Complete Detachment

As humanity heads into a dystopian future, it's not all bad news. If it lived in a utopia, the incentives for individuals to turn inward would be minimal. In a utopia, the lure of attachments draws the individual away from the inner life and makes detachment difficult. The growing dystopia that humanity is now entering poses the danger that individuals will actively shun the world and retreat into isolation, cynicism and misanthropy. 

In our pre-Covid world, we were attached to travel, socialisation and an illusion of freedom. Suddenly that was taken away and severe restrictions were placed on travel and socialisation. The illusion of freedom was cruelly shattered. For some, this was accepted as the necessary price for combating and controlling a dangerous pathogen. For others, like myself, who understand what is really going on, acceptance is not easy. 

It's tempting to be drawn into the great divide that is opening up within humanity between those who accept what is happening and those who do not accept it. Amongst the former is the belief that governments and the medical establishment are doing the best they can for us. If we just cooperate, we'll get through these trying times and, while things will never return to the way they were, things will at least get better.

For those who do not accept what is happening, reactions are mixed. Some want to resist. Others are resigned to the "sound of inevitability" as Agent Smith put it in the original Matrix movie. Whether an individual embraces opposition, withdrawal, resignation, acceptance or cooperation, there is in each case attachment. It's difficult not to take a side or choose a position. The powers-that-ought-not-to-be know this and exploit it, playing different sides off against one another.

It's not easy to remain detached. Retreating into "isolation, cynicism and misanthropy" is not detachment but instead it is a very powerful form of attachment. The fact that our former way of life has disappeared should remind us how illusory it really was to begin with. The freedoms that we thought were our God-given right were snatched away or willingly surrendered by the muzzled masses. These freedoms were not God-given after all but granted by our benign overlords.

Meher Baba, in his Discourses, has explained to us what is meant by complete detachment. If we can begin practising this as the Dark Winter descends on us, there is hope because then the tyranny that is being imposed upon us will not affect us. Here is what He wrote:

COMPLETE DETACHMENT

Meher Baba

The kind of detachment that really lasts is due to the understanding of suffering and its cause. It is securely based upon the unshakable knowledge that all things of this world are momentary and passing, and that any clinging to them is bound eventually to be a source of pain. Man seeks worldly objects of pleasure and tries to avoid things that bring pain, without realising that he cannot have the one and eschew the other. As long as there is attachment to worldly objects of pleasure, he must perpetually invite upon himself the suffering of not having them — and the suffering of losing them after having got them. Lasting detachment, which brings freedom from all desires and attachments, is called Purna Vairagya, or complete dispassion. Complete detachment is one of the essential conditions of lasting and true happiness. For the person who has complete detachment no longer creates for himself the suffering that is due to the unending thralldom produced by desires.

Opposites

Desirelessness makes an individual firm like a rock. He is neither moved by pleasure nor by sorrow, he is not upset by the onslaughts of opposites. One who is affected by agreeable things is bound to be affected by disagreeable things. If a person is encouraged in his endeavours by an omen considered auspicious, he is bound to be discouraged by one considered to be inauspicious. He cannot resist the discouraging effect of an inauspicious omen as long as he derives strength from an auspicious one. The only way not to be upset by omens is to be indifferent to auspicious as well as inauspicious omens.

Praise and blame

The same is true of the opposites of praise and blame. If a person is pleased by receiving praise, he is bound to be miserable when he receives blame. He cannot keep himself steady under a shower of blame as long as he is inwardly delighted by receiving praise. The only way not to be upset by blame is to be detached from praise also. Only then can a person remain unmoved by the opposites of praise and blame. Then he does not lose his equanimity. The steadiness and equanimity that remain unaffected by any opposites is possible only through complete detachment, which is an essential condition of lasting and true happiness. The individual who has complete detachment is not at the mercy of the opposites of experience; and being free from the thralldom of all desires, he no longer creates his own suffering.

DISCOURSES, 7th ed, pp. 391-392

1987 © Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust

Baba left us with these words to ponder after He was gone:

Have courage and be brave.

If you thus lose your heart, how will it be possible for you to fulfill the great task which I have entrusted to you? Be brave and spread MY MESSAGE OF LOVE far and wide to all quarters, in order to fulfill My Divine Will. Let the words ‘BABA, BABA’ come forth from every nook and corner of the world and from the mouth of every child, and let their ignorance be reduced to ashes by the burning flame of My Love.

Come together in order to fulfill My Will by taking your stand on TRUTH, LOVE AND HONESTY, and be worthy of participating in My Task. I give you all My blessings for spreading MY MESSAGE OF LOVE.

Finally, he said:

Don't be lost, hold on to My daaman, never feel lost. Rely completely upon Me. I am always there. 

Baba lovers will know what daaman means while others may not. It is an Urdu word meaning the "hem of ones garment". Baba often wore a sadra (a thin, ankle length muslin skirt) and figuratively He is telling His lovers to hold on to that, with both hands, and never let go. This is the only way to get through what is coming. 

Baba is saying to take your stand on Truth, Love and Honesty and then rely completely upon Him. If a country were to mandate a vaccine for example that you believe to be dangerous, then simply refuse to take it whatever penalties might be imposed for refusal. Take a stand. If you're held down and forcibly injected, don't resist. If you do, more force will be applied and you'll be subdued. Speak the truth about what is going on and leave the consequences to Baba. This applies particularly to people with inside knowledge who have a responsibility to speak out and inform people about the deception and lies.

Baba knew what the future held and knew that it wouldn't be easy to remain truthful, loving and honest in the face of what is coming. All we can do is try. It's easy to hate our oppressors and to despise the sheeple who cooperate in their enslavement. While it may not be possible to love them, we can at least practise detachment and accept them for what they are. Returning to the start of my post, I wrote "As humanity heads into a dystopian future, it's not all bad news". By this I meant, we have an opportunity to reassess our attachments to the world. Because these attachments have been so easily disrupted, we are confronted with their fragility. We are encouraged to look within and seek an attachment that is more resistant to disruption. 

