Darvish Khan Writes

In the mid-sixties, Avatar Meher Baba gave out anti-drug  messages in response to the experimentation with marijuana and psychedelics going on in the US. His unequivocal message was that authentic spirituality has absolutely nothing to do with such drugs or “medicines”. They have absolutely nothing to do with the “expansion of consciousness”; they play no authentic role in opening the “doors of perception”.

Not only do such drugs not get one “spiritually high”, he said, they can be extremely dangerous  with even incidental usage, depending on the person. He declared them to be harmful physically, emotionally and spiritually. He did say that the strictly supervised medical application of such substances could have in certain cases a positive effect- but that in such cases this had nothing at all to do with spirituality. He was referring to cases of mental illness, insanity and such problems as alcoholism.

It should be said of Meher Baba that he strictly defined spirituality as the realization of unconscious divinity concealed by sanskaras (impressions), and that only the Avatar and Perfect Master can offer the help required to cleanse the mental body of all impressions resulting in the realization of God.  Meher Baba explains that the human form has complete consciousness, but that consciousness is like a mirror covered with filth (impressions); what is required is for the mirror to be cleansed of all impressions so as to reveal innate divinity, or God.

Additionally, Meher Baba points out that the use of psychedelics can open up momentary distorted access to the astral body, the body that connects the physical body to the subtle body, the body of pran which itself is subordinate to the mental or causal body where all impressions are stored in seed form. Why is the momentary access offered by psychedelics to the astral body distorted? The answer is that the gross (physical) body promotes gross consciousness based on gross impressions which become the medium by which the astral body (semi subtle) is experienced. In other words, the astral body is not experienced in its own terms, but in the terms of gross impressions which “falsify” the experience. An analogy is offered by the dream state in which gross impressions experience the astral body.  The dream state is simply the activation of  the astral body by gross impressions.

What this means is that whatever one experiences, however sublime, on psychedelics, is not even remotely spiritual. It is simply a distortion of the astral body- which is not even the subtle body the conscious experience of which defines the very beginning of the spiritual path.

The most “far out” experience on drugs is literally an hallucination experienced through the astral body in which the connection with the astral body is entirely fragmentary.

People often attempt to validate the spiritual use of psychedelics by referring to traditional shamanic practices involving psychotropic medicines. The argument goes that psychotropics have always been used for physical and spiritual health, and so why can they not be used for the same purpose in the modern world?

Avatar Meher Baba’s answer is that the shamanic world is NOT the spiritual world; it is a technology that exploits the astral plane and entities that inhabit the astral plane. These entities are not spiritual. The spiritual path begins with the conscious experience of the subtle body and world. This is not to say that shamanic practices don’t have value in their own traditional and indigenous application, but that as a rule they do not pertain to authentic spirituality as defined by Meher Baba.

If one carefully reads the work of Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota, his examples serves to suggest that a traditional medicine man and holy man may actually be truly advanced on the spiritual path and that he expresses his advanced spiritual consciousness through shamanic metaphor. The important point is that such a holy man did not advance to his spiritual station through psychotropics.

Contemporary authors like Michael Pollan who researches the generalized therapeutic use of psychedelics thinks that they can treat  conditions based on fear, depression and anxiety. He believes that they can do this by allowing a new and more healthy ego self concept or narrative to emerge; that ill health is often a matter of what the ego falsely demands of us, and which psychotropics can remedy.

This point of view may well offer valuable insights into the psyche, but it seems a displacement and usurpation of what the traditional spiritual view has to offer. Meher Baba’s view on spiritual psychology is that nothing- nothing at all, compares with divine love in healing the psyche. If the therapeutic use of psychedelics seeks to re-balance the ego mind by carefully administered “natural” drugs, it is putting the cart before the horse. It is entirely a hit or miss approach. Restoring wholeness to the soul is all about relatedness that only divine love can offer.

https://avatarmeherbabatrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/God-in-a-Pill.pdf

https://avatarmeherbabatrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/godspeaks_p1.pdf

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When Avatar Meher Baba first visited the US he remarked that America had great spiritual potential because of its great energy, but that its energy was misapplied. He stated that for America to “lead the world spiritually” it would have to redirect its enormous energy to spiritual purposes. And in which case the world would be transformed.

My blogging on the evils of American empire is to emphasize the importance of refusing to accommodate the Death Machine that is US foreign policy and which is the world’s greatest obstacle to Avatar Meher Baba’s Manifestation.

The US government with its past 23 years of continuous Terror Wars against the middle east is in an unprecedented campaign of hate and carnage that has arrived at the Final Solution of the Palestinian.  The Terror Wars have concluded with an undisguised genocide live streamed 24/7 that has now gone on for 1 year, and which now involves Lebanon and promises to finally include Iran.

Meanwhile, the US has contrived and provoked a proxy war against Russia that could easily result in nuclear war, and the US threatens to involve China in a war over Taiwan, as well. We are in an extraordinary perilous moment orchestrated by the logic of relentless and psychotic empire.

