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

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

I've just finished reading Jung's "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" and it was as absorbing on a second reading as it was thirty or so years ago. In this book, he writes that "it is really the individual's task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities, such as membership in organizations, support of 'isms' and so on, interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible ...". His words are not to be thought of as trumpeting the ego because it is fundamental to Jung's view of the psyche that the ego is only a small part of a much larger and far more ancient whole. This wholeness can only be grasped however, after the individual has disidentified with organization and 'isms'.

Reading the book reminded me of Jung's lifetime study of the psyche and how modern education largely lacks any psychological content. Most students undertake subjects like Mathematics, Science, Business Studies, Economics, Geography etc. and even though Psychology can be studied in some syllabi I would imagine that there is little emphasis placed on introspection. The courses studied offer students no opportunity for self-reflection, no encouragement to examine their inner life. If a school provides instruction in the religion that parents have foisted on the student, there are usually no incentives given to examine or question the belief system that underlies the religion. Any self-examination needs to take place outside of the education system.

The entire education process leads the student away from their inner life and toward involvement in the outer world. There's nothing wrong with that except that the process is overwhelmingly orientated toward the outer world at the almost complete neglect of the inner. Any attempt to redress this imbalance is likely to perceived by parents who follow a particular religion as embracing the devil or undermining the faith of the students. Heaven forbid that, in the classroom, a discussion might take place about dreams or that students be encouraged to keep a dream diary.

After leaving school, students' absorption in the outer world is so one-sided that the psyche compensates. The inner world asserts itself, often suddenly and powerfully, and the adolescent is drawn to cults, religious extremism, drugs or suffers a mental breakdown. My closest friend at school began to display symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia in his last year of high school and suffered a complete mental collapse in his early twenties. He came from a quite religious family but the empty rituals that characterized this religion did nothing to satisfy the demands of his inner life for meaning and a sense of wholeness. He became a passionate reader of Nietzche, recognizing in the philosopher a kindred spirit but, like him, eventually succumbed to ego-inflation and insanity. My friend firmly believed that he had started World War III.