From the show notes:
Ilia Delio and The Human Mystery, AI, and Art with Patrick Beldio (Part 2)
“Ilia Delio and The Human Mystery, AI, and Art with Patrick Beldio (Part 2) In part 2 of her conversation with Patrick Beldio, Ilia asks ‘what, or who, is God?’ and more about the mystery of being human. Patrick shares more about his teacher Meher Baba and how art, creativity and technology can all play a role in deepening the human spirit.”
From the show notes:
Hunger for Wholeness: Catholicism and Sufism with Patrick Beldio (Part 1)
“Ilia Delio interviews religious scholar and artist Patrick Beldio. In Part 1, our guests explore Patrick’s religious journey, its varied traditions, and how he discovered, and settled into, Sufism. Ilia digs into what practicing Sufism looks like from a Western perspective, the mystic perspective, and wisdom of Patrick’s teacher, Meher Baba.”
I am inspired today to share a presentation I gave in 2019 at the American Academy of Religion in San Diego on a topic that becomes more salient by the day. As Russia invades Ukraine, I am thoughtful that we need guidance from the spiritual authorities of our age. Russia is practicing what Meher Baba called “selfish violence,” “[w]hen violence is done for selfish motives by an individual or nation for power and selfish gains, etc.” It cries out for what he called “selfless violence,” or “[v]iolence done in self-defense when one is attacked treacherously, and with no other selfish motive” and even “nonviolent violence,” which is “[v]iolence done solely to defend the weak where there is no question of self-defense or self-motivation.” Read on to learn more.
Stick to Truth at all costs, even if it means giving up your political life. Do not try to force nonviolence on unwilling adherents, nor even try to establish it, since it is already eternally established.
––Meher Baba[1]
I. Introduction
This challenging message to Gandhi that Meher Baba gave in 1941 encapsulates the main issues that these two men often discussed. We might frame these issues with the following question: how does one’s notion of universal Truth relate to strategies of violence and nonviolence to influence our shared life in the world? In this presentation, I will first describe the development of Gandhi’s and Meher Baba’s friendship, and then because of time, I will only very briefly highlight Meher Baba’s view of violence and nonviolence in the context of his broad understanding of the growth of consciousness in creation, what he called “The Divine Theme.” What is salient for the purposes of this presentation is that Meher Baba claimed to have worked through Gandhi to accomplish his spiritual goals for India and the world. He also shared his views of violence and non-violence as well as important parts of “The Divine Theme” with Gandhi, warning him also that his satyagraha work and his uncompromising attempts to force and establish nonviolence in the world would cause suffering now and in the future for many people and for Gandhi personally. Even still, Meher Baba encouraged Gandhi and held him in very high esteem. Baba told his mandali (close disciples),
“Gandhi will suffer terribly in the next life for his present political activities and social movements … as all these activities have caused so many people to suffer. The sanskaras [impressions] of those who follow him now, and who suffer doing so, will be the cause of Gandhi’s suffering in his next birth. But Gandhi is doing all this with the best of intentions and therefore will realize God in his third life after this” (LM 1927: 836).
Gandhi could not accept Baba’s perspectives about violence and nonviolence. Gandhi equated Truth with nonviolence as a moral absolute in political life, while Meher Baba equated Truth with nonviolence as a universal spiritual principle of Love that included and even required violence as part of its manifestation in some phases of growth in all human lives.
I present this material as an insider. I am a member of an American spiritual school called Sufism Reoriented that Meher Baba founded in 1952. Some of the material that I will present today is culled from a hagiography entitled Lord Meher written by a mandali member (disciple) of Meher Baba named Bhau Kalchuri (1927-2013).[2] I gathered about 200 double-spaced pages on a Word document from this source that pertains to Meher Baba’s relationship with Gandhi, which signals just how important this friendship is to an understanding of Meher Baba’s life and work.
For those who may not know of Meher Baba, I offer a very brief introduction. His original name was Merwan Sheriar Irani, born in Poona, India in 1894 to Irani Zoroastrian immigrants. In his twenties he became what he called a God-realized spiritual master owing to his contact with other “Perfect Masters” who realized him: Narayan Maharaj of Kedgaon, Sai Baba of Shirdi, Tajuddin Baba of Nagpur, and especially Hazrat Babajan of Poona and Upasni Maharaj of Sakori. In fact, Meher Baba’s first contact with Gandhi is related to Upasni Maharaj. In 1924 Meher Baba sent Gandhi his Gujarati hagiography of Upasni Maharaj entitled Sakorina Sadguru or The Sadguru of Sakori (Recent updated volume here). By the force of this book, Gandhi visited the Master of Sakori. Gandhi said to Baba, “When I went to him, he had only a sackcloth wrapped around his waist. Seeing me, he parted it, revealing himself, and said, referring to me, ‘However great or renowned in the world he may be, what have I to do with him?’” (LM 1955: 3864). Bhau Kalchuri commented about this episode writing that “Gandhi’s connection was with Meher Baba, not Maharaj, and that is why Maharaj scolded him and drove him away” (LM 1931:1241). For another time, I do wonder if Upasni exposed himself to mirror Gandhi’s well-known struggle with lust and celibacy. Upasni once said that whatever people thought of him, it was really themselves that they saw. He said the following, which Gandhi would have read in the original Gujarati biography:
“My cup is completely empty. Whatever I tell you is simply your own knowledge. It resonates in me, and I repeat it back to you so that you can understand it more easily. And any knowledge that comes to me from you does not stay within me for long. In the same way whatever goodness you see in me, this too comes from you. I simply reflect it back to you in a purified form. And whatever ugliness and baseness you see in me is a reflection of your own qualities. This is why you may find me at one moment pleasantly discussing spirituality, then the next moment shouting and cursing with the foulest possible language. My being simply mirrors yours. I present before you the full range of your states of mind. All your thoughts and feelings are on display, but they are entirely yours. I am nothing but a blank screen, a big zero, an utterly empty void.” (Upasni Maharaj 2020: 263).
