Cycles

     

 

     One cycle is twelve thousand million years [12,000,000,000]. The scientists do not know anything at all about cycles, but this hint will open their eyes. The evolution of the world began two billion years ago and evolution, which started from the nebula, will last until the completion of the cycle—when the Mahapralaya (the total dissolution of the universe) will take place.

          The human form has been evolving for millions of years and will continue to evolve. After a billion years, man will only be five inches in height at the most but will be very brainy. In the beginning of this cycle, man was fourteen feet tall and would live up to three hundred years.

     From the nebula came the four elements, though they were not produced simultaneously. First came heat, then crust, rocks and lastly, water.

     What is there in the universe? Billions and billions of nebulae. Every nebula contains millions of worlds and ours is the earth. What is there in the whole universe? It is gas in its two hundred and seventy-six subtle states. Before gas turns into the first manifestation of the gross, it evolves through 276 subtle stages. None of the scientists knows about these 276 subtle forms of gas before its first manifestation in the gross. Subtle gas very gradually turns into gross form such as hydrogen, oxygen, et cetera. In the nebulae, in all heavenly bodies, and in the planets there is evolution. All of evolution begins from the nebulae. The 276 subtle stages begin from the beginning of the nebulae, which are at the source of subtle energy (Pran) and subtle space (Akash).

     The gas left over after cooling turned into air; and there is no air one hundred miles beyond our earth. This means that, even before the elements—not before heat, but before water—the electron and proton evolved, forming the atom.

     In the beginning, our world was very, very hot. After slowly cooling down, what happened? All the gas was solidified. As the planet became cooler, a crust formed. With the gradual cooling, the earth's crust became solid and the center remained hot. Rocks were formed from the crust. The center was full of gas and extremely hot. There are natural gaps in the crust, because the formation of the rocks was not regular.

     What happened then was, when the gas became cool, it turned into liquid; ant this liquid (water) seeped in between the rocks. Rocks were turned into mountains and the valleys, and the cool gas (water) filled them. This created the oceans and the seas. And evolution of form begins with the oceans.

     

 

     A higher state of understanding is permanent illumination, through which the illumined one experiences and sees all things as they are. In this state, one feels in harmony with everyone and everything, and realizes the divinity in every phase of life, and is able to impart happiness to others. Once this state is attained, one attends to all duties and material affairs, and yet feels mentally detached from the world. This is true renunciation.

     The last and highest state of understanding is the merging of the soul into the Limitless Ocean of infinite bliss, knowledge and power. The Perfect One who has himself attained this freedom can make thousands perfect like himself. I intend bringing about a great spiritual revival in the near future, utilizing the tremendous amount of energy possessed by America for the purpose. Such a spiritual outpouring as I visualize usually takes place at the beginning or end of a cycle and only a Perfect One, who has reached the Christ state of consciousness, can make such a universal appeal.

     My work will embrace everything—it will permeate every phase of life. Perfection would fall far short of the ideal if it were to accept one thing and eschew another. The general spiritual push that I shall give to the whole world will automatically adjust problems such as politics, economics and sex, though these are not directly connected with the original theme. New values and significance will be attached to things which appear to baffle solution at the moment.

     The benefits that shall accrue to different nations and countries when I bring about the spiritual upheaval will be largely determined by the amount of energy each one possesses. The greater the energy however misapplied or misdirected—the greater the response.

     The Master merely diverts the current into the right channel. It will be one of my greatest miracles to bring together and blend the realistic West with the idealistic East; and the West at the zenith of its material and intellectual attainment and the East at the height of its spiritual manifestation in the shape of the Avatar will meet without shaming or looking down upon each other.

     I repeat, materialism and spirituality must go hand in hand. The balance of head and heart must be maintained; the head for discrimination, the heart for feeling, whereby it is possible to realize infinite consciousness in art, science, nature and in every phase of life.

     

 

     I have not come to establish any cult, society or organization, nor even to establish a new religion. The religion I will give teaches the knowledge of the One behind the many.

     The book which I shall make people read is the book of the heart, which holds the key to the mystery of life. As for ritual, I shall teach humanity to discriminate, express and live it rather than utter it. I shall bring about a happy blending of the head and heart.

     Societies and organizations have never succeeded in bringing Truth nearer. Realization of the Truth is solely the concern of the individual.

     Every being is a point from which a start could be made toward the Limitless Ocean of love, bliss, knowledge and goodness already within him. No spiritual Master brings religion to the world in the form it eventually assumes. His very presence is a blessing and radiates spirituality. He imparts it to others by personal contact. The so-called religions are an effort to commemorate that association with a great spiritual Master, and to preserve his atmosphere and influence. It is like an archeological department trying to preserve things which only resuscitate the past. The living spirit being absent, religions or organizations gradually lose their glamour. The result is a mental revolt against the established order. Something more substantial and practical is required which expresses the life of the spirit.

