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.

Hidden Connections

This afternoon, being in a desultory mood, I decided to search for information about a subject that I'd read about in pre-Internet days: mutual hypnosis. The article that I'd read back in the day described a technique that the hypnotist used whereby two subjects hypnotise each other, sequentially, but then repeat the process again and again. I eventually tracked the person who had pioneered this technique and it turned out to be a certain Dr. Charles T. Tart who is still alive (he was born in 1937) and has been prolific in his research over the intervening years. This is a link to his website.

As I skimmed over the fruits of his labours, I could see he had devoted much energy to investigating phenomena such as:

• Parapsychology
• Transpersonal Psychology & Spirituality
• Out-of-the-Body Experiences (OBEs)
• Hypnosis
• Spiritual/Inspirational
• Altered States of Consciousness
• Dreams
• Near-Death Experiences
• Death and Possible Survival

However, I found his intellectual approach to these matters dry and empty. Despite rejecting materialism, he was very much limited by what he saw as the scientific method. I realised that many of the issues he had been investigating had been comprehensively addressed by Meher Baba in his writings. That's when coincidence struck. In a list of books that he recommended reading, I found Golden Thread: Meher Baba – Chapel Hill – 1967 by Barbara Scott (ISBN: 8188224049, Amazon.com).

At first, I thought he was a Baba Lover but I was quickly disabused of that notion when I read what he had written:

The Golden Thread is a moving story of young people at the University of North Carolina (my alma mater) in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the late 1960s, experimenting with psychedelic drugs but wanting a deeper and more reliable spiritual path. It has just published by my sister-in-law, Barbara Scott. I thought The Golden Thread might be of personal interest, since I had been acquainted with a few of the people, but not of general interest. The more I read, though, the more I realised this was both a fascinating history of the times and an excellent teaching story of the evolution of spirit. The particular solution Barbara and her friends took (and still take 30+ years later), following the Indian holy man Meher Baba, is not one that ever appealed to me personally, but I have the greatest admiration for anyone who follows teachings of love and compassion. I am also very impressed with my sister-in-law’s ability to tell a complex story in a clear and impressive way.

The book was published in 2001. She's written or co-written two other books. One is LOVE BADE ME WELCOME - THE LIFE OF PHYLLIS OTT (2006, published by Behler Publications, 253 pages).This book was co-written with Phyllis Ott and some contents of the book are disputed by Phyllis. The other is THE EMPTY CHAIR - MEHER BABA'S 1969 DARSHAN (2011, published by Sheriar Foundation, 364 pages). Here is a video of Barbara talking about her 2011 book:

So Barbara Scott is Dr. Tart's sister-in-law and so via an indirect route I was lead, in my afternoon Internet wanderings, back to Baba. Jai Baba!

Ram Dass

It was with some sadness that I read today of the demise of Ram Dass at the age of 88. Here is the obituary that appeared in The Washington Post:

Washington: Ram Dass, a popular author and white-robed apostle of Eastern mysticism who began his transcendental journey more than 50 years ago as the right-hand disciple of psychedelic-drug advocate Timothy Leary, died on December 22 at his home on Maui. He was 88.

His death was announced on his official Instagram account. He had a paralysing stroke in 1997, but the immediate cause of death was not disclosed.

"Be Here Now", Ram Dass' signature book, described his improbable evolution. Born Richard Alpert, the son of a railroad president and pillar of Boston's Jewish elite, he grew up as a self-described "closet homosexual" in a "Jewish anxiety-ridden, high-achieving tradition."

He gravitated to a lifestyle of heavy drug use in the 1960s while working as an associate professor of clinical psychology at Harvard University but found inner peace and spiritual enlightenment through meditation and yoga. An Indian guru gave him a new name, Ram Dass, which means "servant of God" in Hindi.

The book came out in 1971, just after the peak years of the socio-cultural revolution that dominated the 1960s, and sold 2 million copies. Decades later, New York Times book critic Dwight Garner called it the "counterculture bible".

A seemingly inexhaustible speaker, Ram Dass led marathon-length workshops and retreats that drew thousands of followers. He stood 6-foot-3 and was sinewy from years of disciplined eating and weight training, and wore robes that eventually gave way to cardigan sweaters and trousers.

His talks were filled with self-deprecating quips: "I'm not a guru. I'm only a student, and I give a good rap." He noted his own personal story while delivering a message that centred on self-reflection and finding meaning in a superficial, chaotic world.

In the Chicago Tribune, journalist Paul Galloway once described his teachings as an "Americanised Eastern philosophy" that was "nonthreatening, non-dogmatic, positive and cheerful, a kind of I'm-OK-You're-OK approach with a Zen spin, an assortment of comforting, if vague, prescriptions."

