| Avatar Meher Baba: His Life |
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Declaration of Avatarhood. After the New Life phase, Meher Baba resumed contact with his “Old Life” followers and gave his personal touch to the hundreds of thousands who flocked around him during the mass public gatherings of this period. In February 1954 for the first time Meher Baba publicly declared himself to be the Avatar or Christ of the age. The Avatar is the direct descent of God into human form; previous Avatars known
to history include Zoroaster, Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed. Many of Meher Baba’s most significant messages date this period — including the “Universal Message,” “The Highest of the High,” and the book God Speaks, a monumental and unparalleled elucidation on the theme of God and creation. next
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Meher Baba,
Meherazad, 1954 |
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Automobile accidents. During the 1950s Meher Baba traveled three more times to the West, reestablishing old ties and providing newcomers with the opportunity for his contact. During these visits he stayed at centers in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and Queensland, Australia that had been prepared for him by his lovers there. He passed through two serious automobile accidents, one in Oklahoma, U.S.A. in 1952 and the other
in Satara, India in 1956. As he explained at the time, the Avatar or Christ in all his advents must take physical and spiritual suffering upon himself as a part of the crucifixion which he undergoes for the redemption of humanity. The injuries which Meher Baba sustained particularly from his second automobile accident contributed to the gradual decline in his health over the next decade. next
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Meher Baba in
Switzerland, 1952. |
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| Seclusion and universal work. After 1958 Meher Baba for the most part discontinued his travels and public darshans, withdrawing into an increasingly strict seclusion for the purpose of what he called his “Universal Work.” This seclusion work continued throughout the 1960s, broken only at rare intervals by such darshan programs as the East-West Gathering of 1962 and the Poona darshan of 1965.
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Meher Baba,
mass darshan, 1965 |
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