The only attachment of importance is our relationship with Baba. Looking within does not mean withdrawing from the world, it means withdrawing our attachment to the world and replacing it with an attachment that endures. The lies, hate and dishonesty that have spawned the current turmoil provide a challenge for us to uphold Truth, Love and Honesty. As 1984 has belatedly caught up with us, we are reminded that:

Truth is Lies

Love is Hate

Honesty is Deception

It's impossible to fight the tsunami of lies, hate and deception washing over us at the moment. The global elite seem to have attained almost total control over humanity but this could disappear in an instant. A coronal mass ejection (CME) could destroy our communication infrastructure and with it any hope of a tyrannical world government. We would find ourselves back in the nineteenth century, technology-wise. In the meantime, giving up our smartphones might be the best way to approach 2021. You can't be made to put a tracking app on your smartphone if you don't have a phone. This indeed is a form of detachment as many of us have formed a very strong attachment to our smartphones.

Detaching from your smartphone

With each "detachment", we move closer to the only important attachment and that our attachment to Baba. As He himself said:

God is Shy of Strangers

"God exists. If you are convinced of God's existence then it rests with you to seek Him, to see Him and to realise Him. Do not search for God outside of you. God can only be found within you, for His only abode is the heart. But you have filled His abode with millions of strangers and He cannot enter, for He is shy of strangers. Unless you empty His abode of these millions of strangers you have filled it with, you will never find God.

These strangers are your age-old desires your millions of wants. They are strangers to God because want is an expression of incompleteness and is fundamentally foreign to Him who is All-sufficient and wanting in nothing. Honesty in your dealings with others will clear the strangers out of your heart. Then you will find Him, see Him and realise Him."

The Everything and the Nothing by Meher Baba (page 6)

http://www.ambppct.org/Book_Files/Everything_r.pdf

True Devotion

Robert and Lorna Rouse in 2002

It was either December 1993 or January 1994 when I first visited Avatar's Abode with Sylvia, whom I would later marry. We had just finished a ten day Vipassana meditation retreat at Pomona and thought we'd try to find the Abode as it was not far away. We drove in fairly early in the morning and there was nobody about but it felt like the Garden of Eden. 

Unknowingly, we waited outside Baba's house for someone to arrive. That someone turned out to be Lorna Rouse, who was surprised to find a couple of people on the property at such an early hour. As John Grant describes it in his book "Practical Spirituality", this is what happened back in August of 1958 as described by Robert Rouse: 

At 1:00 p.m. we gathered at the house to say farewell to Baba. He called Robert and Lorna Rouse to see Him privately. He said that He was going now and Robert was to come to Sydney with Him. He told Lorna that He was going away now and to look after His house. He gave her the key and said that after He left, His house was to be locked up and everyone was to go right away from it, and be nowhere near it.

By this Baba meant those attending the Sahavas at the time were to keep away from it. Long term, it was intended as a place of pilgrimage. So here was Lorna, almost thirty five years later, still looking after His house. Baba had allowed the Rouses to live at Avatar's Abode after his departure. When we met her, she was bringing flowers to place in Baba's room. Lorna was the very first Baba person that Sylvia and I met. 

It was only through reading John Grant's book that we become aware of Baba's visit to Queensland is 1958. Sylvia had come across the book in The University of Western Sydney's library. I've written in detail about how the two of us came to Baba (see below):

Lorna died on the 19th February, 2004. I'm fairly sure that Robert outlived his wife. Here are some more photos of Lorna taken from this site.

Lorna when young

Photo taken by Rada Rouse in mid 70's

Rada was the daughter who Lorna was pregnant with when Baba visited Australia in 1956, so she must be around 64 years old now. Anyway, in this post I'm just commemorating Lorna and her devoted service to Baba over the years following his return to India.

Love Me, Love My Creation

Today I woke up around 4am and went down to the lounge room to have some toast and coffee while I watched some YouTube videos. Usually I watch a commentary on a chess game or some alternative news channel. The recommended Meher Baba videos are often quite long and so I'm reluctant to start watching them. However, I noticed that there was a video that was only eight minutes long, so I selected that. It turned out to be snippet of an earlier live stream from a room in Meherabode in Los Angeles that I'd actually come across a few days ago.

Meherabode: Los Angeles

I watched the video of the room and then it segued into another video that featured an audio account of a Baba Lover who had met Baba briefly in Meherabad back in April 15th 1966. The person was then a teenager or young adult and so would have been a similar age to me at the time. His recollections lasted about 15 minutes. 

The aspect of this person's account that struck a resonant chord with me was his observation that God does not stand apart from his creation but is immersed in it. God experiences his creation through his created creatures. While watching it, the thought of Love Me, Love My Creation came over me. We can love God by loving the creatures that we encounter in our own life. These creatures may be humans or animals or even plants.

My own thoughts fell on my poor blind dog, Gromit. I try to take care of her as best I can. I feed her, take her for walks, wash and groom her, touch her and talk to her. Toy poodles are high maintenance dogs as anyone who has ever owned one knows. I do spend time and energy on her but I'm often perfunctory about it and spend vastly more time on my own pursuits. 

One takeaway of this experience was simply to remember that God is always accessible via his creatures and that I should spend a little more time, in my case, taking care of Gromit and making her more comfortable. Baba has said that around 4am is the best time for meditation and spiritual matters. If I'm up at 4am, why not watch a Baba video and set the tone for the day ahead. That was the other takeaway.

Links Across Lifetimes

Figure 1

I watched a short video of Filis Federick talking about the links the Avatar makes with people during his advent. Don Stevens, she said, had been told by Baba that the Avatar decides in his current advent who will meet him in his next. These links are most important in the spiritual advancement of individuals. 

This got me thinking about my own links to the Avatar. Initially, I came to Baba via his book, God Speaks. It was Don Steven's book, Listen Humanity, that led me to Avatar's Abode. Figure 1 shows that I was then amongst the "people who have heard of Baba via the Internet, books or contact with people who know about Baba". 

On my first visit to Avatar's Abode, I met Lorna Rouse who, again referencing Figure 1, was one of those people who "have met Baba in his physical form" and was a member of his outer circle who had been allowed by Baba to live at Avatar's Abode. Lorna met Baba in 1958 and it was about forty years later that I met her. After this I met several other people at Avatar's Abode who had met Baba. I should say that throughout this "voyage of discovery" I was accompanied by my wife at the time. We had met in late 1992 and separated in early 2000.