His message, sprinkled with phrases like "planes of consciousness," resonated in particular with his generation. "When I got into these planes in earlier days," he told one audience, "it was called getting high." But he added that he later learned "the game isn't to get high; the game is to become free."

Becoming free, he said, was to have contact with our "heart-mind source," or "who you are at your deepest level."

Early life

Richard Alpert was born in Boston on April 6, 1931, and was the youngest of three sons. He had a history of tension with his controlling father, George, a high-powered Boston lawyer, president of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, and a founder of Brandeis University. His father harangued him to become a doctor, while the younger Alpert expressed interest in psychology.

After graduating in 1952 from Tufts College (now University) in Medford, Massachusetts, he received a master's degree in psychology at Wesleyan University in 1954 and a doctorate in psychology at Stanford University in 1957.

He developed a reputation in graduate school as a spellbinding teacher, and in 1958 joined the Harvard faculty as an assistant professor. "I had an apartment that was filled with antiques and I gave very charming dinner parties," he later wrote in "Be Here Now." "I had a Mercedes-Benz sedan and a Triumph 500 CC motorcycle and a Cessna 172 airplane and an MG sports car and a sailboat and a bicycle."

But he never realised how unhappy he was, he said, until he began tripping and "felt a new kind of calmness" and "a place where 'I' existed independent of social and physical identity."

He befriended Leary, a Harvard clinical psychologist a decade older who had sampled psychedelic mushrooms during a summer in Mexico, and the two set about establishing a psychedelic program at Harvard. Leary became America's best-known proselytiser of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs. "Turn on, tune in, drop out" was his perennial exhortation to millions of followers of the "flower-child" generation. "You have to go out of your mind," he said, "to use your head."

As colleagues, Leary and Alpert preached a gospel of drug-fuelled, consciousness-raising sensory perception and mental expansion. Both men were enthusiastic users - Alpert at one point said he had used LSD 328 times in five years, journalist Don Lattin wrote in a 2010 book, "The Harvard Psychedelic Club."

The duo ran experiments on LSD with Harvard graduate students, and even tried to solicit the participation of eminent Harvard Divinity School professor Paul Tillich in their LSD trials. He turned them down.

But a 1963 article about their psychedelic experimentation in the Harvard Crimson, the daily student newspaper, led to Alpert's and Leary's dismissals. The former was fired for dispensing LSD to an undergraduate student in violation of his agreement with the University, the latter for dereliction in his teaching duties.

Within two years they were running an LSD research and experimentation centre at a farm near Millbrook, New York, where Alpert undertook a study that led to his disenchantment with the hallucinogens.

As told by Lattin, he locked himself in a bowling alley with five others, where once every four hours for two weeks they ingested huge doses of LSD. But it turned out that the larger the dosage, the less effective it was. The highs were no longer so high. Moreover, by the end of two weeks all of the participants had come to thoroughly hate one another.

"It was the beginning of the end of the dream," observed Lattin. "Alpert was starting to see that LSD would not save the world."

He went to India in 1967 to seek the guidance of an Indian guru, who gave him a new name. Back in Boston, he was met by his father, aghast at the sight of his son, then 39, with his hair and beard long and unkempt. He was barefoot, wearing a long white robe and carrying a tamboura for chanting.

"Quick! Get in the car before someone sees you," George Alpert told him, according to an account in the Times. The father mocked his son as "Rum Dumb." Other family members adopted more profane variants.

Ram Dass devoted the rest of his life to teaching, lecturing and writing about the techniques and principles of his new lifestyle, which he described as staying fully present in the moment.

He wrote sequels to his first book, including "Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying" (2000) and "Be Love Now: The Path of the Heart" (2010), and was the subject of several documentary films.

His personal life was complicated. In a 1977 Times article, he said he was bisexual and intimated that he had been involved with a female follower, but also pronounced himself celibate because his "sexual hangups would have a negative influence on my teaching, my followers."

Unbeknown to him for a half-century, one fling during graduate school produced a son. In 2009, DNA testing showed that Peter Reichard, a banker in Greensboro, North Carolina, was indeed his offspring. They stayed in touch on Skype.

Long based on San Francisco, Ram Dass made his home in later years on the Hawaiian island of Maui and received visitors regularly. He came there, he said, to die.

"The game," he once told the Times, "is not about becoming somebody. It's about becoming nobody."

The Washington Post

What a wonderful way to put it:

The game is not about becoming somebody.

It's about becoming nobody.

As Meher Baba said:

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. 

