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Meher Baba has said “My words are like Atom Bombs.” — “But they have to be put into action,” to yield their full benefit. Here, we can safely deduce that these ‘atomic words’ of Meher Baba must be fully understandable by ordinary human intellect. But, any flaw in one’s understanding of these ‘atomic ideas‘ may not ‘yield their full benefit’. In the Discourses Meher Baba says:
“In other words, the ideas that have been accepted after critical examination must again be released into active life if they are to yield their full benefit.“
— Discourses 353
A narrow or restricted form of understanding can tend to mislead the aspirant. Critical examination of such ideas must therefore be comprehensive in nature, taking all the other things that Meher Baba has taught us into consideration.
“True Spirituality is Comprehensive.”
— Discourses, 87
I believe it is when Meher Baba’s ‘revealed truths’ are taken as a whole and understood comprehensively, that one enters the atomic zone. When Meher Baba says “my words are like atom bombs”, (I contend that) he is speaking of his ‘revealed truths’ taken as a whole. Though each ‘part’ of Meher Baba’s teachings have a potency of their own, the ‘whole’ of his teachings may be greater than the sum of its ‘parts’. And Meher Baba has assured us that the extent of said ‘full benefit’ of such “understanding” when implemented wholeheartedly, are nothing short of atomic.
DISCLAIMER
Now, obviously Meher Baba is not referring here to the ‘words’ that he may have uttered “in his own language”, of which he has told us clearly that “he alone can understand”. Unlike these un-understandable statements, here Meher Baba is referring to his teachings that are clearly understandable by ordinary people. How else could he be asking us to put them into action?
Fortunately for us, all the books that contain Meher Baba’s teachings such as the Discourses, God Speaks, and so forth, are ALL written in a language that we can understand. There may be a statement or two contained in these books that Meher Baba has clearly specified as being “beyond human understanding”, but the rest of it is clearly understandable, and worthy of ‘critical examination’. The clarity and conciseness of Meher Baba’s explanations are both utterly satisfying and devastating to the intellect & the heart. His words are so poignant that they destroy many of our preconceived notions, and through this process devastate our hearts. Baba says:
“Spiritual doctrine can be stated in intellectual terms.
Intellect is a great help in the experience of the heart.”
–Silent Teachings of Meher Baba, p144
It is the function of the mind to correctly understand the ‘revealed truths’ that are given to us in clear ‘intellectual terms’. It is also our mind that is tasked to string all these ‘revealed truths’ together “like beads on one string.” Stringing together all the ‘revealed truths’ given to us by Meher Baba, like beads on one string is the first step in the process of reaching comprehensive spiritual understanding. If the revealed truths do not cohere with each other in my mind in a non-contradictory way, this means that there is an error somewhere in my understanding of his words. All such ‘revealed truths’ given to us by our Master must cohere with each other in our minds somehow, without contradictions. Furthermore, this understanding must then be able to accommodate even “The discourses or the writings of the Avatar and the Perfect Masters, whether living or of the past.” – Discourses, 220 How else can we bring all religions together like beads on one string? As Baba says, spiritual understanding must be comprehensive.
“I am equally concerned with the saint and the sinner, the small and the great, the rich and the poor, the ignorant and the wise, the East and the West. For them all, the one remedy of remedies which is recommended is spiritual understanding, which at once includes and supersedes all other forms of knowledge.” –Lord Meher 3986
Comprehensive coherence of all of Meher Baba’s ‘revealed truths’, combined together with all of Upasni Maharaj’s ‘revealed truths’, as well as all the Avataric religions, is what I’ve been working on for the past decade or so. It was this attempt to cohere all these teachings together with Meher Baba’s teachings that led me to a far deeper and insightful understanding of Meher Baba’s teachings. It is often when I am trying to string these ‘revealed truths’ of the Avatars and Perfect Masters together like beads on one string that things start to get atomic.
THE HEART
Doesn’t Meher Baba teach us to just follow our heart?
Or does he?
