Imagine for a moment that just when it seems the world is about to be engulfed and extinguished in darkness, the Light of the world appears, and as promised God takes human birth again – in your lifetime – and walks the earth in Silence, dispensing divine love and compassion to his most beloved humanity. And imagine that being the master of political incorrectness he takes many of the world’s traditional views and values and totally turns them upside down–including the world’s view of ‘gayness’ – in showing extraordinary tenderness and compassion for his homosexual children. This is not fiction, it is fact. That ancient Light which appears once in every age was born again in human form at 5 a.m. February 25, 1894, echoing the psalmist’s ecstatic refrain, "While night was in the midst of her course and the stars transiting the heavens, thy Almighty Word leapt down with joy from his heavenly throne, entering the womb of the world." And the Word made flesh dwelt among us.
 
 

As he entered the world with his very first breath he began touching the major religious bases – born in the Iranian wing of a Jewish hospital in India, delivered by Catholic nuns, educated by Jesuits and his divinity unveiled by Muslim and Hindu Perfect Masters, signifying from the outset that he belonged to no religion but that all religions belong to him.
 
 

Each time he comes, the Lord of the universe is born under a veil so that he may acquire natural human knowledge. And then in his late teens when his instincts are mature, his divinity is unveiled by the five Perfect Masters of that age. Just as Jesus was unveiled by John the Baptist and four other Masters un-named in the Gospels, in this incarnation he was again unveiled at nineteen by the five Muslim and Hindu Perfect Masters of this age, revealing to him his infinite knowledge, infinite power, and infinite bliss. And reminiscent of a former time, he again began his public life gathering local fishermen as his first disciples who called him Meher Baba, meaning "Compassionate Father", a name they gave him in the 1920's when his extraordinary spiritual status was first recognized.
 
 

And just as of old, the good news was proclaimed to shepherds in the fields. On a sunny morning in 1917, three young children, while tending their sheep on a hillside in Fatima, Portugal, were given the great good news through visions of the Virgin Mary, together with alarming predictions. They were later imprisoned and tortured by local Portuguese authorities who threatened death if they did not reveal their secrets. Two died shortly after and the third, Sister Lucia, lives to this day.
 
 

In 1938, Pope Pius XII realized that the first and second of three secret prophesies that the Blessed Virgin had given the children had in fact come to pass – the first being the announcement of the end of WWI, and the second, the appearance of a spectacular aurora borealis lighting up all of northern Europe, signaling Hitler’s annexation of Austria and the beginning of WWII. He was very anxious for Lucia to reveal the third and final secret to him, though it took six years of him prodding for her to comply. And only in 1944, after further prayer for guidance, was she told by the Blessed Virgin that she could reveal the third secret in the form of a letter to be shown first to her bishop and secondly to the Holy Father on condition that he agreed to reveal the final secret to the world upon Lucia’s death or in 1960, whichever came first. However, by this time, with WWII coming to a dramatic end and with post-war exigencies pressing on him, he became distracted and the Fatima letter was the last thing on the pope’s mind. Then, suddenly in 1957, as Lucia’s local bishop lay dying, a Cardinal in Portugal who was about to inherit the right to take possession of the sealed letter, threatened the Vatican that if Rome did not abide by its original 1944 agreement to publish the letter’s contents by 1960 at the latest, he unilaterally would.
 
 

Several days later a delegation from Rome’s Holy Office of the Inquisition appeared on his doorstep with a papal mandate demanding that the letter be handed over forthwith. And shortly after that L’Observatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, published a report that upon opening the letter and reading its contents, Pius XII had collapsed, weeping for three days and suffering a seizure which hospitalized him. He died shortly thereafter.
 
 

The Vatican later denied that the Holy Father had ever opened the letter – even though it sat in a padlocked steel box on his desk from the time it arrived in Rome until he died, marked, Official Secret of the Vatican. Subsequently, that particular edition of L’Observatore Romano disappeared from libraries and is even still missing from the Vatican’s own archives.
 
