Meher Baba com o nome de Merwan Sheriar Irani foi um guru persa, educado na St. Vincent's High School, na Índia. Durante sua formação,não demonstrou inclinação para os assuntos espirituais. Quando tinha 19 anos, entrou em contato com uma mestra sufi chamada Hazrat Babajan. Esta mestra sufi lhe deu um beijo no rosto. Este fato marcou o início de sua ascendência espiritual. Ele recebeu ajuda de cinco mestres espirituais, os chamados Mestres Perfeitos, incluindo Shirdi Baba e Upasni Maharaj, que foi quem lhe revelou sua identidade espiritual como O ancestral, em 1921.
Baba viveu e viajou na companhia de discípulos , tanto homens quanto mulheres, de quem se exigia absoluta obediência. Todos assumiram uma vida de absoluta simplicidade - a grosso modo, algo no estilo franciscano. A partir de 1925 até sua morte, Baba se calou totalmente, se comunicando apenas por escritos, gestos e uma tábua que continha as letras do alfabeto. Este mestre espiritual praticava jejum, ficava recluso e fazia trabalho para ajudar pobres, além de dar banho em leprosos e fazer um importante trabalho com os masts em clinicas psiquiátricas e com crianças em escolas criadas por ele. Os masts eram indivíduos que tinham se desenvolvido espiritualmente acima da média da população, mas que, por algum motivo desconhecido, perdiam o contato com o mundo, sendo muitas vezes confundidos com "desajustados". Proferiu diversos discursos, que foram coletados por seus seguidores.
Em 1931, Baba fez sua primeira viagem ao mundo ocidental - algo que veio a se repetir por várias vezes. Durante estas viagens, mandalis ocidentais se juntaram a ele. No dia 10 de fevereiro de 1954, Baba se autodeclarou Avatar .
Exerceu forte influência sobre Pete Townshend, guitarrista, compositor e líder da banda de rock britânica The Who, tendo sido citado em canções e homenageado com um álbum completo.
A trajetória do líder espiritual tomou novos rumos a partir de dois acidentes automobilísticos. Eles ocorreram em 1952, nos Estados Unidos e em 1956, na Índia. Com estes acidentes, sua capacidade de caminhar ficou muito limitada e, após um ano, ficou completamente confinado a cadeira de rodas. Meher Baba morreu em janeiro de 1969. Seu túmulo em Meherabad é considerado local sagrado ainda hoje e se tornou um local de peregrinação.
Wikipedia
“All this world confusion and chaos was inevitable and no one is to blame.”
The Universal Message (1958)
Contexto: All this world confusion and chaos was inevitable and no one is to blame. What had to happen has happened; and what has to happen will happen. There was and is no way out except through my coming in your midst. I had to come, and I have come. I am the Ancient One.
“To love Me for what I may give you is not loving Me at all.”
Final Message (6 January 1969).
General sources
Contexto: To love Me for what I may give you is not loving Me at all. To sacrifice anything in My cause to gain something for yourself is like a blind man sacrificing his eyes for sight. I am the Divine Beloved worthy of being loved because I am Love. He who loves Me because of this will be blessed with unlimited sight and will see Me as I am.
Fonte: Discourses (1967), Vol. I, Ch. 15 : The Life of the Spirit.
Contexto: The essence of spirituality does not consist in a specialised or narrow interest in some imagined part of life, but in a certain enlightened attitude to all the various situations which obtain in life. It covers and includes the whole of life. All the material things of this world can be made subservient to the divine game, and when they are thus subordained they become auxiliary to the self-affirmation of the spirit.
What Baba Means by Real Work (1954)
Contexto: If instead of doing the real work of love you start doing organized propaganda work for me, it is absurd. I need no propaganda or publicity. I do not want propaganda and publicity, but I do want love and honesty. If you cannot live the life of love and honesty, you should stop working for me. I am quite capable of doing my Universal Work alone.
Message to Garrett Fort (1936) <!-- Tr p194, also A p26 -->
General sources
Contexto: It is never presumptuous for anyone to hope for realization. It is the goal of creation and the birthright of humanity. Blessed are they who are prepared to assert that right in this very life.
Fonte: Discourses (1967), Vol. III, Ch. 1 : The Avatar, p. 11.
