Discourses (Meher Baba)
Encyclopedia
Meher Baba
Meher Baba , , born Merwan Sheriar Irani, was an Indian mystic and spiritual master who declared publicly in 1954 that he was the Avatar of the age....
that has received seven editions since 1939 and is still in print. Besides God Speaks
God Speaks
God Speaks, The Theme of Creation and Its Purpose is the principal book by Meher Baba, and the most significant religious text used by his followers. It covers Meher Baba's view of the process of Creation and its purpose and has been in print continuously since 1955.-Overview:God Speaks is Meher...
it is considered the second most important of Meher Baba's books by followers of Meher Baba.
Overview
The book covers many subjects, both practical and highly esoteric. Some chapters go into the human search for the TruthTruth
Truth has a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with fact or reality. It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common usage, it also means constancy or sincerity in action or character...
and God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
, spiritual advancement, aspirants, various states of God-realized
God-realization (Meher Baba)
God-realization, according to Indian guru Meher Baba, is the highest state of consciousness and the goal and ultimate destiny of all souls in creation. Ultimately the ego weakens through endless expression of itself in many lifetimes of experience, finally disappearing completely in full Self or...
beings, the Avatar
Avatar
In Hinduism, an avatar is a deliberate descent of a deity to earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being and is mostly translated into English as "incarnation," but more accurately as "appearance" or "manifestation"....
and discipleship. Other chapters deal methodically with several aspects of spiritual advancement and the spiritual path, such as the formation and removal of sanskara
Sanskara
In Hinduism sanskaras are the imprints left on the subconscious mind by experience in this or previous lives, which then color all of life, one's nature, responses, states of mind, etc.-Overview:Sanskaras are impressions derived from past experiences that form desires that influence future...
s (mental impressions), various aspects of meditation
Meditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
, transcending good and evil
Goodness and evil
In religion, ethics, and philosophy, the dichotomy "good and evil" refers to the location on a linear spectrum of objects, desires, or behaviors, the good direction being morally positive, and the evil direction morally negative. Good is a broad concept but it typically deals with an association...
, and clarify Meher Baba's views on such topics as occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
ism, reincarnation
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
and maya
Maya (illusion)
Maya , in Indian religions, has multiple meanings, usually quoted as "illusion", centered on the fact that we do not experience the environment itself but rather a projection of it, created by us. Maya is the principal deity that manifests, perpetuates and governs the illusion and dream of duality...
. Several chapters are discourses on individual subjects such as selfishness, violence, sex, love, happiness and spiritual work. Due to the nature of the Discourses, some topics occur repeatedly in various contexts. Yet the book maintains a methodical flow and structure rather than being a random collection of individual discourses.
The nature of the ego and its termination
The use of the term Ego in the Discourses does not follow strictly the FreudianSigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
definition, although generally it refers to the same concept and many parallels can be drawn. Baba makes no mention of the Id or the Super-ego, but only the distinction between the implicit and the explicit ego. The latter finds manifestation in consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
, whereas the former remains in the subconscious mind. Isolated subconscious tendencies stored in the implicit ego must come to the explicit side to take part in a conscious process. Yet the explicit ego is very intricately organized and has self-protection mechanisms that act as a repressive barrier to subconscious tendencies. Since spiritual progress requires all subconscious tendencies to gradually pass through the conscious part of the mind and become refined and eventually eliminated, the explicit ego has to be weakened, under certain conditions, to permit this to happen.
