba's life were often marked by a

seclusion period. The New Life, for example, was preceded
by a forty-day seclusion in 1949 and during his last years in
the late 1960s, Baba entered a prolonged seclusion declaring
that he had to finish his universal work. This final seclusion
took a great toll on his health:

The strain of that 18 months' Work in seclusion was

tremendous. I used to sit alone in my room for some
hours each day while complete silence was imposed on
the mandali and no one of them was permitted to enter
the room, during those hours every day. The strain was
not in the work itself although I was working on all
planes of consciousness, but in keeping my link with the
gross plane. To keep this link I had to continuously
hammer my right thigh with my fist. 19

At the end of these days in seclusion, the mandali would find

Baba drained and wet with perspiration. When he ended this
seclusion, he announced that his work was complete. Soon
thereafter he left his physical body.

The true scope and significance of the universal work Meher

Baba accomplished in seclusion is known only to him.

[ 76 ]
Baba himself was unconcerned with explanations of his
seclusion, focusing only on completing the work he had
come to do. About the inner work of the Avatar, little more
may be said:

To those who wish to know about my activities I can only

say that as far as my inner life and internal activities are
concerned, only God and those who are one with God
can know and understand... From the beginningless
beginning to the present day I Am What I Am,
irrespective of praise or universal opposition, and will
remain so to the endless end. 20

Universal Suffering

The necessity for God, the Infinite Reality, to suffer the

limitations of finite existence is an important theme of
Meher Baba's life and work. Chapter one explored how God,
the real Self in all living things, must first experience
separative existence in the world of maya before attaining
God-realization. Thus it is that the individualized soul must
journey through evolution, reincarnation and involution in
order to realize its true nature as God.

There is also, as we have seen, the personal aspect of God

that is eternally conscious of the universe and directs its
affairs. Periodically, when suffering in the world reaches its
height, God comes as the Avatar, voluntarily suffering the
limitations of human life in order to awaken Himself in
every finite self. The advent of God as a human being is
always a direct and powerful expression of divine love in
action.

"The Avatar," Baba said, "suffers for one and all beings and
things." He comes not to alter the karma or destiny of the
world, but rather to take on the burden of suffering that
results from the world's karma. By so doing, the Avatar
draws humanity back from the brink of destruction and
enables the world to enter a new age. The Avatar's suffering
results in a tremendous release of divine love and gives
consciousness a dramatic push forward.

[ 77 ]
On a very personal level, by taking our suffering on Himself,
God as the Avatar is truly "God with us," aiding us in our
hour of greatest need. The example of the God-man sharing
the pain and joy of human existence serves to awaken
humanity once again to the reality of the divine Beloved who,
Baba has said, is "nearer to us than our own breath."

Meher Baba's life as the Avatar is replete with examples of

his suffering, outwardly manifested in illness and the two
automobile accidents discussed in chapter two. According to
Baba, this suffering was a visible sign of the burden of his
universal work of transforming consciousness.

Baba allowed doctors to attend him, but he repeatedly

reminded them that there was little they could do as his
suffering was an essential part of his work. The doctors
around him often expressed frustration in trying to treat him
and alleviate his pain. Symptoms would appear and
disappear inexplicably, baffling even the specialists called in
by the mandali. Not long before Baba's passing, when tests
revealed serious medical problems, Baba's sister and close
disciple, Mani Irani, wrote to the West:

Baba says that the pressure of His universal burden

reflects upon His body; and as the strain of His work in
Seclusion was severe, the effect on His body is
consequently severe—but though the effect is human the
cause is divine, and it is therefore in His hands. We get
fleeting glimpses of this, at moments when
unaccountably He looks more well and glowing than one
in the pink of health. Indeed, in the light of recent tests
made, the doctors are much puzzled and amazed by
certain favorable factors that are contrary to all rules of
medical science! 21

Though the mandali accepted Baba's suffering as a necessary

part of his work, they nevertheless found it difficult to
witness the constant pain that marked the last two decades of
his life:

Baba tells us that He is both God and Man. Seeing Him

undergo sickness and accidents and suffering, are stark

[ 78 ]
 reminders that He is Man, that He has said: "I have taken
on the form of Man to take on the suffering of man." And
when, tending to His body to the utmost of our ability, we
feel over-anxious or worried, He reminds us: "Don't
forget I am God. l know all. Simply do as I say." We bow
to His Will. 22

Meher Baba made it clear that his suffering was necessary

for the completion of his universal work—the speaking of
the Word within every heart. A day before he dropped his
body, he said, "All this, all that I have been through all along,
has been a preparation for the Word—for just the One
Word!" And with a quizzical smile He added, "Just
imagine!" 23

To awaken the world, therefore, requires of the Avatar great

suffering. This is the very definition of "Meher Baba"—the
One who through compassion suffers with and for all living
things.

The New Humanity

What is the nature and scope of the "transformation of

consciousness" hinted at in the universal work of Meher
Baba, the Awakener? What may the world expect from the
many years of service and suffering, from the wanderings of
the New Life, from the hidden drama of seclusion work?
Meher Baba promised nothing less than a new era marked by
unprecedented spiritual change:

As in all great critical periods of human history,

humanity is now going through the agonizing travail of
spiritual rebirth. Great forces of destruction are afoot
and seem to be dominant at the moment, but constructive
and creative forces that will redeem humanity are also
being released through several channels. Although the
working of these forces of light is chiefly silent, they are
eventually bound to bring about those transformations
that will make the further spiritual advance of humanity
safe and steady. It is all a part of the divine plan, which is
to give to the hungry and weary world a fresh
dispensation of the eternal and only Truth. 24

[ 79 ]
We are, according to Baba, at the end of one age and on the
threshold of a new way of life called by Baba "the New
Humanity." The present age is an age characterized by
accentuation of separative existence, but this age of
"manyness" is drawing to a close:

In the illusory beginning of Time, there was no such state

of mess in illusion as there is today. When the evolution
of consciousness began, there was oneness, in spite of the
diversity in illusion. With the growth of consciousness,
manyness also went on increasing, until now it is about to
overlap the limit. Like the wave that reaches its crest, this
height of manyness will dissolve itself and bring about
the beginning of oneness in illusion. Suffering at its
height will cause the destruction of this climax of
manyness in illusion. 25

The large mass of humanity is caught up in the clutches

of separative and assertive tendencies. For one who is
overpowered by the spectacle of these fetters of humanity,
there is bound to be nothing but unrelieved despair about
its future. One must look deeper into the realities of the
day if one is to get a correct perspective on the present
distress of humanity. The real possibilities of the New
Humanity are hidden to those who look only at the
surface of the world situation, but they exist and only
need the spark of spiritual understanding to come into
full play and effect. The forces of lust, hate, and greed
produce incalculable suffering and chaos. However, the
one redeeming feature about human nature is that even in
the midst of disruptive forces there invariably exists some
form of love. 26

In these and other messages, Meher Baba stressed that the

destruction of the consciousness of separative existence and
the emergence of the New Humanity will only be brought
about through a release of divine love. And this love will
inaugurate a new era characterized by an experience of
oneness. By "oneness" Baba did not mean a concept or
principle of faith, but rather a living spiritual reality brought
about by divine action:

[ 80 ]
 To affirm religious faiths, to establish societies, or to
hold conferences will never bring about the feeling of
unity and oneness in the life of mankind, now completely
absorbed in the manyness of illusion. Unity in the midst
of diversity can be made to be felt only by touching the
very core of the heart. That is the work for which I have
come. 27

Baba's vision of a New Humanity is of a world awakened to

the oneness of life. Such an awareness will bring about
profound changes in human societies. "In the light of the
truth of the unity of all life," Baba said, "cooperative and
harmonious action becomes natural and inevitable." 28 Self-
interest will give way to self-giving love in economic and
political relationships. And science will work cooperatively
with religion:

The New Humanity that emerges from the travail of the

present struggle and suffering will not ignore science or
its practical attainments. It is a mistake to look upon
science as anti-spiritual. Science is a help or hindrance
to spirituality according to the use to which it is put. Just
as true art expresses spirituality, science, when properly
handled, can be the expression and fulfillment of the
spirit. Scientific truths concerning the physical body and
its life in the gross world can become mediums for the
soul to know itself; but to serve this purpose they must be
properly fitted into larger spiritual understanding. This
includes a steady perception of true and lasting values. In
the absence of such spiritual understanding, scientific
truths and attainments are liable to be used for mutual
destruction and for a life that will tend to strengthen the
chains that bind the spirit. All-sided progress of humanity
can be assured only if science and religion proceed hand
in hand. 29

This age of oneness will be the culmination of Meher Baba's

universal work. Once when asked what his awakening would
do to the world, Baba gestured to signify that he was holding
the world in his hand. Slowly he turned the "globe" one
hundred and eighty degrees. "Upside-down, Baba?" someone
asked. "No", Baba gestured, pointing up, "rightside-up!"

[ 81 ]
While Baba envisioned the New Humanity as a dramatic
advance in consciousness, he did not see it as a permanent
condition of life on earth. Each new era, no matter how
spiritually uplifting the changes it brings, is finally only
another cycle in the world of maya. And each new age is
inevitably accompanied by a new set of challenges for
human consciousness to overcome.

The new age of oneness may bring an era of peace and unity
to the world, but all such collective changes in consciousness
are cyclical in nature and therefore temporary. The only
lasting change, according to Baba, is the realization of God
by the individual soul. All else that happens in the world of
time and space has no lasting value except as a part of God's
divine drama of Self-discovery:

For man to have a glimpse of lasting happiness he has

first to realize that God, being in all, knows all; that God
alone acts and reacts through all; that God, in the guise
of countless animate and inanimate entities, experiences
the innumerably varied phenomena of suffering and
happiness, and that God Himself undergoes all these
illusory happenings. Thus, it is God who has brought
suffering in human experience to its height, and God
alone who will efface this illusory suffering and bring the
illusory happiness to its height. 30

Ages may come and go as humanity experiences an endless

variety of conditions, but ultimately, the real and lasting
impact of the Avatar's universal work is always best
reflected in the change he awakens within individual hearts:

It is my God-ordained work to awaken humanity to the

inviolable unity and inalienable divinity of all life. Know
that you are in essence eternal, and heirs to infinite
knowledge, bliss and power. In order to enjoy your
unlimited state, all that is necessary is to shed your
ignorance which makes you feel that you are separate
from the rest of life. The separative ego or "I" can
disappear only through divine love, which will be my gift
to mankind.