     There exists at the moment a universal dissatisfaction and an indescribable longing for something that will end the chaos and misery that is holding the world in its grip. I will satisfy this craving and lead the world to real happiness and peace by making people look more deeply into things than heretofore.

     As a rule, Masters help individually according to temperament and fitness of the aspirant, but this being an Avataric period, which means the end of the previous cycle and the beginning of a new one, my spiritual help to humanity will be both individual and collective.

     The period of junction of the old and new cycle usually connotes the advent of a Master who rejuvenates religious thought, infusing new life and meaning into the old order of things. Besides imparting the highest state of spirituality to a select few, he gives a general push to the whole world.

     

 

     My next advent, after I drop this body, will be after seven hundred years, and that will mark the end and the beginning of a cycle of cycles. All cycles of time in illusion end and begin after seven hundred to fourteen hundred years. There have been and will be millions and billions of such cycles in a cycle of cycles. Thus, there is no end to illusion, which always remains illusion.

     

 

     A person has to pass through three stages before Realization—evolution, reincarnation and advancement on the path. From stone to animal to human form is evolution; this is the first stage. With the human form, evolution ends and the cycle of rebirth begins; this is the second stage. The third stage is involution through the spiritual planes.

     In Africa there is a full swing of evolution, as all types of animals, plants and metals are found there. In Europe and America, reincarnation is intensified with numerous people taking birth after birth entangled together. In Asia there is spiritual progress and advancement on the path. That is why saints and Masters are found in the East, particularly India.

     

 

     The spiritual revival that you ask about is not very far off and I am going to bring it about in the near future, utilizing the tremendous amount of misapplied energy possessed by America for this purpose. Such a spiritual outburst as I visualize usually takes place every seven or eight hundred years at the end or beginning of a cycle, and only the Perfect One who has reached the Christ state of consciousness can appeal and work so very universally. My work will embrace everything. It will affect and control every phase of life. In the general spiritual push that I shall impart to the world, problems such as politics, economics and sex will all be solved automatically and adjusted.

     

 

     Floods from the Kosi River took a toll of hundreds; villages were literally wiped out. But the destruction could not be averted. Such disasters are on a small scale, limited to specific areas. If there is war and atom bombs are used, all nations will be affected. There will be floods and earthquakes, and no remedy can be suggested for such calamities.

     It is said about atom bombs that they create widespread earthquakes. In the case of atomic warfare, there is a possibility of the earth's outer crust cracking. As a result of the experiments of testing the atom and hydrogen bomb, a whole island [in the Phillipines] disappeared within five minutes. This happened because the origin of matter is gas. I have written about it in my book. When matter is vaporized, space and gas have three factors. The world, crores (tens of millions) of years old, can be destroyed in seven days. How long-lasting is this world, and how many times has it been formed and wiped out?

     Many a world has gone, and this too will go. To take its place, another world is being made ready. Three-fourths of it is already ready, one-fourth remains to be formed. If this world is destroyed today, evolution will start in another. Evolution consists of a fixed process of ages—stone age, vegetable age, worm age, and so forth. If this world is destroyed today, an interval will remain, but by natural processes new life in a new world will take millions of years to materialize. Millions of years are required for another world to come into being.

     Natural and unnatural catastrophes come in cycles of time, not in ages. A cycle is made up of so many ages. Just as after four years a leap year occurs and a day is added for calculation purposes instead of adding a fraction of a day monthly; similarly this destruction will mean leaping millions of years. There is no question of time. Millions of years mean one second, because there is nothing such as time.

     Elcha's age is age forty. (Looking at Elcha, Baba asked him) Do forty years exist for you now? You can understand forty years, but not at this moment. Why? Because there is no question of time. This means that you are forty years old, but at the moment you have no realization of these forty years, as you have no need to think of it. But if you give it a thought, then you picture the whole period of forty years in a moment; if you do not, it does not exist for you. Therefore, in eternity there is no question of time.

     Baba's comments on atomic warfare were particularly timely. Twelve days later, Russia exploded its first hydrogen bomb.

     

 

     A Catholic priest, Father Anthony, the principal of Saint Catherine of Siena School in Bombay, came for Meher Baba's darshan on May 12th, 1960. This Catholic priest had dedicated his life to serving the poor. Baba remarked to him:

     I am well pleased with your work among destitute and abandoned children. By serving the abandoned, you are really serving Jesus Christ, because he was also abandoned by all, even by his own apostles. The emblem of abandonment is the cross. Hence, to serve the abandoned is to serve the Christ, and I am he, undoubtedly.