I was with my wife when we travelled to Meherabad in the late 90's. The first person we met at the Pilgrim Centre in Ahmednagar was Bhau Kalchuri who was working in the garden and smilingly met us as we approached. Naturally, we assumed he was the gardener. Little did we know at that moment that he was Baba's gardener whose business it was to plant Baba seeds around the world. A year or so later Bhau visited Singapore and we were fortunate to meet him there for a few hours on his way back to Meherabad. Thus the first person we met was a member of Baba's inner circle.

I consider myself to be most blessed to have had these contacts and all that I can hope for is that these links may lead me to meet the Avatar in person during his next advent. Of course, that's up to the Avatar. You can find out more about Fillis Federick (second from the left in Figure 2) and other Baba lovers by visiting this site.

Figure 2

The Spiritual Hierarchy

In these dark days, it seems that the world has been overrun by the forces of evil and that the spirit of humanity is being submerged by a ruling elite. At such times, I need to remind myself that there is a spiritual hierarchy overseeing the affairs of this planet and that the real power lies in their hands. In 1934, Meher Baba stated that:

Out of 160 or 170 [very advanced] souls on earth, only 76 are conscious of their body and the gross world. The rest are masts. Twenty of these 76 are 'indifferent' [without duty]; 56 perform different duties, under the five Perfect Masters. Numerous walis, pirs and saints at different stages of advancement work as agents. Every place, village, town and city has its agent [chargeman]. The Hyderabad agent is a wali who moves about in rags and is unknown to people.

Ten years earlier, in 1924, Baba has said that:

... there exist in the physical cosmos 18,000 planets with human life forms, and millions of planets with evolutionary life forms, along with millions and millions of universes which are in a state of cosmic evolution. But he clarified that earth was the only planet where the process of involution occurred — that only on earth do human beings experience the planes of spiritual consciousness. And he further explained that not only were the five Perfect Masters on earth, but also the entire 7,000 member spiritual hierarchy of saints and advanced souls. 

Baba provided an interesting table, shown in Figure 1. He goes on to explain the details behind this table. This occurred in 1943.

Figure 1

Now, after the human form reincarnates 84 lakhs of times, how does the soul enter the subtle world?

There are always and eternally 84 lakhs of souls who experience subtle experiences. Among them, there are seven who are the chiefs and can experience the mental world in the same subtle body. These seven have duty. The 84 lakhs of subtle experiencers are existing even today. The figure is always constant. There are an equal number who experience the mental world. But in each new unwinding, one of the seven chiefs with duty becomes less, meaning he gets no normal consciousness nor duty. How many out of the seven chiefs get duty in the subtle? Seven. In the mental, six have duty; in the God-state, five. 

On the gross plane: 84 lakhs of reincarnations, although there are millions of human beings in the world. On the subtle plane: 84 lakhs of souls who experience the subtle world. Out of these 84 lakhs of those experiencing the subtle world there are seven chiefs who have duty. When these seven cross over to the mental plane, only six have duty and one remains dormant. When these seven cross over from the mental to the God-state, five have duty and two remain dormant. In the God-realized state, out of 56 there are five heads and two majzoobs. The majzoob state is attained on the seventh plane.

In 1926, Baba had explained that:

The key to the world is only one, but it is in the hands of the five Perfect Masters. For example, a safe has only one key and no other key can unlock it. The five Perfect Masters control the safe [the world]. One Master is the keeper of the key, without which the safe cannot be opened. The second guards the safe which cannot be opened without his prior consent. The third is the one who alone has the authority to use the key to unlock the safe. The fourth is the one who has the right to distribute the riches in the safe. And the fifth Master is the one who has the power to authorize the distribution. Thus there is only one key to the world, equally shared among the five Masters.

The five Perfect Masters, plus the 51 other God-realized souls [majzoobs and Jivanmuktas] control the key. These 51 are members of the parliament of the five Perfect Masters. Fifty-one plus five equals 56; this number 56 never changes. Each of the Perfect Masters has a circle and each circle consists of twelve members. In this way does the game of the world go on and on. All this I am telling you is a secret.  

Baba said in 1953 that:

When the Avatar descends, there are five Perfect Masters who sustain him. These five have always sustained me: Sai Baba, Upasni Maharaj, Babajan, Narayan Maharaj and Tajuddin Baba. Sai Baba was Perfection personified, a very rare type even among Sadgurus. Babajan was after all the Shahenshah [Emperor] of Sadgurus. So, there are five Perfect Masters who sustain me from eternity. In every age, when I come, they sustain me. Sai Baba made me what I am; Babajan made me feel what I am; Upasni Maharaj made me know what I am. And what I am, I am! 

Later, in 1956, Baba added that:

Now that my five Perfect Masters, who actively worked, have left their bodies, I carry the entire burden myself, and all who share in it are most fortunate. 

Baba left us in 1969 and so, at this time, the world's affairs are being directed by the five Perfect Masters, whoever they may be, and so we must endure. The current oppression may wane or even intensify but the temporal forces that are oppressing humanity will pass away. As Baba explained, God has no rival in the form of Satan. Only God IS and it is to God that we will all return one day. In the meantime, life in illusion continues.

David Bohm and the Implicate Order

I'm reading Michael Talbot's "The Holographic Universe" that was first published in January of 1996. This was quite a significant month in my life. I started reading David Bohm's "Wholeness and the Implicate Order" but found it heavy going and thought that Talbot's book might be a lighter introduction to the subject. 

This has proven to be the case but in "The Holographic Universe" reference is made to numerous people and events that deserve coverage in their own right. One such person is Therese Neumann and in his book Talbot references a book by Montague Summers titled "The Physical Phenomenon of Mysticism" published in 1950. Therese Neumann was still alive at this time (she was born in 1898 and died in 1962). I was able to find this book on the Internet Archive and am looking forward to reading it. 

The Wikipedia article about her is predictably largely negative but does mention that "Paramahansa Yogananda visited her and wrote about her case in his book Autobiography of a Yogi, published in 1946. He wrote an entire chapter, Therese Neumann, The Catholic Stigmatist of Bavaria, which reverently gives a vivid first-hand description of one of her Friday Passion trances." I have this book so I'll have a read of the chapter relating to her.

