The Seven Realities of Meher Baba’s Teaching

EXISTENCE, LOVE, SACRIFICE, RENUNCIATION,
KNOWLEDGE, CONTROL AND SURRENDER
Discourses by Meher Baba

Meher Baba’s teaching gives no importance to creed, dogma, caste or the performance of religious ceremonies and rites, but does 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 in so-called bad, in saint and in 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; and 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 to abstain from indulgence in low desires, which alone ensures absolute purity of character.
7. The only Real Surrender is that in which 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.

The New Humanity

As in all great critical periods of human history, humanity is now going through the agonising travail of spiritual rebirth. Great forces of destruction are afoot and seem to be dominant at the moment, but constructive and creative forces which 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 which 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.

At present the urgent problem facing humanity is to devise ways and means of eliminating competition, conflict and rivalry in all the subtle and gross forms which they assume in the various spheres of life. Military wars are, of course, the most obvious sources of chaos and destruction. However, wars in themselves do not constitute the central problem for humanity, but are rather the external symptoms of something graver at their root. Wars and the suffering they bring cannot be completely avoided by mere propaganda against war; if they are to disappear from human history it will be necessary to tackle their root-cause. Even when military wars are not being waged, individuals or groups of individuals are constantly engaged in economic or some other subtle form of warfare. Military wars, with all the cruelty which they involve, arise only when these underground causes are aggravated.

The root-cause of the chaos which precipitates itself in wars is that most persons are in the grip of egoism and selfish considerations, and they express their egoism and self-interest individually as well as collectively. This is the life of illusory values in which men are caught. To face the Truth is to realise that life is one, in and through its manifold manifestations. To have this understanding is to forget the limiting self in the realisation of the unity of life.

With the dawn of true understanding the problem of wars would immediately disappear. Wars have to be so clearly seen as both unnecessary and unreasonable that the immediate problem would not be how to stop wars but to wage them spiritually against the attitude of mind responsible for such a cruel and painful state of things. In the light of the Truth of the unity of all life, co-operative and harmonious action becomes natural and inevitable. Hence, the chief task before those who are deeply concerned with the rebuilding of humanity, is to do their utmost to dispel the spiritual ignorance which envelops humanity.

Wars do not arise merely to secure material adjustment; they are often the product of uncritical identification with narrow interests which through association come to be included in that part of the world which is regarded as “mine.” Material adjustment is only part of the wider problem of establishing spiritual adjustment, but spiritual adjustment requires the elimination of self not only from the material aspects of life but also from those spheres which affect the intellectual, emotional and cultural life of man.

To understand the problem of humanity as merely a problem of bread is to reduce humanity to the level of animality. But even when man sets himself to the limited task of securing purely material adjustment, he can only succeed in this attempt if he has spiritual understanding. Economic adjustment is impossible unless people realise that there can be no planned and co-operative action in economic matters until self-interest gives place to self-giving love. Otherwise, with the best of equipment and efficiency in the material spheres, humanity cannot avoid conflict and insufficiency.

The NEW HUMANITY, which emerges from the travail of 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, so 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 a medium for the soul to know itself; but to serve this purpose they must be properly fitted into the 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 which will tend to strengthen the chains which

bind the spirit. All-sided progress of humanity can be assured only if science and religion proceed hand in hand.

The coming civilisation of the New Humanity shall be ensouled not by dry intellectual doctrines, but by living spiritual experience. Spiritual experience has a hold on the deeper truths which are inaccessible to mere intellect; it cannot be born of unaided intellect. Spiritual truth can often be stated and expressed through the intellect, and the intellect surely is of some help for the communication of spiritual experience. But by itself, the intellect is insufficient to enable man to have spiritual experience or to communicate it to others. If two persons have had headaches they can co-operatively examine their experience of headache and make it explicit to themselves through the work of the intellect. If a person has never experienced a headache, no amount of intellectual explanation will suffice for making him understand what a headache is. Intellectual explanation can never be a substitute for spiritual experience; it can at best prepare the ground for it.

