"I feel that a lot of ups and downs will be experienced
in the world; tremendous upheavals will take place,
and many parts of the world will be affected. This will
be from natural and unnatural causes and will happen
as a result of something small.
"Egypt is there, Iran is there, Kashmir is there, Berlin
is there and Austria is now rising in power. If war
breaks out, the disaster will be unprecedented. They
will use atom bombs and deadly gases. But what I
am going to tell you is different. It may precipitate war.
"A surface fire is easy to extinguish, but fires in mines
and collieries are most difficult to put out. Quetta was
in ruins in five minutes when rocked by an earthquake.
Forty thousand people perished in it. Was there any
remedy to prevent it when it occurred? Such destruction
occurs through natural and unnatural causes.
"Floods from the Kosi River took a toll of hundreds;
villages were literally wiped out. But the destruction
could not be averted. Such disasters are on a small
scale, limited to specific areas.
"If there is war and atom bombs are used, all nations
will be affected. There will be floods and earthquakes,
and no remedy can be suggested for such calamities.
"It is said about atom bombs that they create
widespread earthquakes. In the case of atomic warfare,
there is a possibility of the Earth's outer crust cracking.
As a result of the experiments of testing the atom and
hydrogen bomb, a whole island [in the Philippines]
disappeared within five minutes.
"This happened because the origin of matter is gas. I
have written about it in my book. When matter is
vaporized, space and gas have three factors. The
world, crores (tens of millions) of years old, can be
destroyed in seven days. How long-lasting is this
world, and how many times has it been formed and
wiped out?
"Many a world has gone, and this too will go. To
take its place, another world [Earth] is being made
ready. Three-fourths of it is already ready, one-fourth
remains to be formed.
"If this world is destroyed today, evolution will start in
another. Evolution consists of a fixed process of ages
— the stone age, the vegetable age, the worm age,
and so forth [up to the animal and the human age]. If
this world is destroyed today, an interval will remain,
but by natural processes new life in a new world will
take millions of years to materialize. Millions of years
are required for another world to come into being.
"Natural and unnatural catastrophes come in cycles
of time, not in ages. A cycle is made up of so many
ages. Just as after four years a leap year occurs
and a day is added for calculation purposes instead
of adding a fraction of a day monthly; similarly this
destruction will mean leaping millions of years. There
is no question of time. Millions of years mean one
second, because there is nothing such as Time."
"Elcha's age is age forty. Do forty years exist for you
now? You can understand forty years, but not at this
moment.
"Why? Because there is no question of Time. This
means that you are forty years old, but at the
moment you have no realization of these forty years,
as you have no need to think of it. But if you give it
a thought, then you picture the whole period of forty
years in a moment; if you do not, it does not exist
for you. Therefore, in Eternity there is no question
of Time."
Meher Baba's comments on atomic bomb warfare were
particularly timely. Twelve days later, in August 1953, Russia
exploded its first test hydrogen bomb.