I have an electronic copy of his 1971 book, Be Here Now, which I confess to never having read back in the seventies nor even later. After downloading the ebook I still haven't read it right through. I think I must have heard about Richard Alpert/Ram Dass at some point but it was only by watching YouTube videos that I became acquainted with him again. I remember watching a video of him in his LSD days, before his trip to India. He was certainly sharp and smart but it was while watching a video of him talking after his 1997 stroke that I was attracted to him. He came across as a sincere and humble spiritual aspirant.

In My Life

I was listening to Johnny Cash's version of The Beatles classic "In My Life" and I was struck by the lyrics that I guess I only really listened to closely for the first time. They run like this:

In My Life
The Beatles

There are places I'll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone, and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends, I still can recall
Some are dead, and some are living
In my life, I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I love you more

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more

It's a perfect devotional song to sing for Meher Baba or Muhammed, Jesus Christ, Siddharta Gautama or any other transcendent being that has graced our planet and who has inspired that degree of love in us. In the official lyrics, the words are "In my life, I'll love you more" but I prefer Johnny Cash's "In my life, I love you more" because it centres the feeling in the present rather than the future.

Of course I'll be singing to Baba. The lyrics are befitting for a 70 year old such as myself to sing because by then one may have realised that love for a divine being trumps love for mere mortals:

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new

This is just one of several songs that a suitable for devotional purposes. A long time favourite of mine has been "How Can I Tell You" by Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam). In that song, once the words "honey" and "girl" have been taken out, it is entirely suitable. I also alter the phrase "I need to know you, Need to feel my arms around you, Feel my arms around you" to "I need to know you, Need to feel your arms around me, Feel your arms around me" which seems more appropriate. It should be up to the master to initiate the embrace.

How Can I Tell You
Cat Stevens

How can I tell you
That I love you
I love you
But I can't think of right words to say
I long to tell you
That I'm always thinking of you
I'm always thinking of you
But my words just blow away
Just blow away
It always ends up to one thing
And I can't think of right words to say

Wherever I am
I'm always walking with you
I'm always walking with you
But I look and you're not there
Whoever I'm with
I'm always, always talking to you
I'm always talking to you
And I'm sad that you can't hear
Sad that you can't hear
It always ends up to one thing
When I look and you're not there

I need to know you
Need to feel your arms around me
Feel your arms around me
Like a sea around a shore
Each night and day I pray
In hope that I might find you
In hope that I might find you
Because hearts can do no more
Can do no more
It always ends up to one thing
Still I kneel upon the floor

How can I tell you
That I love you
I love you
But I can't think of right words to say
I long to tell you
That I'm always thinking of you
I'm always thinking of you
It always ends up to one thing
And I can't think of right words to say

Van Morrison's "Hymns to the Silence" is also very devotional, as are many of his songs:

Here are the lyrics:

Hymns to the Silence
Van Morrison 

 

Oh my dear, oh my dear sweet love
Oh my dear, oh my dear sweet love
When I'm away from you, when I'm away from you
Well I feel, yeah, well I feel so sad and blue
Well I feel, well I feel so sad and blue
Oh my dear, oh my dear, oh my dear sweet love
When I'm away from you, I just have to sing, my hymns
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence 

Oh my dear, oh my dear sweet love it's a long, long journey
Long, long journey, journey back home
Back home to you, feel you by my side
Long journey, journey, journey
Yeah in the midnight, in the midnight, I burn the candle
Burn the candle at both ends, burn the candle at both ends
Burn the candle at both ends, burn the candle at both ends
And I keep on, 'cause I can't sleep at night
Until the daylight comes through
And I just, and I just, have to sing
Sing my hymns to the silence
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
My hymns to the silence 

I want to go out in the countryside
Oh sit by the clear, cool, crystal water
Get my spirit, way back to the feeling
Deep in my soul, I want to feel
Oh so close to the One, close to the One
Close to the One, close to the One
And that's why, I keep on singing
My hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence 

Oh my hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Oh hymns to the silence, oh hymns to the silence
Oh hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Oh my dear, my dear sweet love 

Can you feel the silence? can you feel the silence?
Can you feel the silence? can you feel the silence? 

Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence
Hymns to the silence, hymns to the silence.

Maybe a Year Without Hafiz

Well, I posted (link) recently about Ladinsky's book, A Year with Hafiz, and even posted (link) about his entry for November 20th. Reading further I came across this little bit of Islamophobia on his December 10th entry:

He was walking unnoticed past a mosque, and the shouts of God’s admirers happened to fill the air, saying, “Allah, Allah! Where are You? Reveal Thyself, Beautiful, Precious One.” 

 And the child in the womb of the Master could not remain silent, and sang back, in an astounding voice, 

“I Am Here! I Am Here—dear life!” 

The crowd in the mosque became frantic, and they picked up shoes, clubs and stones. You know what then happened—the story becomes grim. For most cannot bear the truth.

