FOUR STAGES OF EVERYTHING

 
Sometimes I cannot help asking myself about the things I do and say, and about the things I deliberately avoid and easily forget . . . At the last Meeting in Meherabad I gave out my final declaration and yet it was followed by a clarification, a confirmation and lastly by the decision . . .

Until the other day I had not given it a thought . . . then, while taking a rest I asked myself why at all I did give out the Declaration. Who asked me for a Clarification? Where was the need to issue a Confirmation and what made me give the Decision?

I was satisfied that all that was, had been inevitably necessary . . . Throughout time, in accordance with the common law of nature, there are four stages to everything. Therefore the day I had announced my declaration, I knew the decision inherent therein would have to be worked out by me through the stages that would automatically follow. For example:

After a mango stone is sown and nurtured, a sapling is bound to spring up. The sapling is not in itself the mango but it represents a declaration of the mango's advent. The sapling does not stop there, but unfolds to clarify itself into more leaves, branches, and a trunk. It is however, the coming of the flowers which confirms the fruit is near at hand. And it is the actual appearance of the mango that finally decides beyond a doubt that it was the mango passing through the inevitable four stages in order to become what it really has been all along . . .

Thus my declaration was in fact my decision, but for the declaration to be manifested as the decision, it had inevitably to pass through the intermediary stages of clarification and confirmation. Perhaps you can grasp it better through further examples:

My declaration may be likened to the birth of a child, which is subsequently clarified as to whether it is a boy or a girl. The confirmation represents puberty which reaches its decision in procreation . . . These four stages commonly represent the development of human life . . .

A day is declared by the dawn, clarified by noon, confirmed by afternoon and its completion decided by sunset.

The initiative of all initiatives, the foremost lahar or spontaneous urge on the part of God to ask Himself 'Whom am I?' was God's declaration; creation was then necessary for its clarification; the evolution of perfect consciousness in man is its confirmation, and involution — the transformation of human consciousness into God-consciousness — concludes in the decision (already inherent in the declaration) that throughout God was God and never anything other than God.

But here again I asked myself why in my Declaration I had stated certain things that would definitely happen, without stating a definite date? Whereas in the Clarification which allowed for different interpretations according to the 'language,' I definitely stated a time? What was the reason for presenting two possibilities in the Confirmation: either a change in the nature of events or a change in the factor of time? And, how did I arrive at my Decision which has eliminated the factor of time?

A question is the beginning of an answer — an answer but the end of a question. In the beginningless beginning, when God alone was, and there was neither illusion nor life in illusion, God had the divinely spontaneous urge to know Himself and ask 'Who am I?' The answer 'I am God' was already latent in His question 'Who am I?'

Although God's decision of 'I am God' was inherent in His declaration of 'Who am I,' yet in order to manifest as the decision, the declaration had to pass through the intervening stages of clarification and confirmation. But just as the decision is inherent in the declaration, vacillation is equally inherent in the clarification and confirmation.

The stage of clarification is therefore one of vacillation. The growing consciousness through evolution in the form of stone, vegetable, animal, etc. the declaration 'Who am I' begins to be clarified through the counter question 'Who am I not?' It is through the vacillating experience of 'I am not stone,' 'I am not this,' 'I am not that' that the soul eventually arrives at the only correct answer, 'I am God.'

Before reaching perfection in human form, consciousness has to evolve through a definite period of time. There is no vacillation in the time factor of the clarification therefore, only in its events.

Confirmation — the second intervening stage — is also one of vacillation, but in a different way. Evolved consciousness reaches its fullness in man, and instead of wavering between the various experiences of 'Who am I not?' there is now the certainty of 'I am man' — never for a moment does man doubt himself to be other than man.

This 'I am'-ness, reached in the human form, is the apex of evolutionary consciousness — yet this full but false consciousness is only the beginning of the long journey towards the true Consciousness, God-consciousness or the consciousness of 'I am God.'

On the one hand therefore the positive consciousness of 'I AM' is reached in the human form. On the other hand the Soul is still in quest of the real answer to Its original Question, and this quest expresses itself in man through various experiences, until he can finally say 'I am God.'

Before the commencement of involution into God-consciousness, human consciousness is trapped in the treadmill of reincarnations for an indefinite period and is in what might be expressed as a spiritual stalemate. Because of this there is the vacillation in the time factor of 'confirmation;' for, unlike the fixed limit of time gone through during the evolutionary process, there is the possibility of a chance in deciding the time factor between human-consciousness and God-consciousness.*

Thus the conflicting stages in the nature of events and the factor of time have been governing all things from the beginningless beginning and will continue to do so to the endless end.

There is now no time limit. Things may happen after one month or three months, after three years or twenty years. In short, I may speak tomorrow or after ten years. I am free from all promises, bindings, undertakings and arrangements. None should therefore ask for anything material or spiritual from me at any time or on any account. I will do what I think to be best for one and all and when I deem it fit.

From now on therefore your connection with me will endure on this basis — and this applies not only to those present here, but to all my followers, present and future, in the East as well as in the West. It is now for you to decide whether to hold on to my daaman, believing in me and remaining devoted to me, by following my orders and instructions.

Whatever I have said and have been saying, I was made to say by God. When I say a thing, God makes me say so. All I want to say now is that whatever I have declared and decided will be so and all things shall accordingly happen.

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*The 'chance' is the contact with, or grace of, a Perfect Master.