 

Despite Sr. Lucia’s pleas, reprimands and repeated petitions to the Vatican to abide by its agreement, forty years beyond the 1960 deadline, the information is still kept under lock and key in Rome and has never been revealed to the public. Meanwhile, Sr. Lucia has been under virtual house-arrest in a Carmelite Convent in Portugal, and under a Vatican gag-order to keep the burden of the enigma in the silence of her heart. For many years Meher Baba had one of his chief disciples keep a detailed file on the Vatican and Fatima, complete with news clippings and magazine articles. He also said that the pope would one day be forced to acknowledge him.
 
 

It is the conclusion of people who have thoroughly researched the Meher Baba–Fatima connection that the pope’s collapse was caused, perhaps not just by a prediction of a future global disaster involving much of humanity, but more poignantly that because of the church’s internal spiritual failure it would not be in the forefront to recognize or openly proclaim him – that its voice would be muzzled. Years later Meher Baba himself would cryptically remark, " The priests will be the last ones to find me."
 
 

In India, however, he revealed himself openly to Ghandi, Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa. They met and fell in love with him in the 1930's when he taught them, in keeping with his own motto, "Mastery in servitude" and by his own example, how to love, embrace and serve the lepers. But for political ‘correctness’, among other reasons, this information was kept closed-circle. Recognizing that Rome could not possibly understand, Mother Teresa was forced to keep her love and recognition of him hidden throughout her lifetime, revealing it only through her own Christlike actions, and even asking that it not be spoken of till after her death.
 
 

Ghandi, acting as his secret agent in the struggle for India’s independence, was careful under obedience not to reveal him, though deeply loving him for seventeen years and begging to be allowed to come and live intimately with him as a disciple. The condition that Baba laid down was that Ghandi had to first give up ‘politics’. Of course it was Meher Baba’s intention that Ghandi fight to the end for the liberation of India from English rule. Baba did make a promise that one day he would call Ghandi ‘to Himself’. That day came in 1947 with an assassin’s bullet. You will not find these stories in the ‘official’ biographies of these saintly leaders, but this information and much more is carefully documented and historically preserved, to be released to the world at the time of Meher Baba’s full Manifestation in the 21^st century.
 
 

Who is this Compassionate Father who once again has come to earth to gather the fragments of a lost world, this God-man that even Presidents and Vice-presidents recognize with love, while remaining unable to speak openly about him? The clues are all around. Countless thousands of people in the world already know and love him, though the masses and the world at large will be unaware of him till his Manifestation one hundred or so years after his physical death. He traveled throughout the world living and working in total silence, while deeply affecting and transforming the lives of both believers and un-believers who were fortunate enough to have even only a glimpse of him. In public he would often travel in disguise, collar up, his long hair tucked-up under a beret and wearing sunglasses. Even so, walking through Times Square or down Fifth Avenue people would stop in their tracks and stare, often bursting into quiet sobs, not knowing the hidden Presence that passed by, awakening something at a primordial level deep inside them. All human hearts are secretly tuned by nature to vibrate and resonate in the presence of Compassion Incarnate.
 
 

He said there was no way out except by his coming into our midst as one of us, taking each of us by the hand and pulling us into the tide of his Divine Love, his grace, which alone can free us from the false and eternally awaken us to that alone which is Real. He said we should make no mistake about it, that in this game there is no distinction between so called ‘saints and sinners’.

"With me , no one can live what the world considers a moral life. Here we are concerned with spirituality, not morals. A spiritual life is not ruled nor bound by any principles. The impressions of each individual are different, and so the behavior and temperament of everyone are different.

"In a virtuous life, evil is suppressed and good surfaces; but the evil is still there. The bad impressions remain and have to be worked out, if not in this life then in the next or the one after. In the spiritual life, both get nullified. A spiritual life leads one toward naturalness, whereas a virtuous life, in the guise of humility, inflates the ego and perpetuates it! A spiritual life, though, is only led under the guidance and orders of the Avatar or Perfect Master, who knows the pulse of everyone and treats everyone according to his particular malady.

"You may not like someone’s behavior, but his behavior may have been quite natural and necessary for him. How can you understand that? People of the world act according to moral standards and socially acceptable behavior, but the Avatar or Perfect Master deals with everyone according to his or her impressions. Thus spiritual life is totally different and cannot be judged on the basis of morality, ethics or any principle".