Evolutionarily, the ego is formed by the inherent nature of living beings to store, integrate and evaluate experience around a central mental point. The organized mental structure of experience eventually takes over the sense of "I" and starts considering itself as the central identity of the individual. This creates various erroneous assumptions from the ego's side, such as identifying itself with the physical body, the psychological functions or the mind of the individual, or endowing external objects and events with values that don't really belong to them but that it projects on them. Generally the ego is the central cause of all mental conflict. Its presence during the evolution of consciousness is of instrumental importance, but from a certain point on it starts acting as a hindrance to the further development of self-consciousness. A lot of spiritual effort has to be made to weaken the ego's dominance on self-consciousness and as the effort moves deeper it becomes increasingly difficult to proceed. The individual can get indefinitely stuck in some stages and therefore help from outside becomes very important. The final emancipation of consciousness from the ego is practically impossible without the intervention of a perfect master or sadguru
Satguru
Satguru does not merely mean true guru. The term is distinguished from other forms of gurus, such as musical instructors, scriptural teachers, parents, and so on...
.
Self-consciousness and the consciousness of the apparent universe do not end after the dissolution of the ego and several chapters of the book are dedicated to the states of consciousness gained by those who have transcended the ego. Also, most chapters of the book get into particular practices for the emancipation of consciousness from the ego, qualities that have to be developed by the individual, and examine important issues that have to be confronted in the process.
Good and evil
In the chapter on Good and Evil, Meher Baba takes a unique position. What we call evil, according to Meher Baba, is most often a misapplied relic of a past good. For instance, an act beneficial to a lower species in evolution becomes detrimental to the individual and society in a human cultural context. Similarly, the ego, which plays a vital role in the process of evolving self-awareness, becomes a spiritual hindrance once full awareness (in human form) is achieved. Still, Baba asserts that good actions (judged as good in their context) are preferable to so-called bad actions, in that they are far less binding to the soul. According to Baba, both good and bad actions are binding in the sense that they leave impressions (sanskaraSanskara
In Hinduism sanskaras are the imprints left on the subconscious mind by experience in this or previous lives, which then color all of life, one's nature, responses, states of mind, etc.-Overview:Sanskaras are impressions derived from past experiences that form desires that influence future...
s) that must be worked out or balanced by ongoing experience in reincarnation. But even in this context, good actions are preferable and less binding. He gives the analogy that bad actions are like ropes that bind both feet and hands, but good actions bind only the feet, and thus can more easily be disentangled. This principle of evil being the relic of a past good, becoming bad in the wrong context, is repeated in his writing on the subject of war. A war may be deemed necessary, and thus not necessarily bad, when its use serves the greater good of the people (such as in repelling a significant unprovoked threat) as seen from the highest possible vantage point. However, Meher Baba says that war is generally the least creative means of resolving human conflict and is most often misguided. Also he points out that war is only a symptom, while the root cause of the problem is individual and collective egoism.
Meher Baba suggests that in the final analysis there is no such thing as bad in the sense that we conceive it, but rather there are more truly only degrees of good. Rather than categorizing actions in terms of good and bad (which are sometimes little more than societal conventions) Meher Baba divides actions into binding and unbinding, i.e., those actions that emancipate the soul from illusion (Maya
Maya (illusion)
Maya , in Indian religions, has multiple meanings, usually quoted as "illusion", centered on the fact that we do not experience the environment itself but rather a projection of it, created by us. Maya is the principal deity that manifests, perpetuates and governs the illusion and dream of duality...
) as opposed to those that further retard or thwart the soul's release from all bindings (sanskara
Sanskara
In Hinduism sanskaras are the imprints left on the subconscious mind by experience in this or previous lives, which then color all of life, one's nature, responses, states of mind, etc.-Overview:Sanskaras are impressions derived from past experiences that form desires that influence future...
s). Baba also makes a distinction between natural and non-natural impressions derived from natural and non-natural actions. Natural actions, such as marriage, are far less spiritually entangling and easier to process and balance than, for instance, promiscuity. Thus it is far more advantageous, from a spiritual point of view, to choose good and natural actions over less good and less natural ones.
Maya
The concept of MayaMaya (illusion)
Maya , in Indian religions, has multiple meanings, usually quoted as "illusion", centered on the fact that we do not experience the environment itself but rather a projection of it, created by us. Maya is the principal deity that manifests, perpetuates and governs the illusion and dream of duality...