Contexto: CONSCIOUSLY or unconsciously, every living creature seeks one thing. In the lower forms of life and in less advanced human beings, the quest is unconscious; in advanced human beings, it is conscious. The object of the quest is called by many names — happiness, peace, freedom, truth, love, perfection, Self-realisation, God-realisation, union with God. Essentially, it is a search for all of these, but in a special way. Everyone has moments of happiness, glimpses of truth, fleeting experiences of union with God; what they want is to make them permanent. They want to establish an abiding reality in the midst of constant change.
It is a natural desire, based fundamentally on a memory, dim or clear as the individual’s evolution may be low or high, of his essential unity with God; for, every living thing is a partial manifestation of God, conditioned only by its lack of knowledge of its own true nature. The whole of evolution, in fact, is an evolution from unconscious divinity to conscious divinity, in which God Himself, essentially eternal and unchangeable, assumes an infinite variety of forms, enjoys an infinite variety of experiences and transcends an infinite variety of self-imposed limitations. Evolution from the standpoint of the Creator is a divine sport, in which the Unconditioned tests the infinitude of His absolute knowledge, power and bliss in the midst of all conditions. But evolution from the standpoint of the creature, with his limited knowledge, limited power, limited capacity for enjoying bliss, is an epic of alternating rest and struggle, joy and sorrow, love and hate, until, in the perfected man, God balances the pairs of opposites and transcends duality. Then creature and Creator recognise themselves as one; changelessness is established in the midst of change, eternity is experienced in the midst of time. God knows Himself as God, unchangeable in essence, infinite in manifestation, ever experiencing the supreme bliss of Self-realisation in continually fresh awareness of Himself by Himself.
This realisation must and does take place only in the midst of life, for it is only in the midst of life that limitation can be experienced and transcended, and that subsequent freedom from limitation can be enjoyed.
44 : God Alone Is, p. 72.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)
Contexto: Before he can know Who he is, man has to unlearn the mass of illusory knowledge hehas burdened himself with on the interminable journey from unconsciousness to consciousness. It is only through love that you can begin to unlearn, and, eventually, put an end to all that you do not know. God-love penetrates all illusion, while no amount of illusion can dim God-love. Start by learning to love God by beginning to love those whom you cannot. You will find that in serving others you are serving yourself. The more you remember others with kindness and generosity, the less you remember yourself; and when you completely forget yourself, you find me as the Source of all Love.
44 : God Alone Is, p. 73.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)
Contexto: Give up all forms of parrotry. Start practising whatever you truly feel to be true and justly to be just. Do not make a show of your faiths and beliefs. You have not to give up your religion, but to give up clinging to the husk of mere ritual and ceremony. To get to the fundamental core of Truth underlying all religions, reach beyond religion.
“God is Love. And Love must love. And to love there must be a Beloved.”
"The Lover and the Beloved", p. 1.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)
Contexto: God is Love. And Love must love. And to love there must be a Beloved. But since God is Existence infinite and eternal there is no one for Him to love but Himself. And in order to love Himself He must imagine Himself as the Beloved whom He as the Lover imagines He loves.
“There are no divisions as such, but there is an appearance of separateness because of ignorance.”
65 : Ignorance Personified, p. 111.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)
Contexto: There are no divisions as such, but there is an appearance of separateness because of ignorance. This means that everything is of ignorance and that every one is Ignorance personified.
“Remember that the first step in spirituality is not to speak ill of others.”
7:2506.
Lord Meher (1986)
Contexto: Remember that the first step in spirituality is not to speak ill of others. All human beings have weaknesses and faults. Yet they are all God in their being. Until they become Realized, they have their imperfections. Therefore, before trying to find faults in others and speaking ill of them, try to find your own weaknesses and correct those.
Meher Baba’s Call (1954)
Contexto: I tell you all, with my Divine Authority, that you and I are not “WE,” but “ONE.” You unconsciously feel my Avatarhood within you; I consciously feel in you what each of you feel. Thus every one of us is Avatar, in the sense that everyone and everything is everyone and everything, at the same time, and for all time.
There is nothing but God. He is the only Reality, and we all are one in the indivisible Oneness of this absolute Reality. When the One who has realized God says, “I am God. You are God, and we are all one,” and also awakens this feeling of Oneness in his illusion-bound selves, then the question of the lowly and the great, the poor and the rich, the humble and the modest, the good and the bad, simply vanishes. It is his false awareness of duality that misleads man into making illusory distinctions and filing them into separate categories.
"How to Love God" (12 September 1954).
