Born February 25, 1894, Meher Baba’s name was originally Merwan Sheriar Irani. According to tradition, five Perfect Masters (Qutub-a God-conscious individual) influenced him over a period of seven years to achieve the realization that he was the Avatar of this cycle. The first was an elderly woman of the Muslim faith, Hazrat Babajan, who initiated the process when she kissed him on the forehead. The word “Avatar” means an embodiment or manifestation of God on earth. Followers of Meher Baba believe he was the most recent manifestation of God, having previously visited the earth as Zoroaster, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and others. Meher Baba maintained silence for the last forty-three years of his life, communicating primarily with hand gestures and an alphabet board. He never sought to establish a religious sect, but proclaimed the unity of all religions. A large following of disciples, from many different faiths, continues to grow worldwide. Meher Baba established a Universal Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He died January 31, 1969, at Meherazad, India.

Doctrinal Stance on the Seven Pillars of Wisdom

The Origin and Nature of the Universe

Meher Baba: Taught that God did not actually, consciously create the universe. “It started automatically. First there was God and nothing else. In God was everything: experience, power, knowledge and existence. But he had no consciousness that he was God. All this bother and headache you see around you is to gain that consciousness.”¹ Prior to the act of creation, God was in a state of “infinite unconsciousness.”² God himself passes through three levels or states of consciousness: (1) His Original State (unconsciousness); (2) Helplessness (by expressing himself in the form of helpless humans); (3) All-powerfulness (by unveiling his divinity in enlightened beings).³

Meher Baba also proposed that matter does not exist because “there is nothing but God…the existence of matter is due to the existence of the mind. When the mind disappears, matter also vanishes.”⁴ “The whole world is created and carried on by the force of the imagination.”⁵ Actually, it is only God who appears as the universe. “The manifold evolving universe arises from the mixing of the one Reality and Nothing…It is an outcome of Nothing and is nothing. It only seems to have existence.”⁶ Meher Baba proposed that there are other universes. Within this universe, “there are 18,000 worlds in creation which are inhabited…but the value of our Earth…is inestimable. For it is here and here alone…that God-realization can be attained.”⁷

1 Bhau Kalchuri, Lord Meher, vol. 3 (Asheville, North Carolina: Manifestation, Inc.) p. 855, Meherabad, October 7, 1926.

2 Ibid., pp. 988-989, Meherabad, December, 1927.

3 Meher Baba, The Everything and the Nothing, ed. Francis Brabazon (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Sheriar Press, Inc., 1995) pp. 95-96.

4 Bhau Kalchuri, Lord Meher, vol. 3, p. 1148, Meherabad, March 28, 1929.

5 Meher Baba, The Path of Love, ed. Filis Frederick (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Sheriar Press, Inc, n.d.) p. 32, also The Awakener (Magazine) 10:4, ed. Filis Frederick, p. 1.

6 Meher Baba, Discourses (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Sheriar Press, Inc., 7th rev. ed.,1987) p. 24.

7 T.K Ramanujam, Much Love, (1994) p. 529, Notes dictated by Meher Baba.

The Nature of God

Meher Baba: God is beyond all distinction and thought, the one Reality at the heart of all religions. God is both an Impersonal Absolute and personal in manifestation. Creation is an emanation of God himself. “God has three Infinite aspects: Knowledge, Power, Bliss.”¹ There are “Ten Principal States of God:” (1) God in Beyond Beyond State; (2) God in Beyond; (3) God as Emanator, Sustainer and Dissolver; (4) God as an Embodied Soul; (5) God as a Soul in the State of Evolution; (6) God as a Human Soul in the State of Reincarnation; (7) God in the State of Spiritually Advanced Souls; (8) God as the Divinely Absorbed; (9) God as a Liberated Incarnate Soul; (10) God as a Man-God and God-Man.² A Man-God is a Spiritually Perfect Master. A God-Man is the Avatar, the Christ. God in his original state existed in “infinite unconsciousness.”³ (See The Origin and Nature of the Universe.) The first two states mentioned above are descriptions of God in an Impersonal State. The third is a semi-personal state, while the other seven states concern God manifesting in creation. The evolution of creation is actually the process of God discovering himself, or becoming fully conscious of his own divinity and nature.

1 Meher Baba, The Everything and the Nothing (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Sheriar Press, Inc., 1995) p. 98.

2 Meher Baba, God Speaks (Walnut Creek, California: Sufism Reoriented, 1973) pp. 158-159.

3 Bhau Kalchuri, Lord Meher, vol. 3 (Asheville, North, Carolina: Manifestation, Inc.) pp. 988-989, Meherabad, December 1927.

The origin and Nature of Man

Meher Baba: An ordinary human being possesses four main parts: (1) A gross body (the physical body); (2) A subtle body (pran); (3) A mental body (mana); (4) A ‘higher Self’ (Atma). As a person evolves spiritually, other parts are developed or ‘awakened.’ A God-realized person is comprised of seven parts: (1) A gross body; (2) A subtle body; (3) A mental body; (4) A universal body; (5) A universal mind; (6) An unlimited divine ego; (7) Infinite consciousness. The soul is formless and eternal.

There are 18,000 worlds inhabited by human beings, but only those born in this world can transcend into the higher spheres. Souls from the other worlds will be reincarnated here when it is time for their spiritual development. When this earth ceases to be, another planet will be chosen to fill this special role. “After a billion years, man will only be five inches in height at the most, but will be very brainy. In the beginning of this cycle man was fourteen feet tall and would live up to 300 years.”¹ The Son of God or divine nature is in every man, but needs to be manifested.

1 Bhau Kalchuri, Lord Meher, vol. 5 (Asheville, North Carolina: Manifestation, Inc.) pp. 1871-1873, Meherabad, May 23, 1934.