, or the principle of illusion, is not new to oriental philosophy
Eastern philosophy
Eastern philosophy includes the various philosophies of Asia, including Chinese philosophy, Iranian philosophy, Japanese philosophy, Indian philosophy and Korean philosophy...
. The concept appears at least as early as the works of Indian philosopher Adi Shankara
Adi Shankara
Adi Shankara Adi Shankara Adi Shankara (IAST: pronounced , (Sanskrit: , ) (788 CE - 820 CE), also known as ' and ' was an Indian philosopher from Kalady of present day Kerala who consolidated the doctrine of advaita vedānta...
writing in the 8th century. Meher Baba makes a distinction, however, from the traditional interpretation of Maya as illusion itself, and says that it is that principle that causes one to be deceived into seeing the false as real.
Maya is not illusion; it is the creator of illusion. Maya is not false; it is that which gives false impressions. Maya is not unreal; it is that which makes the real appear unreal and the unreal appear real. Maya is not duality; it is that which causes duality.
Maya does not mean this world and its affairs. The illusion that this world and everything in it is real – and of feeling happy or unhappy over certain conditions – is Maya.
For its spiritual significance, Maya is primarily connected to intellectual misjudgments. But while errors on objective facts (such as the size of an object) can be relatively easily corrected, errors in valuation (such as considering rituals as ends in themselves) are much harder to correct, because they are connected to subjective desires. This second kind of misjudgment leads to false beliefs, which are taken as self-evident and are the hardest to eliminate. From the point of view of the awakening individual, however, Maya disappears completely as consciousness becomes free of its grasp. This awakening from Maya is also termed Mahapralaya, or the final annihilation of the world, since the world is the creation of Maya. This also stands in view of the statement: “The soul in its transcendental state is One, Formless, Eternal and Infinite, yet identifies itself with the phenomenal world of forms, which are many, finite and destructible. This is Maya or the cosmic illusion”.
Meditation
Meher Baba describes meditationMeditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
as the path that an individual makes for himself in his effort to get beyond the limitations of the mind. He distinguishes meditation from concentration in that in the former the mind moves from one relevant idea to the other, whereas in the latter there is no movement in the mind, which remains fixed on its object. Meher Baba disqualifies as meditation any other mental process that doesn't have spiritual significance for the subject. However, he accepts philosophical thinking, as a general type of meditation, provided its goal is to grasp the ultimate nature of life and the universe. He also points out that any effort to force the mind during meditation is bound to be spiritually fruitless. Spontaneity and love for the object of meditation are of utmost importance. He considers seclusion and silence as necessary for meditation and states some helpful factors, such as darkness, posture and place, but leaves much room for alternatives (“Even when walking, one may be absorbed in meditation”). In the case of aspirants who are in harmony with each other and when one is not concerned about the other's course of meditation, collective meditation is also possible and can even be helpful for the individual. He warns also that many disturbing thoughts are bound to try to distract the mind from its object and he advises patience and the confidence that they will subside. Any direct effort to repress them, apart from being a waste of psychic energy, is bound to entangle further the mind with the disturbance and therefore strengthen it.
In the relatively long chapter The Types of Meditation, Meher Baba makes very elaborate classifications of the various types of meditation. He makes three different types of classifications: one based on their functionality in spiritual advancement, one according to the predominant part of the personality that is involved in the process and one on the basis of items of experiences pondered.