Reading on, it was this entry for December 14th that finally did me in:

Anyone you have made love with, it is because you were really looking for God.

If you have known hundreds of partners, God may not say this publicly, but I think He is proud of all your efforts. 

Don’t let the freedom in this truth get you in trouble. 

There are men out there who get lonely up in the hills and then take it out on their camels, sheep and goats. 

I think about the best I can do today along the lines of moral advice, in such a universe as we live, is to say, 

try to not hurt any living thing, ’cause your odds will then, probably, increase for happiness—and who doesn’t want some of that? 

I tend to side now with the critics who say that Ladinsky's poetry bears little semantic connection with Hafiz. I can't imagine a Perfect Master lauding promiscuity and tolerating bestiality. These imaginings have sprung from Ladinsky's mind and have little to do with spirituality. I'm afraid Ladinsky's poetry will not form part of my spiritual reading.

Figure 1

Ladinsky's father was Jewish and his mother Catholic but religion did not play an important role in his upbringing. Nonetheless, he was both circumcised and baptised. However, he seems to have inherited something of the "Jewish Revolutionary Spirit" from his father and has decided to "revolutionise" Hafiz to the dismay of many, myself included. I wonder what Meher Baba would have thought of Ladinsky's writings? I wonder what Baba Lovers think? I wonder what Francis Brabazon would have thought? Well, I know that I think he's too crass and crude.

I might be criticised for being too old and not open to new poetic approaches but Landinsky is a year older than me so it's just one old guy's reaction to another. My disappointment shouldn't put me off Hafiz. There are many other translations and interpretations of his work available. I should explore some of them. After all, Hafiz was Baba's favourite poet.

I have Hafez: Collected Poetical Works by Delphi Classics in my library so I should perhaps start with that, although I'm sure that there are many Internet sites that are suitable as well. Any Internet searches are bound to contain a lot of Ladinsky links so that's the only off-putting thing.

A Year with Hafiz: November 20th

Seeing that I discovered Ladinsky's A Year with Hafiz (read my previous post) on November 20th, I'll start with his entry for that day (I've preserved the original spacing):

NOVEMBER 20

ALL THE HEMISPHERES

Leave the familiar for a while. Let your senses and bodies stretch out

like a welcomed season onto meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the roof. Make a new watermark on your excitement and love.

Like a blooming night flower, bestow your vital fragrance of happiness and giving upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day. All the hemispheres in existence lie beside an equator in your soul.

Greet yourself in your thousand other forms as you mount the hidden tide and travel back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven are sitting around a campfire chatting, while

stitching themselves together into the great circle inside of you.

I'm reminded of Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road" as I read this. The pivotal phrase for me is "equator in your soul' which is echoed in the last line as "the great circle inside of you", with "great circle" being place in italics for emphasis. A great circle is a circle on the surface of sphere which lies in a plane passing through the sphere's centre. An equator typically refers to a great circle whose plane is perpendicular to the axis of rotation of a spinning sphere. This is illustrated nicely in Figure 1 that shows an equator and meridian as special types of great circles and where the hemispheres that are created are emphasised a well.

Figure 1

For a spinning sphere, it only the two hemispheres created by an equator that have centres of gravity that lie on the rotational axis. If sliced as shown, the two hemispheres created by the equator would continue to spin as before whereas those created by a meridian or any other great circle would fly off on opposite trajectories. The only poise or balance is to found on the equator where the hemispheres still exist but they are perfectly balanced.

It is a great metaphor for a Perfect Master, especially in light of the fact that a Sufi term for such a God-realised being is a Qutub, meaning literally an axis. To quote from Wikipedia:

Qutb, Qutub, Kutb, Kutub or Kotb (Arabic: قطب‎), means 'axis', 'pivot' or 'pole'. Qutb can refer to celestial movements and used as an astronomical term or a spiritual symbol. In Sufism, a Qutub is the perfect human being, al-Insān al-Kāmil (The Universal Man), who leads the saintly hierarchy. The Qutub is the Sufi spiritual leader that has a divine connection with God and passes knowledge on which makes him central to, or the axis of, Sufism, but he is unknown to the world. There are five Qutubs per era and they are infallible and trusted spiritual leaders. They are only revealed to a select group of mystics because there is a "human need for direct knowledge of God".

On the other hand, the hemispheres created by great circles other than an equator typify our lives before Realisation: 

All the hemispheres in existence lie beside an equator in your soul. 

