God versus Godhood

How much better it would be if God were conceived of less as a person and more as an experience. Boys pass into to manhood, girls pass into womanhood and some humans pass into Godhood. All humans have the capacity to experience Godhood but very few do. The more God is objectified, the more humans project human qualities on to this notion that they have of God. God becomes a sort of super-person who is all powerfull, all knowledgeable, all merciful etc. The attempt is made to contain God within the bounds of human intellect and understanding.

The so-called Perfect Masters, also called Sadgurus or Qutubs, have experienced Godhood or God-consciousness and returned to worldly consciousness for “universal duty”. Others, called Majzoobs, have also experienced Godhood but remain oblivious to the world, their bodies are here but they have no awareness of their physical surroundings. The majority of those who attain Godhood drop their body within three days, as they have no further use for it. Meher Baba has told us that there are always 56 God-realised souls on Earth at any one time. It is only on Earth that these God-realised souls can be found and on none of the other approximately 18,000 worlds supporting human life.

The first human to attain Godhood is known as the Avatar or Ancient One. This human was a male and His “universal duty” is never-ending. Unlike the Sadgurus who return to consciousness of the physical world only once, the Avatar returns periodically (every 700 or 1400 years) and always in a male body. Zoroaster, Krishna, Ram, Buddha and Christ are some of the forms He has taken. His most recent incarnation was in the form of Meher Baba (1894-1969).

Meher Baba’s life has been recorded in great detail and Bhau Kalchuri’s epic biography, Lord Meher, remains the most authoritative account of His life. Unlike previous Avatars, Meher Baba did not establish a new religion because He said that there were enough of them already. To quote His Universal Message (source):

I have come not to teach but to awaken. Understand therefore that I lay down no precepts. Throughout eternity I have laid down principles and precepts, but mankind has ignored them. Man’s inability to live God’s words makes the Avatar’s teaching a mockery. Instead of practicing the compassion He taught, man has waged crusades in His name. Instead of living the humility, purity and truth of His words, man has given way to hatred, greed and violence. Because man has been deaf to the principles and precepts laid down by God in the past, in this present Avataric Form I observe Silence. You have asked for and been given enough words — it is now time to live them. To get nearer and nearer to God you have to get further and further away from “I”, “my”, “me” and “mine”. You have not to renounce anything but your own self. It is as simple as that, though found to be almost impossible. It is possible for you to renounce your limited self by my Grace. I have come to release that Grace. I repeat, I lay down no precepts. When I release the tide of Truth which I have come to give, men’s daily lives will be the living precept. The words I have not spoken will come to life in them.

It can be noted that the Avatar Himself uses the term God but He makes it clear, via His other utterances, that God is not an external entity but an inner state to be attained. To find God is to experience Godhood: Oneness without Division. Meher Baba emphasised the importance of the Perfect Masters and Avatar as well as alluding to the formless state of God (Godhood) in the following quote:

On May 27th, (1926) Meher Baba discoursed on the Personal and Impersonal sides of God:

The foremost and highest object in life is personally serving a Sadguru and complete surrenderance to him. The second is constant meditation on the divine name. The third is selfless service, and the fourth is the offering of worship (prayer). Serving a Sadguru is like taking a course for a Master’s degree; meditating on the divine name is like studying for a Bachelor’s degree; performing selfless service is like obtaining a high school diploma, and offering prayers is like learning the alphabet. Once one attains the Bachelor’s degree, it does not take much time to attain the Master’s degree.

Were someone to ask me who is greater Personal or Impersonal God, Tukaram or Bhagwan, Zarathustra or Ahuramazda, Jesus or God the Father, I would definitely answer that Tukaram, Zarathustra and Jesus are greater. In fact, they are the Greatest of the Great because by being a Sadguru or the Avatar they render infinite service to the universe and suffer infinitely by taking upon themselves the burden of the world’s infinite amount of sanskaras. Undoubtedly, a conscious divine person such as Tukaram or Zarathustra, compared to the unconscious Bhagwan or Ahuramazda (formless God), is definitely greater!

Zarathustra was actually God in human form – an Avatar. In order to work in creation, he had to come down as man among illiterate, fanatical and hot-tempered humanity. Had Zarathustra told them to worship him, they would have denounced, harassed and murdered him. They would have thought him an enormous egotist and absolutely crazy. So he taught them to pray to formless God. But in reality, by worshiping formless God, they were worshiping him; and consequently they gained the impression that Ahuramazda was greater than Zarathustra, which was wrong.

Lord Meher, Original ed., Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 3, 803.

The Four Pillars of Meherabad

Vishnu came into Meher Baba’s contact as a teenage boy in 1918, and from the days of Manzil-e-Meem in 1922, he was always with Baba. His almost forty years of service, love and obedience to the God-Man were as close to perfect as perfect can be described. His mother, Kakubai, had died in Meherabad, and now Vishnu had laid aside his body at the Beloved’s side. Vishnu was incomparable in forbearance, and Baba was always pleased with him. Even under the most trying circumstances, he would never utter a word of complaint, and he put up with every hardship. Vishnu was called “One of the four pillars of Meherabad,” along with Adi, Pendu and Padri. Among the men, he was sorely missed.

