The concept of Avatar is different from reincarnation, as it corresponds more closely to the view of Docetism in Christian theology.
After he met with the spiritual Muslim holy woman Hazrat Babajan, he started a seven years process of spiritual transformation.
During this process he met other four spiritual figures to complete meetings with what is called The Five Perfect Masters.
Then he began his public work.
The name Meher Baba means The Compassionate Father.
With his Mandali (Circle of deciples), he spent long periods in seclusion in which he often fasted.
From July 10, 1925 to the end of his life, he maintained silence, and communicated by means of an alphabet board or by unique hand gestures.
Each July 10, many of Baba's followers celebrate Silence Day to honor him.
Hen often promised to break his silence by speaking the "Word" in every heart, giving a spiritual push forward to all living things.
He publicly called himself the Divine Beloved.
" When I break My Silence, the impact of My Love will be universal and all life in creation will know, feel and receive of it. It will help every individual to break himself free from his own bondage in his own way. I am the Divine Beloved who loves you more than you can ever love yourself. The breaking of My Silence will help you to help yourself in knowing your real Self."
During his visit to USA in May 1932, the Associated Press Described Baba as "The Messiah".
After interviewing him, They publish an article that claims he listed miracles he had performed, and said that a person who becomes one with the truth can accomplish anything, but that it is a weakness to perform miracles only to show spiritual power. However, another description of the interview states that when Baba was asked about the miracles attributed to him, he replied "The only miracle for the Perfect Man to perform is to make others perfect too. I want to make the Americans realize the infinite state which I myself enjoy."
In the 1930s and 1940s, he did extensive work with a category of people he termed masts: persons "intoxicated with God."
According to him these individuals are essentially disabled by their enchanting experience of the higher spiritual planes.
Although outwardly masts may appear irrational or even insane, he said that their spiritual status was actually quite elevated, and that by meeting with them, he helped them to move forward spiritually while enlisting their aid in his spiritual work.
One of the best known of these masts, known as Mohammed The Mast, lived at his encampment at Meherabad until his death in 2003.
Meher Baba lived an enigmatic period which he called "The New Life". Following a series of questions on their readiness to obey even the most difficult of his requests, he selected twenty companions to join him in a life of complete "hopelessness, helplessness and aimlessness".
In his book about the purpose of creation, God Speaks, he explained the difference between the Avatar and the Sadgurus.
In September 1953, he declared that he was "The Highest of the High."
One year after, Baba publicly and explicitly declared his Avatar-hood for the first time, spelling out on his alphabet board "Avatar Meher Baba Ki Jai."
Meher Baba's metaphysical views are described in God Speaks.
His cosmology incorporates concepts and terms from Vedanta, Sufism, and Christianity.
Baba upheld the concept of non-duality, the view that diverse creation, or duality, is an illusion and that the goal of life is conscious realization of the absolute Oneness of God inherent in all animate and inanimate beings and things.
He compares God's original state to an infinite, shore-less ocean which has only unconscious divinity — unaware of itself because there is nothing but itself.
From this state, God had the "whim" to know Himself, and asked "Who am I?"
In response to this question, creation came into existence.
According to Baba, each soul pursues conscious divinity by evolving: that is, experiencing form in seven "kingdoms" — stone/metal, vegetable, worm, fish, bird, animal, and human.
The soul gathers sanskaras (impressions) in each form; these impressions lead to further evolution expressed by taking new, more complex forms.
With each new form, increasing consciousness is gained, until the soul experiences and discards forms from all the evolutionary kingdoms.
The final form of the soul's evolution is the human form. Only in the human form can the soul experience its own divinity, by entering into involution, through which it gradually eliminates all impressions which cause the appearance of separateness from God.
Baba insists that in the human form, the soul becomes subject to reincarnation, the "involuntary process of association and disassociation of consciousness".
The purpose of reincarnation is to provide the opportunity for liberation from illusion.
The soul reincarnates innumerable times in all conditions of life encompassing the whole range of human experience (e.g. man/woman, rich/poor, powerful/weak, etc.).
Through the experience of opposites, sanskaras gradually grow fainter and scarcer.
Meher Baba described heaven and hell as transitory and illusory states between incarnations:
"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 Avatar, according to Meher Baba, is a special Perfect Master, the first soul to achieve God-realization. This soul, the original Perfect Master, or the "Ancient One", never ceases to incarnate.
According to him the Avatar appears on Earth every 700–1400 years, and is 'brought down' into human form by the five perfect masters of the time to aid in the process of moving creation in its never ending journey toward Godhood. Baba said that in other ages this role was fulfilled by Zoroaster, Rama, Krishna, Gautama Buddha, Jesus, and lastly by Muhammad.
He describes the Avatar as "a gauge against which man can measure what he is and what he may become. "He trues the standard of human values by interpreting them in terms of divinely human life."
Meher Baba died in 1969, leaving behind him thousands of believers, and treasures of Sufi teachings and certainly a big question of genuineness in terms of what he was claiming of divinity.
Sami Cherkaoui
No comments:
Post a Comment