Let those who harken to my call prepare themselves to

render real service to mankind. Let them make it
conscious

[ 82 ]
of its oneness, irrespective of the apparent divisions of
class, sect or creed. I do not attach importance to beliefs
or dogmas. It is not what you believe but what you are
that will ultimately count.

The Truth which I want you to share with me is not a

matter of opinion or belief but of direct experience which
knows no contradiction, and which will make you realize
that nothing in this world is worth being greedy about,
and that there need not be any hatred, jealousy or fear.
Then, and only then, will man launch himself upon the
safe voyage of unending creativity and unfading
happiness which knows no decay or fear; he will have
transcended the duality of "I" and “you," "mine"
31
and "thine."

[ 83 ]
Ahmednagar, September 26, 1954

[ 84 ]
 Chapter 4

The Awakening of
the Heart

The Avatar's universal work is most clearly and

personally seen in the love he awakens in those who
encounter him. Love alone reveals him as the divine Beloved,
the true Self, who dwells within every individual. That is
why Meher Baba declared himself to be the One who can
only be discovered by the heart:

I am the one so many seek and so few find. No amount of

intellect can fathom me. No amount of austerity can
attain me. Only when one loves me and loses one's self in
me, I am found.1

When he awakens the heart the Avatar discloses himself as

The Beloved who inwardly guides and sustains the lover of
God. The lover then enters the path of love to begin a deep
and abiding relationship with the divine Beloved.

The Path of Love

Our exploration of the Avatar's awakening of the heart

begins with Meher Baba's description of the universe as a
divine love story:

We thus have God as infinite love, first limiting

Himself in the forms of creation and then recovering His
infinity

[ 85 ]
 through the different stages of creation. ALL the stages of
God's experience of being a finite lover ultimately
culminate in His experiencing Himself as the sole
Beloved.2

The turning point in this cosmic love drama occurs when the
individual soul is prepared, after many lifetimes, to begin the
spiritual path. The final stage of the journey "home" is most
direct and beautiful when illumined by love:

Love comprehends the different advantages belonging

to the other paths leading to emancipation and is
the most effective Path. It is characterized by self-
sacrifice and happiness. Its uniqueness lies in the fact
that in whole-hearted offering to the Beloved there is no
diversion of psychic energy, and concentration is
complete. In love the physical, vital and mental energies
are made available for the cause of the Beloved and
become dynamic power.3

The first thing to note about Meher Baba's path of love is

that it is, in one sense, a path of no path at all! The lover,
absorbed in the beauty and wonder of the Beloved, gives no
thought to the various stages of the spiritual path. The planes
of consciousness and the experiences that accompany being
stationed on these planes become irrelevant to the pilgrim
focused on the love of the Beloved. One of Baba's close
companions illustrates this state of mind using an image he
gathered from Baba:

We are here now at Meherazad where Meher Baba lived. So

this is His seat and many have been permitted to come here
on a visit. And because of the opportunity which had been
given them, these lovers of Meher Baba were anxious with
thoughts about when they would see Him, or be embraced by
Him and similar thoughts about Him to the exclusion of all
other thoughts.

Now, there is a long approach road from the bus stop

to Meherazad and along that road there are many
sights. There are a great variety of trees, many huts,
many shepherds and cowherds and other similar sights
to behold. But

[ 86 ]
in their eagerness to be in His arms, did these lovers take
notice of any of these sights? If you had asked them, "Did
you notice that particular cherry tree alongside the road?"
they would have said, "No. Is that so, is there a cherry tree? I
haven't seen it!"
"You were passing right alongside of it, how could you have
missed it?"
And the reply would have been, "We were not
even aware we were walking on the road, much less
paying attention to a cherry tree on the side. All our
attention was fixed on the destination to which we were
headed." In other words, the path was following them. 4

Only in retrospect, then, does the lover of God notice

the "spiritual path." Having finally arrived at the threshold of
the Beloved, the lover recognizes that there was indeed a
path that led to the goal of all longing.

The longing of the heart that inspires the individual

to traverse the "path of no path" is a gift of love from the
Beloved. This gift is bestowed upon the aspirant who is
ready, after eons of separation, to begin the final journey
toward union:

Beloved and Lover implies separation. And separation

creates longing; and longing causes search. And the
wider and the more intense the search the greater the
separation and the more terrible the longing.5

Referring to a well-known Persian love story, Baba once

suggested how longing drives the lover to complete
remembrance of the Beloved:

Majnu loved Leila. This was pure Love, not physical,

not intellectual, but spiritual Love. He saw Leila
in everything and everywhere. He never thought of
eating, drinking, sleeping, without thinking of her, and
all the time he wanted her happiness. He would have
gladly seen her married to another if he knew that
would make her happy, and die for her husband if he
thought she would be happy in that. At last it led him
to me—no thought of self, but of the beloved, every
second and continually. 6

[ 87 ]
Such intense longing for the Beloved leads to intimate
companionship. The lover is led into such companionship by
the loving care of the Beloved. At first, like a parent with
a child, the Beloved gives the lover special
attention, coaxing the lover to come ever-closer in the
Beloved's embrace. Special treatment, however, eventually
gives way to true companionship.

Typical of this transformation was the experience of one

of Baba's early Western disciples who lived with Baba
for many years. When he first arrived, he received
extra attention and comforts not given to the other
resident mandali. After a short period, he recorded the
following in his diary:

I get the impression that he [Baba] no longer takes the

trouble to be extra nice to me, to flatter me, but treats me
much more like the other mandali, which is really a big
compliment; for to work for Baba and not to be praised or
thanked is the best. 7

The companions become, in the deepest sense, the hands

and feet of the Beloved. Their wholehearted love and
obedience shapes them into true instruments for his work in
the world. Such companionship is the beginning of the
end of the divine love story. After finally entering the close
circle of the Beloved, the companion-lover lives only for the
sake of love. At this stage the false self is continually, in
Baba's words, "dying by loving." Union with the Beloved is
now inevitable; only the timing is left to be discovered.

The most essential mark of a companion of the Beloved

is the capacity to love for the sake of love alone. Such love,
attained only after much training in the ways of love, is the
ultimate ideal of all genuine spirituality. In the early days of
their lives with Meher Baba, some of the men and women
around him had thoughts of their spiritual status and their
nearness to God-realization. For a time Baba humored this
preoccupation, but gradually he weaned them from it
through the lessons of daily life in his presence:

[ 88 ]
In India, bit by bit the ego gave in; selfconscious-
ness, inferiority, obstinacy, likes and dislikes, all went in our
effort to please and obey Baba...

Baba's ways of eliminating the ego were both skillful

and subtle, but they did rapidly cut down both prejudice and
pride. To quote Baba, "The spiritual benefit accruing to an
aspirant on the path approaching a Spiritual Master is in
direct proportion to the weakening or elimination of the
ego." And so Baba might frequently ask you to do just those
things which your nature revolted against, but never gave
you the reason why. At first, we were rarely given
occupations which we had done before joining the ashram
but rather chores that we would have avoided doing in the
outside world, or which we disliked intensely. Said one who
set to work in the kitchen, "I did not come to peel potatoes—
I can do this at home. I came to be with Baba!" Did we think
we had come to sit with Baba all day, to meditate, discuss
spiritual subjects, read philosophical books, escape the
problems and monotony of daily life? If such was our vision,
Baba through His own example showed us that this was
not His way of life. "All work is My work," He said. Baba
was so intensely practical and I feel it was a help to Baba if
those around Him were practical too.

For the most part, life for all in the Meherabad

ashram was on the practical side, but there were times,
usually corresponding to periods of Baba's special work,
when He gave us periods of combined fasting, silence
and meditation... As the motive for these spiritual
exercises, Baba placed emphasis always on worship or on
helping Him in His universal work, never on any
spiritual benefit that might accrue to us individually.
There was to be no attachment to the results, at least
not consciously. Rarely did Baba discuss one's own
spiritual progress except in group sessions when ethical
behavior in terms of forbearance, love and self-control
came up. 8

Final union with the Beloved is only possible when all

desires, including the desire for God-realization, are
transcended. "Even the craving for union with the Beloved
creates

[ 89 ]
bindings," Baba explained. "Therefore do not bother about
separation or union; just love and love all the more."9 Love
alone liberates the soul from all desire.

Thus Meher Baba as the Beloved might be called the

great "taker." He repeatedly stressed that to prepare the
ground for true love, the Beloved must take away all ego
attachments:

Know you all that if I am the Highest of the High, my

role demands that I strip you of all your possessions
and wants, consume all your desires and make you
desireless rather than satisfy your desires. Sadhus,
saints, yogis and walis can give you what you want; but
I take away your wants and free you from
attachments and liberate you from the bondage of
ignorance. I am the One to take, not the One to give what
you want or as you want.10

The Beloved takes everything that is false in order to

give the only real gift, the gift of divine love.

The true lover-companion is the one who loves only for

the sake of love. Such is the absorption of this state that the
lover anticipates the needs of the Beloved. This love
eventually reaches so great a height that the Beloved falls in
love with the lover—the lover becomes the beloved of the
Beloved!

Meher Baba indicated that the companion of the Avatar

who most clearly exemplifies this height of love is
his closest woman disciple. In this advent, she is Mehera: as
Sita was to Rama, Radha to Krishna, Mary to Jesus, so
Mehera is to Meher Baba. This closest of compan-
ions symbolizes the highest and purest expression of
love between the lover and the Beloved. She is shaped by the
Avatar to be the lover who comes closest to loving him as he
should be loved.

From the time in the 1920s when Mehera Irani and her
mother came to live in Meher Baba's ashram, it was
apparent that Baba had chosen her to play a unique role in
his circle of disciples. As a counterpart to Baba, the
perfect Beloved, Mehera was trained and shaped to be the
perfect lover of God, thereby giving the world a fresh
example of the divine love

[ 90 ]
story that animates the universe. Mehera's absolute purity,
constant remembrance of the Beloved and wholehearted
efforts to please him, reflect her role as the beloved of the
Beloved, and inspire all who seek to become true lovers of
the Avatar.

