Life Eternal

On the Title:

LIFE ETERNAL

You do not see me as I really am. This body is not me. My real self is far more beautiful.

I am infinite truth, infinite love, infinite power. I am LIFE ETERNAL.

I was Krishna, I was Buddha, I was Jesus, and now I am Meher Baba.

Meher Baba, 16 December 1931, Paris, LM4p1507

You do not see me as I really am. This body is not me. My real self is far more beautiful.

I am infinite truth. I am infinite love. I am LIFE ETERNAL.

Meher Baba, 2 November 1933, Marseilles, France
on board the ship Viceroy of India, LM5 p1840

"If the Avatars and Sadgurus prepared their schemes on a safe, firm, sound permanent basis, what would the difference be between them and ordinary human beings? None of the past Avatars like Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus or Muhammad ever did this.

Their lives and work are all full of hectic movements and gestures that were entirely vague, with no sound basis behind them in the material sense, except a great purpose which every Sadguru and Avatar has, which is their mission in life; that is, to depict and prove the transitoriness and falseness of the world and all its things, through the very vagueness of their own moves and schemes.

Thereby mankind turns to sound, solid causes of the LIFE ETERNAL and its attainment through a spiritual life. By the capricious plans and vacillating ways of the Masters, they prove that this changing world, and everything in it, is illusion. Then they lead the aspirants toward the stable and lasting values of the spiritual life, and guide them toward Realisation."

Meher Baba, 31 March 1938, Panchgani,
LM7 p2272-2273

"To die is not easy. Thousands and thousands die daily, but it is not dying. Dying should be such that it is complete death. Then it becomes LIFE ETERNAL."

Meher Baba, 15 May 1943, Meherabad
to Ragho Patel, LM8 p2870

"Do not evade the quest for LIFE ETERNAL..

Do not bury yourself in words that are empty sounds.

Do not stupefy yourself with the repetitions of rituals and ceremonies.

Arise and become fully awake in your own immortal and divine self."

1940s, Forty Messages from Meher Baba, message 1

"O God, today being my first real birthday, my heart expresses that the declaration of the 'Life'* by me was entirely yours and by your will; because nothing happens save by your will. "All my knowledge and my ignorance, all my strength and my weakness, all my freedom and my bondage, are as you have desired and decreed. "This LIFE ETERNAL will be lived by me in conformity with your will, and every word of the declaration of the 'Life' will come to pass by your grace."

Meher Baba, 16 February 1952, Meherazad, LC p7
Other versions: LM 10 p3763, GM p197

*Baba explained about the 'Life' phase, which followed the 'Old Life' and the 'New Life' and began in 1952:

'Life' for me now means:

1. Free and obligationless life.

2. Life of a Master in giving orders, and that of a servant in all humility.

3. The feeling of absolute conviction that we are all eternally one, indivisible and infinite in essence; and with it a feeling of separateness from the real omnipresent self, through ignorance.

4. Life of God in essence; and that of man in actions.

5. Life of strength born of inherent knowledge of oneness; and of weakness born of binding desires.

6 February 1952, Meherazad, LC p3

"When I was in America, people asked me when I would break my silence. I in turn asked them, 'If my silence cannot speak, of what avail would be speeches made by the tongue?'

"When God thinks my speaking would be heard universally, he will make me break my silence. However, silence or no silence, he who would deeply ponder over the truth which I declare shall eventually be initiated into the LIFE ETERNAL."

Meher Baba, November 1952, India, Aw 5:4 p35

"I am happy to hear that my lovers at Nagar are inaugurating the Meher center at Khushru Quarters. Though it is true that my real center is in the heart of the individual, it is helpful for my lovers to come together and think and talk about me, to discuss my teachings and messages, compare notes with each other, and cooperatively try to come closer to me in understanding and spirit. The one who does not seek my blessings, and desires nothing from me but to be able to love and serve me, is my true lover.

"In view of my long stay at Meherabad and Meherazad, the Nagar Meher center has a special responsibility and a role to play. In the future, when Meherabad and Meherazad become places of pilgrimage for my lovers all over the world, the world will be rightly looking forward to the Nagar Meher center for receiving my love and truth.

"It is therefore for you to have these from me by keeping yourself in inner contact with me, by bringing your lives into tune with my will, and by living in a manner that would inspire others to follow you in loving me.

"My nazar* will be on everyone participating in the functions of the Nagar Meher center, which no doubt will have a bright future, rising up to the expectations which the world will naturally build up.

May you all inherit my LIFE ETERNAL..

My love and blessing to you."

Meher Baba, 1962, Ahmednagar
The Early History of the
Ahmednagar Center, by Ward Parks
Meherana Messenger 1995:2 p3

*nazar = the glance of the Master. The expression seems to mean that Baba will 'keep an eye' on them. Nazar has also been translated as 'blessing.'

"If we consult spiritual intuitions, there is indubitably an unique appeal in the impersonal idea of timeless eternity in Brahman or universal reason. When the Upanishad says,

'Mrutyorma amrutam gamaya'

Lead me from death to immortality

The idea is not to avoid or welcome physical death (consisting in dropping the Gross body), but to welcome and transcend the annihilation of the separative ignorance of ego-life in order to inherit the indivisible LIFE ETERNAL.

"This truth of eternity or God as the highest value has an irresistable claim upon our highest intuitions. But it allows room for the relative empirical existence of finite beings (as continuities that run through births and deaths) and also for the hidden realities of planes and worlds in the realm of duality.

"With the grim possibilities of a nuclear war overshadowing the very existence of man on earth, our most pressing question is, who can dispel the forces of mutual distrust and fear, and bring the necessary awakening to humanity? Precepts and slogans cannot take us very far.

"All religions, in some form or the other, have looked forward to the Advent. The world is not going to be saved by teaching alone. It needs full coordination of the hidden spiritual forces, and a fresh dispensation of the eternal truth. The infinite divine reservoir of power, wisdom and happiness has to be unlocked. And the true significance of the hidden realities is that this divine source is always available to us if we inwardly open ourselves to it in the eternal now, even in the most trying ordeals of humanity.

"A great outpouring of the LIFE ETERNAL comes to us on an unprecedented scale and on all the planes through the advent of Avatar Meher Baba, the master of silence, who controls them all. In this age of dry words, he has been observing silence for the last forty years. "The awakener has come. He gives not words but truth. He has come not to teach but to awaken. He does not found a sect or a religion, but releases a new life-impulse, redeeming humanity from all sins and illusions, and reclaiming man to the heritage of his own inalienable divinity.

"By imparting to the hungry world divine love and divine truth, he shows all world religions in their fundamental unity and in their true essence. His silence speaks on all planes more powerfully than heaps of words. He invites us all to inherit the incorruptable bliss, the unwaning understanding, the unassailable peace, the unalloyed sweetness, the irresistable dynamism and unhampered freedom of LIFE ETERNAL. He imparts the conscious realisation that all life is one, and that God alone is real.

"Enticing and astounding, Avatar Meher Baba's silence gives a rude awakening to the confused spirit of our age. But it also takes each and all to the sanctuary of his all-encompassing peace and the bliss of the undivided LIFE ETERNAL.

"No distance in time or space can prevent our inheritance of the illimitable life which he brings while descending in our midst from the inscrutable yonder."

Chakradhar D. Deshmukh
August 1965, Munich, Germany
Meher Mouna Vani 3 (10 October 1965)