Spiritual experience involves more than can be grasped by mere intellect. This is often emphasised by calling it a mystical experience. Mysticism is often regarded as something anti-intellectual, or impractical and unconnected with experience. In fact, true mysticism is none of these. There is nothing irrational in true mysticism when it is, as it should be, a vision of Reality. It is a form of perception which is absolutely unclouded, and so practical that it can be lived every moment of life and expressed in every-day duties. Its connection with experience is so deep that, in one

sense, it is the final understanding of all experience. When spiritual experience is described as mystical one should not assume that it is something supernatural or entirely beyond the grasp of human consciousness. All that is meant is that it is not accessible to limited human intellect until it transcends its limits and is illumined by direct realisation of the Infinite. Christ pointed out the way to spiritual experience when he said, “Leave all and follow me.” This means that man must leave limitations and establish himself in the infinite life of God. Real spiritual experience involves not only realisation of the soul on higher planes, but also a right attitude towards worldly duties. If it loses its connection with the different phases of life, what we have is a neurotic reaction that is far from being a spiritual experience.

The spiritual experience that is to enliven and energise the New Humanity cannot be a reaction to the stern and uncompromising demands made by the realities of life. Those without the capacity for adjustment to the flow of life have a tendency to recoil from the realities of life and to seek shelter and protection in a self-created fortress of illusions. Such reaction is an attempt to perpetuate one’s separate existence by protecting it from the demands made by life. It can only give a pseudo-solution to the problems of life by providing a false sense of security and self-completeness. It is not even an advance towards the real and lasting solution; on the contrary, it is a side-tracking from the true Path. Man will be dislodged again and again from his illusory shelters by fresh and irresistible waves of life, and will invite upon himself fresh forms of suffering by seeking to protect his separative existence through escape.
Just as a person may seek to hold onto his separative experience through escape, he may also seek to hold it through uncritical identification with forms, ceremonies and rituals or with traditions and conventions. Forms, ceremonies and rituals, traditions and conventions are in most cases fetters to the release of infinite life. If they were a pliant medium for the expression of unlimited life, they would be an asset rather than a handicap for securing the fulfillment of divine life on earth; but they mostly have a tendency to gather prestige and claims in their own right, independently of the life which they might express. When this happens, any attachment to them must eventually lead to a drastic curtailment and restriction of life. The New Humanity will be freed from a life of limitations, allowing unhampered scope for the creative life of the spirit; and it will break the attachment to external forms and learn to subordinate them to the claims of the spirit. The limited life of illusions and false values will then be replaced by unlimited life in the Truth, and the limitations, through which the separative self lives, will wither away at the touch of true understanding.

Just as a person may seek to hold onto his separative existence through escape or identification with external forms, he may seek to hold it through identification with some narrow class, creed, sect or religion, or with the divisions based upon sex. Here the individual may seem to have lost his separative existence through identification with a larger whole. But, in fact, he is often expressing his separative existence through such an identification, which enables him to delight in his feeling of being separate from others who belong to another class, nationality, creed, sect, religion or sex.

Separative existence derives its being and strength by identifying itself with one opposite and contrasting itself with the other. A man may seek to protect his separate existence through identification with one ideology rather than another or with his conception of good as contrasted with his idea of evil. What results from identification with narrow groups or limited ideals is not a real merging of the separative self, but only a semblance of it. A real merging of the limited self in the ocean of universal life involves complete surrender of separative existence in all its forms.

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, but the one redeeming feature about human nature is that even in the midst of disruptive forces there invariably exists some form of love.

Even wars require co-operative functioning, but the scope of this co-operative functioning is artificially restricted by identification with a limited group or ideal. Wars often are carried on by a form of love, but it is a love which has not been understood properly. In order that love should come into its own, it must be untrammeled and unlimited. Love does exist in all phases of human life, but it is latent or is limited and poisoned by personal ambition, racial pride, narrow loyalties and rivalries, and attachment to sex, nationality, sect, caste or religion. If there is to be a resurrection of humanity, the heart of man will have to be unlocked so that a new love is born into it—a love which knows no corruption and is entirely free from individual or collective greed.