     I am with you in your work, as I am myself in you. Difficulties, lack of sympathy, and hostile opposition will be there in your work, but I will help you. You have my blessing and love.

     The cross of Christ is also the symbol of sacrifice. Hence, I say that you should sacrifice your whole self and plunge yourself unreservedly into the work of helping the destitute children. By sacrificing your everything, you will find All.

     The Catholic priest was so happy to receive this spontaneous message from Baba, he asked permission to publish it in his quarterly journal Basic Education. Baba agreed and made him repeat the message (which had been taken down). This he did, except for the last sentence of the first paragraph, at which Baba stated, "You have left out the most significant part," and Baba repeated: "I am he, undoubtedly."

     On a previous occasion a month before, Baba had commented about Jesus to the mandali:

     Jesus sometimes used to tell his disciples things which they could not understand at all. But despite all that, they stuck to him wholeheartedly and followed him until the very end, because they understood this much, that the working of the God-Man was a subject far beyond human understanding.

     It is the same with me. Sometimes, I say things which you are at a total loss to understand. This is the last cycle of cycles, so I observe silence that it may bear fruit. I will speak only one Word. Innumerable such cycles have gone by, and innumerable are the times I have descended. It is not for the first time that I am observing silence . . . .

     

 

     On Saturday, November 10th, 1962, Baba left Poona for Meherazad with the men and women mandali. He stopped at Bund Gardens at 8:00 A.M., where the Poona lovers had assembled. About sixty-five of the Westerners, including Elizabeth, Kitty, Jane, Wendy and Charles Haynes, Ruth White and Bili Eaton, had also come. They were delayed because of a problem in booking their return flights. Baba sat in a chair for a while and departed after his arti was sung. Lovers pressed around his car to kiss his outstretched hand as he left.

     Perhaps Jane Haynes has summed up the feeling of many who participated in this unique gathering when she said:

     The East-West Gathering was unprecedented. It was the only time in our lives that we ever experienced what Baba calls oneness. You hear about it and read about it and try to understand, when Baba says to try to find him in everyone, that we are all one. But because of our false self, it is one thing to hear it, another to experience it. We actually experienced oneness under the pandal. There were people of every color, race and creed present. But with the Beloved sitting there, moving his beautiful hands like a symphony conductor, it seemed as though it was one heartbeat. It felt like we were one person sitting there. Every single soul felt that he or she was the only one in the whole world, and Baba was giving him or her something special. His divinity made us feel that way.

      The East-West Gathering was an uniquely significant event in our Age. In Meher Baba's love, a vast array of individuals had become one family, whereby distinctions of race, sect, class and religion were wiped away. It was the first time in this cycle that mankind witnessed such a spectacle. The Avatar declared that he is the Father of the whole universe and all its inhabitants are his children. Neither East nor West remained. A small portion of humanity became one family, which, over the years, will grow into a universal family of all mankind. Mankind will look toward Meher Baba as their Father. Now the lovers, devotees and followers of Meher Baba must direct their energies in assembling the separate and quarreling children on Earth into one universal family in which only love and truth reign.

     

 

      . . . manner. Karachi was under curfew, wires were down, no telegrams delivered, yet we got through, and when we arrived helpless in Bahrain, and could not reach anyone, the BOAC people sent us to their rest house and the man on the desk noticed my little photo pin of Baba and immediately went into action to help us as all his people in India were devotees of the Master. We barely got out of a terrible storm which lasted several days near Karachi on the water and turned back other planes, and shortly afterwards the riots started in Bombay. Baba protected us all the way through.

     I close this poor report by stating that there is every evidence that Meher Baba is the Avatar and the Qutub of all the Sufis, and I regard him as such. The great Sufis of India so regard him, and elsewhere. He is at present finishing his work with the masts. He said he must contact them all before his manifestation, and he had contacted ninety percent before I came and started in on the 12th with the rest. He will finish certain most important work by February 25th which is his birthday. . . . Murshid Inayat Khan works for Baba.

     My poor phrases do no justice to Baba—since we in this world have never beheld perfection before. I find myself helpless to describe it in the person of Meher Baba. But he is in you all and you can feel him and that is all you need.

     Faithfully, Murshida Ivy

     February 1948

     Many words of wisdom were given by Meher Baba to Ivy Duce, such words no one account can fully describe. From another account of one of the mandali present, Baba advised Ivy Duce:

     "Truth is to be experienced. Intellectual knowledge does not lead to Truth."

