Glowing Embers for the New Humanity, Meher Baba & C.G.Jung: God Can Only Be Lived

By Norah Moore

This is the second book of the trilogy The Manifestation of the Real Self, Meher Baba & C. G. Jung: The Theophany of Majesty and Beauty. Glowing Embers brings a more detailed account of how this path can be undertaken, from its earliest beginnings up to the end of the sixth plane of consciousness, and includes an introduction to the final event of God realization in the seventh and final plane.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491889411

Norah Moore

Dr Norah Moore is a Training Analyst and was Director of Training at the Society of Analytical Psychology, London. (Jungian Training). She is also a follower of The Avatar, Meher Baba. She therefore has experience of both fields, psychology and spirituality.

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© 2015 Norah Moore. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/28/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4918-8940-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-8939-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-8941-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014901259

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Photograph of Meher Baba include:

Firstly:   images are © Meher Nazar Publications, and

Secondly:   images are courtesy MSI Collection

Contents

PREFACE

PART 1

THE AWAKENER

1: THE AVATAR

2: AWAKENING

PART 2

MEHER BABA: THE PERFECT MASTER

3: THE COMPENSATING SELF & THE OTHER

4: PRAYER AS APPROACH TO THE SELF

5: SILENCE ON THE PATH

6: THE LOVE SWING: RUZBIHAN’S PENDULUM

7: THE MANIFESTATION OF REALISATION

PART 3

MEHER BABA: THE COMPANION

8: THE GARDEN OF HU

9: COMPANIONSHIP

10: BEADS ON ONE STRING

11: THE ONGOING WHIM & CONTINUOUS CREATION

POSTSCRIPT

GLOSSARY

REFERENCES

INDEX OF FIRST LINES OF POETRY

CONTACTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

TOPICS

This book is

dedicated

in memory of

William Edmonds Dodwell Moore

&

Don Eugene Stevens

"Oh llama de amor viva,

que tiernamente hieres

de mi alma en el mas profundo centro!

Oh lamparas de fuego

En cuyos resplandores

Las profundas cavernas del sentido,

Que estaba obscuro y ciego,

Con extranos primores!"

Calor y luz dan junto a su querido!"

St. John of the Cross

"O living flame of love

that tenderly wounds

my soul in its most profound centre!

O lamps of fire

in whose splendours

the deep caverns of feeling

that used to be sombre and blind,

now, strangely and exquisitely,

Give both heat and light to the Beloved."

Author’s translation

vii.jpg

Meher Baba at his dhuni

Pictures, chart, drawings and illustrations

Meher Baba at his dhuni

Meher Baba shortly before his death.

Meher Baba: The ‘Sermon on the Mount’

Meher Baba with the alphabet board

Meher Baba communicating with gestures

Meher Baba in a serious mood

Meher Baba: Shadow and stream

Meher Baba with folded hands

Meher Baba: ‘Silence’

Meher Baba and Mehera in the mist

El Greco: The disrobing of Christ.

Meher Baba swinging

Young Meher Baba in a daze after his Realisation.

Upasni Maharaj:

Meher Baba’s Perfect Master at their last meetng

Meher Baba in Mehera’s garden, Meherazad with a bird

Meher Baba with companions

Meher Baba at Arthur’s Seat

Meher Baba in seclusion, Meherabad 1941

Meher Baba in seclusion on Seclusion Hill, Meherazad,

with the asbestos cabin in the distance

Meher Baba at the Panchvati cave

Meher Baba sitting in seclusion in the Panchvati cave

Pilgrims at Arthur’s Seat 2007.

Photo of pilgrims outside the manonash cave

Don Stevens descending from the Kailash temple 2007

Photo of plgrims in the manonash cave 2007

Back cover: Photo of the author in the Manonash cave 2007

43294.png

What I have been working on is this:

Painting the Truth,

Revealing

A more realistic picture of God,

Tearing down the cruel walls

That separate you from the tenderness of Fire.

HAFIZ The Subject tonight is Love Trans. Ladinsky p.20

GLOWING EMBERS

FOR THE NEW HUMANITY:

MEHER BABA and C.G.JUNG

GOD CAN ONLY BE LIVED

God cannot be explained, He cannot be argued about. He cannot be theorised, nor can He be discussed and understood. God can only be lived.

Meher Baba, (God Speaks p.190)

PREFACE

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

Nevertheless, all that is said here and explained about God to appease the intellectual convulsions of the mind of man still lacks many more words and further explanations because the TRUTH is that Reality must be realised and the Divinity of God must be attained and lived. To understand the infinite, eternal Reality is not the GOAL of individualised beings in the illusion of Creation, because the Reality can never be understood; it is to be realised by conscious experience. Therefore, the GOAL is to realise the Reality and attain the I am God state in human form. (Meher Baba, God Speaks p.190).