The New Humanity will come into existence through a release of love in measureless abundance, and this release of love can come about by spiritual awakening brought about by the Masters. Love cannot be born of mere determination; through the exercise of will one can at best be dutiful. Through struggle and effort, one may succeed in assuring that one’s external action is in conformity with one’s concept of what is right; but such action is spiritually barren because it lacks the inward beauty of spontaneous love. 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. Love is essentially self-communicative; those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. Those who receive love from others cannot be its recipients without giving a response which, in itself, is the nature of love. True love is unconquerable and irresistible. It goes on gathering power and spreading itself until eventually it transforms everyone it touches. Humanity will attain to a new mode of being and life through the free and unhampered interplay of pure love from heart to heart.

When it is recognised that there are no claims greater than the claims of the universal divine life which, without exception, includes everyone and everything, love will not only establish peace, harmony and happiness in social, national and international spheres, but it will shine in its own purity and beauty. Divine love is unassailable to the onslaughts of duality and is an expression of divinity itself. It is through divine love that the New Humanity will tune in with the divine plan. Divine love will not only introduce imperishable sweetness and infinite bliss into personal life, but it will also make possible an era of New Humanity. Through divine love the New Humanity will learn the art of co-operative and harmonious life; it will free itself from the tyranny of dead forms and release the creative life of spiritual wisdom; it will shed all illusions and get established in the Truth; it will enjoy peace and abiding happiness; it will be initiated in the life of Eternity.

Discourses bye Meher Baba,
Volume 1, Chapter 2

Song of the New Life

Listen to the silent words of Meher Baba;

The life-story of all lovers of God

is based on the practice of these words.

If you are serious about living this New Life,

Then wholeheartedly renounce this ephemeral existence.

We have taken to this life,

in which we rely only on God;

In this, our will (to do or die)

is strengthened by the oath taken;

We are merrily singing the song of hopelessness;

We are inviting all calamities and difficulties.

We neither wail over lost hopes,

nor complain about broken promises;

We neither covet honor, nor shun disgrace;

Backbiting we know not, nor do we fear anyone;

This is now the color of our New Life.

No confusion in the mind now, nor any ties left;

Pride, anger, lust and greed we know not.

We have no religion, nor care for physical and mental fads.

The Shaikh and the Brahmin (typifying all castes and creeds)

are now sailing in the same boat.

There is no small or great now for us all;

The questions of disciple, Master

or Godhood no longer arise.

Brotherliness or fellow-feeling is the link that exists,

And this contributes to our present enjoyment of suffering.

This world or the next, hell or heaven,

we no longer bother about;

Shaktis and siddhis, occultism and miracles

we no longer think of.

All these false impressions (thoughts) for us

have been purged from the mind.

What has value and importance for us now

is to live in the active present.

Dear ones, take seriously the words of Baba when he says:

"Although now I am on the same level with you all,

Yet all orders from me, good, bad, extraordinary,

You should all 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);

Beautify it once again by the seedlings

of contentment and self-sufficiency.

Even if your heart is cut to bits,

let there be a smile on your lips.

Here I divulge to you a point worth noting:

Hidden in your penniless hands is Treasure untold;

Your beggarly life will be the envy of kings!

God exists indeed, and true are the Prophets.

Every cycle has an Avatar, and every moment has a wali.

For us, however, it is only hopelessness and helplessness.

How else should I tell you what our New Life is?

Lord Meher, Volume 10, pg 3469

How toLove God

Meher Baba

To love God in the most practical way is to love our fellow beings. If we feel for others in the same way as we feel for our own dear ones, we 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 ourselves 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 and feel that the greatest act of devotion and worship to God is not to hurt or 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 life is to Love God, and find Him as our own self.

THE PATH OF LOVE, p. 109
Copyright 1986 Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust

Here is what I am going to Do

I am going to paste a passage from different Baba material. This stuff really helps me and I find it quite wonderfull.

What to do

I find myself wondering what should I post on this Blog. I am torn about whether it is appropriate to have a blog with this topic. Is it my ego? is this actually creating more sanskaras( impressions) for me or is it important and does address a need.
My love forMeher Baba seems to have no limits and my enthusiasm is high, but maybe it is misdirected
Meher Baba has said that all he wants us to do is to Love Him.
I just want to Drown