Though at the height of love the lover longs only to

please the Beloved and gives no thought to God-
realization, the time inevitably comes when love culminates
in union. The lover may even resist the prospect of union,
wishing only to remain with the Beloved as companion and
servant. But like a ripened fruit that must eventually drop
from the tree, the lover becomes so ripened by love
that union follows. "All the stages of God's experience of
being a finite lover ultimately culminate in His experiencing
Himself as the sole Beloved."11

Knowledge of the Heart

How is the heart of the spiritual aspirant awakened to

the discovery of the true Beloved? Meher Baba
indicated that when the moment is right the Beloved will
find the lover. When that happens, an encounter with
the divine Beloved will evoke feelings of familiarity and a
sense of inner recognition. The following description, given
in the 1930s, typifies accounts of first meetings with Meher
Baba:

I was so engrossed at looking at this wonderful man for

the first time that everything else faded away. What
impressed me most was the rather wild quality, as of
something untamed, and his truly remarkable eyes. He
smiled, and motioned me to sit beside him. He took my
hand and from time to time patted my shoulder. We sat
for several minutes in silence and I was aware of a great
feeling of love and peace emanating from him; also a
curious feeling of recognition came to me, as if I had
found a long lost friend. 12

These profound experiences of "recognition" have continued

to be reported even by those who have come to love Meher

[ 91 ]
Baba since he left his physical body. Baba himself explained
that such recognition was rooted in many lifetimes of
connection with him and constitutes a knowledge of the
heart that is present under layers of impressions:

As a rule an introduction is required between people who

do not know one another. Such introduction is not felt to
be necessary when there is a give and take of love
between persons, for hearts need no introduction. An
amity can be felt between strangers, a feeling of having
known one another before. This feeling is because of their
connections in previous lives.

No one requires an introduction to me, for no one is a

stranger to me. However, I am a stranger to most, and
those coming and remaining in my presence do not do so
without introduction. As a matter of fact, they have come
with many introductions—for many times in previous
lives have they been introduced to me and have gone
away and forgotten me and met me again. All these
introductions are their introduction to me this time. 13

Intuitive knowledge of the Avatar is always rooted in a deep

experience of his love. While the Avatar's message and life
may be expressed and embodied in various guises each
time he comes, the quality and nature of his love is
readily apparent to the waiting heart.

Thus, when the moment is right, the Avatar as the

Beloved awakens the lover to the inner knowledge of the
Beloved's identity. In this way, as the following story
indicates, it may be said that it is always love that draws
the lover to the Beloved and love alone that keeps the
lover with the Beloved.

A woman who first met Baba on one of his visits to the West
found him to be loving and friendly, but she did not initially
experience him as the divine Beloved. A few days following
her first meeting with him, she awoke in the middle of the
night thinking that her name had been called. Once

[ 92 ]
awake she noticed a beautiful fragrance of jasmine in her
room. Then she slept, falling into a very deep sleep. At dawn
she awoke and began to weep tears of great joy, although she
was not sure why she was weeping. She went directly to
where Baba was staying. Soon he entered the large room
where she and hundreds of others were awaiting his arrival.
He was carried in a lift chair due to the injuries suffered in
the second automobile accident. The woman relates what
happened next in these words:

Upon entering, he had the chair stopped by my seat.

There was no interpreter with him. He simply gestured,
"Did you sleep well, Jane?" Of course I had slept like a
baby, but wakened at dawn weeping, but with joy. Then
Baba went on. At the close of the program, after many
discourses, I heard only this, Adi, one of Baba's mandali,
speaking for Baba: "Only in deep soundless sleep does
the soul return to God. And so it will be when you reach
the end of the journey; only then you will be aware. You
will see me. You will know me as the true Beloved."
Upon leaving the room, again he had the chair stopped by
my seat. He made the same gesture, leaning down,
looking directly into my eyes: "Did you sleep well, Jane?
Now do you understand?" I cried out silently, from my
heart: "But it's you!" And Baba responded, in the inner
voice, very clearly: "Yes, Jane, it is I." He had shown me
the young Christ, very beautiful, the One I had always
tried to pray to. He was utterly familiar, especially his
beautiful eyes. I had a glimpse of his divinity that made
everything disappear. There was only his beautiful face.
The deep impact was there, the recognition. And it is as
clear today, clearer, than then. 14

Once he is recognized by the heart, the Beloved

inspires within the lover an intense longing to love and obey
the Beloved:

The love the aspirant has for the Master is the

response evoked by the love of the Master. Love for the
Master becomes a central element in the life of the
aspirant; because

[ 93 ]
 he knows the Master to be an embodiment of the infinite
God, all his thoughts and aspirations are centered upon
the Master. All other streams of love join this great river
of love and disappear in it.15

The Beloved confirms and deepens the inner recognition

of divine love by revealing to the lover that everything in the
lover's heart is known to the Beloved. This knowledge is not
to be mistaken for a collection of facts about the lover, but is
rather the full knowledge of the heart that can only be known
by the One who is one with our true Self.

Meher Baba went to great lengths to assure his lovers that he

knows their every heartbeat. He became the
companion, removing the distance between lover and
Beloved. Through games, music and humor, as well as
through the challenges of difficult work, he offered those
around him the intimacy of a deep love relationship.

Baba instilled in his lovers the conviction that he is

always within them, guiding them constantly and
responding to the cries of their hearts. The following story
is one of countless events in Baba's life that reveal the great
lengths he would go to awaken his presence in the lover's
heart:

At one town, Masulipatnam, Baba gave his darshan

[personal blessing] to thousands of people from morning
until late in the evening. Later, Baba proceeded in the car
to the house of one of his close followers, but instead of
going inside he entered a lane inhabited by poor hutment
dwellers. Baba began turning down one lane and then the
next, as if he knew the way to some predetermined
destination. The men mandali followed of course, and
behind them were many of the townspeople.

Baba walked on, not indicating where he was headed,

until finally he came to a poor hut near the seashore.
There was only a single kerosene lamp inside, so it
was very dark, but all could see the outline of an old man
standing in the doorway. Baba indicated that he wanted to
go inside, and requested the old man to come and sit near
him for five

[ 94 ]
 minutes alone. Baba was absolutely quiet when he sat
down, yet his fingers were moving rapidly. After
remaining there for five minutes, absorbed in his work,
he left.

The mandali found out later that the old man belonged to
the lowest caste; he was a Harijan or Untouchable. Since
the caste system was strictly enforced in Andhra at that
time, the old man had not gone to Baba's public darshan
program because there were higher caste Hindus in
attendance. Before Baba had arrived at his hut, the man
had been thinking sadly, "How unfortunate I am! God has
come, and he is giving darshan. Most of the people are
there, but I can't even have a glimpse of him! Oh, if I
could but see him!"

God not only heard this poor Untouchable's prayer,

he also answered it and came to his very own house!
The man was so elated when Baba requested he sit
near him inside that he could not utter a single word. He
was dumfounded with no words to express his
gratitude for his good fortune in having Baba there. 16

Time and again, Meher Baba's actions drive home the

point that the Beloved anticipates every need of the
lover's heart. How this was so was not always immediately
apparent to those around Baba. As the next story
illustrates, what appeared to be unpredictable or confusing
behavior would sometimes take on meaning only after the
passage of many years:

One morning, while one of the mandali was reading a

letter to Baba from a Bombay lover, Baba interrupted
and asked if the letter was from a particular lover. "No," the
disciple replied, "this letter is from another fellow. Baba, you
are thinking of someone else." More of the letter was read,
and again Baba stopped him asking if he was sure that it
wasn't from a particular fellow Baba had in mind. "No,
Baba," the disciple said more emphatically this time,
"the man you are thinking of is temporarily stationed in a
place far away. This letter is from someone else entirely."
After this happened yet a third time, the disciple thought
with some irritation: "If he is the Avatar, how can he not
remember that particular person? How can there be this mix-
up?"

[ 95 ]
After finishing the letter, the disciple had a sudden
thought. "Baba," he said, "now that you have mentioned that
fellow who has been stationed far away, it comes to me that
very soon is his birthday." Baba looked surprised and
pleased. "Cable him," Baba said, "send him my love and
blessings and tell him that I am thinking of him." The
disciple sent the cable, and then forgot the incident and the
confusion he had felt.
Years later, after Baba dropped the body, the rest of the story
came out. One day the lover who had been stationed far
away came to Meherazad to see the mandali. Prodded to
relate what he had been doing, the man explained how he
had been transferred to a remote area. He was there for a
couple of years far from towns and cities. Without his family,
he became very lonely. "If you must know," he said, "I fell
into deep despair. I felt as though no one remembered me.
One year, on my birthday, I was feeling particularly
depressed. I even began to doubt that Baba loved me or
remembered me. I felt suicidal. As I was thinking these
thoughts, the doorbell rang and there was the postman with
a cable. He waited because in that remote area if it is good
news they hope for a tip, and if it is bad news they
commiserate and leave. But the postman was confused
because I was joyous and crying at the same time! It was a
cable from my Beloved reminding me that he was thinking
of me and that he loved me."

The disciple concludes the story by saying that those near

Baba came to realize that the Beloved appears to be "not
knowing," but know well that he knows everything. The
Beloved is always alert to the hearts of his lovers. 17

Love, Obedience and Surrender

Once awakened in the heart, the gift of love inspires

the lover to grow ever-closer to the divine Beloved. As love
deepens, it is transformed first into obedience and then,
finally, into complete surrender:

[ 96 ]
Love is a gift from God to man.
Obedience is a gift from Master to man.
Surrender is a gift from man to Master.

One who loves desires the will of the Beloved.

One who obeys does the will of the Beloved.
One who surrenders knows nothing but the will of the
Beloved.

Love seeks union with the Beloved.

Obedience seeks the pleasure of the Beloved.
Surrender seeks nothing.

One who loves is the lover of the Beloved.

One who obeys is the beloved of the Beloved.
One who surrenders has no existence other than the
Beloved.

Greater than love is obedience.