Talbot also writes in his book about the Jansenists who he introduces in these terms:

... one of the most astounding manifestations of psychokinesis, and one of the most remarkable displays of miraculous events ever recorded, took place in Paris in the first half of the eighteenth century. The events centered around a puritanical sect of Dutch-influenced Catholics known as the Jansenists, and were precipitated by the death of a saintly and revered Jansenist deacon named Francois de Paris. Although few people living today have even heard of the Jansenist miracles, they were one of the most talked about events in Europe for the better part of a century.

I found a book on the Internet Archive titled "The Jansenists: their rise, persecutions by the Jesuits, and existing remnant: a chapter in church history" by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, (1813-1875). It was published in 1851. This too should be an interesting read. Interestingly it's available on Amazon who have the cheek to charge $0.99 for it, presumably because it's taking up such a large amount of space on its servers.

Talbot's book also contains an interesting little anecdote about Wolfgang Pauli (Robert Jahn is aerospace scientist and Brenda Dunne, a clinical psychologist, was his associate in a number of ESP experiments that they worked on together) :

Jahn and Dunne think their findings may explain the propensity some individuals seem to have for jinxing machinery and causing equipment to malfunction. One such individual was physicist Wolfgang Pauli, whose talents in this area are so legendary that physicists have jokingly dubbed it the “Pauli effect” It is said that Pauli's mere presence in a laboratory would cause a glass apparatus to explode, or a sensitive measuring device to crack in half. In one particularly famous incident a physicist wrote Pauli to say that at least he couldn't blame Pauli for the recent and mysterious disintegration of a complicated piece of equipment since Pauli had not been present only to find that Pauli had been passing by the laboratory in a train at the precise moment of the mishap! Jahn and Dunne think the famous “Gremlin effect,” the tendency of carefully tested pieces of equipment to undergo inexplicable malfunctions at the most absurdly inopportune moments, often reported by pilots, aircrew, and military operators, may also be an example of unconscious PK activity.

Before "Wholeness and the Implicate Order", "The Holographic Universe", Therese Neumann, the Jansenists and Wolfgang Pauli, there was this video that first introduced me to the ideas of David Bohm. However, it is now private so I can no longer link to it.

After watching and learning about Bohm's ideas about the explicate and implicate order, I knew that I had to find out more. The important part that the Fourier Transform played in his conception of how it all worked was particularly fascinating. I found a paper on Semantic Scholar by the video's creator, Shelli Joye, that discusses matters in more detail. 

Working for Baba

Photo: © Meher Nazar Publications

A quote attached to a Baba post on Instagram caught my attention today. Here is what it contained:

"I have to work in My own way, having had to look to everything in these times of great spiritual upheaval. What it means, you have no idea. You all have to do great work for Me in the future, as and when allotted to you; and you must be in full spirit and strength for all that. This mental depression tells upon your health and energy, which are both essential for future work and should not be unnecessarily wasted like this ... I see in some a spirit of depression, total dejection at times. Why? Have you any idea of the greatness of the task that is ahead for the spiritual upheaval of the world! It will require a spirit that is prepared to face anything, rigid and  immovable like a rock, weathering all blasts of winds and storms from all four corners. You all have in you latent that spirit and iron will, and I am working at all that to bring it out ... Soon great events of great changes everywhere will transpire in rapid succession, transforming the very ideal and outlook of life all the world over, and a new awakening for the life spiritual will result, as I have been repeatedly telling you. You are all being prepared for your different parts in this Great Divine Drama that has to be enacted, and in which I am to play a leading part. Are you not glad that you have to play your parts with Me?

All My Love"

Love Alone Prevails by Kitty Davy pg.123

It is certainly a message for our time, for "these times of great spiritual upheaval" where "mental depression tells upon ... health and energy" and where even "total dejection" can overtake some. These are times that will require not "a spirit of depression" but "a spirit that is prepared to face anything, rigid and immovable like a rock, weathering all blasts of winds and storms from all four corners".

These are times when "great events of great changes everywhere will transpire in rapid succession, transforming the very ideal and outlook of life all the world over, and a new awakening for the life spiritual will result." In these crazy COVID times it's easy to yield to depression, give up on humanity and withdraw from the world. However, even though the forces of evil seem to have seized total control of the planet, there are unseen and formidable spiritual forces at work that are in opposition and, hopefully, "a new awakening for the life spiritual will result". 

It is important in the meantime not to give way to despair but to hold on to Baba's damaan. These tyrannical times may yet bring unforeseen spiritual benefits. As more people lose their jobs and lapse into financial difficulties, as food shortages start to bite and as more curbs are placed on social interaction and travel, the spiritual realm begins to hold more appeal. It becomes more apparent in such times that the world is a nasty place, controlled by nasty people with an agenda that is anti-human and anti-God.

I'm reminded of the lyrics to Bill Fay's song, The Healing Day, that run thus:

It'll be okay

On the healing day

No more going astray

On the healing day

Yeah we'll find our way

On the healing day

To where the children play

On the healing day

When the tyrant is bound

And the tortured freed from his pain

And the lofty brought to the ground

And the lonely rage

Ain't so far away

That healing day

Coming to stay

The healing day

Every battleground

Is a place for sheep to graze

When it all comes tumbling down

All the palaces and parades

It'll be okay

On the healing day

No more going astray

On the healing day

Yeah we'll find our way

On the healing day

To where the children play

On the healing day

Silence Day 2020

Only a little under five hours until July 10th 2020 begins. It marks the 95th anniversary of the day Meher Baba began his lifetime of silence in 1925. For posts about previous Silence Days, see Silence Day 2019, Another Silence Day (2018), Silence Day (2010), Silence Day (2009) and Reflections on Silence Day (2009). This year, as usual, I'll try to keep silence from midnight to midnight and hopefully I won't slip up. This year, now more than half over, has been a painful reminder of how awful life on planet Earth can be.

Even though I'm largely unaffected, I still feel depressed by the world situation and feel ready to move on. Such disillusionment can be a positive force however, in helping to dispel the allure of the world that so completely captures our attention. The draconian restrictions and their arbitrary enforcement remind us of our insignificance and powerlessness in the face of the naked tyranny of governments and the medical mafia. A lot of what entertained us and distracted us has been taken away.