In modernity many people say “just follow your heart’s desire!” I’ve even heard many Babalovers say something like this, as if Meher Baba had said it. But what does Meher Baba actually say about following the Heart? Brace yourselves! This may be atomic!
He says our Hearts must be DRAINED. — Drained of all desires.
“Every time your Soul intends to enter your human heart, it finds the door locked and the inside too full of desires. Do not keep the doors of your hearts closed. Open your heart by weeding out all desires and by harboring only one longing-the longing for union with the ultimate Reality.”
–Discourses page 14
It seems to me, maybe we shouldn’t ‘just’ follow our hearts, without attempting to drain it of desires. Otherwise, we may just end up following our heart’s desires instead, wouldn’t we?
Once spiritual understanding is achieved on an intellectual level, the mind has done its work, and it too must ultimately go. The mental world, though less illusory than the gross and subtle worlds, is illusory, nonetheless. Baba says that before Union, the mind must go. But before it goes, the mind has a job to do. It must discern truth from falsity, the Real from the imaginary, and right from wrong –aided of course by Divine revelations.
“The intellect will become the hero of its own murder.”
Ultimately, it is the intellect(mind) that kills itself as it reaches it’s own zenith. It is intelligence itself that kills the intellect. Unlike what some people think, the mind is not smothered to death by a stern refusal to use it. Instead, it is a deeper understanding of the Truth, that automatically begins to kill it. Once the intellect figures out and clearly understands that “life is a mighty joke” wherein “the sole game with any intrinsic or absolute worth, is to penetrate into the essence of all being and significance”, and that “all other happenings and incidents can in themselves have no lasting importance.” — its basically a ‘dead man walking’ from that point on. Emptying the heart, on the other hand, is done by ‘weeding out all desires’ except for the yearning for union with God, as Baba’s ‘atomic’ revealed truths have told us.
Baba tells us that spiritual understanding is far more dependent on the heart, than the mind. But he never said that it is (completely) independent of the mind. The fruit of realization necessarily entails a previous stage wherein the mind had to assimilate the “ideas that have been accepted after critical examination”. This must be done before these ideas can be “released into active life” by none other than the heart. However, many Meher Baba followers I know would gladly skip this essential first step — For they are actually Deists, and not Theists.
ARE YOU A DEIST?
Deism: is belief in God stripped of all ‘revealed truths’ that are uncomfortable, unpopular, counterintuitive, or difficult to understand and or believe. Basically, Deism embraces only the pleasant-sounding stuff, and rejects the scary stuff. In Deism, man (or the self) is the final arbiter of Truth, and not God. The revelations given to us by the Avatar are like second-class citizens in the mind of a deist, unless or until he finds that they suit his taste.
“Love God and Love your neighbor!
That is all you need to know!
What else do you think you need to know?
Thats it!
Just follow your heart!
Love is all you need!
The rest is just a bunch of intellectual mumbo jumbo anyway! ”
If this is what you tell yourself and others, you may be a Deist, and not a Theist.
The Enlightenment gave birth to two deformed children, Atheism and Deism. In history class we were taught that the Enlightenment of the 17th Century, brought forth the age of light, where man was at last woken up from his dark slumber into a more rational and scientific view of himself & the universe.
“Have the courage to use your own mind’s understanding without another’s guidance.
Dare to know!
Dare to know, on your own terms!
Instead of relying on some external authority, or some old book, trust in your own ability to think.”
These were the mottos of the Enlightenment. In sharp contrast, the Theist is guided by ‘revealed truths’ that tell him:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding.”
–Proverbs 3-5
Does Meher Baba say (more or less) exactly the same thing as Proverbs 3-5? Yes, of course he does. It is literally plastered all over the Discourses from beginning to end, not to mention God Speaks. Yet, the Deist Babalover relies first and foremost on his/her own feelings, intuitions, understanding, and discernment — over and above Meher Baba’s revealed truths.