Greater than obedience is surrender.
All three arise out of, and remain contained in, the ocean of
divine Love.18

The inner journey of the lover from love to surrender

is marked by an ever-greater capacity to obey the
Beloved, who is the true Self of the lover. As the Avatar,
Meher Baba acts both as the inner guide and the ultimate
goal of this love-journey. It is the love of the Avatar in his
role as divine Beloved that awakens the aspirant to the
dynamic of the spiritual life.

Throughout his life, Meher Baba constantly trained his

lovers in the ways of obedience. Everything that happens, he
said, is the will of God. Thus it is the work of the Master to
help the aspirant become more and more in tune with God's
will through obedience:

The beginning of real love is obedience, and the

highest aspect of this love, which surpasses that of
love itself, is that which culminates in perfect
obedience to and supreme resignation to the Will and the
Wish of the Beloved. In this love are embodied all
the yogas known to saints and seekers.19

[ 97 ]
Obedience gradually opens the lover to the realization that
the desires of the ego are totally empty and the life of the ego
is ultimately false: God alone is real, and all else is illusion.
As this awareness deepens, the lover begins to let go of what
is unreal and hold on ever more tightly to the reality of the
Beloved who is the true Self. This "letting go" through love
is what Baba termed surrender.

In the early days of his work, as we have seen, Baba

offered outward guidance for every aspect of his lovers'
daily lives. Through the orders he gave and the
difficult circumstances that arose in trying to carry out
those orders, Baba shaped the mandali in obedience, and
inspired them to surrender all to the will of God. The
following example, taken from the days of Baba's first
ashram in the 1920s, summarizes the challenges of
eliminating the ego through true obedience:

Occasionally the members of the Ashram were ordered to

fast for a day or two. But this did not exempt them from
work. On the contrary, their work was increased. At
other times they were ordered by Baba to find hundreds
of blind and lame beggars and bring them to Manzil-E-
Meem [Baba's ashram] for the purpose of feeding and
clothing them. Since beggars are plentiful all over
India, this seemed an easy order to fulfill. But Baba
did not want the able-bodied ones— only those who were
disabled. This made their task more difficult. It was often
further complicated by the fact that the disciples—who
were restricted to eight pie (five cents) a day—would find
themselves at the other end of the city without the
necessary money for transportation home. To persuade
the mendicants to follow them to a strange house—where,
they assured them, they would be bountifully fed and
newly clothed—and at the same time to borrow money
from them for carfare, was another of those experiences
which tested both their ingenuity and fortitude! 20

Meher Baba's training of his lovers in obedience and

surrender took a different, more inward, direction during
the last two decades of his physical life. Beginning with the
New Life

[ 98 ]
in 1949, Baba began to give fewer external orders to his
lovers. His seclusions lengthened, and by the 1960s many
restrictions had been placed on the outward contact his
lovers could have with him.

Naturally, many wondered how Baba would continue to train

and guide his lovers without external contact. When asked
about this he replied that all of his "external" work was to
establish internal links with his lovers and with all living
things. Once the internal link is established, there is no
longer any need for external ties. He indicated that from
seclusion he was completing the real work of inner
awakening:

My (real) work is different. It is not my work to

travel continuously and hold darshan programs simply to
allow people to bow down at my feet. It is not my work
to give discourses, to perform miracles, or to
attract crowds to me. I do not come for this. I come for
all. I come to awaken all... You have no idea what I
am really doing. The more you stretch a bow, the
greater the distance the arrow will fly and the harder
it will hit the target. I am in seclusion now, yes, but I am
drawing back my bow farther and farther so that when I
release the arrow of my love, it will strike deep and
wound the hearts of all.21

In the last years of his physical life, Meher Baba

repeatedly indicated that he would henceforth guide his
lovers from within. He stressed that the real "Baba" would
be awakened within all who approached him with love,
whether or not they had seen him physically. When, on one
occasion, a disciple mentioned how great his lovers were and
how they longed to be with him, Baba replied:

Yes, you are right... My lovers are really great. But

what do you mean by this? You have been with me for
so many years, yet you still don't understand what I am
doing for them? If they come to me, what will they see?
This physical form. This is nothing.

Then he made the sign for his seclusion work, hitting his
thigh with his fist, and continued, This is the real thing I

[ 99 ]
 am giving them, and you will witness with your own eyes
what will happen to those who have not seen me
physically. Though they have not seen me physically, they
are with me and I am working for them. They are present
here.22

Today, some twenty years after Meher Baba left the

physical body, his lovers feel deeply the results of his
work in seclusion. They experience him as the Inner
Guide who has been awakened within the heart. The
training in obedience and surrender is felt to be given
still, but now it takes place in the "ashram" of daily life.

To hear and follow the inner guidance of the Beloved

now that the Avatar is not in the body, the lover must
learn the ways of the Beloved. In the example of the
Avatar's life, the lover discovers how the Beloved acts,
and how the Beloved would have the lover act. Other
clues about the ways of the Beloved are found in the
places where Meher Baba lived, and by contact with those
who lived with him. Much about his ways is also revealed in
his messages and discourses, words that provide
a framework for the spiritual life and point to the truth that
he brings.

In discovering the ways of the Beloved, the lover is not

seeking a set of rigid rules or external practices. The
lover strives to act for the sake of love alone by seeking
the pleasure of the Beloved in every thought, word and
deed. Baba once gave a simple guide to pleasing the
Beloved in daily life:
Think of things that you will not hesitate to think in my
presence; speak words that you will not hesitate to speak
in my presence; and do things that you will not hesitate to
do an my presence. 23

Remembrance

Meher Baba repeatedly stressed that a life of love,

obedience, and surrender must be nurtured by remembrance
of the Beloved. Such remembrance, when practiced
wholeheartedly,

[ 100 ]
is essential to a flourishing relationship between the lover
and the Beloved:

Complete identification of the Master with the spiritual

ideal is responsible for removing such barriers as
might exist between the aspirant and the Master. This
gives rise to the release of unrestrained love for the
Master and leads to the meditation of the heart, which
consists in constant thinking about the Master with an
uninterrupted flow of limitless love. Such love annihilates
the illusion of separateness, which seems to divide
the aspirant from the Master; and it has in it a
spontaneity that is virtually without parallel in other
forms of meditation. In its final stages, meditation of the
heart is accompanied by unbounded joy and
utter forgetfulness of self. 24

True meditation of the heart must be focused on a

Master who is God-realized. Remembrance of such a Master,
who is the real Self in every finite self, alerts the lover to the
presence of Beloved God deep within. "I am nearer to you
than your own breath," said Meher Baba. "Remember Me
and I am with you and My love will guide you."25

Baba explained that remembrance is not mere repetition

of the Beloved's name; it must be wholehearted:

Just as when we breathe we do not pay attention to

our breathing, and in sound sleep it is automatic and our
constant companion, and still we do not pay attention to
it, so Baba is there all the time and therefore you don't
feel Him. Although I am "taking" my own name
continuously, I have come to hear it repeated by my
lovers, and even though I were deaf, I would hear it if you
repeated it only once with all your heart in it.26

Wholehearted remembrance opens the aspirant to the

Master's work of ego-elimination. Absorbed by
remembrance of the Beloved, the lover gradually forgets the
limited self. This "forgetfulness" creates the best conditions
for surrendering the desires of the ego-mind. Consciousness
begins to free

[ 101 ]
itself from the bonds of impressions that have for so
long ruled the life of the individual soul. Thus love for the
Beloved can, in Baba's words, "Burn all your desires and
longings and kindle the one and only desire and longing—
union with the Divine Beloved... To be worthy of the Divine
gift of this love, let all your thoughts, words and deeds be
controlled by the constant remembrance of God."27

Remembrance of the Beloved is offered by Meher Baba as

an avenue for ending the seemingly endless cycle of
accumulating fresh impressions (sanskaras) in lifetime after
lifetime. The central predicament of the aspirant is that
every action creates new bindings:

It is, therefore, most necessary for the aspirant to keep

free from the idea "I do this, and I do that." This does not
mean to keep clear of all activity through fear of
developing this form of the ego. He may have to take to
the life of action to wear out the ego that he has
developed. So he is caught up in the dilemma that if he
keeps inactive he does nothing toward breaking through
the prison of his ego-life, and if he takes to a life of action,
he is faced with the possibility of his ego being
transferred to these new acts.28

The way out of this ego-bind, according to Baba, is for the

lover to remember the Beloved constantly,
thereby "replacing" the ego with the Beloved as the center of
consciousness. Such remembrance creates what Baba called
the "provisional ego":

Before beginning anything, the aspirant thinks it is not he

who is doing it but the Master who is getting it done
through him; and after doing it he does not claim the
results of action or enjoy them, but offers them to the
Master. By so training his mind he creates a new ego
which, though provisional, is able to become a source of
confidence, enthusiasm and energy. This new ego is
spiritually harmless, since it derives its life from the
Master and since, when the time comes, it can be thrown
away.29

[ 102 ]
With the Beloved as the provisional ego, the lover
accumulates fewer new impressions and becomes more and
more centered in the Beloved, who is the true Self. In this
way, remembrance of the Beloved is a gradual ego death:

The less you think of yourself and the more you think of
Baba, the sooner the ego goes and Baba remains. When
you—"ego"—go away entirely, I am one with you. So bit
by bit, you have to go... So better think of me when you
eat, sleep, see or hear. Enjoy all, don't discard anything,
but think it is Baba—Baba who enjoys, Baba who is
eating. It is Baba sleeping soundly and when you wake up,
remember it is Baba getting up! Keep this one thought
constantly with you.30

Meher Baba made it clear that to remember the Beloved

leads to a gradual awakening of the true Self. Though
such an awakening results in forgetfulness of the ego-self, it
is in no way an avoidance of the ego conflicts experienced in
daily life. On the contrary, by focusing on the Beloved, the
lover is opened to the Master's work of ego-elimination. One
who lived with Baba explains the dynamics of this process:

At Meherabad, it was very necessary at first that

Baba supervise every activity in the ashram because,
although we all loved Baba, still with our very different
nationalities and different ages, life, as I have said, did
not always run smoothly. Baba, of course, did not expect all
would go smoothly with such assertive egos. Had He wanted
continual peace, He would have selected very different types.
We all had too many sanskaras, more than even we
suspected while we were still out in the world. Loosening up
the ego must have been for Baba not unlike extracting a
tooth, painful to the patient, but most satisfying to the dentist!
And as Baba saw the ego slowly disintegrating under
His ceaseless drilling, there He would be, ready to fill the
void with His Love and presence...
There were often arguments, discussions or clashes of
opinion regarding how things should be done. We were
fussy

[ 103 ]
over food; Indian food was too spicy, English food too
insipid... To Baba, dislikes were as significant as likes.
"Both," He said, "are desires of the ego, and hence both have
to go."
...It was, however, just these daily happenings that
afforded Baba His opportunity to work up a crisis of ego-
elimination and bring us a step further on the Path toward
God, through control, obedience, and a mind concentrated on
Him. "Any time a person's thoughts turn truly to Me, I am
truly with them," He told us. 31

In life with Baba then and now, remembrance of the

Beloved requires the lover to confront the hard work of
destroying the false self. The Beloved, once awake in the
heart, directs the timing and circumstances of ego-
elimination. He must eventually bring all of the complexities
of the ego's desires to the surface to be faced and worked out.