This bipartisan insanity is the Deep State or the Duopoly in action. There is no political solution to this insanity as the Deep State, as remarked, is a bipartisan actor. Only an outside agency can deflect and change the course toward global destruction.

The horse is saddled and the rider is on his way.

It has now become a civic and spiritual  obligation to resist and counter the Deep State in all manner possible. Not only the fate of America is at stake, but the fate of the world. The “end of every affair was in its beginning” applies to the settler colonial tragedy of the US: what began as genocide and slavery organized by the corporation (Jamestown) and rationalized as Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine, has now become American Exceptionalism and Full Spectrum Dominance.

The US aspires to be a galactic empire in fact as advocated by the technologist, Elon Musk, with the backing of the Deep State. The conquest of Mars is the exaltation of Ares, the god of war and empire. This is the energy of Death that we all must resist and defeat so that Spirit and Love can reign.

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The problem with Avatar Meher Baba’s books and statements is that one can easily read them in isolation from other books and statements that often provide essential context to form a just appreciation of them. This can lead to very serious errors.

The fact that the Avatar is Perfect does not guarantee that his books and statements don’t require contextualization. In other words, spiritual perfection often does not warrant a literal reading or assessment of content taken at face value. For example, God Speaks is widely regarded as Baba’s most important work, a work so important that most of the text was meticulously dictated. It could easily be regarded as a perfect book for that reason. But in fact, we know that Baba expressed unhappiness with the published work in notes made by Francis Brabazon, who was tasked by Baba to make some additions and changes. (This never happened.) This tells us that no matter how valuable and insightful the material of God Speaks is, it is not a perfect work.

And in fact Baba tells us that in the text itself, in Part 10, Conclusion:

“God cannot be explained. He cannot be argued about, He cannot be theorized, nor can he be discussed and understood. God can only be lived.”

Another example: Baba’s Discourses are widely regarded as his authoritative statements on a wide variety of subjects. There are chapters on meditation which go into exacting detail on the subject. But Baba in his own life disavowed the importance of meditation as unnecessary relative to remembrance of his Name, and especially so for the time period covering his life, and for some time after after his dropping the body.

Another example: Baba went to extraordinary efforts to collaborate with Ivy Duce on a charter that would empower the sufi order of which she was the presiding Murshida, to carry Baba’s imprimatur. This charter was guaranteed by her promise of 100% honesty in obeying Baba, as she herself was not qualified to act as a Murshida. (She didn’t have the requisite spiritual status.) So, the charter which Baba approved was conditioned on a covenant of honesty to Baba’s wishes and expectations. The short story is, the sufi order started wandering in the wilderness. To adduce the charter as proof of the sufi order’s legitimacy is ridiculous.

Another example: Baba was recently quoted in the online edition of Lord Meher as having expressed surprise and respect for Israel, a small country, having defeated  a coalition of larger Arab countries, in the 1967 6 Day War. But this quotation has been adduced as evidence of Baba supporting the present US/ Israel genocide of occupied Palestine. This is obviously a complete distortion of Baba’s words made decades earlier which in no way were an endorsement of genocide.  And in fact Baba has made very clear statements about what justifies war, and the gratuitous persecution and annihilation of Arab Muslims is definitely not on the list.

There is no substitute for common sense and context in the appreciation of the writings and words of the Avatar. Literalism and especially deliberate distortion of his words because of the refusal to apply context is what will guarantee that Baba’s advent will be dishonored.

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“Ethics in time of war can only be judged by the degree to which they reflect the divine plan. In war there are two kinds of forces operative: (1) those which make for love, justice, harmony, and the well being of all mankind, and (2) those which work in alliance with narrow racial and national loyalties towards the selfish exploitation of others…

He who would wage war must search his heart and make sure that the ends for which he is fighting are a reflection of the divine plan. His actions will be justified only if they help to lead humanity to spiritual brotherhood cemented by an inviolable sense of the unity of all human beings, regardless of class, color, nationality, race, religion or creed.”

Meher Baba, from Listen, Humanity pg. 131

https://avatarmeherbabatrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ListenHumanity.pdf

The above statement by Avatar Meher Baba is a concise statement on the ethics of war and an excellent basis on which to evaluate the justifiable basis for war. It is a common sense rule of thumb from a spiritual and humanistic perspective that posits the essential unity of life despite outward differences, and that to wage war apart from or in contradiction to this basis is unacceptable.

In short, war based on “selfish exploitation of others” is unacceptable. War will only be justified, in fact, if it promotes “spiritual brotherhood…regardless of class, color, nationality, race, religion or creed.”

By this standard, the US/ Israel genocide against occupied Palestine is flagrantly unacceptable. Israel is acting altogether as a rogue state in denying the rights and very existence of millions of Palestinians- whose land Israel has stolen. This could not be a more emphatic illustration of the promotion of “narrow racial and national loyalty”.

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