Baba on Masts

I found this explanation, taken from Lord Meher, about how masts see the world to be very poignant:

Although Baidul would work wholeheartedly and very hard in the mast work, his mind would at times trouble him. He could not accept Mohammed as a saint or wali, thinking him to be mad for playing with dirt or digging with his fingers in dirt. Once in Ranchi it began raining heavily. Baidul tried to dissuade Mohammed from playing in the dirt (or “deesh” as he called it), and to come in out of the rain to protect his health. Baidul was rather harsh with him and Mohammed started crying. Baba happened to come by when Baidul was threatening Mohammed and forcefully pulling him out of the mud and rain. It was this incident that caused Baba to give a long explanation about the condition of these masts and the undesirability of using any force on them.

"You have no idea how these masts feel in this changed environment. All the care we bestow – the food and clothing we give – is no obligation to them at all, for they do not need it; rather they resent it. In allowing us an opportunity to serve, they are, on the contrary, obliging us. Otherwise, it is a binding to those accustomed to live freely and happily according to their own peculiar whims and methods. To distract them from a particular thing in which they are interested is a torture to them, for they find relief even in staying in their squalor and playing with dirt and filth.

A mast such as Karim Baba gulping five and six coins at a time and passing them out in his stools, and again gulping them down is an example of this. It is his method. If you try to stop it, even with the best of motives to keep him clean and out of the dirt, and he gets enraged, you could be doomed for life, because the wrath of masts and saints is very dangerous.

Mohammed’s trait of finding and looking at his “deesh” is a sort of relief to him to be thus occupied. You think that he is playing with dirt and is exposed to the elements. With the best of motives of safeguarding his health, you try to bring him in. When he resists, you forcibly try to pull him out and break his link to what he has seen in that particular object, through the higher consciousness of the spiritual plane on which he is. And what happens? The moment he finds you trying to dissuade him, he feels disturbed and is indecisive whether to be there or here, meaning where his consciousness has taken him on the higher planes through the thing he is looking at, or where he is called on by you to go, leaving his deesh on this earthly plane.

This is no joke. It is a regular torture to Mohammed to reconcile the two different and conflicting states of the higher and lower planes of consciousness. If, in the torments of this torture or excitement, he were to abuse or curse anyone for thus disturbing him in the enjoyment of his ecstasy, the cursed one would be doomed for this life. It is simply because of me that he cannot do this and you are saved from his wrath. That is why I have been asking you constantly to be very tolerant and lenient with the masts and never to disturb them if they are persistent, even when you have the best of motives such as to protect them from the elements, uncleanliness, et cetera, which is also one of your duties.

The best way to handle them is the way of love and mild persuasion. If these do not succeed, nothing else will. Compulsion or force would be worse, even if they cannot hurt you for my sake. It reacts on them and causes them to suffer, which I do not want. For I know what a torture it is to them, and how they suffer.

It is a torture both ways. First of all, the masts suffer from being deprived of their own environment and their freedom in the places where they used to live. To be thus kept confined, even with all the other liberties we give them, and best care we take of them is to suffer. Secondly, the masts suffer whenever disturbed and pulled out of their ecstatic enjoyment. It is because they feel happy in my presence that they stay. They see me and know me as none of you do. That is why they are quiet. Otherwise, they would be impossible to manage.

If efforts made with love are effective with worldly people, they would be all the more effective and essential in dealing with these saintly beings who are lost in the love of God. You love to enjoy one phase of some of their peculiar traits when they are quiet and pleasing. You should equally enjoy the other phase of their insistence in the experience of the bliss they find in certain things which your eyes cannot penetrate, nor your mind understand."

Lord Meher, American ed., Bhau Kalchuri Vol. 7, pp. 2583 – 2585.

There's not much that I can add to that. It makes you realise how little we really understand about what is going on. We are totally mesmerised by the world and experience it as the only reality. The masts become mesmerised as well and the reality they experience is very different to ours. They are still trapped in illusion but with far fewer veils of ignorance separating them from the ultimate reality. Yet the "well adjusted", those who are fully absorbed in the earthly drama, have no understanding of these masts who are seemingly insane or mentally handicapped. Even Baidul, one of Baba's mandali, failed to understand them.