He said that if saints are God’s assets and sinners his liabilities, his work is to turn all his liabilities into assets. To do this he comes age after age into our midst. He takes seven human births in each cycle of time. He said he was called Zoroaster, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and now in our age he is called Meher Baba, the Compassionate Father.
 
 

In this Incarnation that compassion specifically embraced the downtrodden of this world, the ‘poor in spirit’, including his dearest gay children. Seeing the plight of homosexuals worldwide, Meher Baba promised to raise the oppression and depression of their consciousness. This writer was told directly by Eruch Jessewala, one of Meher Baba’s chief disciples, that in 1951 Baba began his Manonash work [ the annihilation of the limited mind ] in India among a community of despised hijras, transvestites, which he said would have universal effect in one day raising the consciousness of the homosexual community throughout the world. In his open association with this outcast community, Eruch said that Baba attracted to himself hatred and abuse, perhaps to break the back of homophobic prejudice in the coming New Age. It is obvious that many people throughout the world are still under the veil of this humiliation, but in time that will change. We have God’s word on it with the obvious fact that he personally took that abuse upon himself.
 
 

Eighteen years later, just a few months after Baba dropped his physical body on January 31, 1969, and less than a hundred feet from where a Pathe newsreel crew preserved for posterity his first public gathering in America, three days of riots took place at Stonewall – the proverbial ‘shot heard round the world’ demanding equal rights under the law for all sexual minorities.
 
 

It was only a decade later when God allowed his gay children and many others to partake of his suffering and crucifixion in the AIDS epidemic. He shared with them his cross, allowing it to touch them so deeply that the transforming alchemy of this enormous suffering produced an extraordinary maturity, not only in individuals, but for the first time in history, a worldwide community of gay people in which the spirit of care and compassion was born in the hearts of all who were touched or gave their lives – even while the world continued to despise them. In centuries to come this will b e seen as the historical event which opened the way for the spiritual redemption of this chosen people.
 
 

God’s glory is to invest in loss. He loves those most who are hopeless and abandoned. History has shown us time and again that when we are most despised or suffering his Spirit is closest to us. Strangely, it is always the way he treats his chosen ones. Deep suffering reveals his total compassion in allowing the sufferer to draw closer to him and share in the work of redemption. His own words on this subject were, "Since God loves most the afflicted ones, to emphasize their helplessness is to act in ignorance of their true state of grace. Instead of making them think more and more of their helplessness, they must be made to realize that they are coming nearer and nearer to God." Still, the world seems to keep missing this lesson.
 
 

While warning that promiscuity, whether heterosexual or homosexual, was a dead end that lead one away from the Goal, Meher Baba deeply loved those whom the world despised and oppressed. In this age he especially included homosexuals in his all-embracing love, showing us that this is part of his divine plan. In the process of re-incarnating we must overcome the duality of sex and gender. When the soul re-incarnates it takes a new body, often the same gender of its last body. But if that body is going from one gender to another, from male to female or vice-versa, there may sometimes be a lag during which the psyche needs another lifetime to fully make the jump. In such cases homosexuality is the natural result. Seen in this light, it is easy to understand how at many junctures in the process of re-incarnating, God gives us the opportunity to experience homosexual lives, and sometimes more than one may be necessary to overcome the effects of lifetimes of heterosexual duality which was necessary for the continuation of the species. There is growing evidence in our culture, however that God may be gradually moving us toward a genderless society in which human beings will finally transcend the duality of sex.
 
 

The duality of race and color is another area that Meher Baba said he would change in society. For example, at a truck stop in the south during the l950's he deliberately used a ‘colored only’ men’s room and drank out of a ‘colored only’ water fountain. And in his visits to the American center dedicated to him in Myrtle Beach, S. Carolina, and in other places throughout the U. S., when a black person came into his presence he always made it a point to stand and greet them most warmly. Here, as always, while working on an individual level, Baba was simultaneously working on a universal level. We believe the effects of this Universal Work manifested in the south as the great civil rights movement a decade later.
 