1.jpg The frontispiece The photo of Meher Baba at his Dhuni (sacred fire), sets the scene for an exploration of the glowing embers that he left behind that will guide the New Humanity on the Path to realise Reality. The dhuni is the abode of the Avatar’s direct living and personal radiation. He writes in a poem to his dhuni,

He who loses himself in you becomes like you.

Wonderful is your effect, wonderful is your play,

Wonderful is your nature.

Yours is the gift which nurtures or destroys-

The seed you fructify, while the tree you uproot-

both are your blessings.

This book follows on from my earlier book The Sound of Bells and is the second book of a Trilogy "The Manifestation of the Real Self, Meher Baba and C.J Jung: The Theophany of Majesty and Beauty." In The Sound of Bells I explored the relation between Meher Baba and C.G.Jung’s ideas. Here I look further at that relation between Baba and Jung in the context of what we know of the Avatar’s work as Awakener, as Perfect Master and as Companion and of God’s ongoing whim and continuous creation. In the third book I will explore the epiphany to Himself of His Reality, nature and attributes through the incarnation of man and describe the incarnations of the nine avatars of the present cycle.

In God Speaks Meher Baba gave a skeleton that has to be filled out through personal intuition and experience. In this book I wish to follow some of his truths that he left merely as hints and also to try to fan any glowing embers that he left from which new fires might be kindled in the coming age. Meher Baba’s death was the end of the present age and the beginning of the New Age, and these embers are left for the New Humanity that he is already bringing into full swing.

My intuition is that Baba wanted to leave important words and explanations for the New Age about how God’s Divinity can be lived through actual conscious experience. So the heart and focus of this book is how God can be lived on the spiritual path. I will try to glean fragments of his legacy about how "God can only be lived" by man in creation, and how Reality can be realised not only at the Goal but also gradually throughout the planes of the Path in echoes and fragments.

Many people have ideas about Baba’s wishes for the future. These include topics that I, and I suspect many others, would dearly like him to clarify. We can merely guess what subjects he wanted to open up further for the New Age, but a variety of possible subjects have been suggested. For instance, one important theme is that all religions are Beads on One String, pearls on one necklace. So in writing this book I plan to take pearls from many religions, from Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, Christian mysticism and the Kabala, also from Sufism and the Sufi poets since Sufi lore offers a common base for the mystical dimension in all religions.

Among other important themes that have been suggested is companionship. Another subject is the idea of the ongoing Whim and continuous creation. These are crucial subjects that many people want to explore. I too have guesses about what he may have wished to explain further for his followers in the coming seven hundred years so to pave the way for his next coming as the Avatar. I would like to undertake a voyage of discovery to explore what Baba may have meant by "God can only be lived and Reality can never be understood, it is to be realised by conscious experience" and perhaps discover with the reader Baba’s secrets about living the life of God on the planes of the Path whether consciously or unconsciously, knowingly or unknowingly.

This book addresses anybody seeking for the meaning of life and for God’s Reality, and may especially appeal to followers of Meher Baba and to Sufis of all religions as well as to those searching Jung’s work. Jung’s writing is a major port of call for me and my perspective inevitably reflects a background as a Jungian psychoanalyst, so fellow Jungians may well find many ideas in this book that appeal to them.

I turn to Jung’s writings especially about the many different images and symbols of God, about the shadow, about the paradox of opposites and the compensating Self and about the archetype of the Way. I often wonder what Meher Baba would have made of Jung’s writings had they been available to him, or what Jung would have made of Meher Baba had he met him.

Some of the interpretations that I make of Meher Baba’s words are not necessarily shared by other companions.

PART 1

THE AWAKENER

p18%20Baba%20shortly%20before%20his%20death.tif

Meher Baba shortly before his death.

1: THE avatar

1.jpg Meher Baba the Avatar was a worker. He never ceased working until his last breath. He never explained what his work was or what he did. We know it was spiritual work and that it brought him much suffering as we can see in his face in this picture taken of him shortly before his death in 1969. We also know that his work as Avatar was for every person, for every animal, even for every ant. We know he came as Awakener of men’s hearts, as Perfect Master of those attempting the slippery spiritual path and as Companion on the journey.