In all these lives (the thousand other forms) the opposites are not in balance. It seems to me that Hafiz is exhorting us to step off the current great circle we are on (leave the familiar for a while) and for a while at least be bigger than we imagine ourselves to be:

Let your senses and bodies stretch out like a welcomed season onto meadows and shores and hills. Open up to the roof. Make a new watermark on your excitement and love ... change rooms in your mind for a day

All that has happened, all that is happening and all that will ever happened exist in a configuration beyond time. We move on our great circles and that movement we interpret as time passing. Our attention is constantly shifting from one point on the circle to the next and that shift in attention registers as time passing. All the hemispheres that we have created as we travel along our great circles, life after life, exist simultaneously.

All the hemispheres in heaven are sitting around a campfire chatting, while stitching themselves together into the great circle inside of you.

These are just some of the thoughts that arose from the November 20th entry and it is in no way an exhaustive analysis but it has served its purpose of focusing my attention on spiritual matters. It is spiritual exercise to borrow a phrase used by Saint Ignatius Loyola.

Image taken from here

Hafiz

The thought struck me recently that it was time to get serious about spirituality. I realised that I spend most of my time: 

• working on mathematical or programming problems
• reading books or articles on history, geopolitics or about famous people
• walking and exercising
• eating, sleeping etc.

I asked myself how much time do I spend in "spiritual pursuits", a term that for me means reading material dictated by Meher Baba or about Meher Baba. The answer was simply: not much time at all. On the other hand, I know a Muslim who prays seven times a day, two more than the recommended five, and often for quite lengthy periods of time. This contrasts quite sharply with the meagre time that I allot to my own spiritual pursuits.

By way of addressing this deficiency, I was recently reading additional commentary added by Meher Baba to God Speaks (identified as God Speaks Supplement to Part 2 of God Speaks) where he spends a lot of time discussing Sufi terms and occasionally quoting from Kabir, Rumi and Hafiz. I checked my library and found I had a copy of The Purity of Desire by Daniel Landinsky (with Nancy Owen Barton) which contains a 100 poems of Rumi. A reviewer wrote of this book:

The first full-length volume of Rumi's cherished verse by bestselling poet Daniel Ladinsky. Renowned for his poignant renderings of Hafiz's mystical texts, Daniel Ladinsky captures the beauty, intimacy, and musicality of another of Islam's most beloved poets and spiritual thinkers. In collaboration here with Nancy Owen Barton, and with learned insight and a delicate touch, they explore the nuances of desire—that universal emotion—in verse inspired by Rumi's love and admiration for his companion and spiritual teacher, Shams-e Tabriz. These poems thoughtfully capture the compelling wisdom of one of Islam's most revered artistic and religious voices and one of the most widely read poets in the English language.

This review alerted me to the fact that he had also done some "renderings of Hafiz's mystical texts" and so I managed to get hold of a copy of his book A Year with Hafiz. As I began to read the Acknowledgements, I was in for a surprise. It begins:

I thank my teacher, Eruch Jessawala, with whom I spent a lot of time over a twenty-year period. I think he knew Hafiz intrinsically, more truly and deeply than anyone I have ever met. Not one poem of mine would ever have been published without his extraordinary sanction and a profound, rare insight he revealed to me about my work. And I thank his decades-old little bamboo walking stick—that Zen’s master’s baton—that I journeyed next to for hundreds of miles in India. It lays across my computer as I write. I think my every word leans against it and upon Eruch, in many ways. For he is now the hub of me, and I a spoke he moves.

He concludes his foreward by saying:

What can I say to my dear Master, Meher Baba, for all his help and guidance? Whatever truth, beauty, laughter and charm you may find here, I would say is a gift from him, the Avatar. 

So the person that I had more or less randomly chosen to render Hafiz turns out to be a Baba-Lover who was mentored by Eruch. How amazing! This confirmed to me that I was on the right track in my choice of elevating spiritual literature because Hafiz was Baba's favourite poet and who better to render the spirit of Hafiz's writing in English than Landinsky.

Daniel at Sheriar Press, Myrtle Beach, S.C.
https://www.meherbabatravels.com/books/authors-of-baba-contents/daniel-ladinsky

I was prompted to find out a little about him and found some biographical details on Wikipedia from which I've extracted the following quote about his early life and background:

Ladinsky was born and brought up in suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri, where his father was a wealthy developer. He grew up with two brothers, and had a Jewish upbring as his father was Jewish, though he was also baptized as a Catholic, as his mother was Christian. After studying in small colleges, at age 20, he enrolled at the University of Arizona. During this period he came across the book God Speaks, by Meher Baba, and poetry by Rumi, both of which had a deep impact on him. At the back of the Meher Baba book, he found the address of the five centers dedicated to the spiritual master. 