 

Meanwhile, it is a fact known by many and confirmed personally to this writer during lengthy conversations in England in 1981 with Meher Baba’s brother, Adi Irani, that some of his closest male and female disciples were gay, especially in the West where the results of his work in this area would first manifest. But, as others who also know this have said, that fact was simply overshadowed and buried under their all-consuming love for the God-man himself. In his contact with those around him, Baba was always full of compassion and sensitivity and it was observed that those individuals who lived transparently homosexual lives during his physical lifetime were treated with particular care and tenderness. We don’t know whether he ever gave special advice in private to these persons, but it was totally obvious that they were treated with the same respect and love that he showed all others for whom he took complete responsibility on the path to Truth. In future ages much will be written witnessing these facts.

Meher Baba said that being God in human form there was nothing under the sun that he himself was not, and that whatever people took him to be he was that. Among kings, he was the king of kings. Among thieves, the thief of thieves – that he was the highest of the high and the lowest of the low. "Whatever you take me to be, I am that, for God is in everything and in everyone." People have often asked if he were ‘gay’. Jokingly, someone once said that with the ‘straight he was straight and among the gay he was gay.’ Perhaps that’s not far from the truth, for there is nothing that the totality of his being cannot fully embrace and love.
 
 

He said that we would eventually be able to get beyond all our attachments to the physical realm. "Remember that I love you," he said, "and don’t worry about your weaknesses. Eventually they will go; even if they linger, love will one day consume them. Everything disappears in the Ocean of Love. Because I love you, you have a pool of love within you. When you feel wretched, when you fall in your weakness, have a dip in that pool of love. Refresh yourself in that pool of my love within you. It’s always there. Even if you wash your weaknesses every day in that pool, it will remain clear. Don’t worry. Baba loves you, and that’s what really matters."
 
 

Meanwhile, those gay people who are spiritually inclined but have felt left out of the picture can now feel totally vindicated and able to proclaim, "YES! I knew it! He was there for us all along!" Finally God himself is out of the closet.
 
 

He promised to set in motion energies in the world culture that would eventually lead to the breakdown of all caste systems and prejudices. He often warned that his ways were not the ways of the world, that he came not to bring what the world calls ‘peace’, but the sword. Real peace, the true infinite and eternal peace of each one’s individual God-realization comes only after the sword of mercy has cut through and killed the root of the age-old, false ego-mind, lived life after false life in total illusion. As the mystical poet Rumi said of him centuries ago, "The sword of his love is opposite all other ways."
 
 

Baba also said that it was part of his divine mission in this incarnation to unite the East and the West and to that end deliberately shed his blood on American soil in a serious auto accident in Prague, Oklahoma in 1952, crushing and disabling the left side of his body. Then, four years later another accident in India disabled his right side. Explaining it as a ‘gross exchange’, he said he was uniting the East and the West in his own body and that this was just a part of his divinely ordained crucifixion. "To draw you to me and make you realize that you are Bliss itself, I come amongst you and suffer infinite agony."
 
 

If Meher Baba is God, how could he suffer? It is out of divine love that he takes birth among us and when he does, his infinite bliss and infinite power are not used – only his infinite knowledge, whereby he simultaneously experiences the suffering of each and every creature living in the illusion of duality. Having a universal mind, the suffering of each one in illusion is focused as through a lens into the center of his being. We cannot even fathom the degree of that agony which is his continual crucifixion. Nor can we fathom the infinite love that makes him pass through that for our sakes, to finally awaken us. It is the mystery of mysteries beyond human understanding. And it is only on earth, he tells us, that this drama takes place.
 

 Meher Baba revealed that there are 18,000 planets in the universe which contain  life,     Three of these contain human life with various degrees of balance between intellect and heart.  The humans on one of these planets have 100% intellect, are hightly advanced scientifically, but with no heart.  A second planet has humans with 75% intellect and 25% heart, but only on planet earth, the shockpoint of the universe is there a perfect balance, an equal blending of head and heart that makes perfection, love and God-realization possible.  And though the entire universe is his domain and his universal work affects everything and everyone in the universe, it is only on earth that he takes physical human birth to accomplish that work and it is from here that he gives a spiritual push forward to the entire creation as the fruit of that universal work. It is therefore only on earth in a human body that one can be God-realized. This is why when he comes there is such a population explosion, for even the human beings from other planets must incarnate here on earth in order to grab the wave to enter the spiritual path. We have the best seats in the house. As the poet so aptly sung, "Oh blue-green jewel, floating in space, jewel among jewels, have you any idea of your worth?"
 