When everything has been taken away (or we lose interest in it) and when we forget ourselves, we find God. So these times provide an opportunity to realise what is truly important. It's interesting that a search for Silence Day on Google returns the following as its first result:

Day of Silence is GLSEN's annual day of action to spread awareness about the effects of the bullying and harassment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) students. In the United States, students take a day-long vow of silence to symbolically represent the silencing of LGBTQ students.

The organisation GLSEN is described as:

GLSEN (formerly the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network) is a United States-based education organization working to end discrimination, harassment, and bullying based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression and to prompt LGBT cultural inclusion and awareness in K-12 schools. Founded in 1990 in Boston, Massachusetts, the organization is now headquartered in New York City and has an office of public policy based in Washington, D.C.. 

In my post Going Against the Tide of October 19th 2019, I remarked on the similarity between Baba's multicoloured flag and that of the LGBT movement but quoted the following:

The work I wish to do for the world [involves] the minimizing of lust and especially to destroy that lust of homosexuals which is now prevalent to an alarming extent all over the world ... the homosexual is in male form but is working out or spending his female sanskaras, whereas he is meant to be spending his male sanskaras ... a lesbian is working out or spending her male sanskaras, whereas she is meant to be spending her female sanskaras.  

Thus Silence Day is another parallel between Baba and the LGBT movement but Baba has stated unequivocally his disapproval of the LGBT lifestyle. Clearly this parallel is no coincidence and part of Baba's long term plan for "the youth of the future". Perhaps, as more homosexuals and lesbians grow disillusioned with their sexual orientation, they will be drawn to Baba's oddly familiar flag and thus come to him. There must come a turning point.

Any opposition to the LGBT agenda of course is viewed as homophobia. However, the LGBT movement is a well-funded and carefully promoted propaganda machine that does not have the least concern for the best interests of homosexuals. Some homosexuals realise this and can see the inevitable backlash coming. Homosexuals have always been a part of society but they have never sought to be mainstream. They enjoyed the fact that they were different but never sought to promote it as a lifestyle.

Organisations like GLSEN are particularly insidious and dangerous as they gain more and more control over the education systems of countries. However, Baba was always insistent that his followers not get involved in politics and organisations like GLSEN are essentially political. They gain influence by getting politicians on side who will then appoint suitable bureaucrats to oversee educational "reforms". The challenge for Baba Lovers is how to respond to this corruption of youth. The best response is simply to uphold those values, of which Baba would approve, in their day to day lives. He has made it quite clear, in his Discourses, what those values are. He writes:

The spiritual value of married life is directly related to the nature of the preponderating factors which determine its daily course. If it is based upon shallow considerations, it can deteriorate into a partnership in selfishness aimed against the rest of the world. Married life must be in tune with Divine Plan. If it is inspired by lofty idealism, it can rise to a fellowship which not only requires and calls forth increasingly greater sacrifices for each other, but actually become a medium through which the two souls can offer their united love and service to the whole family of humanity. When married life is thus brought into direct line with the Divine Plan for the evolution of the individual, it becomes a pure blessing for the children who are the fruit of the marriage, for they have the advantage of absorbing a spiritual atmosphere from the very beginning of their earthly career.

Though the children are thus the beneficiaries of the married life of the parents, the married life of the parents is in its turn enriched by the presence of the children. Married life sanctified and enriched by children give to parents an opportunity for expressing and developing a real and spontaneous love in which sacrifice becomes easy and delightful, and the part played by children in the life of parents is of tremendous importance for the spiritual advancement of parents themselves. It therefore follows that when children make their appearance in married life they ought to be whole-heartedly welcomed by the parents.

Seeding the Future

In reference to the abundance of so-called saints and false gurus in the East, Baba once stopped the singing and commented: 

“They are like seashells scattered on the beach, their superfluous glitter attracting the loiterers on the beach, who pick them up and think they have gained the treasure of the sea. But it is a far cry from the ‘Pearl’ ensconced in the depths of the Ocean. And so it is that Hafiz says: 

“How foolish people are who compare pearls with seashells. 

The real pearl is here. Do not run after shells.” 

When Baba quoted Hafiz’s “the real pearl is here,” he pointed to himself.

A few times he explained a line or two from a ghazal of the poet Jigar: 

“When I dive into the ocean of love,

the waves of suffering embrace me.

That embrace is like the embrace of my mother.

They are chicken-hearted [coward] who seek the safety of the shores!”

Baba conveyed these observations in June of 1963 and it is reported in Lord Meher, American ed., Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 18, p. 6189.

In seeking the pearl in the depths of the Ocean however, many seekers (those who are not "chicken-hearted" and who have chosen not to "seek the safety of the shores") still become distracted by the sights they encounter. These seekers are the "masts" or God-intoxicated persons whose spiritual progress is arrested on one of the higher planes. As Meher Baba says (Lord Meher p. 2031):

How does it happen that some men and women become masts? 

There are those who have become masts whose minds have become unbalanced through unceasing dwelling upon thoughts of God, so that they neglect all normal human requirements. 

There are those whose minds have become unbalanced by sudden contact with a highly advanced spiritual being. 

There are those who have sought spiritual experience and have met a crisis from which they do not recover. 

What characterises all masts is their concentration upon the love of God.

What caught my attention recently was something Don Stevens said in a YouTube video that I was watching:

Baba told him that his work with masts was partly to prepare them for their next life in which their minds would not be unbalanced as they were in their current life. Instead, they would return and retain their spiritual status while being able to function in the world. This would provide a spiritual push to the world's inhabitants. In this way, Baba was seeding the future and ensuring the continued release of the spiritual energy after he was gone.

Figure 1

The major focus of the Don Steven's video was on "God Speaks", the book that Baba dictated and for which Don provided the introduction. Baba told him that this book had great spiritual energy and that anybody reading the book, whether they understand it fully or not, would benefit. Thus in another way, Baba was "seeding the future", not with returned masts but with the latent spiritual energy contained in the words of the book. These are words that Baba himself painstakingly selected to convey his explanation of the creation process. 