The above is a quote from this source. In reading “Lord Meher” it’s sometimes difficult to clearly distinguish between the different mandali. I’m prompted in this post to explore the life of this pillar of Meherabad, using Meher Baba’s Life and Travels as my source of information. Vishnu Deorukhar was also known as “Bazaar-Master,” because he did the marketing for many years at Meherabad, Meherazad and other headquarters. Figure 1 shows a photo of him. The text following is taken from the just quoted source and is reproduced in full because it’s difficult to read on the actual site. I took a screenshot of the text and then used Google Keep to grab the text from the image. It did a good job and I only needed to make a few minor corrections.

Vishnu
Born : 21st June 1903
Died : 13th May 1962

When the disciple is ready, it is said, the Master appears. Vishnu Deorukhat, later known as “Vishnu Master,” must have completed his preparations in previous births, since he met Baba when just a boy of fifteen, and remained His permanently. The year was 1919, and the place was Poona. Vishnu lived with his mother just across the street from Merwan’s toddy shop located in the Kasba Peth district, a neighborhood near the river inhabited by poor fishermen. In these days, Baba would perform arti in a small room adjacent to the shop that He had established as a temple, and after prayers He gave gave prasad to all-comers. Baba was drawing many of His earliest disciples to Himself at this time.

One day while Baba was distributing prasad, a boy came forward, holding out his hands. Before he could leave, Baba asked him, “Where is your father!” Young Vishnu told Baba that his father had died and that he lived with his mother. Baba told the lad, “From now on I am your father” With these words Baba sealed the connection, which proved to be lifelong. Soon after this Vishnu’s mother, who was cooking Baba His lunch each day, complained that her son was associating with a bad group of boys and going to movies. Immediately Baba set off to the neighborhood theater, caught the boy, and slapped him several times. Shocked, Vishnu protested that he had bought the ticket with his own money. “But did you ask me if you could go to the movies? Baka scolded him. “Didn’t I tell you that I would be your father!”

From that time on, Vishnu knew that he could not do anything without Baba’s permission. Four years later, in early 1923 Vishnu was called to join Baba as one of His mandali at the Marsil-e-Meem in Bombay; and a year after that he came to live with Baba at Meherabad. During this period Baba designated Vishnu as bazaar-wali responsible for shopping and keeping the accounts. And this duty stuck throughout the years, whether Baba was on tour, in Meherabad, in Meherazad, in Guruprasad, or other places.

Vishnu accompanied Baba on His first trip to Persia in 1929 and during His sensational, high-profile visit to the West in 1932. On other tours during this phase of Baba’s intensive world travel, He assigned Vishnu the duty of sending Him a daily telegram reporting on the routine activities and health of the mandali back in the ashram. If Vishnu happened to miss a day, Baba would demand, “What happened! Why hasn’t Vishnu sent the telegram! And Baba would have His own telegram sent out asking the reason for the lapse.

From the mid-1920s until he passed anang, Vishnu was closely associated with Meherabad. Indeed, he was one of the “Four Pillars of Meherabad,” along with Padri, Pendu, and Adi Senior. Baba give them this title in the great meetings in August 1949 in which He announced the New Life. During those meetings Vishnu came forward as one of the “yes-walis” and set out with Baba as one of His twenty companions on October 16.

After the New Life Vishnu continued in his role as one of Baba’s resident mandali. He was one of Baba’s fellow-travelers when He met with His second automobile accident in Satara in December 1956. When Eruch regained consciousness and staggered out of the car with broken ribs in the accidents immediate aftermath, he asked Vishnu, who was the least hurt, what had happened. But it seems that Vishru had experienced a vision of Baba in His universal body, surrounded by effulgent light. Stunned by what he had witnessed, Vishnu could only speak to Eruch about the radiance of Baba’s face, who had appeared to him like Krishnu triumphant on the battlefield of Kurukshetra! Perhaps Baba had granted him some glimpse of the inner dimensions of His Avataric working on that momentous occasion.

Though Vishnu did not often stay at Meherabad, when Baba shifted residence to Guruprasad in Poona in the summer months, Vishnu accompanied Him there. And so it came to pass, one afternoon in 1962 shortly after the usual Sunday darshan gathering had dispersed, that Vishnu passed away after a heart attack. Informed by Goher of what had happened, Baba came from His room and sat by His old disciple, who had worn out his life in his Beloved’s service, for a full hour. “Never before have I sat near the body of any of My mandali as I am doing today by Vishnu,” Baba commented.”He is most fortunate. Vishnu is now merged in Me.”

A “smallish man of regal bearing” as Mani afterwards described him, Vishnu kept a low profile among Baba’s mandali, but was one of the stalwarts in His work. His body now tests in the men’s graveyard in Lower Meherabad next to the grave of his fellow disciple and longtime friend Nilu.

The author of Meher Baba’s Life and Travels makes the odd statement on the site that Meher Baba claimed the Vishnu was Napoleon Bonaparte in a previous life. However, a reading of Lord Meher (page 2209 online edition) makes it clear that this is not the case. What Baba actually said was:

Meanwhile, at Laksar, the men mandali had to change trains with Chatti Baba, who refused to board it. The train was about to leave when Vishnu thought of this trick: He told the mast, “We are trying to take you back to your native place, but we can’t, if you won’t board the train.” The ruse worked and Chatti Baba happily climbed on board. When Baba heard of it, he laughed, and joked, “Vishnu is short and does all the work of marketing and travel arrangements. But now I see that not only does he look like Napoleon and labor like Napoleon — even his brain works like Napoleon’s!”