Back to Merwan. Merwan’s early followers gave him the name “Meher Baba,” meaning “Compassionate Father.” He is known for his silence that he practiced for forty-four years. In 1932 he claimed that his mission was simply to “make others realize the Truth in every phase of life and to make brotherhood a practical fact” (LM 1932:1415). Meher Baba’s is a path of realizing the Truth in every phase of life through love. He said, “To love the world and serve it in the ways of the Masters is no game for the weak and faint-hearted” (Meher Baba 2007c: 120-21). He often cautioned people that “It is no joke to love. If you have come to see this as fun, you will become fun yourself!” (LM: 4873). Later in 1958, in what is known as his “Universal Message” he said that “I have come not to teach but to awaken” (LM 1958: 4447). Near Hamirpur, Uttar Pradesh, on February 10, 1954, Meher Baba’s birthday on the Parsi calendar, he announced publicly that he was God in human form, the Avatar, or living Christ come again.
Meher Baba traveled all over the world, gathering a devoted following in India, Europe and the UK, the US, and Australia. He did spiritual work with children, adults of all classes and religions or worldviews. He also worked with animals and the natural world, with technology and culture, and with advanced spiritual figures in both the East and the West. He shed his blood in two serious automobile accidents in America and India, where he broke many of the bones on the left and right side of his body, respectively. After years of chronic pain, he died in his Meherazad ashram in 1969 a few months after proclaiming that he had completed his universal spiritual work “100 percent to my satisfaction” (LM 1968: 5340). This universal work was to transform basic matter to create what he called a “New Humanity” that “will attain to a new mode of being and life through the free and unhampered interplay of pure love from heart to heart” (Meher Baba 2007a: 12). He claimed that the result of this transformation is a new age of joy that would host a “new world culture” that “will not deny the value of diverse traditions, nor will it merely accord them patronizing tolerance. On the contrary, it will entail active appreciation of the diverse religions and cultures” (Meher Baba 1985: 143). He also said (and this is germane to our topic today) that this new age of joy would not occur without significant opposition and even violence before it proved itself worthy of being.
II. Story of a Friendship
In reading the material of Lord Meher, I was struck by how much Meher Baba loved Gandhi even as he criticized him. Knowing Meher Baba’s method of working with others, we might even say that Baba loved Gandhi in criticizing him. Meher Baba thought Gandhi’s shortcomings were his desire “to keep every party pleased,” his need to “preach such things which he himself can’t or won’t do,” and “vanity and inconsistency” (LM 1931: 1256). Baba more often praised the Mahatma saying things like “Gandhiji was a jewel of a soul,” “Gandhi’s heart was incomparable; it was pure gold,” and “No one’s heart was as beautiful as his.” (LM 1954:3498, 1955:3780, 1955:3865). His highest compliment is the following, (which was alluded to before): “Gandhi is the best man amongst the present-day political workers and public servants. He is quite sincere. He has no thought of any deception and is not mean-spirited in any of his actions. He has a fine mentality. He will realize God in his third life after this one, after 170 years.” (1927:780).
Meher Baba called Gandhi, “Dosaji,” a term of affection for an old man, since he was Baba’s senior by twenty-five years. Gandhi called Meher Baba “Babaji” and they built a friendship from 1924-48. They kept in touch mainly through letters and proxies, though they met face to face three times. The first time was in 1931 onboard the steamer Rajputanawhen Gandhi traveled to London for the Round Table Talks while Baba traveled to gather his first Western disciples in England. Gandhi came to Baba’s cabin three times on the ship. They met in London as well that same month, and lastly, they met for about an hour in 1932 at Gandhi’s residence right before Gandhi was arrested in put in prison.
In these meetings, they discussed spiritual matters, nonviolence, and their mutual love for the Untouchable class and their desire to bring them into the mainstream. Baba, in fact, met with the leader of the Untouchables, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in 1932 upon Gandhi’s request to persuade him to work with Gandhi to seek joint electorates for the Untouchables with the rest of Hindu society. Baba and Gandhi also spoke about working for Hindu-Muslim unity, yet for practical purposes, Baba advised that they have separate electorates. They discussed India’s future beyond British rule, and the role of the West, especially that of America, whose materialism actually made Baba quite proud to the consternation of Gandhi, one would imagine. Meher Baba told him, “In America, the spiritual hunger is intense. … There is everything there materially. There is wealth; there are brains; there is heart. In other words, there is sufficient preparedness for spiritual growth and development” (LM 1931:1345).
Gandhi also promised in their first meetings that if India gained independence, he would come to live with Meher Baba. Meher Baba never forgot this promise and consistently tried to stay in contact with him to bring him into his circle. In 1953, reminiscing a few years after Gandhi’s assassination, Baba said to his lovers, “There is only one man who led a life of 100 percent truthfulness and honesty, and that was Mahatma Gandhi. I took a promise from him when he met me on the steamer Rajputana that he should come to me after India attains independence. He kept his promise, and he has come to me.” (LM 1953:3261).
