A Christmas Message

      

A Christmas Message From Don Stevens To all

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BIRTHDAYS

In the Baba world the months of December, January and February are well filled with special celebrations, such as the birthdays of Jesus Christ, Mehera and Mani, the birthday of the most recent coming of the Avatar, and just before that, on the basis of the calendar, his dropping the body. All this collection of important events results in a good deal of reflection, as well as celebration, as even dropping the body in Baba's case was certainly a very great relief for him after the years of increasingly acute pain he had to endure first with the broken hip, and finally, with the worn-out neck joints.

As this latter event will soon be upon us, one tends to focus first on the suffering Baba confirmed to us that the Avatar takes upon himself each time he is born into creation, to help all of humanity dissipate a portion of the enormous load of suffering that creation and its achievement of the infinite consciousness of God involves. Of course, Baba also advises us that some 90% of that suffering is unnecessary and is inflicted on us by ourselves, but this statistic appears to go on throughout time without change. In any case, the Avatar goes through a literal crucifixion for us to alleviate in some degree this great burden, in the case of Jesus by crucifixion on a wooden cross, and in Baba's case through the crucifixion of bodily pain. For Jesus Christ, the scene was more dramatic, but in Baba's case as well, it was not possible to be around him for very many minutes in his latter years without seeing some signs, as much as he tried to mask them, of the excruciating pain that was his constant companion.

While this is the inevitable reflection that one associates with Amartithi Day in January, it is inevitably followed by the recollection of the magnificent gift of love that both incarnations of the Avatar showered upon humanity. Although I was not present personally when Jesus Christ gave his shower of love, or if I was, I do not have the ability to pierce into the mental storage bin to recall it, I do remember many occasions when I was present and witnessed, always with the greatest awe, the impact of Baba's love when some new person experienced it for the first time. Oddly enough, the most common evidence of the event was a burst of tears, often uncontrollable, and very often continuing for even days. The wonderful and reassuring fact, though, is that this typical evidence of Baba's love has not terminated. There are still persons living who had been in Baba's presence who evoke, seemingly completely without intent nor effort, the same evidence of Baba's presence and grace. It never ceases to amaze and warm me as well, to know so clearly of his constant presence among us. Especially this year, as the transition we are going through is so very apparent, I reflect on the heritage Baba has left us. Always, he impressed upon me, he had to provide for certain key mechanisms, to accomodate the change of both human forms present as well as major mechanisms for seeking the Truth. One of the earliest of these, which he carefully explained to me, was the manner in which he has prepared us for the inevitable change from love as the major principle to be used along the Spiritual Path, to that of meditation, which he explained did not have the force and the efficacy of love in moving us along that Path, but was nevertheless, as he put it, the most important of the secondary means of assistance. Hence the Discourses, with more chapters on Meditation than any other subject. Baba could not have been clearer to me in explaining the exact reasons and purpose behind this singular fact.

This is also, invevitably, the season for reflection on the Word left us centuries ago by Jesus, and the Word that Baba explained to me he has left with us for a major use by his devotees for the next seven hundred years. Perhaps I am tragedy oriented, but each time I think of the teachings of Jesus and the manner in which they have come to us, I cannot divorce even for a moment what I have studied through the years of the dissensions and even the bloody wars fought over the nature and the meaning of Jesus' words. And, inevitably, I wonder if a similar fate will overtake the words Baba has left us, before they are able to deliver their true import in our inividual spiritual ongoing.

To date, unfortunately, I am not very optimistic, as already I see far too many signs of the manner in which our individual egos insist on turning out phrases that we feel are important and representative of Baba's own original words, but without the simple and easily achieved base of checking Baba's own original usage. We think we know what he said, but the tragedy is that too often it is not, or we have skewed words and their import by our own heritage of habit and desire. In brief, our own sanskaras are our own worst enemy in what we often intend as a renewal of the Truth given us by Baba. How strange, that this occurs so often, when it would be so easily accomplished to take out a book originally given out by Baba to a close mandali, and then that mandali's carefully composed words reviewed meticuoulsly by Baba himself and confirmed as being exactly what he wished to say. This is a painstaking procedure that was not used by the Avatar for a simple exercise in logic. It was his means of constructing the vehicle to which, as again he explained carefully twice to me, he attached the bombs of spiritual energy which he intended for our use in the hundreds of years until his next coming.

A word, when handled by the Avatar, has two major contents: firstly, the logical content of what constitutes the skeleton structure, often of the functioning of Creation, along with us within it. The second is the sheer individualized spiritual energy he has attached to it. And, unfortunately, that attached spiritual energy, is not transferred by some miraculous priority, to another's interpretation, even though this may be in inspiring concepts and colors. Baba gave no such description of a transference of the essential spiritual energy content of his words. His simple and blunt instruction was to work with his words, even if one did not understand the meaning of two of those which one read. And the incredible miracle of all, is that it is already clearly evident that this spiritual energy is completely individualized for our own individual needs and ongoing. Only the Avatar could do a job of this magnificent wholeness in answering our needs for the future - all seven hundred years of it.

D.E. Stevens