The book is freely available for download from the Internet and I'm sure that over the coming decades more and more people will download it or purchase a physical copy. I'm lucky to have a 1955 edition that came into my possession fortuitously in around 1981. The latent energy of the words in the book remained latent until their explosion in my consciousness in 1993. Figure 1 shows the book and the box that I now keep it in. Although I'm an enthusiastic reader of ebooks, I must say that I'm happy that I have a physical copy of "God Speaks". The book is the reason that I came to Baba in the first place. It was the seed that took twelve years to germinate in the stony ground of my arid consciousness.

Repeating His Name

I'm very near to finishing the third book of David Fenster's absorbing trilogy: "Mehera-Meher: A Divine Romance". At one point, Mehera says this in reference to repeating Meher Baba's name:

“You must repeat his name. It is essential to repeat his name because God's name should be on your lips as much as possible. When you are doing anything, you must feel that 'Baba, you are with me.' Wherever you are, you must feel his companionship. You must make him your companion. See that when you remember Baba, he is very near you. He is there all the time, but your love should be there to remember him. It is only that you can't see him. He can see you and is happy with your love. "Whatever amount you love him, even that much makes him happy. Give him more, and it will give him that much more happiness. Even the love that you have now for Baba is making him feel happy. You want to love him more and you will. The soil takes its own time to nourish the plant before it can bear fruit."

In reading this, I was reminded of the power of Meher Baba's name in my own life. In 1968, when I attended a Baba talk at the University of Queensland presented by Bill Le Page and another Baba Lover, all that I took away was the name: Meher Baba. Remarkably, with no reinforcement whatever over the next thirteen years, I remembered that name when I came across "God Speaks" and saw who the author was.

I kept that book on my bookshelf for another twelve years. Every few years, I would pick the book up and try to make sense of it before putting it down in frustration. In 1993, the penny dropped as they say and my spiritual adventure began. I was 44 years old and my meandering path through life had finally brought me to my Hidaya, as Islam calls it, meaning:

One of the beautiful names of Allah is Al-Hadi (The Guide), and Hidaya (Guidance) is one of the most important themes of the Holy Qur’an. Hidaya means “To lead and to guide.” From it also comes the word Hadiyyah, which means, “present or gift.” Hidaya, or Guidance, is the gift of The Creator to His creation. 

According to Imam Raghib Al-Isphani, the famous lexicographer of the Holy Qur’an, Hidaya means “showing the way or leading to the goal in a gentle and kind way.” It means both explanation and direction; and it also means helping and supporting a person to reach to his goal.

Source

"God Speaks" was certainly my BEACON OF LIGHT but it was Meher Baba's name that echoed in the halls of my memory down all those meandering years from 1968 until 1981 and gave the book its special meaning to me. Thus I am fully in agreement with Mehera when she says:

“You must repeat his name. It is essential to repeat his name because God's name should be on your lips as much as possible.

Of course, there are many names for God and one can repeat them all or repeat only one. It's up to the individual. For me it will be Meher Baba.

ADDENDUM

As I composed this post, on the 21st May 2020, I finished the third volume and was made aware that Mehera passed away at Meherazad on the 20th May 1989 at 9:43am.

Secular Humanism

The term "secular humanism" is described on the website Free Inquiry in the following terms:

Secular humanism is comprehensive, touching every aspect of life including issues of values, meaning, and identity. Thus it is broader than atheism, which concerns only the nonexistence of god or the supernatural. Important as that may be, there’s a lot more to life … and secular humanism addresses it.
Secular humanism is nonreligious, espousing no belief in a realm or beings imagined to transcend ordinary experience. 

Secular humanism is a life-stance, or what Council for Secular Humanism founder Paul Kurtz has termed a eupraxsophy: a body of principles suitable for orienting a complete human life. As a secular life-stance, secular humanism incorporates the Enlightenment principle of individualism, which celebrates emancipating the individual from traditional controls by family, church, and state, increasingly empowering each of us to set the terms of his or her own life. 

Secular humanism is philosophically naturalistic. It holds that nature (the world of everyday physical experience) is all there is, and that reliable knowledge is best obtained when we query nature using the scientific method. Naturalism asserts that supernatural entities like God do not exist, and warns us that knowledge gained without appeal to the natural world and without impartial review by multiple observers is unreliable. 

Secular humanism provides a cosmic outlook—a world-view in the broadest sense, grounding our lives in the context of our universe and relying on methods demonstrated by science. Secular humanists see themselves as undesigned, unintended beings who arose through evolution, possessing unique attributes of self-awareness and moral agency. 

Secular humanists hold that ethics is consequential, to be judged by results. This is in contrast to so-called command ethics, in which right and wrong are defined in advance and attributed to divine authority. “No god will save us,” declared Humanist Manifesto II (1973), “we must save ourselves.” Secular humanists seek to develop and improve their ethical principles by examining the results they yield in the lives of real men and women.

Figure 1: Paul Kurtz, in 2010, published books and magazines
devoted to fact-based, not faith-based, solutions to human problems.Credit...

Paul Kurtz (December 21, 1925 – October 20, 2012) is regarded as "the father of secular humanism" and here is the link to the Wikipedia article about him. For anyone who has read E. Michael Jones' "The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit", it will not come as no surprise to learn that Kurtz was Jewish. Any reference to Jews nowadays is likely to be denounced as anti-semitism, unless it is unreservedly complimentary. This is unfortunate as it promotes polarisation and suppresses any sort of rational discussion. One must be either philo-semitic or anti-semitic. There can be no in-between.

In an obituary for him in The New York Times, it's written that:

In 1980, in response to the conservative religious movement the Moral Majority, Professor Kurtz founded the journal Free Inquiry. In its inaugural issue he drafted another statement, “A Secular Humanist Declaration,” in which he warned that “the reappearance of dogmatic authoritarian religions” had become a threat to intellectual freedom, human rights and scientific progress. The statement, signed by 61 scholars, directed its objections toward “fundamentalist, literalist and doctrinaire Christianity; a rapidly growing and uncompromising Muslim clericalism in the Middle East and Asia; the reassertion of orthodox authority by the Roman Catholic papal hierarchy; nationalist religious Judaism; and the reversion to obscurantist religions in Asia.”