Of course, with any mention of masts, one cannot forget Dr. William Donkin, or Don as Baba called him, who accompanied Baba on many of his journeys to find masts and who wrote "The Wayfarers" that chronicles these journeys.

Dr. William Donkin

Born : 14 November, 1911 - England

Died : 9th August, 1969 - India

To quote from Meher Baba's Life and Travels:

These Men of God, who are themselves the "Great Heroes" of the Spiritual Path, have at times spontaneously given expression to their recognition of Baba as He Is: they are able to see and know from personal inner knowledge The Real Being that is Baba. As Dr. Donkin points out in "The Wayfarers” from which these examples are taken, "In reading these brief paragraphs one should remember that, when on tour in search of MASTS, Baba is almost always incognito, and that when a MAST bears witness to Baba's spiritual greatness, he often does so without having any external means of knowing who Baba is; those (who do know Baba externally) have reputations as MASTS or saints quite independent of their contact or relationship to Baba, and this, I believe, adds greatly to the value of what they say.”

Bob Mossman has written a biography of Don titled "Slave of Love" and in this YouTube video he talks about the inspiration behind the idea of writing of the book as well as the process of of its creation. Unfortunately, it only seems to be available as a paperback and not in electronic form.

Silence Day 2021

Another Silence Day. For the first time ever, I was aware of needing to maintain silence in my dreams and remember making at least a couple of slip ups in them. It's only mid-morning now in my waking life and so far so good. In the past, I've slipped up by speaking a word or two to my dog. Not so this morning. 

The current climate of fear makes it easier to keep silent due to the reduced opportunities for visiting people and the fewer people likely to visit. These are strange times and the need to maintain equanimity or poise is greater than ever. As Baba said:

What is spirituality? It is the undoing of what you have been doing since ages. You always thought of selfish motives for eating, preserving your life, and attending to every need with zeal. All these lives you have made a habit of looking [out for] yourself. If the slightest thing goes against your habit you are upset. Now, to undo all these selfish bindings, you have to do what you have not been doing, or not to do what you have been doing.

What you have been doing always is thinking of yourself; so now you must not think of yourself, but think of others. This is what is called love. But it needs character, poise, perseverance. Poise — what is it? That state of mind where nothing excites you, nothing upsets you. Only [if you have poise] can you help others, then only can you make others happy. That means love. Thinking not of yourself but of others.

If you are in the Sahara, and for four days you have no water to drink and all of a sudden one bottle of water appears — how do you react? If you have poise, you will let your companion drink and not mind dying and letting her live. But if you fight and grab for it, you lack poise and spirituality. It is this poise that makes you sacrifice and [make] others happy.

I just reread my post of December 25th 2020 titled Complete Detachment. In that post, I wrote:

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.

Worldly-wise, things have gotten worse since I wrote those lines, making detachment even more difficult, and things are going to get far worse. The abnegation of basic human rights is chastening for the egos of those who realise the game plan of the cabal but seem powerless to oppose it. The spiritual aspirant must learn the learn the lesson that the ego is nothing but now even the non-spiritually inclined are learning that lesson as they are trampled underfoot by the fascist boot of the State.

What is the difference between squished under the fascist jackboot and being dust at the feet of the master? Someone who has been reduced to dust at the feet of the master has had their ego crushed by a spiritual master who has the enlightenment of the disciple as the goal. It is a very personal process between master and disciple. Someone who is being squished under the fascist jackboot is a victim of an impersonal process that is spiritually barren and that seeks to enslave and not liberate.

Humanity is currently being herded into a spiritually barren future and all we can do is to nourish our spiritual roots so that we do not wither and die. Baba of course saw where humanity was headed and it was not his intention to see a spiritual winter descend over the Earth only a few decades after he dropped his body. A spiritual flowering will occur but Baba, as Lord and Master of the Universe, works in mysterious ways and we can only hope and wait, and not lose faith in Him.

In these trying times, when the evil forces seeking to control the world have come out of the shadows, it's more important than ever to cling to Baba's daaman and not let go. It's easy to fall prey to despair and depression unless we constantly remember Him. Jai Baba!