Some time later, as Ladinsky recounted in an interview, intending to drive towards the Andes mountain, he took a detour of a thousand miles, and stopped the Meher Baba Center at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. There, he met the disciple Kitty Davy, then in her seventies, who had spent twenty years in India with Meher Baba. He stayed at the Center for a few months, when Davy advised him to go back to his family, and to find a job that would let him work with his hands. Back home, his father helped him join a carpentry school. 

He worked for a few years at a carpentry job, and thereafter joined his father's investment company. Unable to find fulfillment, he visited the Meher Baba Center in South Carolina again. Then, in 1978, Davy advised him to visit the Meher Baba ashram, at Meherabad, near Ahmednagar, India. There he met Meher Baba's sister Mani Irani, and his close disciple, Eruch Jessawala. Though Ladinsky's first visit lasted only two weeks, it started a process which continued with regular visits for the next two decades, and Jessawala became his spiritual teacher. He even lived in a nearby spiritual community at Meherazad for six years, working at the local free clinic and spending time with Jessawala.

His work is not without controversy as the following quote from Wikipedia illustrates:

Scholars and critics point out that Ladinsky's poems are originals, and not translations or interpretations of Hafez. Christopher Shackle describes The Gift as "not so much a paraphrase as a parody of the wondrously wrought style of the greatest master of Persian art-poetry" and Aria Fanil describes his contribution thusly "Ladinsky does not know Persian while his poems bear little or no resemblance to what Hafez has composed". That his poems are neither written nor intended to fall under the purview of literal and/or scholarly translations of Hafiz' work, Ladinsky states in each of his volumes.

He was born in 1948 so he is a year older than me. There is a detailed interview with him to be found on this site. Anyway, I've very little of his poetry and haven't formed any opinion of it whatsoever. I may like it, I may not. Let's see how things unfold.

Going Against the Tide

Many years ago, I remember coming across some Meher Baba books in the Adyar Bookstore in Sydney. They were categorised, appropriately enough, under "Mavericks". The term "maverick" being defined as:

I hadn't realised the etymology of the word until I looked up this definition. I actually took a photo of the books on the bookshelf in Adyar but can't locate it at the moment. Anyway, it was appropriate for Baba who, as the Avatar, was the original maverick who broke away from the herd of humanity to realise his divinity. A maverick will never follow the herd and Meher Baba has made many assertions that would not sit well with modern day assumptions.

One contemporary assumption is that the Earth is an insignificant planet circling one star out of billions in the Milky Way galaxy and that galaxy is itself only one of billions of other galaxies. Apart from its being our home planet, there's nothing special about Earth. Baba begs to disagree and states that:

... there are other planets besides Earth where living beings exist. Still, I emphatically say that God can only be realised on this earth. God is everywhere, but he manifests as the Avatar only on this earth. Perfect Masters are also found only on the earth and nowhere else. On one planet people have enlarged their intellects so much so that they can survive for hundreds of years. But the people there are 99 percent atheists. On all of these evolved planets, the mind predominates and the heart is totally undeveloped. On some planets, people are totally devoid of heart; there is not even one percent place for [feeling love]. Except for the Earth, on all other evolved worlds intellect alone prevails. Therefore, God cannot be realised on those planets. These souls must take birth on this Earth to realise God. Lord Meher Online Edition Page 4597

In the passage below, Baba restates this:

Only on the planet earth do human beings come to reincarnate and begin the involutionary path to God-realisation. The earth is at the centre of the millions of universes, to which all souls must migrate to begin the Inward Journey. In Infinity, you cannot have a point as centre otherwise, it is not Infinity. And yet on the chart we have made the earth the centre of infinite space. Why? Because though there are many inhabited worlds in infinite space, human beings of those planets have to migrate eventually to the earth. In some worlds, the people are very intelligent, much more so than on earth; yet, they must come to this earth-speck for the sake of the "heart," the involutionary journey. Lord Meher Online Edition Page 4859 

In another passage, there is mention made of "millions and millions of universes" which accords with modern scientific speculation about the so-called "multiverse". Baba explained:

... 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. Lord Meher Online Edition Page 505 

In Baba's view, the Earth is very special and not just any old rock floating in space. This is not to say that it is in any way permanent. Baba points out that:

The sun that gives you light at present will burst after many crores [tens of millions] of years, but another sun will take its place. The earth is getting cooler and will eventually turn into a moon; but another planet, just like the present earth, will take its place. What has been in the past will be in the future. The processes of evolution and involution will go on forever. Ignorance and creation go hand in hand. Lord Meher Online Edition Page 1010 

Baba clearly stated that the Avatar always takes a male body when incarnating and this struck me as rather sexist the first time I became aware of it. Baba says:

Now, we again come to the Beyond-God, Who is both the Father and Mother in one. During cycles of cycles of time, after ages, when God descends as the Avatar on this material plane, he always takes a male form. He is never born as a woman. Avatars are the Sons of the Father in the Beyond state. All the past Avataric periods witnessed the presence of the Avatar as the healthy, bright, intellectual Son of the God-Beyond. This means in my previous advents I always remained the Beloved Son of my Father. Lord Meher Online Edition Page 4282

It is important to note that Baba is not saying that a woman cannot become God-realised. After all, Babajan who first made him aware of his divinity was a Perfect Master or Qutub. The notion is not entertained that, in the interests of promoting equality of the sexes, the Avatar ought to split incarnations 50:50 in terms taking male and female bodies.