First classification of meditation
According to the meditation's functionality in spiritual advancement, Meher Baba distinguishes between associative meditation, in which consciousness associates itself with various aspects of the eternal Truth (such as "I am Infinite") and dissociative meditation, where consciousness dissociates itself from illusion (such as "I am not my desires"). In the associative type the synthetic activity of the mind (Anwaya) is involved, while in the dissociative type the analytic activity of the mind (Vyatireka) is at work. Dissociative meditation prepares the way for associative meditation, which is spiritually more fruitful than the former. Translator E.B. CowellEdward Byles Cowell
Professor Edward Byles Cowell FBA was a noted translator of Persian poetry and the first professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge University....
defines anwaya-vyatireka as "affirmative and negative induction," in his edition of Colebrooke's Essays
Henry Thomas Colebrooke
Henry Thomas Colebrooke was an English orientalist.-Biography:Henry Thomas Colebrooke, third son of Sir George Colebrooke, 2nd Baronet, was born in London. He was educated at home; and when only fifteen he had made considerable attainments in classics and mathematics...
, vol. i., p. 315, note 3.
Second classification of meditation
According to the predominant part of the personality involved in the meditation, Baba distinguishes between "discriminative meditation", where the intellect is predominant and can include both types of the previous system, the "meditation of the heart", where the heart is predominant in a steady flow of love from the aspirant towards the Divine Beloved, and the "meditation of action", where the active nature of man is predominant, in the form of selfless service of the Master or humanity. These three types, although undertaken one at a time, are to be used complementarily, but in such a manner that the one doesn't interfere with the progress of the other.Third classification of meditation
According to items of experiences involved, two subdivisions are made: general meditation, which aims at the mental assimilation of the Divine Truths (through philosophical thinking, hearing discourses from the Masters, or reading the written expositions of the Masters), and specialized meditation (meditation concerned with the object of experience, meditation concerned with the subject of experience and meditation concerned with mental processes), in which the mind is exclusively concerned with some definite experience it selects. In this system of classification are also mentioned two types of meditation of the Spiritually Perfect: NirvanaNirvana
Nirvāṇa ; ) is a central concept in Indian religions. In sramanic thought, it is the state of being free from suffering. In Hindu philosophy, it is the union with the Supreme being through moksha...
(or absorption) and the Nirvikalpa
Nirvikalpa
Nirvikalpa is a Sanskrit adjective with the general sense of "not admitting an alternative", formed by applying the contra-existential prepositional prefix to the term .-Usage:...
State (or divinity in expression).
Love
In the Discourses, love is mentioned in many forms. Love pervades the universe. The first fundamental force known to have split as an independent principle from the original primordial unity in recent Cosmology is gravity. Baba says that gravity is the reflection of love. All the forces of attraction and of repulsion in every level (from small particles to material objects to living organisms) are expressions of love. In the animal kingdom this love becomes explicit in conscious processes through instinctive drives. The drive to look for nutrition is love. Sex-attraction is love. Actually anything that drives an organism to fulfill a bodily impulse or desire is love.In the human level, with the development of consciousness, love, although continuous with its lower forms, attains a higher form because of its relation to reason. In the beginning these two factors are in a natural harmony, but the one doesn't have conscious access to the other. Each one operates almost separately from the other. Then comes a stage where reason and love come in rapport and conflict with each other, yet the important factor is that they start coming simultaneously in the conscious sphere. Then comes a third stage where a synthesis of love and reason is achieved to bring an altogether new type of consciousness, best described as superconsciousness.
Obviously the longest part of human development deals with the second phase. Yet from the effort to resolve the conflicts brought about between love and reason there arises spiritual progress. As lower forms of love come in conflict with higher ones, human love is limited by many factors. Lust, greed and anger are limiting factors mentioned in many philosophies. The only hope of breaking these limits is the appearance of a pure form of love, called Divine love. This love can only arise through the grace of spiritual Masters. This is not a momentary event. The Avatar comes to awaken humanity to this higher love. An individual has to develop a conscious longing for this love and has to give up all forms of desires except for the desire to attain it. In human love the duality of the lover and the Beloved persist. In Divine love, lover and Beloved are indivisibly one.