If you value your own personal ideas, thoughts, & so called ‘intuitions’, over and above the clearly understandable ‘revealed truths’ given to us by the Avatar & his Perfect Masters, then you are actually a Deist & not a Theist. Deism is actually much closer to Agnosticism & Atheism than it is to Theism. To a True Theist like Kalyan (see Discourses), the words of the Avatar are truly like Atom Bombs. In Deism, words of the Avatar, are like any other words, they are just words anyway, and words are just words, nothing more. And who knows what Baba really meant by them! — they might add. It is often the most ignorant of Meher Baba’s metaphysics, that proudly proclaim this view.
Unknown to most Americans, the United States was actually founded as a Deist nation and not a Christian one. Most of the founding fathers of the United States were Deists. Among them Thomas Jefferson actually made a version of the Bible to suit his Deist sentiments. The Jefferson Bible did not include major scenes like the resurrection or ascension to heaven or miracles like turning water into wine or walking on water. Instead, Jefferson’s Bible focused on Jesus as a man of morals, a teacher whose truths were expressed without the help of miracles or the supernatural powers of God. Basically, it is a Bible made for atheistic materialists. To Jefferson, Jesus was a good teacher and a very moral dude — but surely not God in human form.
Rather than the ‘revelations’ of God, Deists are more oriented toward scientific observations and discoveries in nature, that are empirically verifiable through repeatable experiments. To a Deist, all revelations given by the Avatar, are thereby subjected to the higher authority of human reason, rational thinking, and of course their own personal subjective intuitions. Each Deist can now have a God that perfectly suits his taste.
Essentially a Deist is an Atheist in Theist robes, he/she thrives in that ‘plausibly deniable’ place situated right on the fence somewhere in between Atheism and Theism. They might say they believe in Jesus but couldn’t honestly tell you anything of any depth about His teachings. They are not interested in these trivial details, you see — all that is needed is love, good intentions, and the heart.
But didn’t Baba tell us that without the aid of the Divine, we have nearly no chance of getting to know God. How can we come to know Him without Divine revelations? Did the Buddha teach for 40 years in vain? Was Meher Baba or Upasni Maharaj’s Discourses written in vain? Was the Vedant and the Gita written in vain? Was the Quran written in vain?
“Fools cannot love Him (God), for the love of Him springs directly from the knowledge of Him.”
— Al Ghazali
And this knowledge that Al Ghazali speaks of is contained in the ‘revealed truths’ given to us by the ‘Masters of Wisdom’ such as Meher Baba, and Upasni Maharaj. It is not something that can be generated by unaided human intellect. Having said all this, I am not implying that everyone needs to go through the trouble of understanding all the ‘revealed truths’ given to us by the ‘Masters of Wisdom’. What I am saying though is that no one should actively discourage others, who may have this yearning to understand these spiritual truths. After all, there are those among us that seem to have been born with this understanding without having every really studied it at all in this life.
In closing, I would like to share an atom bomb from Meher Baba (through Francis Brabazon)
“The Dark Ages were the ages of light:
the Renaissance was the twilight of our present black night of materialism.”
— Stay with God, page 94
The Enlightenment, considered the age of light by most Atheists, is a movement that places all of its trust in man and his abilities, instead of God. St. Augustine, one of Baba’s favorite men in the West said:
There can only be two basic loves…
the love of God, unto the forgetfulness of self,
or the love of self, unto the forgetfulness and denial of God.”
Love of self forms the City of Man; Love of God forms the City of God
Two cities have been formed by two loves:
the earthly by the love of self(man), even to the forgetfulness of God;
and the heavenly by the love of God, even to the forgetfulness of self.
The former glorifies itself; the latter glorifies God.
Right now, the powers that be, with our help, are trying to build the City of Man, or what they call ‘Smart Cities’. What Augustine calls ‘The City of God’, Meher Baba calls ‘The New Humanity’. We, as Babalovers, should be for the City of God, and not for the City of Man.
Thank you for reading & listening.
I wrote this song 30 odd years ago when I was 19 or in my early 20s. It was based on Meher Baba’s revealed truths and is an expression of how I could feel His love for me in his words (especially in the Discourses) devastating my heart.
Jai Meher Baba!
Chai Gatewalla