"Baba-Lovers"
By Merwan Mehta
I met a couple. The husband was an ardent Baba disciple. The lady was taking her time to become familiar with Baba and did not go out of her way to show how devoted she was toward Baba. She created an impression amongst their family and friends that she was a "non-believer." With such an impression about this lady running rampant in the local Baba group, when every self-declared Baba-lover met her they would pose the question, ‘have you become a Baba lover yet?' Naturally, this irritated the lady into becoming even more resistant in accepting Baba.
When we use the label "Baba-lover," it creates two sects, the Baba-lover group and the non-Baba-lover group, which in the minds of people gets stretched to infer non-believer-in-Baba group. Using this label we are trying consciously or unconsciously to establish the new Meher Baba religion around Baba, something Baba would never have liked. Baba went to great lengths to show the separation between God and religion. Baba said, "I am here to bring all religions together like beads on a string," and, further Baba said that He was here to help us eradicate all religious ceremonies and replace them with love for God. This infers that it does not matter what religion you belong to, to follow Baba and understand His message.
Let us look at this a little differently. Baba said that the ultimate aim for all humans is to become one with God. This goal is so lofty that humans will have to experience all that is "experienceable" in the universe, and this will more than likely take thousands of incarnations of various kinds to achieve. A few good thousands of incarnations in various forms, will also include several thousand human incarnations. These human incarnations will show gradual improvement in terms of the experience level and spiritual insight. Now think, what is the probability of a person's understanding to have sufficiently developed such that the person is ready to take advantage of the presence of an Avatar of God, who visits the world once every 700 years or so? So why do we embarrass those of us who us who are slow in recognizing the Avatar of the Age? The answer can only be for the sake of fulfilling the desire to belong, which eventually can lead to creation of a religion.
When you introduce someone to Baba, and ask after a week or so whether the person is sold on the idea that Baba is the Avatar, this is similar to buying a house after half an hour of discussion with a real estate agent. Not that this cannot happen, but this can only happen if the person buying the house is exactly looking for something that he or she has been offered, which that person might have been researching for a long time. The same thing also happens with Baba, some people have been with Baba in His previous incarnations and instantly reestablish the old connection, whereas others need to be brought up to speed to begin to make the connection.
Baba has said, "To each one I appear to be what he thinks I am." This suggests that not all of us can see Him the same, since we do not all think the same. Baba is such an ocean of knowledge and bliss that all of us can take as much as we want, and still leave the ocean intact. What this statement of His also means is that since we do not know how our other fellow beings think, we can not know how Baba appears to them. Hence, how can we judge how much of a Baba-lover a person is or is not?
In trying to gauge the differences between partners that we live with, understand that in the various incarnations that we undertake to ultimately merge with God, we live with thousands and thousands of souls as partners and friends. What are the chances that both partners will have an equal appreciation for Baba's teachings? There is a very small chance that this will happen. If one spouse gets the understanding first, he or she should patiently let the other one discover it on their own, which may or may not happen in this incarnation. Being impatient and forcing ones' beliefs on another creates strife in all spheres of life. Such inconsiderate behavior apart from creating a desire in the minds of the non-complying partner to even resist more, achieves little but a desire to stay away from all Baba talk and experiences.
So the next time you are inclined to label someone a Baba-lover or not a Baba-lover remember that loving Baba is a very personal matter, and each are on different paths and levels in that journey. Instead of classifying people as Baba-lovers or not Baba-lovers, try to follow the simple means to truly love God that Baba has elaborated in "How to Love God."
"If, instead of seeing faults in others, we look within ourselves, we are loving God. If, we suffer in the sufferings of others and feel happy in the happiness of others, we are loving God. If, instead of worrying over our own misfortunes, we think of ourselves as more fortunate than many, many, others, we are loving God. To love God as He ought to be loved we must live for God and die for God, knowing that the goal of all life is to love God and find Him as our own self."