God realization
According to Meher Baba, the aim of all beings in creation, in fact the very purpose of creation, is God-realizationGod-realization (Meher Baba)
God-realization, according to Indian guru Meher Baba, is the highest state of consciousness and the goal and ultimate destiny of all souls in creation. Ultimately the ego weakens through endless expression of itself in many lifetimes of experience, finally disappearing completely in full Self or...
. A soul is God-realized when it has first traversed evolution, taking each successive form in creation until it achieves full consciousness in the human form (the terminus of physical evolution according to Meher Baba), then has gone through successive lives during reincarnation
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
, and finally, having traversed the inner planes of consciousness during involution
Involution (Meher Baba)
For Indian spiritual master Meher Baba, involution is the inner path of the human soul to the Self. Charles Haynes, in describing Meher Baba's sense of involution writes, "The old and new impressions, both of which create a veil over consciousness, gradually wear away, revealing an increasingly ...
, has achieved consciousness of its true original identity as God. This experience of Oneness with God, according to Meher Baba, is not the same as simply a discursive realization of this condition through reading or contemplation, but rather must be fully experienced with the help of a perfect master or sadguru
Satguru
Satguru does not merely mean true guru. The term is distinguished from other forms of gurus, such as musical instructors, scriptural teachers, parents, and so on...
. Thus he emphasized that a man who reads, in Vedanta literature for instance, that he is God and then says that he is God, is in fact a hypocrite, since he does not have this experience. The goal of life, instead, is to achieve this "I am God" state as a permanent and genuine experience. According to Meher Baba this ultimate experience, for which the universe came into being and is continually sustained, cannot be described or talked about, but only lived and directly experienced.
History of the Discourses
The text of the Discourses was first published in New York as a series of essays in Meher Baba Journal between 1938 and 1943 by Princess Norina Matchabelli and Elizabeth C. Patterson. Between 1939 and 1954 in India, a five-volume compilation titled Discourses of Meher Baba received several printings. In 1955 an early single volume edition edited by C.B. PurdomCharles Purdom
Charles Benjamin Purdom, usually credited as C. B. Purdom , was a British author, drama critic, economist and editor of an English periodical called Everyman. Everyman covered books, drama, music and travel and featured articles by renowned authors such as Ivor Brown, Arthur Machen, G. K....
titled God to Man and Man to God was published by Victor Gollancz Ltd
Victor Gollancz Ltd
Victor Gollancz Ltd was a major British book publishing house of the twentieth century. It was founded in 1927 by Victor Gollancz and specialised in the publication of high quality literature, nonfiction and popular fiction, including science fiction. Upon Gollancz's death in 1967, ownership...
, London. In 1967 the discourses were re-released as a three-volume set titled The Discourses, and finally took their current form as simply Discourses in 1987 (Sheriar Foundation). In 2005, a reprinting of the three-volume 6th edition was released concurrently with a web version (see external link below). Both of those versions recreate the words of the original 1967 6th edition. Both were approved by Bhau Kalchuri
Bhau Kalchuri
Bhau Kalchuri is an Indian author, poet, trust administrator, and one of Meher Baba's mandali . Bhau Kalchuri is also the principal biographer of Meher Baba's life....
, chairman of the Avatar Meher Baba Trust
Avatar Meher Baba Trust
The Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust is a Charitable trust created by Meher Baba in 1959 to fulfill after his death various directives given by him. Bhau Kalchuri is currently its chairman.- History and charter :...
. In 2007, Sheriar Press released a four-volume set, which includes a companion volume on the history of the Discourses.
Material from Meher Baba's discourses is also printed in part in many other works and anthologies
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
, including Silent Teachings of Meher Baba by Naosherwan Anzar, Treasures from Meher Baba Journals by Jane Barry Haynes, Meher Baba the Awakener by Charles C. Haynes, Much Silence by Tom & Dorothy Hopkinson, Mastery of Consciousness by Allan Cohen, The Narrow Lane compiled by William Le Page, and The Silent Master Meher Baba by Irwin Luck.