It might be said, then, that remembrance immerses the

lover in the process of ego-destruction, sometimes
causing the lover to experience an intensification of
lust, greed, anger and other ego-centered impressions.
Fortunately, remembrance also awakens a deep love
relationship with the Beloved. The love of the Beloved
sustains the lover as the many layers of impressions are
painfully stripped away.

Remembrance also serves in a very practical way to help the

lover cope with the many desires and conflicts that are
brought into the conscious mind by the work of ego-
elimination. The name of the Beloved becomes a form of
protection and a source of strength:

...when you feel angry or have lustful thoughts,

remember Baba at once. Let Baba's name serve as a net
around you so that your thoughts, like mosquitoes, may
keep buzzing around you and yet not sting you. 32

Such wholehearted remembrance of the name enables the

lover to confront thoughts and desires without
necessarily putting them into action. The name of the
Beloved remembered in the heart brings the lover's true Self
into play, and

[ 104 ]
allows the lover to deal calmly and bravely with the
challenges of life.

It is important to point out that while remembrance of the

Beloved leads to detachment from the world and self-
forgetfulness, remembrance does not mean forgetfulness of
others. On the contrary, as the ego diminishes through
remembrance, the lover becomes increasingly aware of the
Beloved who dwells in every living thing. This awareness
begins to break the back of the ego's ingrained habit of
relating to others, even helping others, out of selfish
motives. Gradually the lover is inspired to help others by
serving the Beloved in all:

The only Real Knowledge is the knowledge that God is

the inner dweller in good people and so-called bad,
in saint and so-called sinner. This knowledge
requires you to help all equally as circumstances demand,
without expectation of reward, and when compelled to
take part in a dispute, to act without the slightest trace of
enmity or hatred; to try to make others happy
with brotherly or sisterly feeling for each one; to harm no
one in thought, word, or deed, not even those who harm
you. 33

Concern for others that is rooted in awareness of the God

within each one becomes yet another vehicle for
diminishing the ego:

"The more you remember others with kindness and

generosity, the more you forget yourself, and when you
completely forget yourself, you find God."34

Baba emphasized that remembering others must always be

grounded in remembrance of God. Otherwise the ego easily
takes over. He cautioned that service undertaken with
selfish motives has no spiritual value and may actually
result in harm to the one served. Consequently Baba calls
upon the lover to serve with no thought of personal gain, and
to guard against ego-entanglement by remembering always
that it is the Beloved who is being served:

I am the Ancient One, the one residing in every

heart. Therefore, love others, make others happy, serve
others even at discomfort to yourself this is to love me.35

[ 105 ]
 The Awakener

All that has been written here about the awakening of

the heart can only point to the transformation Meher
Baba came to bring about in the world. His work of
awakening is not a concept; it is an experience that must
take place deep within each individual. His real
message does not consist of words or explanations; it is a
silent movement of love within the human heart. The work
of Meher Baba will only be fulfilled when there is a
genuine change of heart:

In the spiritual path, these messages and addresses

mean nothing. Without actual experience, all
philosophical statements are idle talk and all the
ceremonial phenomenon is further addition to the
existing illusion.

If, instead of erecting Churches, Fire-temples,

Mandirs and Mosques, people were to establish the house
of God in their hearts for their Beloved God, my
work will have been done.
If, instead of performing ceremonies and rituals
mechanically as age-old customs, people were to serve
their fellow-beings with the selflessness of love, taking
God to be equally residing in one and all, and that by so
serving others they are serving God, my work will have
been fulfilled.

I give you all my blessings so that, if not all, some of you,

few of you or one of you, could love God honestly and
find me in everyone and everything.36

The results of Meher Baba's work of awakening can never be

measured by the recognition he receives or the
organizations established in his name. That is not how Baba
wished to be known or remembered. He can only be known
through love. It was love that drew Meher Baba's first
disciples to him, and it is for the sake of love alone that
his lovers remain with him.

Today there are many who feel that his Word of love is
breaking out of its Silence, bringing long-awaited relief to a
suffering world. Thousands of people throughout the world
are now responding to his inner call, their hearts touched by

[ 106 ]
his love. Their living experience of Meher Baba reminds us
that the real story of the Awakener is at its very beginning. It
will be told in the lives of those who love him, and in the
New Humanity that he promised to the world. In this advent,
and each time he comes, the Avatar's story is a love story
that ultimately speaks for itself:

True love is unconquerable and irresistible. It goes

on gathering power and spreading itself until
eventually it transforms everyone it touches. Humanity
will attain a new mode of being and life through the free
and unhampered interplay of pure love from heart to
heart.37

[ 107 ]
Blank Page

[108]
Supplement

[ 109 ]
Narbada River, Jabalpur, December, 1938

[ 110 ]
 Meher Baba's Universal Message

I have come not to teach but to awaken. Understand

therefore that I lay down no precepts.

Throughout eternity I have laid down principles and precepts,

but mankind has ignored them. Man's inability to live God's
words makes the Avatar's teaching a mockery. Instead of
practising the compassion He taught, man has waged
crusades in His name. Instead of living the humility, purity
and truth of His words, man has given way to hatred, greed
and violence.

Because man has been deaf to the principles and precepts

laid down by God in the past, in this present Avataric Form I
observe Silence. You have asked for and been given enough
words—it is now time to live them. To get nearer and nearer
to God you have to get further and further away from "I",
"my", "me" and "mine". You have not to renounce anything
but your own self. It is as simple as that, though found to be
almost impossible. It is possible for you to renounce your
limited self by my Grace. I have come to release that Grace.

I repeat, I lay down no precepts. When I release the tide of

Truth which I have come to give, men's daily lives will be
the living precept. The words I have not spoken will come to
life in them.

I veil myself from man by his own curtain of ignorance, and

manifest my Glory to a few. My present Avataric Form is
the last Incarnation of this cycle of time, hence my
Manifestation will be the greatest. When I break my Silence,
the impact of my Love will be universal and all life in
creation will know, feel and receive of it. It will help every
individual to break himself free from his own bondage in his
own way. I am the Divine Beloved who loves you more than
you can ever love yourself. The breaking of my Silence will
help you to help yourself in knowing your real Self.

All this world confusion and chaos was inevitable and no

one is to blame. What had to happen has happened; and what
has to happen will happen. There was and is no way out
except through my coming in your midst. I had to come, and
I have come. I am the Ancient One.

[ 111 ]
 The Avatar

Consciously or unconsciously, every living creature seeks

one thing. In the lower forms of life and in less advanced
human beings, the quest is unconscious; in advanced human
beings, it is conscious. The object of the quest is called by
many names—happiness, peace, freedom, truth, love,
perfection, Self-realization, God-realization, union with God.
Essentially, it is a search for all of these, but in a special way.
Everyone has moments of happiness, glimpses of truth,
fleeting experiences of union with God; what they want is to
make them permanent. They want to establish an abiding
reality in the midst of constant change.

This is a natural desire, based fundamentally on a memory

dim or clear as the evolution of the individual soul may be
low or high of its essential unity with God. For every living
thing is a partial manifestation of God, conditioned only by
its lack of knowledge of its own true nature. The whole of
evolution, in fact, is an evolution from unconscious divinity
to conscious divinity, in which God Himself, essentially
eternal and unchangeable, assumes an infinite variety of
forms, enjoys an infinite variety of experiences, and
transcends an infinite variety of self- imposed limitations.
Evolution from the standpoint of the Creator is a divine sport,
in which the Unconditioned tests the infinitude of His
absolute knowledge, power, and bliss in the midst of all
conditions. But evolution from the standpoint of the creature,
with its limited knowledge, limited power, limited capacity
for enjoying bliss, is an epic of alternating rest and struggle,
joy and sorrow, love and hate—until in the perfected person,
God balances the pairs of opposites, and duality is
transcended. Then creature and Creator recognize
themselves as one; changelessness is established in the midst
of change; eternity is experienced in the midst of time. God
knows Himself as God, unchangeable in essence, infinite in
manifestation, ever experiencing the supreme bliss of Self-
realization in continually fresh awareness

[ 112 ]
of Himself by Himself. This Realization must and does take
place only in the midst of life; for it is only in the midst of
life that limitation can be experienced and transcended, and
that subsequent freedom from limitation can be enjoyed.
This freedom from limitation assumes three forms.

Most God-realized souls leave the body at once and forever,

and remain eternally merged in the unmanifest aspect of God.
They are conscious only of the bliss of Union. Creation no
longer exists for them. Their constant round of births and
deaths is ended. This is known as Moksha (ordinary Mukti),
or Liberation.

Some God-realized souls retain the body for a time; but their
consciousness is merged completely in the unmanifest aspect
of God, and they are therefore not conscious either of their
bodies or of creation. They experience constantly the infinite
bliss, power, and knowledge of God; but they cannot
consciously use them in creation or help others to attain
Liberation. Nevertheless, their presence on earth is like a
focal point for the concentration and radiation of the infinite
power, knowledge, and bliss of God; and those who
approach them, serve them, and worship them are spiritually
benefited by contact with them. These souls are called
Majzoobs-e-Kamil; and this particular type of Liberation is
called Videh Mukti, or liberation with the body.

