Darvish Khan Writes

There is great confusion in the Baba world as to what exactly Meher Baba meant by his various statements on politics, and the need to not mix up love for him with politics.

Meher Baba had a dim view of politics in general, but especially relative to his spiritual work which completely eschewed politics. Real spirituality, he claimed, has nothing to do with politics. God, and the love for God, should never be confused or conflated with politics. God, who is infinite and indivisible, must not be politicized.

But the matter is not so simple, it turns out.

Does this mean that a Baba lover should not enter politics, as often illustrated by Baba’s statement to Mahatma Gandhi that he should leave politics and come to reside with Baba? On the other hand, Sarosh Irani, an intimate disciple, was mayor of Ahmednagar at Baba’s direction. And there are other similar examples. So what is the point?

The point, I believe, is that the indivisible truth and purity of God and love for God can never be represented politically.

Now, Baba also made interesting observations on partisan politics as inherently problematic, practically speaking: group-think demanded by party loyalty will always compromise individual honor and integrity, and thus prove to be worthless. Politics will inevitably betray one’s highest values, in any case.

Then there is the injunction to not talk about politics at the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, SC. This has generated an attitude among many that to talk about politics at all, anywhere, is a waste of time better spent remembering God; that to talk about politics is somehow dirty and unspiritual.

This gives rise to the problem that much of life is political one way or another, and so how does one talk about power? How does one talk about the abuse of power- without being accused of being political?

The current example of genocidal Israel is an excellent example of how a grave humanitarian problem gets wholly subsumed as “political”, and thus rendered a taboo subject. This of course becomes a highly repressive power trip on the part of Baba lover Zionists.

Thus the problem facing a Baba lover concerned about injustice, is how to address the subject of power and injustice without being accused of being political. For many, the default attitude is simply to not discuss controversial topics. This is completely lame, needless to say.

It should be said that for many truth and justice are closely related, and cannot be so easily divorced. In fact, in Islam, social justice is considered a direct reflection of religious faith. It is not possible to be a good Muslim, and be indifferent to social injustice. Remember that the Prophet was both a political and spiritual leader on the basis of divine revelation, and that this is the primary difference between him and Christ. The Christian can more easily maintain that God is pie in the sky.

The problem in a nutshell for the Baba lover is how to address the egregious abuse of power illustrated by the US imperial war machine, especially in the case of support for the self-identified Jewish state of Israel, without being accused of talking politics.

Now, what if a Baba lover reads Meher Baba’s own words on war, and what represents just and unjust war, and concludes that to vocally oppose murderous fascism as illustrated by US support of Israeli policy is fully justified by such words? That there could hardly be a more open and shut example of what Baba meant by catastrophically unjust war and violence.

We are in a pickle, except for those who have the courage to cut the cant and grok that truth and justice can never be separated by rhetorical sleight of hand. If we desire a New Humanity, we must act like we really want a New Humanity, and in the name of that God who will deliver us to such a world.

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In the Kali Yug, the bull of Dharma (righteousness) is highly unstable. It stands on one leg, having lost the support of its other legs in the the previous cosmological ages. In the Satya Age, or Golden Age, the bull stands on all four legs of virtue but loses one leg each age until in the Kali Yug, it teeters on the one leg.

In the Treta Yug or Silver Age, self discipline or simplicity in mind and action is destroyed by pride and arrogance, and the bull stands on three legs.

In the Dvarpara Age, or Bronze Age, purity of heart gives way to lust and greed, and the bull stands on two legs.

In the Kali Yug, or Iron Age- the Machine Age, symbolized by the automobile, the last virtue of mercy or compassion is further eroded by greed, hate and power, and the bull is about to collapse.

In the Kali Yug, religion is relentlessly politicized and degrades into propaganda to promote- not the Unity of Life, but separateness and division. This age represents the final inversion of Nature as the bull of dharma collapses.

Everything starts to collapse in the Machine Age as greed and power is normalized by the abdication of love. Mercy and compassion are renounced for power that empowers greed through propaganda. This is the Age we are now living in.

The Machine Age is the age of Propaganda. It enshrines the goddess Progress as the exploitation of Nature and capital. The machine is worshipped as the capacity to dominate Nature through violent appetite.

The Machine Age is typified by the War Machine, the dedication to violent control of land, labor and resources. This is exemplified by the US as the very personification of predatory capitalism, which degrades at last into fascism, and as illustrated in the support of psychotic Israel.

The US since the end of the 2nd WW has come to regard itself as the vanguard of Progress and liberalism, the acme of the Machine Age and the nation that would now normalize genocide and war crimes as legitimate national policy with a 1.7 Trillion dollar annual War Budget.

The Bull of Dharma is in its final collapse as love and mercy have completely given way to greed and hate- and in the name of God, no less: the God of violent power.

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One of the more fascinating and significant contributions to the subject of aliens, UFOs, the cosmological universe, etc., is to be found in the work and comments by Avatar Meher Baba.

In his most important work, God Speaks, which is a sublime metaphysical and cosmological treatise on the nature and function of creation (Nature), Meher Baba says that there are 18,000 planets with human life. These planets are divided into three classes of planets determined by the relative influence of mind (intellect) and heart (feeling). There are planets with 100% intellect and 0% feeling; planets with 75% intellect and 25% feeling and only one planet, our planet Earth, where intellect and feeling are relatively balanced at 50% each.

In other words, all other planets are much, much smarter planets but have no or little capacity for feeling. In Meher Baba’s opinion, it is only the balance between mind and heart that facilitates spirituality; it is only on this planet Earth that spiritual development becomes possible. The other two classes of planets are inhabited by eggheads who unconsciously long to take birth on Earth so that they can begin to feel and thus begin to spiritually develop.

Now, one of the interesting qualities of planets with 100% and 75% mind is that they have mastered telepathy. They can project their consciousness where they will, not on the basis of empathy, but on the basis of inquiry.

Meher Baba once replied to the question, “are UFOs from outer space” with the answer, “no”. He did not explain further. My interpretation of this remark is that UFOs are from astral space, i.e. they are the result of some form of thought transmission, or telepathy, and which occurs on the astral plane which is the juncture between the gross plane and the subtle plane. This is a semi-material plane, so to speak.

UFOs are not physical objects, per se. They are astral images. They are a virtual image. They are a telepathic projection. And they are interested in Earth because they unconsciously long to feel. They are checking us out.

Now, Meher Baba also said that the population explosion after the industrial revolution is largely the result of aliens from the super smart planets taking birth on earth to develop feeling; they long to feel. And that they took and take birth here on Earth with a tradeoff: they develop the capacity for feeling and at the same time are responsible for the tremendous growth in science and technology. They are the eggheads responsible for the scientific revolution. But they also long to become more human.

It is likely that much of the world’s current population are immigrants from outer space, and that they have come here after first checking us out; they have asked, “do we really want to take birth on planet Earth”, and many have responded with a resounding “yes!”

Earth is the planet of operatic drama; it is the only planet of operatic drama. This is the only planet where song is life. And this is why Earth is the center of the universe for which all life longs. This is the planet, the only planet, where love can grow.

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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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