AVATAR MEHER BABA

Avatar Meher Baba — Avatar represents His Status of the Highest of the High in the realm of spirituality, Meher represents His name and Baba represents a term of reverence as used for father or any one held in reverence. We have so often heard the name Avatar Meher Baba but hardly tried to understand what each word really means.

To know of Baba's real inner work as the Avatar is beyond our imagination. It could only be known by one who has the experience of His Being and His state of consciousness. To think of it as we have a right to, would only be a speculation on our part. Even such a speculation would take a life-time to be formulated in thoughts and expressed in words.

His inner work has come to be known by me from what He has said about it time and again and from the different moods and changes of expressions I have seen on His face and in His movements during my stay with Him. I shall keep this subject aside for today's talk and proceed on with what He has given as His message.

His primary message to the world consists of nine words: "I have come not to teach but to awaken." In this, according to me is comprised the fundamentals or the roots of all His other messages. It precisely affirms the character and nature of work for which He has come, meaning, taken the human form. It is one of "not to teach but to awaken."

The act of teaching like a school teacher, a professor or a religious teacher is one that only gives understanding of particular subjects intellectually and does not comprehensively raise a man to higher stratas of consciousness and knowledge on all sides of his moral, mental and emotional make-up. The act of awakening is far too radical, deep and comprehensive.

Meher Baba's spirituality is practical. Were it not so "says" Baba, it would be no spirituality. Routine periodical method of meditation, yoga or any other so-called spiritual practice would confine a man to a periodical habit of mental and spiritual development not covering the rest of the periods of his waking consciousness left to other pursuits of his professional and domestic life. There would not be a continuity on the path of spiritual progress.

Most simple, practical and uninterrupted life is dedication of oneself with wholehearted love — love for anything and anyone held in highest esteem and reverence. Baba lays great stress upon love. Love given in worship to anything and anyone is always rewarding. But love lavished upon a Personage who is consciously one with God and has the authority of the Avatar of exercising His absolute Power, Knowledge and Bliss for the benefit of humanity — its reward and response is far too great and lasting.

Meher Baba is the living Avatar of the age and we should therefore love Him and go on adding up to the strength of our love for Him by remembering Him at all times of the day when the mind is free of the necessary pursuits of life.

Love is the most common, natural and practical asset in human life; but love is subjected to so many uses and interpretations, from sex to divine love, that it has lost charm of man's attention and a careful cogitation about it. Despite its many phases and degrees of expression it is love that exists in substance in every human heart like water that exists in the form of vapour, ice, clean and dirty water. The purity of love depends upon how much unselfish it is. The impurity of love is because of the element of selfishness it sustains.

The most unselfish love is divine love which consumes a man of his desires. By dedicating our lives in love and service to Meher Baba, we continue to progress and develop spiritually without going in for any of the so-called spiritual practice or sadhana. The sadhana of love is most practical, natural and easy in the present day life of stress and strain.

Meher Baba "says": "Hold on to My 'daaman' more than ever." This is not in the literal sense of holding on to His skirt. It is to love Him and make the bond of love ever so firm and strong. The carriages that are attached to an engine will reach the destination if the couplings (of love) that held them tight to the engine are firm and do not break away — no matter what the carriages contain, either the filth of sanskaras or the gold of good deeds.

Some ask curiously why Meher Baba calls Himself as the Avatar. I am sure if He did not do so, it would be easier for people to associate with Him and His writings but the fact is that it would be very untruthful for Baba to say that He is some one other than the Avatar when He is the Avatar. So let us be grateful to God for giving us an occasion to be associated with the Avatar and to love Him for our greatest good of knowing and realising our true Self as none other than God, who is Personified in Avatar Meher Baba.