This might tempt one to wonder if Gandhi ever thought of Baba as his guru in the same way as Baba thought of Gandhi as part of him and his work. In 1932 Gandhi wrote in a letter that “the relationship between Baba and me is not that of guru and disciple, but is that of two ordinary friends.” Baba took this a bit further, emphasizing their extraordinaryfriendship. He responded directly to Gandhi saying that “I take you as Premi Mitra, one who is my loving friend; because in each one, I see no other than myself. Thus, whose ‘Guru’ can I be and where can the ‘chela’ [disciple] be! According to me, of all friends, he alone is dearest who remains infinitely restless for Truth!” (LM 1932:1482-1495). Gandhi was such a soul “restless for Truth,” of course, in Meher Baba’s view, and why I think he loved him so much.
Gandhi loved Baba as well but was puzzled by him. According to Lord Meher, Gandhi told Baba on the Rajputanathat “I feel within that you are someone great” and because of this greatness Gandhi was anxious that Meher Baba break his silence and teach by means of words in books or speech as he was doing. At that time, Meher Baba shared a part of a special book that he wrote about the theme of creation and its purpose. This was an unprecedented thing because he had never shown it to anyone else, even his mandali, and has since become lost. Gandhi read the part that he was given and was impressed by the ideas but more by the authority behind them. Meher Baba told him that he would speak soon and share his “Word.” Many years later, however, Baba was still practicing silence and he commented through hand gestures that “still the promise is not kept. Why? Because eternally it has been my habit to give promises and break them, because I am eternally free from all bindings. I told this to Gandhi, too. He laughed.” (LM 1955:3780).
III. Violence and Non-Violence in Meher Baba’s Divine Theme
In 1942, as World War II raged, Baba dictated on his alphabet board four messages that covered topics like violence and non-violence, the war, and India. He gave copies of these messages to over thirty leaders of the All India Congress before their ill-fated meeting with Stafford Cripps to enlist India to fight in exchange for independence. Gandhi called the ideas in Meher Baba’s messages “wholly inapplicable” (LM 1942: 2273). Within one of the messages, Meher Baba said that
A right understanding of the status of violence and non-violence in the scheme of spiritual values requires true perception of the meaning of the purpose of existence. Action, therefore, should not be governed by means of any slogans (however high sounding) based upon incomplete and insufficient ideas of mere violence or mere non-violence. It should be a spontaneous outcome of divine love, which is above duality, and of spiritual understanding, which is above rules. (Meher Baba 2007a: 104-5).
Based on his understanding “of the meaning of the purpose of existence” rooted in divine love, Meher Baba than gave a typology that lists different levels of violence and non-violence that are practiced in a developmental way by all human beings. I will briefly show you these levels and focus on where Gandhi might fit.
The list moves along a path from what Baba called “Non-Love,” which is “Violence,” to the goal of “Love,” which is “Non-Violence.”
Baba listed four classes of Violence (Non-Love):
1. Selfish Violence based on hatred and lust (Baba comments that this is “When violence is done for selfish motives by an individual or nation for power and selfish gains, etc.”).
2. Non-Violence of the Coward based on limited weakness of character and mind (Baba explains that “Those who do not resist aggression because of fear and for no other reason belong to this class”).
3. Selfless Violence based on limited human love (Baba writes that this is “Violence done in self-defense when one is attacked treacherously, and with no other selfish motive”).
4. Non-Violent Violence based on unlimited love (This is “Violence done solely to defend the weak where there is no question of self-defense or self-motivation”).
Baba then listed two classes of Non-Violence (Love):
5. Non-Violence of the Brave based on unlimited pure love (He comments, “This applies to those who, although not one with all through actual realization, consider no one as their enemy. They try to win over the aggressors through Love and give up their lives by being attacked, not through fear but through Love”).
6. Non-Violence Pure and Simple based on divine love (This is the goal of creation and Baba comments that “Here one sees all as his own Self and beyond both friendship and enmity. Never under any circumstances does a single thought of violence enter his mind”) (Meher Baba 2007a: 106-107).
It is safe to suggest that Gandhi practiced beautifully “Non-Violence of the Brave based on unlimited pure love.” He tried to win over aggressors to Love, sacrificing his body in fasting, in beatings, and in many other ways. He literally gave up his life by being attacked not through fear but through Love, chanting the sweet name of God on his lips as he breathed his last. Such a practice is rare since it demonstrates the consciousness of someone on the threshold of the goal of life, which Baba claimed Gandhi indeed was stationed, given that he said he had only three more lives to live until it would be achieved.
Baba commented that though “Non-Violence of the Brave” is to be aspired to because it is the preparation for the real goal of life––“Non-Violence Pure and Simple,” it cannot be forced upon the masses who do not yet possess the requisite maturity to hold such an experience and consciousness. To make them attempt such a way of life before they are ready, would risk them falling into what Meher Baba calls “Non-Violence of the Coward,” that is, the masses will end up resisting “aggression simply because of fear,” weakening their sense of self. Therefore, he advocated that one should lead the masses to “Non-Violence of the Brave” by first encouraging them to master “Non-Violent Violence” (or violence done on behalf of another with no thought of self); and if this is not yet possible, to encourage people to try “Selfless Violence” (or violence done in self-defense) (Meher Baba 2007a: 108-9). The goal, he repeats, is “Non-Violence, Pure and Simple,” but one achieves it through stages of mastery. He warns, “The means must not be confused with or otherwise mixed up with the goal itself” (Meher Baba 2007a: 110).