 

What, in his message this time, was different from that of his previous incarnations? He took upon himself deliberate and total silence, not using his voice to speak. And though declaring that this time he had come not to teach but to awaken, he left a legacy of simple and direct teachings on the art of living a divine life in the world. He also left us the most sublime and complete teachings on human and divine consciousness, the creation, evolution, re-incarnation and the fundamental mechanics of life and the universe that the world has ever seen. His book, God Speaks, presents these and other themes from the standpoint of the major world religions, and will one day be seen as the definitive statement on this subject, perhaps for ages to come. His presentation unifies the teachings of all religions like beads on one string. He even used that simile, saying that all religions and scriptures were the result of his coming to earth once every 700-1400 years, and that they should be seen simply as pearls around God’s neck, but that mankind has mistaken and worshiped the pearls instead of God Himself.
 
 

He insisted people be totally natural with him. He loved jokes and had an extraordinary sense of humor. He said that anyone could lead a spiritual life by simply trying to keep cheerful through life’s ups and down and enjoying the trip. "True spirituality," he said, "is perfect poise in all of life’s situations." It is the art of raising the eyebrows instead of the roof. "And if your heart be cut to bits, let a smile be on your lips....He who upsets no one is a good man. He who is upset by no one is a God-man." When others persecute or back-stab you, think, speak or do anything negative to you, cheat, rob or hurt you or your reputation in any way– they are your true benefactors. So long as you do not return the thought or action in kind, they instantly attract to themselves your negative karma, thereby freeing you of your ‘sins’ and fast-forwarding you on the spiritual path. As Jesus said, "Rejoice on that day, for your reward is great." Also, if Meher Baba is humanity’s automatic pilot, his now famous saying, "Don’t worry, be happy, and I will help you!" takes on a new, far deeper, even theological meaning. It’s just as e.e. cummings put it, "All the rules are fair and in the end there will be wonderful surprises."
 
 

What else in Meher Baba’s message is different this time? In the past Jesus told the masses that God was in heaven, urging them to do good and try to find him. To his followers he said, "I am God -- I and the Father are one." But to his most inner circle, his apostles or ‘mandali’, Jesus revealed that they themselves were God and actually gave them the experience. Now, in this incarnation Meher Baba has openly revealed and emphatically declared this supreme truth to the entire world.
 
 

It is one thing to hear and understand this intellectually, but to experience it directly is something else. That direct experience will one day be ours. Why do we not experience it now? It is because of the accumulation and accretion of false impressions and bindings that each soul absolutely and inevitably acquires traveling across the journey of evolution to finally reach the fullness of human form. Consciousness had to acquire countless billions of false impressions at each stage of the evolutionary journey and then discard them to move on to the next higher stage. Each of these false impressions leaves natural residues or scars (sanskaras) which are ‘natural’ because they are part and parcel of the natural evolutionary process. But once human form is acquired, suddenly involution, the journey across the inner planes of consciousness, begins, and with that ‘un-natural’ impressions or scars begin to enter the picture -- anger, hatred, jealousy, deceit, gluttony, lust, etc. until the pure light of consciousness is dimmed and completely covered over with both natural and un-natural sanskaras.
 
 

We become totally clouded by these false impressions and bindings that persist over eons of time, producing a state of deep, almost irrevocable hypnotic trance and delusion, in which life after life, consciousness identifies with only false forms, body, mind, etc. thinking them to be real. And, Baba says, "That alone which is real --God, is unseen and thought to be unreal or even false, while that which is truly false and completely non-existent, except as a dream --the universe -- is falsely taken to be ‘real’.
 
 

It is such a great divine cosmic joke. Nobody can say God doesn’t have a terrific sense of humor. This entire process of false consciousness is governed by the principle of maya, or ignorance and is literally the mother of all ‘special effects’. Recall the 1998 film, The Truman Show - "always on the air, always unaware". Except for fifty-six God-realized humans who live on earth at all times, the rest of us are all ‘Trumans’, while God and his fifty-six realized ones alone see directly through the cosmic illusion. That is why the premise of this movie struck such a deep cord with so many people. Instinctively, there is something deep inside us that knows this, but millions of years of false impressions in the individual and collective consciousness keep us from realizing it.
 
