WAKE UP

  Baba wants us to be most independent in our love for God and not rely upon anybody. And if we have to rely upon anyone, rely only on Meher Baba who says that He is the personification of God — He is the Avatar. No intermediary is necessary. The priests come and say, "I am your intermediary. I know the gate to God. You will not be able to enter unless you do this puja and you pay me this money." There is nothing of this sort. We have a direct access to God, to Meher Baba.

Another of Meher Baba's messages is, "I have established Myself in your heart. I am there all the time. You need not take anybody as an intermediary." Suppose even a person like me is responsible for giving you all the information about Meher Baba. Do not try to look upon me as your guru. Once your relationship is established with Meher Baba, look upon me as an ordinary man just as you are. Although I have spent fifty years of my life with Meher Baba, I still say that we are all one. It is heaven's right for any man to love God directly. No intermediary is necessary.

It is possible that somebody may have introduced me to Meher Baba. Somebody may have introduced you to Meher Baba. I may have introduced Meher Baba to you, but that does not mean that I should be an intermediary. Once I see that you and Meher Baba are brought together, it is your business and His business. You love Him and He responds to your love directly. After introducing you to Meher Baba or giving you the understanding of Him, suppose I tell you this: "I am very great; I am the only man holding an exalted position in the family of Meher Baba. You must respect me, fall at my feet, almost worship me and look upon me as half of Meher Baba or even all of Meher Baba." This is all false. It is selfishness. You should never submit to such an approach if I were to speak to you like that tomorrow.

My fifty years of experience tells me, and Baba also has taught me, never to be hypocritical about anything, never to pose for what I am not.

Even if a person who has lived with Baba for fifty years comes before you and poses to be very great, it is false, bunkum and selfish; you should not believe him or give credence to what he says. God is all-powerful. Why can't we allow you to establish your direct relationship with Baba? If by coincidence I or anybody else were responsible forgiving you a picture of Meher Baba or introducing you to Him, that does not mean that he or I should be a wedge between you as a lover and Meher Baba as your Beloved.

Meher Baba's spirituality is this. Every man has to be independent in his love for God, in his faith in God and in his conviction in God and in Meher Baba, who says that He is the personification of God. You see, if we get the conviction that God is, and that Meher Baba is the Avatar and personification of God, that conviction becomes so strong that it never changes. Everything else in our lives will change: our thoughts change, our emotions change, the cells of our blood change. Man changes his body. He is born, he dies. Everything changes. But there is only one thing that does not change. Once we get that conviction, it outlives our lives. Even when the body deteriorates and dies, that conviction remains our eternal companion. And that conviction is nothing else but "God is".