Julius Lipner notes that along with sacred scriptures, Gandhi relied on a specific understanding of human nature for his ideology of nonviolence, which I think accounts for the main difference between he and Meher Baba’s view of non-violence. Lipner writes, “For him [Gandhi], nonviolence was politically apt precisely because it was a moral absolute. And it was a moral absolute because it was rooted in human nature” as he understood it. Lipner continues that nonviolence for Gandhi, “is an expression of the human condition. It is how human beings can be true to themselves: Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute.”[3]
For Meher Baba, the human being is equal to evolution; that is, all forms in creation are contained within the human form, and as such, the human being experiences––in self-aware ways and at different stages of development in reincarnation––the consciousness of all other creatures. Contrary to Gandhi, for Baba the law of the human species is the law of the brute made conscious. We have within us, the drive to rip each other apart just as the lion seeks to tear apart the deer. At the same time, we have within us the aspiration to turn to the light as the rose seeks the sun. In Meher Baba’s teaching called “The Divine Theme,” which is described in his book God Speaks and The Nothing and the Everything, he explains the way in which consciousness grows along this path of evolution to the human form and from the human to the divine (See the two charts “Divine Theme” in God Speaks pp. 224, 226). This journey is, in his view, a long progressive process of growth of each soul from duality to union, from violence and conflict to harmony and love (or non-violence).
As a conclusion, I want to highlight this Divine Theme depicted in art and its relationship to Meher Baba’s view of violence and non-violence. I will also try to situate Gandhi within this cosmology. I apologize but this has to be a rather fast tour of murals of The Divine Theme that are installed within our Sufi Sanctuary in Walnut Creek, CA and in the Meher Baba Universal Spiritual Centre in Byramangala, India, south of Bangalore. These murals depict the different states of God as he develops consciousness of Himself in a progressive fashion from what Baba calls “evolution,” “reincarnation,” “involution,” and then “realization of Himself.”
Meher Baba says that each soul experiences 50,400,000 forms in evolution until it is ready to be human. There is no going backwards (Nothing and the Everything 291). God in the state of human reincarnation occurs next when consciousness is fully achieved but not able to know that its true nature is God owing to the sanskaras or impressions that evolution wound around it, veiling it from the light of its own Self-knowledge. The sanskaras are depicted by the gilded and colored ribbons and loops in each mural. After what Meher Baba says are 8,400,000 lives in reincarnation that shake loose sanskaras as a human being, a “Turning Point” follows in which each soul tires of the dual nature of human experience and starts to question the meaning of life and to seek something more (God Speaks 155; Nothing and the Everything 291). The soul enters the next stage of growth as God in the different states of what Meher Baba called “Involution” when sanskarasare unwound, gradually unveiling the light of one’s own Self-Consciousness. This is the spiritual path of return to God in his Infinite Conscious state, which Baba said takes 1,400,000 years (not lives) to achieve for each soul (Nothing and the Everything 134-5).
Where would Gandhi fit within this scheme? Julius Lipner wrote that “Gandhi once said that Truth is God (not God is Truth). In this respect, what he wanted by the life he lived, was to see ‘God’ face to face, in utter transparency.”[4]Relatedly, Meher Baba said that Gandhi had three more lives to live before he became God realized. He would, therefore, be stationed on the sixth plane of consciousness in Meher Baba’s system, which Baba called the plane of full illumination where one in fact sees God face to face and is overcome with a desire to eventually becomes what one sees.
As a Baba-lover, I see this friendship between Gandhi and Meher Baba as a tribute to them both: I would call it the Truth of Non-Violence of the Brave in friendship with the Truth of Non-Violence Pure and Simple.
Bibliography
Baba, Meher. 1985. Listen, Humanity. Atlanta and Denver: In Company With Meher Baba.
____. 1997. God Speaks. Walnut Creek, CA: Sufism Reoriented.
____. 2007a. Discourses I. Myrtle Beach, SC: Sheriar Foundation.
____. 2007b. Discourses II. Myrtle Beach, SC: Sheriar Foundation.
___. 2007c. Discourses III. Myrtle Beach, SC: Sheriar Foundation.
Coward, Harold, ed. 2003. Indian Critiques of Gandhi. New York: SUNY Press.
Irani, Beheram Jamshed and Desai, Sorabji Muncherji. 2020. Upasni Maharaj: A Perfect Master of India. Trans. Anurag Gumastha. Ed. Murshida Carol Weyland Conner, Gabrielle Cavagnaro, Eleanore Lambert, and Henry Mindlin. Walnut Creek, CA: Sufism Reoriented.
Kalchuri, Bhau. 1981. The Nothing and the Everything. Myrtle Beach, SC: Manifestation Inc.
____. Meher Prabhu: Lord Meher, The Biography of the Avatar of the Age, Meher Baba. Online edition http://www.lordmeher.org/rev/index.jsp; Last updated 9.20.19.
[1] Bhau Kalchuri, Lord Meher (hereafter LM)1941:2243. I am listing the year in which the quotation was made and then page number in these notes.
[2] The full title of this text is Meher Prabhu: Lord Meher, The Biography of the Avatar of the Age, Meher Baba. It was first published in Hindi, Bhau’s first language, and then in English as a 20-volume series of over 6500 pages in the 1980s. I am using the online edition, http://www.lordmeher.org, last updated 9.20.19. Hereafter LM.
[3] Julius Lipner in Indian Critiques of Gandhi, ed. Harold Coward (New York: SUNY Press, 2003), 242; his emphasis.
[4] Lipner, 244-45.
Meher Baba begging with New Life companion Adi K. Irani in 11.25.1949.
Meher Baba begging with New Life companion Adi K. Irani in 11.25.1949.