 

It is to awaken us from this dream that he comes. And although he tells us that the entire creation is his divine leela, his game, it is an absolutely necessary game in order for you to become conscious of him in you, as you. God lives within you as you, though we are completely asleep to this fact. After all the false impressions are wiped out we will acquire our natural state of infinite consciousness. He says ,

"All that can be said, has been said and will be said by those

who live and experience that State is that when the false self is lost,

the Real Self is found; that the birth of the real can only follow the

death of the false; that dying to ourselves – the true death which ends

all dying – is the only way to Perpetual Life.
 
 

This means that when the mind with its satellites – desires,

cravings, longings – is completely consumed by the fire of divine love,

then the infinite, indestructible, indivisible, eternal Self is manifested.
 
 

This is Manonash, the annihilation of the false, limited, miserable,

ignorant, destructible "I," to be replaced by the "Real I," the Eternal

Possessor of Infinite Knowledge, Love, Power, Peace, Bliss and Glory

in its unchangeable existence.
 
 

Manonash is bound to result in this glorious state in which

plurality goes and Unity comes, ignorance goes and Knowledge comes,

binding goes and Freedom comes.
 
 

We are all permanently lodged in this shoreless Ocean of

Infinite Knowledge, and yet are infinitely ignorant of it until the

mind – which is the source of this ignorance – vanishes forever;

for ignorance ceases to exist when the mind ceases to exist!

Unless and until ignorance is removed and Knowledge is gained –

the Knowledge whereby the Divine Life is experienced and lived –

everything pertaining to the spiritual seems paradoxical. God, whom

we do not see, we say is real; and the world which we do see, we say

is false. In experience, what exists for us [the world] does not really

exist, and what does not exist for us [God and our own Divinity]

really does exist.
 
 

We must lose ourselves in order to find ourselves. Thus loss is gain.

We must die to self to live in God. Thus death means Life.

We must become completely void inside to be completely

possessed by God. Thus complete emptiness means complete Fullness.

We must become naked of selfhood by possessing nothing, so as

to be absorbed in the infinity of God. Thus nothing means Everything."
 
 

[Lord Meher, vol. Ten, pp 3760-1]
 
 

Further in God Speaks, part five, he says, "In that state subject and object totally and

permanently vanish and disappear. The entire realm of imagination is transcended forever.

Lover and Beloved become one in the state of Divine Union where the soul finally fulfills

its original urge for Self-knowledge, experiencing its own Self as identical with unchanging,

eternal, indivisible and formless Divinity, with infinite knowledge infinite reality, infinite power and infinite bliss."
 
 

This precious life is the journey toward our own inherent divinity, and each human being re-incarnates, taking as many lifetimes as necessary to fully accomplish it. In this light, a human being is far more than anyone could have ever imagined and truly the envy of the angels who, Baba says, must themselves incarnate on this earth plane at least once in order to be God realized.
 
 

Each of us is ineluctably destined for a realization of God’s own infinite knowledge and bliss far beyond any notion of ‘heaven’ spoken of by scripture or traditional religion. To reveal and bestow this supreme gift is why he comes age after age, out of infinite love and compassion for his beloved humanity. He gets himself bound to cut the binding knot and extricate us from our age-old dreams of illusion. He comes, and while living on earth in human form, he burns the accumulated rubbish of both our natural and un-natural sanskaras that keep us from experiencing our eternal Divine Self. It was his fault that we got temporarily separated and bound in this mess in the first place when he himself asked the original question "WHO AM I?" and the entire creation sprang into existence. So now it is his responsibility for all time and eternity to keep coming back to extricate us from his wondrous, seemingly endless maze of creation. Age after age he comes again and again, and if religion tells you that the Lord comes or came only once, don’t believe it.
 
 

Kicking or screaming, whether we like it or not, we are going to get God-realization because it is our inalienable birthright. We have come from the Divine and we must return to the Divine. There is no place else to go. The journey will take as long as we really want it to take and not a moment longer, based on our choices wise or not. If you hitch your wagon to a star – like holding fast to the Avatar, he will take you there directly, non-stop, without detours. Or, you can opt for various side-trips, lay-overs, excursions and Holiday Packages as listed in the brochures of life – a variety of addictions: drugs, sex, cyber, name & fame trips, a few lifetimes of hedonistic promiscuity, maybe joining a hate cult or acquiring and manipulating occult powers; hyper-materialistic abundance and prosperity ventures, or just picking the wrong new-age guru who deifies your false ego-mind and misleads you about the nature of your consciousness.
 