"Will the Avatar ever be a woman?" the person queried. 

"Never!" Baba emphasised. "Never has there been a female Avatar, nor will there ever be one. The Avatar has always been a male and will always be in a male form." Lord Meher Online Edition Page 1620 

Interestingly, Baba also had the following to say about where the Avatar incarnates:

One person asked, "Will the West ever produce an Avatar?" 

Baba revealed, "The Avatar has always been and will always be born in Asia. This is because of the peculiar situation there in the evolution of the universe and in the existence of the gross plane which necessitates the manifestation of the Avatar only on that particular continent." Lord Meher Online Edition Page 1619

In these days of gender diversity, gay marriage and the widespread acceptance in Western societies of a homosexual lifestyle, it is interesting to speculate on what Baba would have thought. Baba advocated that sexual relationships should be practised only within marriage between a man and a woman. He strongly recommended that no physical means of birth control be used, only "mental control". The sexual licence of today was so far beyond his ideals that he seems to have had little to say about it. However, here is a quote from Lord Meher:

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. 

Source: LM/6-7/2213 + footnote with LM referrring to LORD MEHER, 20 vols., 1st ed., by Bhau Kalchuri (MANifestation, Inc. 1986-2001), copyright by AMBPPCT (The current online revised edition may have different wording for some sayings.)

Elsewhere he says:

One day in Cannes, Baba disclosed, "For my work I need a healthy, handsome, intelligent and innocent boy. These qualities are essential for the work I wish to do for the world involving the minimizing of lust, especially of homosexuals, which is now prevalent to an alarming extent all over the world. If the boy is not innocent, he would at once misunderstand my intention, which would hinder instead of help my work." On another occasion, when Kitty questioned Baba about his work with the boys, he remarked, "I am working with the youth of the future." Lord Meher Online Edition Page 1863

 Of course, while Baba did not approve of a homosexual lifestyle, he was accepting of everybody as the following quote illustrates:

Two young homosexuals, one a well-known painter and the other a dancer, were also in the queue. Both were good friends of Delia who had persuaded them to come. As they approached Baba they began to have misgivings, wondering if Baba was going to censure them. They considered leaving but decided to stay. As they apprehensively came before him, Baba looked at them, threw up his hands and gestured, "Chums!" They were so relieved, they nearly leapt forward and hugged Baba! Lord Meher Online Edition Page 3977

Such acceptance is characteristic of the Avatar in all ages, whether it be Mohammed, Jesus Christ, Siddharta Gautama, Krishna, Ram or Zoroaster. However, they would have been unanimous in their condemnation of the current sexual permissiveness and would not have softened their stance to align more with current societal norms. Some members of the LGBTQ community might be confused however, about Baba's stance because of his choice of flag (see Figure 1) which is similar to the LGBTQ flag. The latter has only six colours but they are in the same order, with only the final sky blue colour missing. Additionally, the LGBTQ flag is most commonly displayed with the red at the top. This is indeed a case of two flags being at sixes and sevens to each other.

Figure 1: Meher Baba's flag

The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit

My posts are less frequent now that this blog has become mainly a vehicle for whatever spiritual observations I might make. It's far easier to post to my Mathematics or Alternative News blogs. Writing about spiritual matters is less easy. However, having recently finished E. Michael Jones's "The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and its Effect on World History", I think it's time to put some of my reflections down in writing.

Jones wrote his book from a Catholic perspective because that's the religion that he follows. However, I firmly rejected Catholicism when I was in high school, in Grade 11. The belief in Christ's resurrection from the dead, his virgin birth, his ascension into heaven and the like suddenly seemed like ridiculous fantasies. In 1965, I embraced atheism and remained an atheist until early 1973 until I reconnected with Theosophy and eastern mysticism. Labelling myself an atheist is perhaps too strong a word as it seems to connect me to card-carrying atheists like Richard Dawkins who proselytise with religious fervour. During my time at University I'd read books about Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen and so on but spiritually there was no connection with the content. I was processing what I was reading at an intellectual level.