Read More
“Creation, Evolution, Reincarnation, Involution and Realization,” which was chart drawn by Rano Gayley under Meher Baba’s direction for God Speaks, 1961.
This brief explanation is meant to be a resource for my blogs on racial justice and Sufism Reoriented.
One can do no better than read Meher Baba’s explanations about what he called “The Divine Theme,” which is his explanation of the beginning, growth, and destiny of creation through the stages of “Creation, Evolution, Reincarnation, Involution and Realization.” See especially God Speaks, pp. 220-228 and the accompanying charts.
Meher Baba’s teaches in God Speaks, the Discourses, and The Nothing and the Everything a progressive understanding of karma and rebirth that leads to God-Realization for all souls without exception, which like all other Dharma traditions (Hindu, Jain, Sikh, and Buddhist), takes a long view of human growth through many lifetimes. However, unlike these other traditions which may teach that the number of lives one lives are indefinite and the direction may be regressive or progressive based on virtuous or vicious actions in a given life, Baba teaches that the trajectory of this extremely long development has a set number of lives, is always progressive (except in one case), and the key to its unfolding drama is the notion of “winding and unwinding of impressions” or saṃskāras in Sanskrit.
Meher Baba writes that all souls begin as unconscious God and finish as conscious God but in between gain this conscious state by building it over unimaginable spans of time. Baba writes that each soul can be compared to a drop of the Infinite Ocean of Divinity. The separation between the “drop-soul” and the Infinite Ocean is in reality imaginary. In the process of creation, each soul “loses” its identity with the Infinite Oversoul and imagines that it is finite in a long series of forms, though that series is followed in a progressive manner. It first becomes every form in every kingdom in biological evolution, one at a time, from the gas kingdom, to the stone, metal, plant, insect and worm, fish, bird, and animal kingdoms. During this process the soul gathers or “winds” the saṃskāras or impressions that hold the level of consciousness achieved in each form like a net. God Speaks defines saṃskāras as
“impressions which are left on the soul as memories from former lives, and which determine one’s desires and actions in the present lifetime.” (p. 296).
This process of evolving consciousness happens through 50.4 million forms in the natural word. The general rule is that once a “sanskaric” net is formed, it cannot be unformed, therefore, once a level of consciousness is achieved, that consciousness cannot be lost. When those 50.4M forms are mastered, each soul then becomes a human being and incarnates in 8.4 million human lives exploring every possible permutation of being a human (becoming each sex, every sexual orientation, ability, class, ethnicity, religion, morality, etc.). After this set number of human lives, the soul has experienced all possible combination of saṃskāra that was inherited from the animal kingdom and is ready to “unwind” them back to God. This is a difficult process that Meher Baba called “involution” and is also called the spiritual path of return to God that proceeds in seven stages through the “subtle” sphere and then the “mental” sphere (see chart above). Meher Baba said that
“[t]hese seven stages of gradual involution of the consciousness of God in the man state may be compared with the wide-open eyes of a man, at first gazing straight ahead of him and away from him. Then, in an attempt to behold his own self, he lowers his eyes gradually, shifting them in seven stages, until eventually his range of vision includes his own self” (God Speaks, p. 114).
Involution comprises a much smaller (though still substantial number) of human lifetimes than 8.4M, when one returns to God traversing seven spiritual planes of consciousness: the first three planes are in the subtle world, the fourth on the cusp of the subtle and mental world, and the last two planes are stationed in the mental world.
For Meher Baba, learning is always progressive. In other words, one can never go backwards except in one seemingly bizarre case: when one reaches what he calls the 4th plane of consciousness, where one has mastered the planes of God’s Infinite Energy in the subtle sphere, but is on the threshold of God’s Infinite Mind and its “full blast of intense desires and emotions” in the mental sphere (God Speaks, 44). This is the true “Dark Night of the Soul” as St. John of the Cross called it, where the tremendous Infinite Desire tempts the misuse of the Infinite Energy. If this misuse happens, Meher Baba writes that
“the experience of liberating this infinite energy invariably proves fatal at this juncture for the soul on the fourth plane. The result is that all of the consciousness gained by the soul is violently disintegrated, and the soul retains only the most finite consciousness and identifies itself once again with the stone-form. This soul then has to pass through the whole process of evolution from the stone-form onward to regain full consciousness” as a human being” (God Speaks, 45).
Baba assures his readers that this disintegration is very, very rare since souls stationed on the 5th plane of consciousness have the responsibility to mentor and protect the 4th plane soul, seeing to her or his advancement without peril. However, if it happens, going back to the stone form is not a form of punishment but a reaction.
In terms of the drama of this transition from the 4th plane to the 5th plane of consciousness, one might think of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and its story of the one ring of power that can rule all but not without corrupting its possessor, awakening unmanageable desire. Sauron, the Lord of the Rings, might be compared to a 4th-plane soul unable to use the ring’s power for growth, but is mastered by its raw and overwhelming force. The character Tom Bombadil is the true master of this ring of power, someone that we may say is at least on the 5th plane of consciousness in Meher Baba’s system, a pilgrim of the higher Mind and its Infinite desires and emotions. He could wear the ring with no negative effect and even make it disappear and reappear at will for Frodo the Hobbit who was its bearer, tasked with destroying it in the fires of Mount Doom. Frodo might be thought of a veiled pilgrim on the path of return to God, traversing the treacherous 4th plane into the 5th, though not tempted in the same way as Sauron owing to the mercy of his being veiled from the “full blast of intense desires and emotions” in the mental sphere. I always thought it a tragic mistake to not include Tom Bombadil in Peter Jackson’s films since he is the very goal of the story, someone who has passed on from the lessons of the ring of power. (Meher Baba loved this trilogy, by the way, having it read to him by his sister Mani).