 

The journey is replete with bottomless pitfalls. But there is a built-in homing device that will lead your soul after lifetimes of frustration and wall-head-banging-dead-ends, back on the real spiritual path where he is waiting to take you by the hand and lead you on a direct path to your goal, which is God himself. Someone once compared finding the spiritual path to riding a wild horse when you’re lost. You have to keep spurring and kicking and goading him till he takes you in the direction he wants and knows you must go. Meher Baba pointed his disciples in that direction toward the end of his life when he told them, "Keep the trust I have reposed in you, by remembering me wholeheartedly. Think of me, love me, abuse me – whatever – just remember me so often that your mind is at a loss to find other thoughts to feed on. How to begin? At the start and end of any action mentally say, ‘Baba, it is you, not I, who’s doing this.’ Then gradually you will realize that it is I, doing everything through you.
 
 

Remember and follow me without any question of why, or what you will get from it...Do not expect anything but my love... no begging, no wanting, no room for desires – only the longing to unite with the Beloved. ...Do not think that by coming to me you will solve all your difficulties, and your troubles will be over. I have nothing to do with such things. I have no key for such problems. Do not hope for blessings for health or wealth. If you think you have come for the betterment of your health, on the contrary you will lose it. I have come -- descended from the highest state -- to bestow my love on you all. The rest is illusion".
 
 

In the last millennium there was never such a time as now to approach the path of ‘remembering him’. We are on the threshold of an extraordinary Age. A fresh divine call has gone out and the invitation has been given anew. Because of the universal work Meher Baba did in this century a new springtide of grace is in the air, in abundance, at ridiculously low and discounted prices. Failing to grab the opportunity to reach for the golden ring in this lifetime may mean you have to wait many more lifetimes before the wheel of life brings the ring again within reaching distance, or in 700 years when he said he would come back again in human form. But he is now most active and powerful in these years directly preceding and following his Universal Manifestation. This is truly the springtide for humanity.
 
 

If you’re not on an inside track, what are the signs, how can you know he’s been here again? There are unmistakable external markers in the culture. Each time he comes there is a spiritual push forward in all aspects of life and culture which results in precipitating a healing crisis where all the dregs and dormant evils in the collective unconscious of society boil up, giving the appearance of unprecedented misery, but mercifully allowing it to come to the surface where he can skim it off. It’s like a healing crisis. It gets worse before it can get better. Then there is an opposite effect, an accelerated burn, an explosion that literally gives birth to a new culture. We have seen it partially take form as advances in technology, medicine, communications and new forms of mass media – radio, telephone, film, television, the computer and the Internet – all with one purpose in mind, to unify human consciousness across time and distance. We went from the horse and buggy to deep space in less than fifty years. Daily, our knowledge of the universe is expanding. There is an inner movement within global societies, breaking down ancient prejudices, hatreds and caste systems to unify the human spirit and prepare us for his global spiritual awakening and that fulness of complete Intuition, whereby all human hearts will be connected one to another and to God without the need of words, rituals, ceremonies or the external trappings of religion – Humanity, One Body, One Spirit, in what the 20^th century metaphysician Oscar Ichazo terms the Metasociety.
 
 

The "giant leap" for mankind in 1969 – also the year when Meher Baba dropped his body– was not just the technical know-how that put us on the moon. It was even more so the unprecedented event of global unity – however fleeting – when for the first time in human history billions of people in breathless anticipation, sat awestruck in front of their televisions, focusing their hearts and minds as one-heart, one-mind, sending waves of love, support and God-speed to our astronaut brothers who broke the bonds of earth’s gravity and opened up a whole new age. For sure, that moment of global unity was a spiritual allegory of an even deeper unity that will be shared by all humanity in the coming age, or even by the remnants of humanity if the catastrophic events long-predicted actually do come to pass. While the speed of human consensus on the planet has accelerated at an unprecedented rate, these startling advances in all fields during the last one hundred years have totally outstripped those made in the last five thousand years put together.
 