When Meher Baba said that he had come to awaken, he did not mean just to awaken spirituality in those of mankind who are on the Path. He came to revivify everyone, everything, all creatures, and all areas of being. He is the awakener of eternal spring for all. He awakens human love as well as Divine love, and awakens the search for knowledge in creation as well as in the divine. He revivifies all religions as Beads on One String, the String that is himself. He awakens ever new and creative whims in everyone and these carry on his life of continuous creativity, whims which we live out, as best we may, God’s Whim to answer His question to know the meaning of Reality and to know who He is, through his whim, Who am I?

In order to concentrate on his work Baba used to go at times into seclusion, sometimes in small caves. When he was asked if the enclosure, heat and airlessness was oppressive he said that on the contrary being shut in the earth helped him to stay in touch with creation, as a tree reaches up to the heavens giving shade and fruits to all but has roots delving far and wide deep in the earth.

We say in the Christian creed that Jesus is of one subsance with the Father. He is also of one substance with men and they are one substance with him. But this is a secret we hide from ourselves.

The Avatar does not always make himself known. He may be taken only to be an ordinary man. He may be unrecognised by the majority of men unless he makes himself known. "Baba the Avatar is not necessarily recognised and hailed by each and all, because he covers himself under a veil for his own spiritual work . . . . The veil which the Avatar puts on himself can be removed by him at any time and for any person or persons as he may desire for the purpose of self-revelation or self-communication." (Meher Baba, Beams pp.31-32).

The Avatar suffers, as does any man. Baba says in Beams," The Avatar does not take upon himself the karma of the world nor does he become bound by it. But he takes upon himself the suffering of the world which is the result of its karma. His suffering for the world is vicarious. It does not entail entanglement with the karma of the world. But humanity finds its redemption from its karma through his vicarious sufferings, e.g., illness, humiliation, accidents and the like." (Beams p. 32).

In the editors’ introduction to God Speaks Baba is quoted as saying in 1937, "A Perfect Master who has to take upon himself the burdens of the world, to absorb them, must necessarily have physical reactions, and consequently must suffer physically like ordinary human Beings . . . The Perfect Master absorbs duality in his true existence, in order to sublimate it." (Introduction to God Speaks p.xxvii). This naturally also applies even more to Meher Baba and his own suffering.

Baba writes about God’s original consciousness and unconsciousness, and the Avatar’s place in this. He says, "In the Infinite Beyond state of God, which transcends the categories of consciousness as well as unconsciousness, there appeared the first initial urge for God to know Himself. And with the arising of this initial urge, there was an instantaneous manifestation of infinite consciousness as well as infinite unconsciousness, as simultaneous resultants. Of these two seemingly opposite but complementary aspects, the infinite consciousness plays the role of the Avatar or Divine Incarnation. The infinite unconsciousness finds its expression through an evolution, which seeks to develop full consciousness through time processes." (Beams p.27).

In this passage Meher Baba makes it very clear that the Avatar emanates from God as His infinite consciousness. It is through the Avatar that God becomes conscious of His nature and His Divinity. Meher Baba has this nature and function, as every Avatar has had, in the present cycle, in all his incarnations as Zoroaster, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, John of Avila, Mohammed, Shivaji and Meher Baba.

Baba says, The Avatar was the first individual soul to emerge from the evolutionary and involutional processes as a Sadguru, and he is the only Avatar who has ever manifested or will ever manifest. Through him God first completed the journey from unconscious divinity to conscious divinity, first unconsciously became man in order consciously to become God. (Discourses p.268).

The Avatar Mohammed says of himself, "The first thing that God created was my light, which originated from his light and derived from the majesty of His greatness." (Carl Ernst, Hadith sayings in the Masnavi).

There are one or two points here that are unclear to me. God did not become aware of Himself and His nature through the Whim or Creation Point but throughout creation itself and the process of evolution and involution. Certainly God contained creation in Himself in latency, but at the Whim He had neither consciousness of Himself nor of anything else. The question ‘WHO AM I’ came at the Whim of Beyond Beyond God. The answer ‘I am God’ came in the Beyond God State as a result of his experience as man in creation. There was no consciousness of any attribute such as light at that point, all His attributes being present only in latency, but He had no consciousness of them. God’s Being is neither light nor dark in the Beyond the Beyond. What He became ‘aware’ of at the creation point may have been his Essence or Being. God’s awareness of His nature did not come at the creation point but later through His state in man as the Beyond God.

When He came to his second state of the Beyond, God had already asked "WHO AM I’’ and become aware of his Essence. In the Beyond the Beyond He had been unconscious both of His own Essence and of His nature and wanted to be known to Himself, not primarily to man. He became aware of Himself through creation through which His awareness of his nature came through man’s evolution and involution in the experience of life and in the process of the spiritual path, through which the centring of the Self is refocused upon God.