Related to the Christian understanding of the afterlife, Meher Baba teaches that heaven and hell exist as provisional states on the 2nd plane of consciousness that each soul in the “winding” phase experiences in between human lives to “digest” one’s previous life on the gross plane. Depending on the “digestion,” the experience can be heavenly or hellish. Heaven or hell are important to experience the full force of one’s love and/or lack of love and to learn from this before one incarnates for the next life and its lessons or karma. God Speaks defines karma as “action. Fate. The natural and necessary happenings in one’s lifetime, preconditioned by one’s past lives” (p. 289). Heaven and Hell are not necessary for souls fully engaged in the unwinding phase since they are doing “life reviews,” as it were, while alive, and processing many lives in one. In Meher Baba’s own words:
“This state of the soul, in the apparent gap between death and birth, is generally called hell or heaven, and this process of intermittent association and dissociation of consciousness of the conscious soul in human-form, now fully conscious, is termed the “Reincarnation Process.”
“If the predominant counterpart of the impressions of opposites (such as virtue and vice, good and evil, male and female, etc.), as experienced by the soul now associated only with the subtle and mental, is of virtue or goodness (i.e., the positive aspect of the opposite impressions), then the soul is said to be in heaven. If it is of vice or evil (i.e., the negative aspect of opposite impressions), then the soul is said to be in hell.
“The states of heaven and hell are nothing but states of intensive experiences of the consciousness of the soul, experiencing either of the predominant counterparts of the opposite impressions while the soul is dissociated from the gross human body or form. The soul itself does not go to heaven or hell, as is the general belief, because it is eternally infinite and eternally in the Over-Soul. It is the consciousness of the soul which experiences the impressions.
“As soon as the predominant counterpart of impressions is experienced and exhausted, and just when equilibrium is about to be maintained between the opposites of impressions of the last human-form that was dropped, at this juncture the soul automatically associates with the next-most human-form, moulded of the consolidated impressions of opposites which were about to be in a state of equilibrium.
“Thus the gross consciousness of the soul, after experiencing either hell or heaven, associates with the next human-form (takes another birth) to experience and exhaust the residual opposite impressions of the last birth. As has already been said, this next human-form of the soul is nothing but the consolidated mould of the residual opposite impressions of the last form” (God Speaks, 34).
“Our Lady of Ferguson” by Mark Doox. See his website here.
I have some preliminary thoughts related to racial justice and my own spiritual community of Sufism Reoriented. It seems appropriate to make this attempt on the upcoming celebration of August 2nd which commemorates the special Franciscan Feast of Universal Pardon. The Perfect Master Francis of Assisi created this feast because he wanted all people to experience the uncompromising inclusion of the Divine at his “spiritual seat” of the Portiuncula chapel. This small sacred place was important for him personally, since there he was finally able to let go of feeling deeply worthless and embrace true humility in union with Christ in all creatures. It is the experience that the jivanmukta (God-realized soul) Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897-1981) described when he said, “Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, Love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life moves.” Beloved Francis was concerned that since everyone in his world believed that only going to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome would confer such a blessing, he wanted to provide a tangible way for his fellow “minores,” who could not afford the trip to Rome, to feel this pardon and this freedom for love right where they live and in their bodies as he did.
There is a wonderful replica of the Porziuncula chapel here in Washington, DC, which is on the garden-grounds of the Franciscan Monastery. My studio-office is on the grounds as well, right behind the chapel. I feel that it was no accident that I have been creating art and writing scholarship under the aegis of this unique tradition since 2006, as my mission at “Reunion Studios” is to create a new world culture that celebrates a reconciliation and reunion with our true Self, with others, and with the natural world. There is an even more fabulous replica of the Porziuncula in San Francisco, CA that I recommend seeing after this travail of pandemics allows travel. It is called the Nuova Porziuncola located in the North Beach part of town that Pope Benedict XVI named a Holy Site in 2008. In the inlay of the front steps are written in Italian Francis’s saying, “Oh Brothers and Sisters, I want you all to go to heaven!”
Exterior of Porziuncola chapel at the Franciscan Monastery in Washington, DC
Interior of the Nuova Porziuncula in San Francisco, CA
Francis never emphasized hell, only heaven. Dante Alighieri, who later wrote about hell or l’inferno in his epic poem La Commedia never said that people were there because God put them there. They chose it rather than face the Truth of their existence in Paradise, which is the genius of Dante. Some Christians today are finally waking up to the idea that there is no eternal place of conscious torment for any soul after death; that such an idea is incompatible with Jesus’ most important teaching that one love God with one’s entire being and love one’s neighbor as one’s very self. The key is making sure to understand that one’s neighbor is one’s very self and that there is no creature that is not one’s neighbor. The teaching resonates with the memorable response by Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) in the tradition of Advaita Vedānta. When asked how one should treat others, the great jivanmukti replied, “There are no others.” The most recent book by Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart argues for abandoning hell in Christian belief, entitled That All Shall Be Saved. He writes,
“Really, all our language of Christian love is rendered vacuous to the precise degree that we truly believe in eternal perdition. Love my neighbor all I may, if I believe hell is real, I cannot love him as myself. My conviction that there is a hell to which one of us might go while the other enters into the Kingdom of God means that I must be willing to abandon him — indeed, abandon everyone — to a fate of total misery while yet continuing to assume that, having done so, I shall be able to enjoy perfect eternal bliss (155)”.