 

Has some "energy" visited us and catalyzed the entire process of civilization? If so, What or Whom might that be? The question is intriguing. But for hundreds of thousands of people who already know about the Avatar, and flock by the tens of thousands in pilgrimage to his resting place in India each January 31, the answer is very clear.
 
 

If you have access to a computer with audio capability you can hear some wonderful stories of how he walked the earth in the 20^th century, showering his radiant smile, his love and compassion while being totally silent. The following audio website begins with a true story that he told his disciples of the spiritually Perfect Master who was God-realized while being a gay transvestite, and how he helped his followers overcome the ignorance and homophobia of local townspeople, teaching them to respect all the friends of God. These and many more stories about the Avatar of this age, Meher Baba, the Compassionate Father, are told on this website with insight and humor by a former Catholic priest who recognized Meher Baba as the Avatar in 1977. No, you won’t get this information from Rome, because, as Baba so delightfully said, "God is now at home."
 
 

Though these stories will place his name in your ear, it is his responsibility, he said, to bring it from there to your heart. As he repeated to his lovers in a previous incarnation, "Let those who have ears, hear." This is just the thread. Then see if you can grab hold of the rope, and if you can, and you’re even lucky enough to ‘hang’ yourself with it, good for you.

[ http://real.sunyerie.edu/mb/html/realmedia.html ] click Ed Flanagan – Baba Stories

(Later, read how Meher Baba’s rainbow flag became a borrowed symbol for
the gay community @ https://www.angelfire.com/mb2/MeherBabaLovers/rainbows.htm)

In his Universal Message to Humanity Meher Baba said:

"I have not come to teach but to awaken. I lay down no precepts.

Throughout eternity I have laid down principles and precepts, but

mankind has ignored them. Man’s inability to live God’s words

makes His teaching a mockery. Instead of practicing the compassion

He taught, man has waged crusades in His name. Instead of living

the humility, purity and truth of His words, man has given way to

hatred, greed, and violence.
 
 

Because man has been deaf to principles and precepts laid down by

God in the past, in this present Avataric Form I observe Silence.

You have asked for and been given enough words -- it is now time to

live them. To get nearer and nearer to God you have to get further

and further away from "I", "my", "me", and "mine". There is nothing

to renounce but your own self. It is as simple as that. Though almost

impossible, it is possible through my Grace. I have come to release that

Grace. When I release the tide of Truth, men’s daily lives will be the

living precept. The words I have not spoken will come to life in them.
 
 

I veil myself from man by his own curtain of ignorance, and manifest my

glory to a few. My present Avataric Form is the last incarnation of

this cycle of time, hence my Manifestation will be the greatest. When

I break my Silence, the impact of my Love will be universal and all life in

creation will know, feel and receive 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.
 
 

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 my coming in your midst. I had to

come, and I have come. I am the Ancient One".

Meher Baba

Much of the material for this piece has been freely quoted or paraphrased from various sources:
 
 

God Speaks, directly dictated by Meher Baba and first published

in 1955 by Sufism Reoriented, 1300 Boulevard Way,

Walnut Creek, CA 94595. This is a major work on the

theme of creation, evolution, reincarnation, involution -- the

fundamental mechanics of life and the universe.
 
 
 
 

Discourses, 3 Vols. Sufism Reoriented, as above. Original discourses

given to disciples between 1938-44. A comprehensive source of

Baba’s suggestions about practical details of the spiritual path,

covering an immense range of topics. 1967 edition personally

reviewed and approved by Meher Baba.
 
 
 
 

Lord Meher, A Biography of the Avatar of the Age, Meher Baba,

by Bhau Kalchuri. Copyright 1986, Avatar Meher Baba Public

Perpetual Charitable Trust, also Copyright of English translation

by Lawrence Reiter, MANifestation, Inc. Box 77335 Myrtle Beach,

South Carolina 29577. This is a monumental biography

Commissioned by Meher Baba who guided the author in all phases

of the work. 14 Vols. Published in English to date (1999) with

more to come.

Information on Meher Baba is expanding daily on the Internet.
 
 

Let your search engine do the walking.