The Nature of Salvation, Liberation or Enlightenment

Meher Baba: “Do not search for God outside of you. God can only be found within you, for his only abode is the heart.”¹ In his book, “God Speaks,” Baba declares that there are as many ways to God as there are souls. In another book, he explains, “Your own religion, if put into practice, is sufficient to bring salvation to you. It is a mistake to change one’s own religion for that of another. The surroundings and circumstances in which you find yourself are best suited to work out your destiny or to exhaust your past karma.”² Salvation or liberation is attained when the reincarnation process ends and the soul experiences oneness with God. Baba was adamant in insisting that except for the very first soul, in order to reach Enlightenment (God-Consciousness, Self-Realization), all souls must have the help of a God-realized Perfect Master or the Avatar. So it is vitally important in life to find that Master and to serve him or her in love and obedience.

1 Information brochure from Meher Spiritual Center, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, A Place of Pilgrimage For All Time, p. 5.

2 C. D. Deshmukh, Sparks of the Truth: From Dissertations of Meher Baba (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Sheriar Press, Inc., 1971, Reprinted from “The Awakener” Magazine) p. 91.

Dimensions or Planes of Existence

Meher Baba: There are seven planes that the soul can experience above the physical or gross plane. The soul exists apart from these planes, experiencing them according to the level of spiritual maturity: (1) The subtle world of energy (the gross world on the threshold of the energy world); (2) The subtle world of infinite energy (minor miracles); (3) The subtle world of infinite energy (grand miracles); (4) The subtle world on the threshold of the mental world (the dark night of the soul); (5) The mental world: inquiring or reflective thought; (6) The mental world: impressions or sympathetic feelings; (7) Reality: the experience of Infinite Knowledge, Power and Bliss. The first six planes are in the realm of duality and thus, can afford false or delusional experiences. The seventh plane alone provides an experience of the Absolute or the Real.

There are “seven subdivisions of the first Subtle plane (the Astral), seven stages of evolution, seven planes and seven heavens in involution.”¹ Heaven and hell do have an existence in the Subtle World, but they are actually “states of mind; they should not be looked upon as being places. And though subjectively they mean a great deal to the individualized soul, they are both illusions within the greater illusion.”² Heaven and hell states provide temporary, transient experiences to the soul between incarnations.

1 Bhau Kalchuri, Lord Meher, vol. 4, (Asheville, North, Carolina: Manifestation, Inc.) p. 1264, Nasik, January 12, 1930.

2 Meher Baba, Discourses (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Sheriar Press, Inc., 7th rev. ed., 1987) p. 30.

The Spiritual Journey and Ultimate Destiny of Man

Meher Baba: Though born in a Zoroastrian family (a worldview that teaches just one life) Meher Baba taught reincarnation. He instructed that “in pursuit of consciousness, evolution of forms occurs in seven stages: stone or metal, vegetable, worm, fish, bird, animal and human.”¹ Every individualized soul ordinarily experiences all of these forms in order to gain full consciousness. “After attaining the human form, as a rule there is no reversion to animal forms; cases of retrogression to subhuman forms are special and rare exceptions.”² Also, the soul must pass through 504,000,000 pre-human forms “and 8,400,000 human forms on its way to enlightenment.”³ In its utmost essence, the soul is formless and eternal.

After the evolutionary journey brings the soul to human form, the remainder of the journey consists of progress through the seven planes of existence (a process called “involution”). Though the soul may exist on these planes between incarnations, all evolutionary progress through these planes is made while actually living in the physical world. The highest plane is Consciousness of Absolute, Infinite Oneness. If a soul advances to the fourth plane, but misuses its power, the result can be extremely detrimental, involving possible reversion in the next incarnation to the lowest form, starting the process of evolution all over again.

“The way to divinity lies through the renunciation of evil in favor of good...The good sanskaras [accumulated imprints of positive, past experiences that determine a person’s desires and actions] deposited by the manifestations of these qualities overlap and balance the opposite, bad sanskaras of lust, greed, and anger. When there is an exact balancing and overlapping of good and bad sanskaras, there is at once a termination of both types and the precipitation of consciousness from a state of bondage to a state of Freedom. The credit and debit sides must be exactly equal to each other if the account is to be closed…The limited self can linger through good as well as bad sanskaras. What is required for its final extinction is an exact balancing and overlapping of the bad and good sanskaras.”⁴

1 “Meher Baba,” Miriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions, p. 706.

2 Meher Baba, Discourses (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Sheriar Press, Inc., 7th rev. ed., 1987) p. 320.

3 Bhau Kalchuri, The Nothing and the Everything, p. 291-292, From dictated notes, Meherabad, 1968.

4 Meher Baba, Discourses (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Sheriar Press, Inc., 7th rev. ed., 1987) p. 63.

Cycles, Ages and the Ultimate State of the Universe

Meher Baba: Unique to Meher Baba’s teaching is the concept that “in each cycle of time, which ranges from 700 to 1400 years, there are eleven ages of 65 to 125 years each.”¹ Each cycle brings an Avataric manifestation (an Avatar such as: Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Meher Baba). He also claimed “the evolution of creation has seven stages,” and that a major cycle of cycles “is twelve thousand million (12,000,000,000) years” long.²

1 Meher Baba, God Speaks (Walnut Creek, California: Sufism Reoriented, 1973) p. 254.

2 Bhau Kalchuri, Lord Meher, vol. 4 (Asheville, North Carolina: Manifestation, Inc.) p. 1264, Nasik, January 12, 1930; Lord Meher, vol. 5, p. 1871-1873, Meherabad, May 23, 1934.

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