Please note: The essays on this page are my own composition. They are my personal understandings given in good faith. J.F.
THE question:
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Who is Meher Baba?
Many people have struggled with finding the right words to answer this most significant of questions, and truly any answer one tries to give seems to always fall short. Struggling with this dilemma, those around Baba asked for His help. He said the answer was so simple, He said to tell them that Meher Baba is He who provokes this question in you; that He is the Being of all Beings. For many of us at first this can seem like a rather difficult concept to grasp, what does He mean by "the Being of all Beings"? To attempt to answer this we have to delve deep into ourselves and deep into a new paradigm of understanding, not just about who Meher Baba is, but also who we are. What is in fact the true nature of our own Beingness, and the Beingness of everyone and everything?
Meher Baba Begins
Before He was Meher Baba He was Merwan Irani. Born in 1894 in Poona (Pune) India. In 1914 He was, as He later described "Unveiled" by the spiritual master, Hazrat Babajan. This process lasted 7 years, after which He began His mission as the Avatar of the Age.
What does this "process" mean, one may ask? The balancing of His Divine consciousness within our world of duality; He perfectly and completely integrated the Infinite Ocean of Oneness into the thimble of a man.
Recognised by a core group of dedicated and devoted followers, they began calling Him "Meher Baba" - Compassionate Father.
His Work Begins
As the Avatar His work and life is for all creation. His Work is to give a spiritual rebirth to a suffering world. He does this out of His compassion and love for all creation, and the results of His lifetime of work has Universal affect. What we can see of His Work is only the surface layer, but even this is magnificent in content and expression. His presence itself was filled with love, sweetness, power, humour, beauty and intelligence of the highest order. One aspect of His Work he took on in 1925; while being a very dynamic and active individual, with a beautiful singing voice, He declared He would begin a period of Silence; this He would maintain for the rest of the 44 years of His life.
A Brief Accounting of His Work
Maintaining His Silence did not interfere or slow His activities in the slightest. Briefly they included:
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A school for children irregardless of caste or religion.
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Washing the feet of hundreds of lepers over His lifetime.
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Caring for the spiritually advanced He referred to as Masts, seeking them out throughout India.
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Washing the feet and giving food and Darshan (sight, touch) to many thousands of the poor over His lifetime.
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13 visits to the West 1931 - 1958, contacting those in the West ready to receive Him. Laying "spiritual cables".
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The New Life, a 3 year period of "Helplessness and Hopelessness". Blazing a path for future generations.
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Giving Darshan to many thousands, multiple times over His lifetime, in spite in later years of declining health.
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Two Car accidents in which He shed blood and was severally injured, causing years of physical suffering.
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His Universal Seclusion Work, an intense period of His Work, resulting in great strain on His declining health.
The Avatar
The word avatar has come to mean many things in the digital age but it's roots are spiritual. Some have referred to many avatars, Meher Baba's explanation is vastly more profound. He states that the advent of the Avatar is a periodic event, it being the decent of God into Human form, which takes place approximately every 700 to 1400 years. The impact of His life on the world is transformative, we know some of the past incarnations as Zoroaster, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammad. Religions are man's attempt to contain the magnificence and energy of these lifetimes. Time and man's limited nature often causing the Avatar's precious Truths to become contorted into man-made dogmas. The Avatar then returns once again to rekindle the torch of Truth in a dark world. He suffers and bares man's indifference for love's sake, resulting once again in mankind's spiritual renewal.
See Meher Baba's own words:
A Brief Glimpse of His Spirituality
Meher Baba revealed many fresh, contemporary insights into the theme and purpose of the spiritual journey we are all treading, whether we know it or not. Two books most notably are masterworks; Discourses by Meher Baba and God Speaks. An example; the seemingly opposite doctrines of a single lifetime vs multiple lives and reincarnation. Meher Baba explains that both are true, there is in fact only one real birth and one real death. We enter creation once, have many lifetimes, and then conclude our time in creation when union with the Infinite is finally achieved. Our journey of lifetimes is the soul's journey in creation, experiencing itself initially as the least conscious form, evolving eventually to full gross consciousness as man, and ultimately concluding when the spiritual path reveals ones true "Beingness" as Divine, our separateness as an illusion, our Oneness with the Beloved, personified by the glorious Avatar Himself, our true destiny.