One writer in the US Evangelical tradition, Rick Pidock, argues that Evangelicals’ attachment to this teaching is related to love of Bible and love of going to church services over love of neighbor. The (il)logic is that going to church is one’s ticket to heaven. Not going to a Christian church is unfaithfulness to God’s scripture and reason enough for damnation. In the context of a global pandemic when going to church services is quite literally placing one’s neighbor in peril, such teaching about hell ignore’s Jesus’ own word and has real world effects. See Pidock’s insightful critique here. He writes,
“once you have allowed in your mind for someone to be set on fire forever as something they deserve, the thought of them suffering temporarily from COVID-19 in a hospital bed doesn’t quite seem to be that big a deal anymore. The theology of eternal conscious torment deadens the humanity of both the person being seen and the seer.”
The same dynamic plays out in the white Christian ability to ignore the suffering of Black people or any other subaltern group in American society, while maintaining its long traditions of white supremacy, conscious or unconscious.
There is a similar problem related to understandings of the afterlife in my own spiritual path of Sufism Reoriented and the wider world of Meher Baba-lovers. The issue twists our thoughts, feelings, and treatment of others in this life. As a group of about 450, Sufism Reoriented boasts only a handful of Blacks, Indigenous, and people of color. In terms of the wider Baba world, it is more difficult to quantify, but people of European descent make up the majority of participants in any Meher Baba gathering in the US that I have attended. When in India for these gatherings that I have been to, those representing the US and other western countries are also by far a majority of white people. Simply said, in the United States of America, we who love Meher Baba comprise a white community. I am not embarrassed by European culture and its iteration in the New World, for I know the important divine assignment to master matter that it accomplished as preparation for a new spiritual age of joy and harmony. (See Murshida Carol Weyland Conner’s article about this issue here). I am only taking note that we as a group are a by-product of the racism that accompanied this material mastery and the racist nation in which we as a Sufi school was formed. I am proud to say that in some important ways, to the extent that we, who are Sufis follow the guidance of our Murshids, we use our power and influence to confront racism within and without. In the current parlance, we seek to take responsibility for the lifelong work of admitting when we are being racist (because we are) and make every effort to be antiracist each day, protecting Black bodies from white supremacy. We received incredible training to be of service in the pattern of Meher Baba for years following our Murshids, and now we are using that training in more public ways in award-winning service projects that Murshida Conner designed and manages. These projects seek nothing less than completely alleviating the scourge of poverty. See the page dedicated to Murshida on our website and scroll down to “White Pony Express” to learn more about the beautiful work being done in Contra Costa County in Northern California, here in Washington, DC, and in Myrtle Beach, SC. Her projects attack the issues of racism head on, which is to dissolve the economic roots of its existence. Hopefully, more people will catch this breeze of service and create similar programs that give from the surplus of privilege to the want of those on the margins, all with an eye to place the marginalized within the mainstream of American life and culture.
We as Baba Lovers need to recognize that we are not capable of knowing how to be anti-racist in a vacuum or in theory. We need to recognize that only those who suffer bodily harm at the hands of white supremacy are the only ones capable of being a sincere and honest mirror. Some of us are trying, but I see enough evidence in our Sufi membership and in the wider Baba world that we still don’t care. We don’t recognize the supreme authority of Blacks, the Indigenous, and Peoples of Color in this area. Instead we “whitesplain” and use our teaching about karma and rebirth to place an insidious comfortable distance between us and racial justice.
Sufism Reoriented is so far a white group. I think it means that we are not yet worthy of the maturity that Blacks, Indigenous, and Peoples of Color have had to learn carrying the traumatic burden of racism in their bodies. I look forward to the day when Sufism grows up enough be a truly mixed community.
What do I mean that as Baba lovers our brand of belief in karma and rebirth distorts how we think of racial justice? I will share these thoughts in my next blog post.
Happy early Feast of Universal Pardon. May we know the mercy of God’s Love so deeply within that we may live it more fully without. There is no supremacy but Love’s.
Icon written by American iconographer Brother Simeon Davis. See https://www.monasteryicons.com/category/original-hand-painted-icons
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Read MoreThe celebration of Christ’s Resurrection and bodily Transfiguration is one that is best celebrated as a communal event, just as the Eastern Orthodox Christians will celebrate it this coming Sunday (They are on a different calendar than the Latin West). See this beautiful icon from Turkey as an example of what I mean. The Orthodox celebrate Christ first going down not up. He goes down to break apart the doors of Hell and reaching his hand into the darkness there to pull all people out with him as they ALL rise. The Resurrection is not an individual matter, but a social one and it is uncompromisingly universal and inclusive of all peoples, whether they be human or vegetable, fish, or mountain range. Catholics and Protestants need to retrieve this. Richard Rohr, who is a Franciscan and is sensitive to the issue, does this in his new book The Universal Christ (Convergent Books, 2019), and earlier Dr. John Dominic Crossan and Sarah Sexton Crossan’s book Resurrecting Easter: How the West Lost and the East Kept the Original Easter Vision (Harper Collins, 2018) make this excellent point.