As well as Awakener the Avatar is the Perfect Master. Meher Baba says, "The easiest and safest way to lose one’s finite ego is by surrendering completely to the Perfect Master or to the God-man (Avatar), who is consciously one with the truth." (Listen, Humanity p.163).

Baba is of course the real and ultimate Master but he said that it was important for some people, now that he has dropped the body, to have frequent access to a living Master because we are in creation. Baba may be reached through intuition but that can become changed and corrupted in passing through the sanskaras. He says, The Divine truths are most easily accepted and assimilated when they are passed on directly to the aspirant by a living Master. (Discourses p. 220). A living master, who may be a master of the planes, becomes more and more essential from the fourth plane and even more so on the later mental planes. But we do not have to take everything on trust. Baba said, "The right of testing the Master through critical reasoning has always been conceded to the disciples." (Discourses p.367).

For the final leap across the gulf to God-realisation Baba says that a living Perfect Mater is absolutely essential but sometimes Baba himself does take the pilgrim across himself, or he may send Khizr the eternal wandering Master as he is said to have done to Moses and to St. Francis of Assisi.

Baba will always provide a Master if this is what he wants to happen, but we should try hard to find one. I searched for twenty-five years before I found a master and then it was the result of a sudden chance intuition. The time was not wasted but very fruitful although I was under a veil and was unaware that anything at all was happening.

The Master stands in the place of the Avatar in creation and so the same sort of unquestioning obedience that Baba asks towards himself is due to the Perfect Master. It is no good obeying only when we agree with it. Baba says that a disciple knows the Master to be an embodiment and representation of Infinite God. (Discourses p.147). The disciple therefore must always test his own promptings by means of the standards or orders given by the Master. In the event of any conflict between the two, he should thoroughly re-examine his own ideas to discover the points wherein they might be short of perfection. Almost always a little reflection is sufficient to perceive the basic harmony between the true dictates of his own higher Self and the requirements of the Master. (Discourses p.151).

Baba often stressed to the Mandali the importance of obedience to a Perfect Master and would ask Aloba, one of the Mandali, to recite Hafiz’s lines about unquestioning obedience to a Perfect Master,

"Befitting a fortunate slave, carry out every command

of the master without any question of why or what.

Never say it is wrong, because, my dear, the fault lies in your own incapacity to understand him."

Hafiz quoted in Lord Meher p.789.

These ideas may confuse many people in the West where the whole idea of unquestioning obedience to a master is often unattractive. In the East this is different since there the recognition of the importance on the spiritual path of reducing the ego’s dominance is more usual. Meher Baba says, The easiest and safest way to lose one’s finite ego is by surrendering completely to the Perfect Master or to the God-man (the Avatar). (Listen, Humanity p.163).

1.jpg Glowing Embers . . . . In God Speaks, Meher Baba left a skeleton of his philosophy leaving it open to being filled out through personal intuition and experience. In seeking his wishes for the coming age, in particular about how God’s life may be lived, Meher Baba’s statement that ‘God can only be lived’ seems to me to be pointing not to any theoretical thought but to the actual experience of living in the present moment with God on the planes of the spiritual path. While God Speaks tells of the states of God and how He reaches consciousness of His nature through the finite consciousness of man during evolution and involution, Meher Baba’s later writing focuses somewhat more upon a disciple’s actual experience on the planes of the Path and at the Goal rather than on explanations or philosophy.

It is my hunch that Baba’s glowing embers will evoke further new intuitions and ignite new fires in the future for living His life on the Path and attaining awareness of the soul’s oneness with Reality. A number of subjects that Baba left only as hints and echoes are being explored by many people as possible themes that Baba may have wanted to be opened up for the next age. These include the idea of all religions being Beads on One String, the New Life, and companionship with Baba and with our fellows, and intuition.

It is pleasant to imagine that Baba’s hints about themes for the future are just waiting for one to interpret. I suspect that many people in many ages have had such a fantasy. Among possibilities that appeal to me, my guess is that he may have wanted to write about living in the present moment. Perhaps he wished to give more details about the experience of such a way of living in the stages and states of the planes. Or he may have wanted to say something about the meaning of silence. Paradox and the opposites of bliss and pain are among the subjects that come immediately to mind. Other guesses of mine are about how we may glean form and meaning from sanskaras, or habits of thoughts and actions, after their energy has been dispersed, and how head and heart become balanced and marginalised. Perhaps he wished to say more about how the way of love will close in coming years, as he has predicted, resulting in meditation replacing the way of love as the safest and quickest way to God. Perhaps he