Amartithi

Today is the 40th anniversary of the death of Meher Baba. The photograph above shows where he is buried and is referred to as his Samadhi. However, Baba lovers don't think of this anniversary as a death but as the dropping of his physical body. Baba emphasised that there was really only one birth and one death, the birth of the soul into ignorance of its true nature and the death of ignorance once the soul realises its true nature. He described physical death as being akin to sleeping. When a person goes to sleep, he or she wakes up in the same body but when a person dies, he or she wakes up in a new body.

At the moment thousands of people from India and from around the world are gathered at Meherabad for a three day celebration of this anniversary. There is live coverage of the event of the Internet while video and audio highlights can be viewed here. The term Amartithi is used for this celebration and Wikipedia describes the origin of the term as follows:

Amartithi is the day which commemorates Meher Baba's death on January 31, 1969. The word "Amartithi" appears to have been coined by Meher Baba and means "deathless day" (Literally, amar, deathless; tithi, day). Also translated as "eternal date" or "date with the Eternal." 10,000-12,000 overnight and 25,000-30,000 daytime visitors from all over the world gather at Meherabad for the three-day program. Amartithi is celebrated by Meher Baba's followers all over the world, including in the United States, Europe, and Australia, and, besides "Silence Day" (July 10, commemorating the commencement of Meher Baba's lifelong silence), it is considered the most significant holiday among followers of Meher Baba. At Meherabad the climax of the event takes place on Amartithi day itself when the assembled crowd keeps silence for fifteen minutes in honor of the physical passing of Meher Baba at 12:15 p.m. on January 31, 1969. Meher Baba's flag is flown over Meherabad during Amartithi.

When I first visited Meherabad over ten years ago, it was difficult to even reach the centre via email but now there is even a live video feed to the Internet on the big occasions such as this. Times have certainly changed. Out of necessity, I remember leaving behind in Singapore in 1999 the few volumes of Bhau Kalchuri's Lord Meher that I had purchased. Now the entire collection is freely available online along with all of Baba's books and those of a great many of his followers.

Social Networking via Books

A friend introduced me to shelfari, a site where you can keep track of books you've read, books you're currently reading and books you would like to read. You can also write your own reviews and share them with other people. It's quite interesting to reflect back on all the books that you've read over the years. Some of the first books that I can recall reading in the late 1950s were a series of science fiction books written by W.E.Johns who was better known for his Biggles novels. Around the same time, I read another series of science fiction novels, written by Ivan Southall, about a character called Simon Black. There are no biographical details in shelfari for either of these authors so I can supply these if I like, along with a photograph of the author, and everyone can then share this information. Additionally you can add a widget, as I've done, that will appear in this blog showing the book that I am currently reading.

the five people you meet in heaven

During the holidays, I finished reading the five people you meet in heaven by Mitch Albom and quite enjoyed it. I'm to keen to view the movie version that was released in 2005 and starred Jon Voight as Eddie, the central character who dies and meets these five people in heaven who explain certain things about his former life. They have all touched his life in some way although he only knew two of the people directly. There's been lots of movies made about the after-life over the years. I watched recently relaeased one tonight called Passengers starring Anne Hathaway and Patrick Wilson. I found it very moving. Books and movies like this attempt in different ways to depict the experiences that a suddenly discarnate consciousness undergoes in the immediate after-death state. A little research in Lord Meher about sudden death turned up this interesting quote from Meher Baba:

If a person dies by a sudden accident before his natural death, he immediately takes birth again and completes the remaining time of his past life, after which he dies. Some live for one, two, three, four or five years; and after finishing the remaining period of their past life, they take another body according to the sanskaras of the life which ended suddenly by accidental death. However, they cannot live longer than it takes to complete this remaining time. This is why some children die – some in a few days, some in a few months, and some after a few years. Generally, children up to the age of seven do not incur sanskaras. Their life until seven years of age is passed through according to, and depending on, the push of the sanskaras in their previous life. They are happy or miserable in accordance with the push being smooth or violent.

This makes perfect sense when you think about it. For example, in the tsunami that devastated Aceh in Indonesia, the lives of at least 120,000 people were suddenly expunged in a matter of minutes. It would be unlikely that all these people had simultaneously worked out their sanskaras and were ready for their natural death. However, I found another reference that suggests that this unlikely gathering of ill-fated individuals does indeed take place.

God is not kind, he is the ocean of mercy. But it is all according to law. And law is not complicated, it is simple. You sow a seed, you water it, you have a plant that grows - it is so simple. Law gives you all this from one seed, because all this was latent in the seed. Law deals individually, and also in multitudes of the same type. Your taking birth at a certain time, your giving up the body at a certain time, is all according to law, which shapes your actions. You are not responsible. But what about those who all die at one and the same moment, like thousands in an earthquake? Law gathers all of the similar types in one country, and ends it in one time.

I suspect that the majority of those who die in natural disasters have been gathered in the one place by the Law of Karma but a minority do die before their appointed time simply because of the indiscriminate nature of the disaster.

Life on the Road

For a few days recently, I swapped my safe, predictable and comfortable life in Jakarta for a decidedly unsafe, unpredictable and uncomfortablelife on the road to various locations in North Sumatra. Choosing to travel largely by public transport added to the stress because I found myself crammed into minivans containing more people than seats. Invariably, some male in the vehicle would light up a cigarette to add to the discomfort already caused by the overcrowding, heat and dust. It was an opportunity to exercise non-reaction in the face of provocative stimuli and overall I did very well.

I started to find that it was easier simply to accept the situation, rather than work up the emotional energy required to get annoyed and express this annoyance or try to contain it. Simply observing the situation and seeing the humour in it helped. At one point in my journeying, I was stuck in the back of a minivan when an old guy decided to light up in the seat in front of me. He was sitting beside a woman nursing a new born baby and had his own granddaughter on his lap. At least I was beside an open window and had some escape from the smoke. Nobody complained or even looked annoyed and neither did I. This old guy obviously had no awareness that the smoke from his cigarette might be harming the lungs of the baby beside him.

On another occasion, I was reminded of Meher Baba and his widespread travels throughout India. Usually he traveled by train in the third class compartments and often slept rough. My discomfort was mild and transient compared to what he would have gone through. So I just watched and found myself repeating, in mantra-like fashion, "observe but don't react, respond appropriately if the situation requires it". This practice was put to the test during the final leg of the journey when the driver of a private vehicle that we were sharing with other people was recklessly overtaking vehicles and it seemed that the appropriate response would be to ask him to stop and for me to get out. However, it was the middle of nowhere and as fate would have it, the car finally died because the driver had been pushing it beyond its limits and it had fatally overheated.

Thus it was that all the occupants of the vehicle alighted while the driver surveyed the situation. We had been standing by the side of the road for no more than two minutes when a fatal accident unfolded a couple of hundred metres up the road. A bus collided with a female motorcyclist who had been killed instantly. The bus overturned and its occupants suffered cuts and abrasions but nothing more serious. I uncovered these details because I walked up to the accident scene. This was New Year's Eve by the way and the young woman who was killed would have been looking forward to the coming year. It reminded me of the futility of thinking excessively about the future because it may not arrive.

I was also appreciative of the breakdown of our vehicle because it meant that we transferred to a taxi whose driver who was certainly less reckless and we completed our journey in safety. I have a final image of passing the motorcyclist's body as it lay by the side of the road. The body had been covered by pieces of cardboard but the bottom of the legs were visible. The victim had been wearing blue jeans and her toenails were painted red. When we arrived at the hotel it was 7pm and I wasn't in any mood to celebrate the arrival of the New Year but at least I was alive to see it in.