Easter is celebrated in the Catholic Church over an 8-day period––what’s called an “octave,” which is also a musical term. I think it is true to say that music is one way in which spiritual truth and love are best expressed. The liturgical music that shaped me growing up came through my mom and dad. We sang all kinds of songs for mass, mostly folk music which was made popular at the time with the changes of Vatican II. But at the University of Notre Dame where I sang in many choirs, I learned more about hymnody. Steve Warner and the ND Folk Choir were my main teachers. I am so grateful. Each day now, during this pandemic the University of Notre Dame sends an email to friends and family with music and the mass readings for the day. Today’s Gospel reading is from Luke 24:13-25, the story of the Road to Emmaus. Jesus greets two men walking to this small village from Jerusalem and they don’t recognize him until he stops and breaks bread with them. He vanishes from their sight in the breaking, but he remains in their hearts in the recognition. It is a wonderful story that resonates with the experience of Meher Baba when he dropped his body and his lovers gathered at his tomb the first week of February 1969, no one noticing that he had gone. He was so fully present because his love was unbounded! The song that ND sent along with the Luke story is sung by the Notre Dame Children’s Choir, which is equally wonderful as the story. The hymn is called “Joyful is the Dark.” It is set to a profound poem written by the Englishman Brian Wren. The darkness of death and hell is celebrated in this song as the very birthplace of light, which encourages me at least to befriend the dark. I don’t know of a better message and Dr. Wren does it justice with deep feeling. The musical composition by Hillary Doerries is also very lovely.
In the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, they celebrate something similar that has been forming my experience for the past 20 years. They talk about and more importantly, experience a dawning new creation and new human being as a result of the work of their spiritual guides, the Mother (1878-1973) and Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950). The darkness of the old world that is right now trying to hold on to its supremacy is dying: a world of “mainstream and marginalized,” of “people who are right and people who are wrong,” of “old-time religion.” Their dawning “new time religion” is not a religion at all, but a non-sectarian path called the Integral Yoga, and it seeks to break old forms and integrate what can move forward in the new creation. The Ashram is still going strong today in Pondicherry, India, comprised of some of the most mature human beings I have ever met. It is a wonder.
The Mother said that the old world exists next to this new world that is now coming, a world of universal inclusion, universal transfiguration. But to live in that new world, to strengthen its presence so that it can take over the strength of the old world, one must let go of the old ways of being religious. One must set out on a completely new adventure. I don’t want to make these posts too long, so I invite you to read the full account of the Mother’s words on this delicious subject here. (She made these remarks on July 10, 1957, which is an important date for those who love Meher Baba as he began his silence on July 10, 1925). The following is a taste of her words that moves me, and I hope it moves you too; that you might see how much God is flooding all paths with the same divine force even as the paths themselves become more what they are meant to be––the Catholic mystic path, the Sufism Reoriented path, and the Integral Yoga path in my case. Even more, there is a flood of divine force that invites one into the third space between all these paths, as I wrote about last time.
The Mother concludes her remarks this way,
“There are people who love adventure. It is these I call, and I tell them this: ‘I invite you to the great adventure.’
“It is not a question of repeating spiritually what others have done before us, for our adventure begins beyond that. It is a question of a new creation, entirely new, with all the unforeseen events, the risks, the hazards it entails—a real adventure, whose goal is certain victory, but the road to which is unknown and must be traced out step by step in the unexplored. Something that has never been in this present universe and that will never be again in the same way. If that interests you... well, let us embark. What will happen to you tomorrow—I have no idea.
“One must put aside all that has been foreseen, all that has been devised, all that has been constructed, and then... set off walking into the unknown. And—come what may! There.”
Today is Good Friday, the commemoration of Jesus’ Crucifixion, the second day of the Triduum. This special time is auspicious for me to begin a new chapter in life: to die to an old, though wonderful stage of growth, and in the residue and humus of this life, plant a new seed. I want to share my planting, my fertilizing, my watering, and my tending. It is a risky thing to do in this public way but feel the vulnerability is necessary to bear fruit that can be of service. One of the fruits I hope will be a book and this blog, I think, can be a place to explore ideas and potential expressions. Your sincere and compassionate comments are welcome. I feel, somehow, within the context of this Covid 19 Pandemic, I am freer to do this, supported by a shared, globally shared experience of helplessness and hopelessness that brings us all together in one boat.
I have been thoughtful about my spiritual journey from Jesus to other masters, most notably Meher Baba and his Sufi Murshids, as well as the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. (Ramana Maharshi, Papaji, Nisargadatta, Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda are among a few others who are expanding my spiritual family as well). The passage from Jesus to these beautiful Friends has been a twenty-year journey that is now culminating in a way that propels me to return to Jesus and my Catholic formation from their vantage.
The need to do this was most fully awoken this past July with my dad’s death after a battle with cancer. His funeral mass and my worshiping with my family since then has flooded the river of my childhood religion with an ocean of love. I have decided that I will write a book about this process as it relates to a theology of the God-Man across spiritual paths, to channel my creativity in this way to help myself process grief, to integrate faith traditions, and possibly to help others who find themselves in between life stages and in between religions that feed their soul in different ways. I find myself living in what scholars call a “third space” where one can find support to see one’s home tradition more fully in light of another. This third space is also, I have discovered, a setting that hosts a very high form of love that floods all other spaces.. In fact, this third space can become a home in and of itself. My childhood home of Catholicism has been expanded by my adventures of finding a home in Meher Baba and his spiritual school of Sufism Reoriented, as well as the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. I want to explore the potentials of sharing this journey through this media to see how it strikes others, how it might name or not their reality.
For my Christian brothers and sisters, I wish you a blessed Good Friday. May our contemplation of the cross awoken a deeper commitment to share His suffering as we seek to alleviate it in others. If we cannot alleviate, may we stand in it silently with others so they know and feel that they are not alone. I have found that sometimes a smile will do.
The Dawn of Youpon Dunes, Myrtle Beach, SC
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