General sources
Contexto: When I say I am the Avatar, there are a few who feel happy, some who feel shocked, and many who hearing me claim this, would take me for a hypocrite, a fraud, a supreme egoist, or just mad. If I were to say every one of you is an Avatar, a few would be tickled, and many would consider it a blasphemy or a joke. The fact that God being One, Indivisible and equally in us all, we can be nought else but one, is too much for the duality-conscious mind to accept. Yet each of us is what the other is. I know I am the Avatar in every sense of the word, and that each one of you is an Avatar in one sense or the other.
It is an unalterable and universally recognized fact since time immemorial that God knows everything, God does everything, and that nothing happens but by the Will of God. Therefore it is God who makes me say I am the Avatar, and that each one of you is an Avatar. Again, it is He Who is tickled through some, and through others is shocked. It is God Who acts, and God Who reacts. It is He Who scoffs, and He Who responds. He is the Creator, the Producer, the Actor and the Audience in His own Divine Play.
"How to Love God" (12 September 1954).
General sources
Contexto: When I say I am the Avatar, there are a few who feel happy, some who feel shocked, and many who hearing me claim this, would take me for a hypocrite, a fraud, a supreme egoist, or just mad. If I were to say every one of you is an Avatar, a few would be tickled, and many would consider it a blasphemy or a joke. The fact that God being One, Indivisible and equally in us all, we can be nought else but one, is too much for the duality-conscious mind to accept. Yet each of us is what the other is. I know I am the Avatar in every sense of the word, and that each one of you is an Avatar in one sense or the other.
It is an unalterable and universally recognized fact since time immemorial that God knows everything, God does everything, and that nothing happens but by the Will of God. Therefore it is God who makes me say I am the Avatar, and that each one of you is an Avatar. Again, it is He Who is tickled through some, and through others is shocked. It is God Who acts, and God Who reacts. It is He Who scoffs, and He Who responds. He is the Creator, the Producer, the Actor and the Audience in His own Divine Play.
Message at Pickfair, Beverly Hills, California (1 June 1932), as quoted in Life Is A Jest (1974) edited by A. K. Hajra <!-- or 6 January? 1932 Me p100-101 -->
General sources
Contexto: Life becomes meaningful and all activities are purposeful only on the basis of faith in the enduring reality. … The greatest romance possible in life is to discover this Eternal Reality in the midst of infinite change. Once, one has experienced this, one sees oneself in everything that lives, one recognises all of life as his life, everybody's interests as his own. One is no longer bound by habits of the past, no longer swayed by the hopes of the future — One lives in and enjoys each present moment to the full. There is no greater romance in life than this adventure in realization.
Lord Meher http://www.lordmeher.org/index.jsp?pageBase=page.jsp&nextPage=6742, by Bhau Kalchuri, pp. 5770, 5970, 6742. The famous Bobby McFerrin song was based on this phrase often used by Meher Baba.
Variants:
Don't Worry; be Happy! Remember Me; I will help you.
As quoted in Showers of Grace (1984) by Bal Natu, p. 92
Do your best, then don't worry, be happy. Leave the rest to me.
As quoted in The Homeopathic Revolution : Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy (2007) by Dana Ullman, p. 367.
General sources
Variante: Don't worry, be happy.
Part of his public message upon arrival on his second visit to America (19 May 1932).
General sources
“I love everybody. Each one plays the role they have to play…”
Statement to Delia DeLeon in 1948, as quoted in How A Master Works (1975) by Ivy Oneita Duce, p. 457.
General sources
Contexto: I love everybody. Each one plays the role they have to play, but in the spiritual arena there are people who are even closer to me than that.
Contexto: I don't usually explain about Mehera to anyone. But I will tell you this. Don't you think I love Mani? Well, Mehera plays the same role to me that the Virgin Mary played to Jesus. She is like my skin — she protects, she feels every thought I feel. But I love everybody. Each one plays the role they have to play, but in the spiritual arena there are people who are even closer to me than that.
“The seeker asking, Where is God? Is really God saying, Where indeed is the seeker!”
14 : God Seeks, p. 19.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)
p. 5729 http://www.lordmeher.org/index.jsp?pageBase=page.jsp&nextPage=5729
Lord Meher (1986)
Statement to his women mandali, December 1942, as quoted in Gift of God (1996) by Arnavaz Dadachanji, p. 72.
General sources
“If God can be found through the medium of any drug, God is not worthy of being God.”
God in a Pill? : Meher Baba on L.S.D. and The High Roads (1966)
General sources
47 : The Question and its Answer, p. 78.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)
The Highest of the High (1953)
44 : God Alone Is, p. 74.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)