Figure 1: St Theresa of Avila

From 1973 to 1993, I certainly believed in planes of consciousness beyond the physical and by implication God as the pinnacle of consciousness and a goal toward which myself and the lifestream were ascending. Fortunately, I came to the light of Meher Baba is 1993 and it all became clear or at least clearer. However, I was never hostile to Catholicism, at least not the same way that the Jews had been. I had no time for the hierarchy of the Church but great respect for some of its saints such as St. Francis of Assisi, St. John of the Cross and Saint Theresa of Avila. To quote from pages 1271 and 1272 of the Online Edition of Lord Meher: 

Desmond then asked, "Are there any true saints and holy priests in Christianity?" 

"There were saints," Baba answered, "but the Christian priests are the same type as those priests in every other religion throughout the world. Out of selfishness, priests create and propagate their own customs, tenets and practices, thereby crippling religion. All these rites, rituals and ceremonies are the dry husk of the corn." 

It seems in a sense that the Jews are God's chosen people because they seem to be the ones who are the most ready to attack hierarchies that they perceive to be oppressive such as the Catholic Church around the time of the Reformation. The alternatives, such as Protestantism in the case of the Church, that they champion however, turn out to be little better than what they replace. In the case of Communism, championed as an alternative to the rich-poor divide, the results were far worse. As Jones say in his book, the atheistic Jews like Marx were the most dangerous of all because, having abandoned belief in the coming of their Messiah, they believed political ideologies, like Communism, could act as a replacement messiah and save the world. 

Figure 2: Christian Zionists

Of course, no political system or organisation will solve the world's problems because it will be run by human beings who are firmly in the grip of their egos. Catholics like E. Michael Jones are hoping that disillusionment with humanity's descent into moral chaos will lead to a resurgence of faith that will fill the now largely empty churches. I don't think that's likely. 

Catholicism seems to have dealt a mortal blow with the pedophilia revelations that keep being trumpeted gleefully by the mainstream media. Protestantism is fragmented and even linked to Messianic Judaism in the case of the Christian Zionists. Buddhism is halfway between a religion and a philosophy and there are certainly aspects of it that can be useful to a humanity that is striving to find its moral compass again. Islam remains a powerful religious force but the long-standing Shia/Sunni split is being exploited successfully by its enemies to set the one against the other. Additionally and unfortunately, the majority Sunni variant is currently going through a phase whereby it is very focused on the extrinsic (outer rituals) as opposed to an intrinsic (Sufi) orientation. As such it is an unlikely candidate to carry the flame of spirituality further into the twenty-first century.

Israel is fearful of Sunni Islam, surrounded as it is so many of its adherents, and will do everything necessary to undermine and weaken it. The last thing that it wants is to find itself opposed to the North, West and South by a Caliphate. Despite the Israeli rhetoric about how dangerous Iran is, I suspect that all is not as it seems. My feeling is that the two countries have a secret agreement whereby some engineered conflict will lead to an Iranian  invasion of Saudi Arabia and an Israel intervention. The result will be an expansion of both countries borders and many Sunni Moslems will suddenly find themselves in Shia or Israeli controlled territory. 

Figure 3: Greater Israel

On a different but related note, Israel's increasingly close ties to India (and thus Hinduism) may be part of longer term strategy. India is purchasing large amounts of Israeli military technology and the tension between Pakistan and India is perennial. Given Israeli technological prowess and the backdoors that have built into the software and hardware that they sell, it would be easy for its hackers to trigger an Indian missile launch that might lead to all out war, perhaps involving nuclear weapons. This might seriously weaken both countries and lead to a refugee crisis of staggering proportions. Israel remains far enough away so as to not be affected by fallout or refugees. Zionists have no love of Hinduism, nor any religion, that might pose an obstacle to their plans for global hegemony. Refugee crises are an ideal way of diffusing a native population and diluting the populations into which they are forced to assimilate. 

I don't think that Israel will succeed in its plans for global hegemony. Historically, the Jewish Elite has always overplayed its hand and the rank and file Jews have payed dearly for it. This time around, I don't think it will any different. Jewish disillusionment with their leadership and disillusionment with messianic fantasies will encourage the majority to finally join the mainstream of humanity. Out of the turmoil of Hindus versus Sunni Moslems and Sunni Moslems versus Shia Moslems, a general disillusionment with religion (already well underway in Western countries) as a source of division will develop and deepen. The West will already have reached its spiritual nadir and looking for a way back up to the light. That's when I think that Meher Baba's teachings will begin to appeal to a bewildered humanity in search of spiritual guidance. His acceptance of all religions and his emphasis on the inner experience of the intrinsic truths of a religion rather than adherence to its outer rituals will be key. Jai Baba!

Figure 4: Mastery in Servitude