     "Don't worry about anything, including Charmian. Faithfully discharge all your earthly duties, always be honest in everything and do not tell even little white lies, because God cannot live in a heart where there is hypocrisy."

     "Don't expect anything to be easy; life will be full of problems and the world even more so. In fact, in years to come the world will reach a zenith of anti-God thinking, immorality, lust and greed, because the ending of a vast cycle of cycles is taking place. But after the climax a new era of real brotherly love will be ushered in by God, who knows all that is going on."

     

 

     When God manifests on earth in the form of man and reveals His divinity to mankind, He is recognized as the Avatar—the Messiah—the Prophet. Thus God becomes Man.

     And so Infinite God, age after age, throughout all cycles, wills through His Infinite Mercy, to effect His presence amidst mankind by stooping down to human level in the human form. But His physical presence amidst mankind not being apprehended, He is looked upon as an ordinary man of the world. When He asserts, however, His divinity on earth by proclaiming Himself the Avatar of the age, He is worshiped by some who accept Him as God, and glorified by a few who know Him as God on earth. But it invariably falls to the lot of the rest of humanity to condemn Him, while He is physically in their midst.

     Thus it is that God as man, proclaiming Himself as the Avatar, suffers Himself to be persecuted and tortured, to be humiliated and condemned by humanity, for whose sake His Infinite Love has made Him stoop so low, in order that humanity, by its very act of condemning God's manifestation in the form of Avatar should, however indirectly, assert the existence of God in His Infinite Eternal state.

     The Avatar is always one and the same, because God is always One and the Same, the Eternal, Indivisible, Infinite One who manifests Himself in the form of man as the Avatar, as the Messiah, as the Prophet, as the Ancient One—the Highest of the High. This Eternally One and the Same Avatar repeats His manifestation from time to time, in different cycles, adopting different human forms and different names, in different places, to reveal Truth in different garbs and different languages, in order to raise humanity from the pit of ignorance and help free it from the bondage of delusions.

     Of the most recognized and much worshiped manifestations of God as Avatar, that of Zarathustra is the earliest—having been before Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad. Thousands of years ago, he gave to the world the essence of Truth in the form of three fundamental precepts—Good Thoughts, Good Words, and Good Deeds. These precepts were and are constantly unfolded to humanity in one form or another, directly or indirectly in every cycle, by the Avatar of the age as he leads humanity, imperceptibly, toward the Truth. To put these precepts of Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds into practice is not as easily done as it would appear, though it is not impossible. But to live up to these precepts honestly and literally is apparently as impossible as it is to practice a living death in the midst of life.

     

 

     Age multiple definitions: Evolution consists of a fixed process of ages—stone age, vegetable age, worm age, and so forth. If this world is destroyed today, an interval will remain, but by natural processes new life in a new world will take millions of years to materialize. Millions of years are required for another world to come into being.

     

 

     Tenets explained: "Roughly," in the words of a disciple explaining his master's tenets, "every 2,200 years, the sun enters another sign of the zodiac. We are now entering a new solar epoch. The critical condition of the world is due to this fact. An old age is dying; a new age is being born. The world is convulsed by the birth pangs of a new civilization. Now, as always, when the need of mankind is most pressing, a great spiritual push will be given to the world. But first a great darkness will fall on the world. This darkness, however, is only the shadow cast by a great light.

     "This is both a wonderful and a terrible time. It depends on how you look at it. Everywhere old forms, mental as well as physical, are breaking up. The wise see in these changes the bursting asunder of the chrysalis that frees the golden butterfly.

     "During the last 2,000 years, the lower human mind has developed to its zenith. Now the divine, or universal mind, is stirring from its age long slumber, and the new era which we are about to enter will mark the unfoldment of the divine mind. This implies an immense outpouring of spiritual energy, a quickening of the life impulse on a universal scale, the manifestation of a new type of consciousness—a higher synthesis of heart and mind.

     "Shri Meher Baba is regarded as a Perfect Master, or Sadguru, all over India. He visited a retreat established by one of his disciples in England, and during his stay of eleven days, everyone there was transformed, permanently transformed, radiant, and at peace with himself and the world."

     A Disciple's Experience: The disciple here quoted is Meredith Starr, a poet, who established the retreat in North Devonshire after a visit to Shri Meher Baba in India. Mr. Starr's meeting with "the Master," he recounts in some detail.

     "Baba's age," he says, "seemed to be about 35. His skin was as fair as any European's; his hair and mustache were dark brown, making a vivid contrast to his face, and he had large, luminous eyes. Serenity and strength radiated from his presence, and his face seemed lit up as if by an inner light.