Probably Kurtz was well-intentioned and genuinely concerned about "the reappearance of dogmatic authoritarian religions". He felt secular humanism was the solution, just as Karl Marx, another Jew, felt that communism was the solution. In theory, communism did hold promise and yet things went terribly wrong in its implementation. The reason was that humans got in the way and monsters like Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung perverted its original intent and created tyrannies. It will be the same way with secular humanism. Though it "celebrates emancipating the individual from traditional controls by family, church, and state", the reality is proving very different. 

As religions weaken within societies, secular humanism gathers strength. However, it replaces religion by science and promotes scientists as the new priests. Science has emerged as the new tyranny and promises to be far worse than communism ever was. The scientists have been bought off by corporate interests who fund and thus direct their research and development. Only compliant scientists receive grants and the opportunity to rise through the ranks to assume positions of leadership in influential scientific organisations. The non-compliant are banished to the wilderness. 

If the scientific method were adhered to by these scientists then some degree of rationality might prevail. However, it has been abandoned and thus the high priests of the Church of Climatology pontificate, the Vaccine Industry thrives and humanity moves ever closer to the Gates of Hell with the assistance of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Pseudoscience, masquerading as science, has been hijacked by a global elite that does indeed want to emancipate the individual from the traditional controls of family, church, and state. Its intention however, is to impose new shackles.

Individuals have traditionally drawn strength through identification with their family, religion and country. It is this sort of identification that the global elite wish to undermine. The LGBT movement has certainly undermined the traditional concept of what constitutes a family. Secular humanism is ready to step in to take the place of religion for those individuals who abandon their faith. Immigration and refugees have altered the original ethnic composition of countries. 

Individuals with weak or non-existent ties to their family, religion and country are easy to manipulate and ultimately subjugate. The goal of the global elite is to enforce total subjugation and conformity. Secular humanism plays an unwitting role in this by encouraging people to abandon religion and replace it by faith in science. The graphic stating that "Science flies you to the moon, religion into skyscrapers" perfectly captures this incentive. 

However, what if NASA never took humans to the Moon and what if religious fanatics were not responsible for the destruction of the twin towers? Personally, I don't believe humans landed on the Moon and I don't believe that some Moslems armed with box cutters seized control of three airplanes. It is for this reason that I find the graphic so ironic. Secular humanism maintains "that nature is all there is" and "that supernatural entities like God do not exist". Pathetically, it offers science as a replacement.

What might God have to say about all of this? Well, if one accepts that Meher Baba was God Incarnate, as I do, then this is what He had to say:

It is only through love that you can begin to unlearn, thus eventually putting an end to all that you do not know. God-Love penetrates all illusion, while no amount of illusion can penetrate God-Love. 

Start learning to love God by beginning to love those whom you cannot. You will find that in serving others you are serving yourself. The more you remember others with kindness and generosity, the less you remember yourself; and the less you can remember yourself the more you forget yourself. And when you completely forget yourself, you find me as the source of all love. 

Give up parroting in all its aspects. Start practicing whatever you truly feel to be true and justly to be just. Do not make a show of your faith and beliefs. You have not to give up your religion but to give up clinging to the outer crust of mere ritual and ceremonies. To get to the fundamental core of Truth underlying all religions, reach beyond religion. 

Through endless time, God's greatest gift is continuously given in silence. But when mankind becomes completely deaf to the thunder of His Silence, God incarnates as man. The Unlimited assumes the limited to shake maya-drugged humanity to a consciousness of its true destiny and to give a spiritual push to the world by his physical presence on earth. He uses the body for his Universal work, to be discarded in final sacrifice, as soon as it has served its purpose. 

God has come again and again in various forms, has spoken again and again in different languages the same one Truth — but how many are there that live up to it? Instead of making Truth the vital breath of his life, man compromises by making over and over again a mechanical religion of it, as a handy staff to lean on in time of adversity, as a soothing balm for his conscience or as a tradition to be followed in the footsteps of the past. 

Man's inability to live God's words makes them a mockery. How many Christians follow Christ's teaching to "turn the other cheek" or to "love thy neighbour as thyself?" How many Muslims follow Muhammad's precept to "hold God above everything else?" How many Hindus "bear the Torch of Righteousness at all cost?" How many Buddhists live the "life of pure compassion" expounded by Buddhism? How many Zoroastrians "think truly, speak truly and act truly?" Link

Secular humanism maintains that "supernatural entities like God do not exist". Meher Baba, with his divine authority, assured as that GOD IS and there is really nothing but God. In the quote above, Baba gives us directions about how to connect with God. My contrarian views about 9/11, the Moon landings, vaccinations, climate change and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are my own and can be disregarded. The point of my post is that secular humanism offers no hope and that religion does not need to be abandoned but reinterpreted:

You have not to give up your religion but to give up clinging to the outer crust of mere ritual and ceremonies. To get to the fundamental core of Truth underlying all religions, reach beyond religion. 

Meandering

Figure 1: screenshot of my Google Site's website

I like the word meandering. I guess that's why I choose it for the name of my Google Sites website: Mystical Meanderings. Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the home page as it currently looks.

What's the etymology of the word meander?

There is some interesting information to be found on this site, from we learn that it derives from the Greek Μαιανδρος which transliterates to Maiandros and thence to Maeandrus or Maeander in Latin.

It seems that Maiandros or Maeander was a son of Oceanus and Tethys and the father of Cyanea and Canaus:

He was a river-god of Karia (Caria) in Anatolia (modern Turkey). The River Maiandros had its headwaters in the highlands of southern Phrygia and, flowing west through Karia, entered the Aegean Sea opposite the town of Miletos (Miletus). The major neighbouring rivers were the Kaystros (Cayster) to the north and the Indos to the south.

Figure 2 shows an interesting map of the river's mouth and the evolution of silting of Miletus Bay during Antiquity (source). It's remarkable how much the topology has changed over the millenia.

Figure 2: source

Figure 3 shows a Roman Statue of the River God Meander from the Baths of Faustina 170 BC.

Figure 3: the River God Meander

This site provides a good description of the usage of the word:

Ah, the Lazy River: the most wonderful waterpark ride for the indolent among us. After a long day of riding gigantic slides, standing on even more gigantic lines, and trying not to swallow questionable pool water, the Lazy River's meanders are more welcome than the softest bedsheets. There's no fear involved, no skill, no complications; you just give yourself over to the current and let your inner tube meander where it will. And the best part? While you drift along past grinning tikis and sublimely fake palm trees, your thoughts are free to meander too, as aimless and relaxed as the Lazy River itself. 