A few God-realized souls keep the body, yet are conscious

of themselves as God in both His unmanifest and His
manifest aspects. They know themselves both as the
unchangeable divine Essence and as its infinitely varied
manifestation. They experience themselves as God apart
from creation; as God the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer
of the whole of creation. These souls experience constantly
the absolute peace, the infinite knowledge, power, and bliss
of God. They enjoy to the full the divine sport of creation.
They know themselves as God in everything; therefore they
are able to help everything spiritually and thus help other
souls realize God, either as Majzoobs-e-Kamil, Paramhansas,
Jivanmuktas—or even Sadgurus, as they themselves are
called.

[ 113 ]
 There are fifty-six God-realized souls in the world at all
times. They are always one in consciousness. They are
always different in function. For the most part, they live and
work apart from and unknown to the general public; but five,
who act in a sense as a directing body, always work in public
and attain public prominence and importance. These are
known as Sadgurus, or Perfect Masters. In Avataric periods
the Avatar, as the Supreme Sadguru, takes His place as the
head of this body and of the spiritual hierarchy as a whole.

Avataric periods are like the springtide of creation. They

bring a new release of power, a new awakening of
consciousness, a new experience of life—not merely for a
few, but for all. Qualities of energy and awareness, which
had been used and enjoyed by only a few advanced souls,
are made available for all humanity. Life, as a whole, is
stepped up to a higher level of consciousness, is geared to a
new rate of energy. The transition from sensation to reason
was one such step; the transition from reason to intuition will
be another.

This new influx of the creative impulse manifests, through

the medium of a divine personality, an incarnation of God in
a special sense—the Avatar. The Avatar was the first
individual soul to emerge from the evolutionary and
involutionary process as a Sadguru, and He is the only
Avatar who has ever manifested or will ever manifest.
Through Him God first completed the journey from
unconscious divinity to conscious divinity, first
unconsciously became man in order consciously to become
God. Through Him, periodically, God consciously becomes
man for the liberation of mankind.

The Avatar appears in different forms, under different names,

at different times, in different parts of the world. As his
appearance always coincides with the spiritual regeneration
of man, the period immediately preceding His manifestation
is always one in which humanity suffers from the pangs of
the approaching rebirth. Man seems more than ever enslaved
by desire, more than ever driven by greed, held by fear,
swept by anger. The strong dominate the weak; the rich
oppress the poor; large masses of people are exploited for
the benefit of the

[ 114 ]
few who are in power. The individual, who finds no peace or
rest, seeks to forget himself in excitement. Immorality
increases, crime flourishes, religion is ridiculed. Corruption
spreads throughout the social order. Class and national
hatreds are aroused and fostered. Wars break out. Humanity
grows desperate. There seems to be no possibility of
stemming the tide of destruction.

At this moment the Avatar appears. Being the total

manifestation of God in human form, He is like a gauge
against which man can measure what he is and what he may
become. He trues the standard of human values by
interpreting them in terms of divinely human life.

He is interested in everything but not concerned about

anything. The slightest mishap may command His sympathy;
the greatest tragedy will not upset Him. He is beyond the
alternations of pain and pleasure, desire and satisfaction, rest
and struggle, life and death. To Him they are equally
illusions that He has transcended, but by which others are
bound, and from which He has come to free them. He uses
every circumstance as a means to lead others toward
Realization.

He knows that individuals do not cease to exist when they

die and therefore is not concerned over death. He knows that
destruction must precede construction, that out of suffering
is born peace and bliss, that out of struggle comes liberation
from the bonds of action. He is only concerned about
concern.

In those who contact Him, He awakens a love that consumes

all selfish desires in the flame of the one desire to serve Him.
Those who consecrate their lives to Him gradually become
identified with Him in consciousness. Little by little their
humanity is absorbed into His divinity, and they become free.
Those who are closest to him are known as His Circle.

Every Sadguru has an intimate Circle of twelve disciples

who, at the point of Realization, are made equal to the
Sadguru himself, though they may differ from him in
function and authority. In Avataric periods the Avatar has a
Circle of ten concentric Circles with a total of 122 disciples,
all of whom experience Realization and work for the
Liberation of others.

[ 115 ]
The work of the Avatar and His disciples is not only for
contemporary humanity but for posterity as well. The
unfoldment of life and consciousness for the whole Avataric
cycle, which had been mapped out in the creative world
before the Avatar took form, is endorsed and fixed in the
formative and material worlds during the Avatar's life on
earth.

The Avatar awakens contemporary humanity to a realization

of its true spiritual nature, gives Liberation to those who are
ready, and quickens the life of the spirit in His time. For
posterity is left the stimulating power of His divinely human
example—of the nobility of a life supremely lived, of a love
unmixed with desire, of a power unused except for others, of
a peace untroubled by ambition, of a knowledge undimmed
by illusion. He has demonstrated the possibility of a divine
life for all humanity, of a heavenly life on earth. Those who
have the necessary courage and integrity can follow when
they will.

Those who are spiritually awake have been aware for some
time that the world is at present in the midst of a period such
as always precedes Avataric manifestations. Even
unawakened men and women are becoming aware of it now.
From their darkness they are reaching out for light; in their
sorrow they are longing for comfort; from the midst of the
strife into which they have found themselves plunged, they
are praying for peace and deliverance.

For the moment they must be patient. The wave of

destruction must rise still higher, must spread still further.
But when, from the depths of his heart, man desires
something more lasting than wealth and something more real
than material power, the wave will recede. Then peace will
come, joy will come, light will come.

The breaking of my silence—the signal for my public

manifestation—is not far off. I bring the greatest treasure it
is possible for man to receive—a treasure that includes all
other treasures, that will endure forever, that increases when
shared with others. Be ready to receive it.

[ 116 ]
 The Master's Prayer

This prayer was dictated by Meher Baba, and during the 21

days of Baba's Special Work (the 13th of August to the 2nd
of September, 1953) it was recited every day by one of the
Mandali in Baba's presence. The Gujarati translation of the
Prayer was also read out by another of the Mandali.

O Parvardigar, the Preserver and Protector of all!

You are without Beginning, and without End;
Non-dual, beyond comparison; and none can measure You.
You are without color, without expression, without form and
without attributes.
You are unlimited and unfathomable, beyond imagination and
conception; eternal and imperishable.
You are indivisible; and none can see You but with eyes divine.
You always were, You always are, and You always will be;
You are everywhere, You are in everything; and You are also
beyond everywhere and beyond everything.
You are in the firmament and in the depths. You are manifest
and unmanifest, on all planes, and beyond all planes.
You are in the three worlds, and also beyond the three worlds.
You are imperceptible and independent.
You are the Creator, the Lord of Lords, the Knower of all
minds and hearts; You are omnipotent and omnipresent.
You are Knowledge Infinite, Power Infinite, and Bliss Infinite.
You are the ocean of Knowledge, All-Knowing, Infinitely-
Knowing; the Knower of the past, the present and the
future; and You are Knowledge itself.
You are all-merciful and eternally benevolent.
You are the Soul of souls, the One with infinite attributes.
You are the trinity of Truth, Knowledge and Bliss.
You are the Source of Truth, the Ocean of Love.
You are the Ancient One, the Highest of the High; You are
Prabhu and Parameshwar; You are the Beyond-God,
and the Beyond-Beyond God also; You are Parabrahma;
Allah; Elahi; Yezdan; Ahuramazda; and God the Beloved.
You are named Ezad, the Only One worthy of worship.

[ 117 ]
 How To Love God

If, instead of seeing faults in others, we look within

ourselves, we are loving God.

If, instead of robbing others to help ourselves, we rob

ourselves to help others, we are loving God.

If we suffer in the sufferings of others and feel happy in the

happiness of others, we are loving God.

If, instead of worrying over our own misfortunes, we think

of ourselves as more fortunate than many, many others, we
are loving God.

If we endure our lot with patience and contentment,

accepting it as His will, we are loving God.

If we understand that the greatest act of devotion towards

God is not to harm any of His beings, we are loving God.

To love God as He ought to be loved we must live for God

and die for God, knowing that the goal of all life is to love
God and find Him as our own self.

[ 118 ]
 The Seven Realities

Meher Baba gives no importance to creed, dogma, caste

systems, and the performance of religious ceremonies and
rites, but to the UNDERSTANDING of the following seven
Realities:

1. The only Real Existence is that of the One and only God;
who is the Self in every (finite) self.
2. The only Real Love is the Love for this Infinity (God),
which arouses an intense longing to see, know, and become
one with its Truth (God).
3. The only Real Sacrifice is that in which, in pursuance of this
Love, all things, body, mind, position, welfare, and even life
itself are sacrificed.
4. The only Real Renunciation is that which abandons, even
in the midst of worldly duties, all selfish thoughts and
desires
5. The only Real Knowledge is the Knowledge that God is the
inner dweller in good people and so-called bad, in saint and
so-called sinner. This Knowledge requires you to help all
equally as circumstances demand, without expectation of
reward, and when compelled to take part in a dispute, to act
without the slightest trace of enmity or hatred; to try to make
others happy with brotherly or sisterly feeling for each one;
to harm no one in thought, word, or deed, not even those
who harm you.
6. The only Real Control is the discipline of the senses from
indulgence in low desires, which alone ensures absolute
purity of character.
7. The only Real Surrender is that in which the poise is
undisturbed by any adverse circumstance, and the individual,
amidst every kind of hardship, is resigned with perfect calm
to the will of God.

[ 119 ]
 The Highest of The High

On the morning of September 7, 1953, the anniversary of

Zoroaster's birth, Meher Baba gave the following message:

Consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, each

and every creature, each and every human being—in one
form or the other—strives to assert individuality. But when
eventually man consciously experiences that he is Infinite,
Eternal and Indivisible, then he is fully conscious of his
individuality as God, and as such experiences Infinite
Knowledge, Infinite Power and Infinite Bliss. Thus Man
becomes God, and is recognized as a Perfect Master,
Sadguru, or Kutub. To worship this Man is to worship God.

When God manifests on earth in the form of man and reveals

His Divinity to mankind, He is recognized as the Avatar—
the Messiah—the Prophet. Thus God becomes Man.

