Meher Baba: His Life

HIS LIFE

HIS MESSAGE

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Avatar Meher Baba: His Life

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Physical Death. In July of 1968, Meher Baba announced that he had completed his work 100% to his satisfaction. But his health was shattered, and a few months later, on 31 January 1969, he dropped his physical form to live eternally in the hearts of all who love him. In keeping with his prior instructions, his body was interred in the crypt in Meherabad Hill which had been prepared for this purpose thirty years earlier. Today, Meher Baba’s Tomb at Meherabad is a site of pilgrimage, and thousands of visitors annually travel from all over the world to pay homage to one whom they regard as the Avatar of the age. next

Meher Baba's Tomb,
(Samadhi) in
Meherabad, India

Personality. Meher Baba had a magnetic, indeed, captivating personality whose appeal was evident not only in intimate settings but before large crowds. Many who met him, both followers and otherwise, have commented particularly on the quality of his eyes and glance. Encouraging around him an atmosphere of spontaneity and good humor, Meher Baba himself possessed an ease and grace of manner and related himself with no apparent effort and on their own level to people of all types and from all social backgrounds. Though fire and force of character played a role in the discipline which he required of his disciples, his usual disposition was compassionate and gentle, particularly toward those in suffering. His ability to inspire enduring love and devotion in those whom he contacted has many testimonials, particularly in the lifelong service of close associates through the course of extraordinary hardships. next

Meher Baba 1950s

The Theme of Creation. Meher Baba said that he had come not to teach but to awaken, nonetheless his various messages and books, particularly God Speaks and the Discourses, present a definite and coherent cosmology. God, as he explained, is the sole Reality, and the created universe exists only in dream or imagination. The dream of creation originated in the Whim of God to know Himself. This precipitated an evolution of consciousness in which the “drop-soul” (or jeevatma), identifying with innumerable physical forms and thereby growing in experience, progressed from stone and metal through varied species of the vegetable, worm, fish, bird, and animal kingdoms.

In human form, which is the terminus of evolution, consciousness is fully developed, but now the soul experiences the accumulated impressions of evolution rather than its own, native God-state. This ignorance necessitates further births and deaths in human form in the round of reincarnation. Still impelled by the God’s original Whim to know Himself, at length the soul turns inward and embarks upon what Meher Baba called the process of involution. This involutionary journey leads out of the gross or physical and on through the subtle and mental spheres (that is, the spheres of energy and mind), spanning seven planes of higher consciousness. The spiritual path culminates on the seventh plane with the experience of Divine Union or God-Realization, wherein the soul acquires direct and incontrovertible Knowledge of itself as God, the sole Being and infinite Reality. top | next page

Creation chart painted
by Rano Gayley under
the instruction of
Meher Baba.

Copyright © 2003-2007 Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust, Ahmednagar, India. All quotes of Meher Baba copyright
Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust unless otherwise indicated. All photos used by permission.