We'll try not to get sidetracked here: meander commonly functions as a verb to refer to the taking of a twisty, purposelessly circuitous track. A path or road that meanders stretches out in bends, curves, and spirals, taking strange or unnecessary detours and maybe even doubling back on itself. Winding, lazily flowing rivers (even those found at waterparks) are among the most common things said to meander in this way, but the word can also be used to talk about the courses of things like country roads and mountain passes. 

Unless you're navigating a river, though, you'd probably encounter meander in reference to aimless, nonlinear roaming. If you set out on a walk with the intent to meander, you've already kind of defeated yourself, as the word implies a movement without any sort of purpose, motivation, or logic. Meandering is also often thought of as slow and easy, perhaps a result of a relaxed or confused mind. This is the kind of ambling you might do when you've got absolutely no clear thoughts; you're just sort of heading wherever the mood strikes, stopping to smell any flower that attracts you and letting your feet do the thinking. 

Meander is also commonly used a little more figuratively to describe rambling in speech or thought. When giving an important speech or trying to write a poignant letter, it's probably not a good idea to meander from topic to topic, as doing so might make your message boring or nonsensical. However, allowing your mind to meander from time to time can be both relaxing and stimulate creative thinking, as everyone who's ever tried freewriting knows. So when you're actually composing that important speech or letter, or even just trying to come up with ideas for fun, don't be afraid to let your thoughts wander in circles! 

Meander can sometimes function as a noun, too, although this type of usage isn't especially widespread. You might hear someone describe the bends and detours of a river or trail as its meanders (technically, you could call just one such bend a meander, but here the word's mostly used in the plural to refer to curvature as a whole). A meander can also be a long, unfocused trip taken at a gentle pace, full of distractions, changes in course, and general aimlessness. If you were to take your dog to the park and just follow him as he sniffed around, you'd be engaged in a meander.

The same site provides some derivative words:

Meandrous: This adjective characterises something as wandering and undirected either in path or in focus. 

Example: Following the elderly professor's meandrous lecture became difficult. 

Example: Having spent an hour and a half driving over the meandrous country roads, I pulled out a map to make sure I was going in the right direction. 

Meanders: This simple present form of the verb meander is used when a singular third-person subject wanders aimlessly or follows an intricately bending path. 

Example: The stream meanders through woods and plains before reaching a lake. 

Meandered: This preterit form of meander is used when a subject rambled or moved in a twisting, intricate fashion in the past. 

Example: The lexicographer's various examples meandered from subject to subject. 

Meandering: The progressive form of meander is used when a subject is currently moving in a circuitous fashion or roaming without clear purpose. 

Example: Every morning finds the rooster meandering contentedly about his pen. 

God is a State not a Person

When I say that God is a state, I mean of course a state of consciousness: the ultimate state of consciousness in which all duality vanishes and there is only the experience of an indivisible Oneness. It is certainly preferable to view God in this way and to abandon these silly anthropomorphic conceptions of God. Having done this, God no longer punishes us for our sins. We punish ourselves thanks to the impartial workings of karma. The hurt and suffering we cause others rebounds upon us, either in this life or the next. If we hurl a ball against a wall, it rebounds under the laws of physics. God has nothing to do with the rebounding ball or our so-called sins.

The notion that I'm espousing does not bring us any closer to God but it can save a lot of wasted energy. How many prayers are offered up to God, asking for this or that, in the mistaken belief that these prayers are being heard and assessed by some divine being? Consciousness develops in physical organisms to the point where, in the human species, it is capable of realising Oneness but rarely does because of the karmic knots accumulated during countless lifetimes, the most recent in human form but before that in animal form. Because of this the majority of us identify with our ego, that sense of self that arises around three years of age and that we cling to throughout the remainder of our lives. Only very few can abandon that identification with the ego.

At the instant of illumination, the limited ego dissolves and consciousness experiences the infinite bliss of union. There is no awareness of the creation. The physical world disappears and in most cases the body is discarded after a few days. In some cases, the body is retained and functions more or less automatically while consciousness remains divinely absorbed and oblivious of the body's continued existence in illusion. A very, very few are destined for whatever reason to return to the physical world to become Perfect Masters. They are God in the sense that they retain their awareness of Oneness after their return. The very first human to realise Oneness is unique however, and is referred to as the Avatar. The Avatar feels a sense of responsibility for ignorant and suffering humanity and returns to Earth every 700 or 1400 years in order to lend us a helping hand as it were.

These incarnations of the Avatar are very special, each one having a unique flavour. Zoroaster, Ram, Krishna, the Buddha, Jesus Christ and Mohammed are some of his incarnations, with Meher Baba being the most recent. The Avatar always returns in male form. That is not to say that God is a male. Before Realisation, the Avatar was a male and remains so in subsequent incarnations. God is of course neither male nor female but a state that transcends all opposites. Both males and females can realise this state but the ego must be extinguished before this is possible. Extinguishing the ego of course is all but impossible and definitely so without the direct help of a Perfect Master. In a sense the aspirant never achieves illumination because he or she must die in the process, not physically (although this is often a side-effect) but mentally. The illusion of a separative ego must vanish.

Religions cause a great deal of confusion in our attempts to understand God. While inspired by the Avatar, religions continue to develop following the death of the Avatar, taking the form of Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. Some of course would argue that Buddhism, in its essence, is not a religion but there's no point debating that here. Religions were intended to help us realise our essential Oneness but often serve to highlight Duality. This is the fault of the religion's adherents who lose touch with the originating spirit of the religion. The problems caused by religions have come to outweigh their benefits and that is why Meher Baba, the latest incarnation of the Avatar, chose not to establish a new religion. If someone is following a religion, Baba didn't recommend that he or she abandon it. Instead, he recommended that the adherent be true to the spirit of the religion and not become absorbed in empty rituals.

What I've written here is only a very brief summary of my interpretation of what Meher Baba has said. The reader is advised to go the source if there is desire to understand more about what I've written. Many books, in electronic format, by or about Meher Baba are available for free download at https://www.ambppct.org/library.php.