|
The story of Meherdham begins
with the life and work of Avatar Meher Baba
(1894-1969). Meher Baba, whose name means
?Compassionate Father?, affirmed that he is the
Avatar, God in human form. At critical periods
of human history, the ?World Teacher?, or the
Christ or Prophet of his time, brings a
?springtide of creation? to our impoverished
Earth, adapting his work and message to the
specific needs of our times. Through his
infinite love and dedicated service, he helps
all individuals move closer to God, who dwells
within each heart. His incarnation, perfectly
blending full consciousness of God and man,
revitalizes the principles of divine life on
earth. In his latest incarnation as Avatar,
Meher Baba sought to awaken humanity to Divine
Love, which encompasses and lifts all other
loves and strivings.
From the Encyclopedia Britannica:
Avatar Meher Baba was born February 25, 1894, in
Poona, India. He was also called ?The Awakener?.
His original name was Merwan Sheriar Irani. He
was a spiritual master in western India with a
sizable following both in that country and
abroad. Beginning on July 10, 1925, he observed
silence for the last 44 years of his life,
communicating with his disciples at first
through an alphabet board but increasingly with
gestures.
He observed that he had come ?not to teach but
to awaken?, adding that ?things that are real
are given and received in silence?. He was born
into a a Zoroastrian family of Persian descent.
He was educated in Poona and attended Deccan
College there, where at the age of 19, he met a
aged Muslim woman, Hazrat Babajan, the first of
five ?perfect masters? (spiritually enlightened,
or ?God-realized, persons) who over the next
seven years helped him find his own spiritual
identity. That identity, Meher Baba said, was as
the avatar of this age, interpreting that
Vedantic term to mean the periodic incarnation
of God in human form. He placed himself among
such universal religious figures as Zoroaster,
Rama, Krishna, Gautama Buddha, Jesus and
Muhammad. ?I am the same Ancient One come again
to your midst?, he told his disciples, declaring
that all major religions are revelations of ?the
One Reality which is God?. Meher Baba?s
cosmology may be summarized as follows: The goal
of all life is to realize the absolute oneness
of God, from whom the universe emanated as a
result of the whim of unconscious divinity to
know itself as conscious divinity. In pursuit of
consciousness, evolution of forms occurs in
seven stages: Stone or metal, vegetable, worm
fish, bird, animal, and human. Every
individualized soul must experience all of
theses forms in order to gain full
consciousness. Once consciousness is attained,
the burden of impressions accumulated in these
forms prevents the soul from realizing its
identity with God.
To gain this realization, the individual must
traverse an inward spiritual path, eliminating
all false impressions of individuality and
eventuating in the knowledge of the ?real self?
as God. Meher Baba saw his work as awakening the
world through love to a new consciousness of the
oneness of all life. To that end, he lived a
life of love and service which included
extensive work with the poor, the physically and
mentally ill, and many others, performing such
tasks as feeding the poor, cleaning the latrines
of untouchables, and bathing lepers. These
outward activities Meher Baba saw as indications
of the inner transformation of consciousness
that he came to give the world. He established
and later dismantled many institutions of
service, which he compared to scaffolding
temporarily erected to construct a building that
really was within the human heart.
He said that a ?new humanity? would emerge from
his life?s work, and that he would bring about
an unprecedented release of diving love in the
world. Between 1931 and 1958 he mad many visits
to the United States and Europe, on one such
trip in 1952 establishing the Meher Spiritual
Center in Myrtle Beach, SC. A similar centre,
Avatar?s Abode, was created at Woomby,
Queensland, Australia, in 1958. From the
mid-1960s Meher Baba was in seclusion, and
during that period several U. S. drug
experimenters were drawn to him in a quest for
spiritual truth. Through them, his admonitions
the non-medical use of psychedelic and other
drugs came to the attention of the news media in
the U. S. and West. He warned young people
explicitly that ?drugs are harmful mentally,
physically, and spiritually?,---trying to draw
them away from dugs and toward a spiritual life.
Meher Baba never sought to form a sect of
proclaim a dogma; he attracted and welcomed
followers of many faiths and every social class
with a message emphasizing love and compassion,
the elimination of the selfish ego, and the
potential of realizing God within themselves.
Although his equation of the several
manifestations of God was syncretic, he won many
followers from sects and denominations that
repudiated the syncretism, and encouraged those
follower s to be strong in their original
faiths. After his death, his followers heeded
his wish that they not form an organization, but
continued to gather informally and often to
discuss and read his works and express through
music, poetry, dance, or drama their reflections
on his life.
His tomb at Meherabad, near Ahmednagar, has
become a place of pilgrimage for his followers
throughout the world. His books include
Discourses (5 vol. 1938-43; the earliest
dictated on and alphabet board, the others by
gesture). God Speaks: The Theme of Creation and
Its Purposes (1955), and The Everything and the
Nothing (1963).
Copyright 1994-2004 Encyclopedia Britannica,
Inc.
More information about Meher Baba, his work and
messages, books and centers is available through
these links.
|
