February 4, 2021
As tumultuous illusory dramas of the outer world come and go with increasing frequency, I would like to pass on several statements Meher Baba made about the period of his manifestation. Though they date from the late 1930s and ’40s, they seem remarkably pertinent today.
In 1937, during his stay in Cannes, France, Baba told a visitor, “Chaos and destruction are essential for reconstruction. It is the spiritual law – create and destroy. Create chaos, confusion, and misery – then destroy it, so that it may all be built anew. How can an old house be rebuilt unless it is demolished?”
In January 1939, a reporter from the Associated Press asked, “How long will the present chaotic state of affairs continue in the world?” Baba replied, “As long as selfishness exists, because it is the root cause. In all this chaos and confusion my work is done. It is a cleaning process.”
At their first meeting at Meherazad, in 1948, Baba told Murshida Duce, “Don’t expect anything to be easy. Life will be full of problems, and the world even more so. In fact, in years to come the world will reach a zenith of anti-God thinking, immorality, lust and greed, because the ending of a vast Cycle of cycles is taking place. But after the climax, a new era of brotherly love will be ushered in by God, Who knows all that is going on.”
Meher Baba told Murshida Duce that we are living at the “zenith” of the Kali yuga, when all forces of life, positive and negative, are at their strongest. It is the time when the greatest progress can be achieved, because more energy is available – for growth or destruction – than at any time in many thousands of years. That is why we as individuals have such a tremendous struggle with thoughts, feelings, and desires associated with the lower nature. Those patterns of life are especially vibrant now, and they are strengthened by the forces of Nature itself to manifest fully and completely so that the energy of Kali (the destroyer of Illusion) can transform them. Our job is to apply discrimination, to make the mind pellucid as crystal, to see our way clearly, and to wrap ourselves in the cloak of Baba’s Name as we go about our everyday lives, trying our best to represent his principles in a world that is blind to those principles. In that sense, we are pathfinders. But we are following the Path Maker on His pure and swift white steed.
In His Unbounded Love,
Murshida