And so Infinite God, age after age, throughout all cycles,

wills through His Infinite Mercy to effect His presence
amidst mankind by stooping down to human level in the
human form, but His physical presence amidst mankind not
being apprehended, He is looked upon as an ordinary man of
the world. When He asserts, however, His Divinity on earth
by proclaiming Himself the Avatar of the age, He is
worshiped by some who accept Him as God; and glorified
by a few who know him as God on Earth. But it invariably
falls to the lot of the rest of humanity to condemn Him,
while He is physically in their midst.

Thus it is that God as man, proclaiming Himself as the

Avatar, suffers Himself to be persecuted and tortured, to be
humiliated and condemned by humanity for whose sake His
Infinite Love has made him stoop so low, in order that
humanity, by its very act of condemning God's manifestation
in the form of Avatar should, however, indirectly, assert the
existence of God in His Infinite Eternal state.

[ 120 ]
The Avatar is always one and the same, because God is
always One and the Same, the Eternal, Indivisible, Infinite
One, who manifests Himself in the form of man as the
Avatar, as the Messiah, as the Prophet, as the Ancient One—
the Highest of the High. This Eternally One and the Same
Avatar repeats His manifestation from time to time, in
different cycles, adopting different human forms and
different names, in different places, to reveal Truth in
different garbs and different languages, in order to raise
humanity from the pit of ignorance and help free it from the
bondage of delusions.

Of the most recognized and much worshiped manifestations

of God as Avatar, that of Zoroaster is the earliest—having
been before Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed.
Thousands of years ago, he gave to the world the essence of
Truth in the form of three fundamental precepts,
Good Thoughts, Good Words, and Good Deeds. These
precepts were and are constantly unfolded to humanity in
one form or another, directly or indirectly in every cycle,
by the Avatar of the Age, as he leads humanity
imperceptibly towards the Truth. To put these precepts of
Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds into
practice is not as easily done as it would appear, though
it is not impossible. But to live up to these precepts
honestly and literally is as apparently impossible as it
is to practice a living death in the midst of life.

In the world there are countless sadhus, mahatmas,

mahapurushas, saints, yogis and walis, though the number of
genuine ones is very, very limited. The few genuine ones are,
according to their spiritual status, in a category of their own,
which is neither on a level with the ordinary human being
nor on a level with the state of the Highest of the High.

I am neither a mahatma nor a rnahapurush, neither a sadhu

nor a saint, neither a yogi or a wali. Those who approach me
with the desire to gain wealth or to retain their possessions,
those who seek through me relief from distress and suffering,
those who ask my help to fulfill and satisfy mundane desires,
to them I once again declare that, as I am not a sadhu, a saint
or a mahatma, mahapurush or yogi, to

[ 121]
seek these things through me is but to court utter disap-
pointment, though only apparently; for eventually this
disappointment is itself invariably instrumental in bringing
about the complete transformation of mundane wants and
desires.

The sadhus, saints, yogis, walis and such others who are on
the via media, can and do perform miracles and satisfy the
transient material needs of individuals who approach them
for help and relief.

The question therefore arises that if I am not a sadhu, not a

saint, not a yogi, not a mahapurusha, nor a wali, then what
am I? The natural assumption would be that I am either just
an ordinary human being, or I am the Highest of the High.
But one thing I say definitely, and that is that I can never be
included amongst those having the intermediary status of the
real sadhus, saints, yogis and such others.

Now, if I am just an ordinary man, my capabilities and

powers are limited—I am no better or different from an
ordinary human being. If people take me as such then they
should not expect any supernatural help from me in the form
of miracles or spiritual guidance; and to approach me to
fulfill their desires would also be absolutely futile.

On the other hand, if I am beyond the level of an ordinary

human being, and much beyond the level of saints and yogis
then I must be the Highest of the High. In which case, to
judge me with your human intellect and limited mind and to
approach me with mundane desires would not only be the
height of folly but sheer ignorance as well; because no
amount of intellectual gymnastics could ever understand my
ways or judge my Infinite State.

If I am the Highest of the High my Will is Law, my Wish

governs the Law, and my Love sustains the Universe.
Whatever your apparent calamities and transient sufferings,
they are but the outcome of my Love for the ultimate good.
Therefore, to approach me for deliverance from your
predicaments, to expect me to satisfy your worldly desires,
would be asking me to do the impossible—to undo what I
have already ordained.

[ 122 ]
If you truly and in all faith accept your Baba as the Highest
of the High, it behooves you to lay down your life at His feet,
rather than to crave the fulfillment of your desires. Not your
one life but your millions of lives would be but a small
sacrifice to place at the feet of One such as Baba, who is the
Highest of the High; for Baba's unbounded love is the only
sure and unfailing guide to lead you safely through the
innumerable blind alleys of your transient life.

They cannot obligate me, who, surrendering their all (body,

mind, possessions)—which perforce they must discard one
day—surrender with a motive; surrender because they
understand that to gain the everlasting treasure of Bliss they
must relinquish ephemeral possessions. This desire for
greater gain is still clinging behind their surrender, and as
such the surrender cannot be complete.

Know you all that if I am the Highest of the High, my role

demands that I strip you of all your possessions and wants,
consume all your desires and make you desireless rather than
satisfy your desires. Sadhus, saints, yogis and walis can give
you what you want; but I take away your wants and free you
from attachments and liberate you from the bondage of
ignorance. I am the One to take, not the One to give, what
you want or as you want.

Mere intellectuals can never understand me through their

intellect. If I am the Highest of the High, it becomes
impossible for the intellect to gauge me nor is it possible for
my ways to be fathomed by the limited human mind.

I am not to be attained by those who, loving me, stand

reverentially by in rapt admiration. I am not for those who
ridicule me and point at me with contempt. To have a crowd
of tens of millions flocking around me is not what I am for. I
am for the selected few, who, scattered amongst the crowd,
silently and unostentatiously surrender their all—body, mind
and possessions—to me. I am still more for those who, after
surrendering their all, never give another thought to their
surrender. They are all mine who are prepared to renounce
even the very thought of their renunciation and who, keeping
constant vigil

[ 123 ]
in the midst of intense activity, await their turn to lay down
their lives for the cause of Truth at a glance or sign from me.
Those who have indomitable courage to face willingly and
cheerfully the worst calamities, who have unshakable faith in
me, eager to fulfill my slightest wish at the cost of their
happiness and comfort, they indeed, truly love me.

From my point of view, far more blessed is the atheist who

confidently discharges his worldly responsibilities, accepting
them as his honorable duty, than the man who presumes he
is a devout believer in God, yet shirks the responsibilities
apportioned to him through Divine Law and runs after
sadhus, saints and yogis, seeking relief from the suffering
which ultimately would have pronounced his eternal
Liberation.

To have one eye glued on the enchanting pleasures of the

flesh and with the other expect to see a spark of Eternal Bliss
is not only impossible but the height of hypocrisy.

I cannot expect you to understand all at once what I want

you to know. It is for me to awaken you from time to time
throughout the ages, sowing the seed in your limited minds,
which must in due course and with proper heed and care on
your part, germinate, flourish and bear the fruit of that True
Knowledge which is inherently yours to gain.

If on the other hand, led by your ignorance, you persist in

going your own way, none can stop you in your choice of
progress; for that too is progress which, however slow and
painful, eventually and after innumerable incarnations, is
bound to make you realize that which I want you to know
now. To save yourself from further entanglement in the
maze of delusion and self-created suffering which owes its
magnitude to the extent of your ignorance of the true Goal,
awake now. Pay heed and strive for Freedom by
experiencing ignorance in its true perspective. Be honest
with yourself and God. One may fool the world and one's
neighbors, but one can never escape from the knowledge of
the Omniscient—such is the Divine Law.

I declare to all of you who approach me, and to those of you

who desire to approach me, accepting me as the Highest

[ 124 ]
of the High, that you must never come with the desire in
your heart which craves for wealth and worldly gain, but
only with the fervent longing to give your all—body, mind
and possessions—with all their attachments. Seek me not in
order to extricate you from your predicaments, but find me
in order to surrender yourself wholeheartedly to my Will.
Cling to me not for worldly happiness and short-lived
comforts, but adhere to me, through thick and thin,
sacrificing your own happiness and comforts at my feet. Let
my happiness be your cheer and my comforts your rest. Do
not ask me to bless you with a good job, but desire to serve
me more diligently and honestly without expectation of
reward. Never beg of me to save your life or the lives of
your dear ones, but beg of me to accept you and permit you
to lay down your lives for me. Never expect me to cure you
of your bodily afflictions but beseech me to cure you of your
Ignorance. Never stretch out your hands to receive anything
from me, but hold them high in praise of me whom you have
approached as the Highest of the High.

If I am the Highest of the High, nothing is then impossible to

me; and though I do not perform miracles to satisfy
individual needs—the satisfaction of which would result in
entangling the individual more and more into the net of
ephemeral existence—yet time and again at certain periods I
manifest the Infinite Power in the form of miracles, but only
for the spiritual upliftment and benefit of humanity and all
creatures.

However, miraculous experiences have often been

experienced by individuals who love me and have
unswerving faith in me, and these have been attributed to my
nazar or Grace on them. But I want all to know that it does
not befit my lovers to attribute such individual miraculous
experiences to my state of the Highest of the High. If I am
the Highest of the High I am above these illusory plays of
maya in the course of the Divine Law. Therefore, whatever
miraculous experiences are experienced by my lovers who
recognize me as such, or by those who love me unknowingly
through other channels, they are but the outcome of their
own firm faith in me. Their unshakable faith often
superceding the course of the play of

[ 125 ]
maya gives them those experiences which they call miracles.
Such experiences derived through firm Faith eventually do
good and do not entangle the individuals who experience
them into further and greater bindings of Illusion.

If I am the Highest of the High, then a wish of my Universal

Will is sufficient to give, in an instant, God-realization to
one and all, and thus free every creature in creation from the
shackles of Ignorance. But blessed is Knowledge that is
gained through the experience of Ignorance, in accordance
with the Divine Law. This Knowledge is made possible for
you to attain in the midst of ignorance by the guidance of
Perfect Masters and surrenderance to the Highest of the High.

[ 126 ]
Blank Page

[ 127 ]
 Footnotes
Chapter One

1 Meher Baba, Life at its Best (New York: Harper and

Row, 1972), p. 45.
2 Meher Baba, Discourses. 7th revised edition (Myrtle
Beach, S.C.: Sheriar Press, 1987), p. 223.
3 Meher Baba, God Speaks, 2nd ed., rev. (New York:
Dodd, Mead and Co., 1973), p. 235.
4 Meher Baba, Beams from Meher Baba on the Spiritual
Panorama (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), pp. 4-5.
5 Meher Baba, God Speaks, p. 182.
6 Loc. cit.
7 Meher Baba, God Speaks, pp. 235-236.
8 Meher Baba, The Everything and the Nothing
(Berkeley, Ca.: Beguine Library, 1971), p. 111.
9 Dr. A.A.G. Munsiff, "The House of the Master," The
Glow. Vol. 10, No. 4 (Nov. 1975), p. 7.
10 Meher Baba, The Everything and the Nothing, pp. 93-94.
11 Meher Baba. God Speaks, p. 87.
12 Ibid, p. 236.
13 Ibid, p. 31.
14 Meher Baba, God to Man and Man to God, ed. C.B.
Purdom
(N. Myrtle Beach, S.C.: Sheriar Press, 1981), p. 71.
15 Meher Baba, God Speaks, p. 39.
16 Loc. cit.
17 Meher Baba, God to Man and Man to God, p. 128.
18 Meher Baba, Discourses, p. 168.
19 Meher Baba. God to Man and Man to God, p. 134.
20 Meher Baba, Discourses, p. 389.
21 Ibid., p. 330.
22 Meher Baba. God to Man and Man to God, p. 215.
23 Meher Baba. God Speaks, p. 238.
24 Meher Baba. Discourses, p. 227.
25 Meher Baba. God to Man and Man to God, pp. 16-17.
26 Ibid., p. 25.
27 Ibid., p. 268.
28 Meher Baba. The Everything and the Nothing
(Berkeley, Ca.: Beguine Library, 1971), p. 1.
29 Meher Baba. God to Man and Man to God, pp. 264-265.
30 Ibid., p. 259.
31 Ibid., p. 86.
32 Ibid., p. 262.
33 Ibid., p. 264.
34 Meher Baba, Discourses, p. 398.
35 Ibid, p. 268.
36 Don Stevens, Listen. Humanity (New York: Harper and
Row, 1971), p. 227.
37 Meher Baba. Beams, p. 37.
38 Meher Baba, God Speaks, p. 268-9.
39 Meher Baba, The Everything and the Nothing, p. 105.
40 Loc. cit.
41 Mani S. Irani, Family Letters (South Carolina: Sheriar
Press, 1976), p. 54.
42 Kari-JoHarb,"AVisitTo Meherazad — 9th December,
1962," The Awakener. Vol. 9, No. 4, p. 15.
43 Meher Baba, Discourses, pp. 268-269.
44 Ibid., p. 269.
 Footnotes
Chapter Two

1 Meher Baba, The Everything and the Nothing, p. 106.

2 Kitty Davy, Love Alone Prevails (North Myrtle Beach,
S.C.: Sheriar Press, 1981), p. 711.
3 Meher Baba, The Fiery Free Life (Ahmednagar, India:
Meher Publications, 1952), pp. 5-6.
4 Tom and Dorothy Hopkinson, Much Silence (New
York: Dodd Mead and Co., 1974), p. 27.
5 Don Stevens, Listen. Humanity, p. 248.
6 Ibid., p. 249.
7 Naosherwan Anzar, "Interview with Adi K. Irani," The
Glow. Vol. 10, No. 3 (August 1975), p. 9.
8 Francis Brabazon, The Silent Word (Balmain, Australia:
Meher Baba Foundation, 1978), p. 245.
9 Meher Baba, Significance of Silence Meher Baba
Observed, ed. K. K. Ramakrishnan (Poona: Meher Era
Publications, 1977), p. 3.
10 Francis Brabazon, The Silent Word, p. 287.
11 Charles Purdom. The God-Man (North Myrtle Beach,
S.C.: Sheriar Press, 1971), p. 50.
12 Meher Baba. The Mastery of Consciousness, ed. Allan
Y. Cohen (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), p. 54.
13 Meher Baba, God Speaks, second edition, p. xxxvi.
14 Naosherwan Anzar, "Meher Baba in America 1931,"
The Glow. Vol. 7, No. 3, August, 1972, pp. 3-4.
15 Purdom, The God-Man, pp. 105-106.
16 William Donkin, The Wayfarers (San Francisco: Sufism
Reoriented, 1969), p. 373.
17 Jane Barry Haynes, ed., Treasures
From The Meher Baba Journals
(Myrtle Beach, S.C.: Sheriar Press,
1980), p. 174.
18 William Donkin, The Wayfarers.
pp. 2-3.
19 Ibid., p. 19.
20 Ibid., p. 33.
21 Ibid., pp. 6-7.
22 Ibid., pp. 8-9.
23 Ibid., pp. 162-163.
24 Ibid., pp. 151,153
25 Ibid., pp. 47-48.
26 Ibid., pp. 8-9.
27 Charles Purdom, The God-Man, pp. 165-166.
28 Ibid., pp. 169-170.
29 Ibid., p. 168.
30 Loc. cit.
31 The God-Man, pp. 178-179.
32 Ibid., pp. 187-188.
33 Meher Baba, The Path of Love (New
York: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1976), pp. 27-28.
34 Francis Brabazon, Journey
With God (North Myrtle Beach, S.C.:
Sheriar Press, 1971), p. 27.
35 Meher Baba, October 7.1954 Circular, Last message on
the alphabet board.
36 Mani S. Irani, The Family Letters, p. 310.
37 Ibid., p. 322.
 FOOTNOTES
CHAPTER THREE

1 Kitty Davy, Love Alone Prevails, p. 711.

2 Ibid., p. 712.
3 Ibid., p. 700.
4 Francis Brabazon, Stay With God
(Balmain, Australia: Meher Baba
Foundation, 1977) p. 66.
5 Charles Purdom, The God-Man, p. 413.
6 Mani S. Irani, Family Letters, p. 226.
7 Meher Baba, Sparks from Meher Baba
(North Myrtle Beach, S.C.: Sheriar Press, 1971), p. 8.
8 Meher Baba, The Everything and the Nothing, p. 105.
9 Tom and Dorothy Hopkinson, Much Silence, p. 67.
10 Naosherwan Anzar, The Answer (Bombay, India:
Glow Publications, 1972) p. 32.
11 William Donkin, The Wayfarers. p. 374.
12 Ibid., p. 15.
13 Ibid., p. 10.
14 Ibid., p. 64.
15 Charles Purdom. The God-Man, p. 379.
16 William Donkin, The Wayfarers, p. 62.
17 Ramjoo Abdulla and CD. Deshmukh
Meher Baba in the Great Seclusion
(Seattle: Warren Healy, 1949), p. 3.
18 Ibid., p. 6.
19 Mani S. Irani, Family Letters, p. 328.
20 Meher Baba, Life at its Best, pp. 66-68.
21 Mani S. Irani, Family Letters, pp. 334-335.
22 Ibid., p. 335.
23 Ibid., p. 346.
24 Meher Baba, Discourses, p. 3.
25 Kitty Davy, Love Alone Prevails, p. 699.
26 Meher Baba, Discourses, p. 8.
27 Kitty Davy, Love Alone Prevails, p. 700.
28 Meher Baba, Discourses, p. 4.
29 Ibid., p. 5.
30 Love Alone Prevails, p. 699.
31 Meher Baba. Life at Its Best, pp. 60-61.
 FOOTNOTES
Chapter Four

1 Francis Brabazon, Journey With God, p. 30.

2 Meher Baba, Meher Baba On Love, p. 93.
3 Meher Baba.God to Man and Man to God, p. 86.
4 [Eruch Jessawala], The Ancient One. A Disciple's
Memoirs of Meher Baba. ed. Naosherwan Anzar
(Englishtown, N.J.: Beloved Books, 1985), p. 219.
5 Meher Baba, The Everything and the Nothing, p. 1.
6 Meher Baba, The Path of Love, p. 78.
7 Charles Purdom, The God-Man, p. 432.
8 Kitty Davy, Love Alone Prevails, pp. 240-242.
9 Meher Baba, The Everything and the Nothing, p. 8.
10 Charles Purdom. The God-Man, p. 212.
11 Meher Baba, Discourses, p. 403.
12 The Glow. May 1970, p. 13.
13 Meher Baba, The Everything and the Nothing, p. 38.
14 Jane Barry Haynes, Interview at Meher Spiritual Center,
S.C., Sept., 1983.
15 Meher Baba, God to Man and Man to God, p. 62.
16 Bhau Kalchuri. While the World Slept (N. Myrtle
Beach, S.C.: Manifestation, Inc., 1984), p. 13.
17 Interview with Eruch Jessawala, Meherazad, India.
18 Meher Baba. The Everything and the Nothing, p. 5.
19 Meher Baba, Six Messages of Avatar Meher Baba
(Ahmednagar, India: Meher Publications, 1955), p. 11.
20 Jean Adriel, Avatar (Berkeley: John F. Kennedy
University Press, 1971), p. 66.
21 Bhau Kalchuri. While the World Slept, p. 68.
22 Ibid., p. 69.
23 Meher Baba. The Mastery of Consciousness, p. 127.
24 Meher Baba, Discourses, p. 232.
25 Meher Baba. Meher Baba Calling (Bombay, India:
Avatar Meher Baba Bombay Centre, no date), p. 37.
26 Meher Baba. The Mastery of Consciousness, p. 119.
27 Ibid., p. 47.
28 Meher Baba, God to Man and Man to God, p. 145.
29 Ibid., p. 146.
30 Kitty Davy, "Twenty Years With Meher Baba — Part
II," The Awakener. Vol. 3, No. 1 (Summer, 1955), p. 26.
31 Kitty Davy, Love Alone Prevails, pp. 242-243.
32 Dr. V.G. Kher, 'The High-Road to God-Realisation,"
Divva Vani. Vol. 1, No. 4 (10th April, 1962), p. 56.
33 Meher Baba, Sparks from Meher Baba. p. 22.
34 Ibid., p. 17.
35 Ibid., p. 18.
36 Francis Brabazon, Journey With God, pp. 28-29.
37 Meher Baba, Discourses, p. 9.