On Sunday, February 14th, 1943, the day of Baba’s forty-ninth birthday, gatherings were held in six different cities: Poona, Bombay, Nagpur, Sholapur, Madras and Lahore. One gathering could not be aranged in Hyderabad as Baba wished. Baba sent a representative to each place to deliver His message, “The Task for Spiritual Workers.” Adi Sr. went to Lahore, Savak Kotwal to Poona, Pandoba and Gadekar to Sholapur, Babadas to Nagpur, Chanji to Bombay and Dr. Ghani to Madras.
Meher Baba’s message was particularly aimed at ninety-nine spiritual workers who had been invited to these gatherings, urging them to awaken people to the understanding that the divine Truth is always within each one, but it is each person’s duty to experience it consciously.
In the path, the most important condition of discipleship is readiness to work for the spiritual cause of bringing humanity closer to the Realization of God. Through your faith and love for me, you have wholeheartedly offered yourselves for sharing my universal work of spiritualizing the world. You will not only inherit for yourself the Truth, but also become enthusiastic and valiant torch-bearers for humanity, which is enveloped in deep ignorance.
Because of its supreme importance for the true and final well-being of humanity, spiritual work has a natural and imperative claim on all who love humanity. It is therefore very necessary to be quite clear about its nature. The whole world is firmly established in the false idea of separateness, and being caught up in the illusion of duality, it is subject to all the complexities of duality. The spiritual workers have to redeem the world from the throes of imagined duality by bringing home to it the truth of the unity of all life.
The root cause of the illusion of manyness is that the soul, in its ignorance, identifies itself with its bodies or with the ego-mind. The gross and subtle bodies as well as the ego-mind of the mental body are all mediums for experiencing the different states of the world of duality, but they cannot be the mediums for knowing the true nature of the soul, which transcends them all. By being identified with the bodies or the ego-mind, the soul gets caught up in the ignorance of manyness. The soul in all the bodies and ego-mind is really one undivided existence, but as it gets mixed up with these bodies and ego-mind, which are only its vehicles, it considers itself as limited and looks upon itself as being only one among the many of creation, instead of looking upon itself as being the only one reality without a second.
Every soul is eternally and inviolably one with the one undivided and indivisible Universal Soul, which is the sole reality. Yet false identification with the bodies or the ego-mind creates the illusion of manyness and of differentiation within the whole. The bodies or the ego-minds are only the mediums or the vehicles of consciousness, and as the soul experiences the different planes of creation through its different mediums or vehicles, it goes through different states of consciousness.
Most souls are unconscious of their true nature as God, Who is the unity and reality of all souls. God-Realization is only latently present in them, since in them Realization has not yet come to be experienced consciously. Those who have cast off the veil of duality experience the soul through itself independently of any mediums or vehicles. In this experience the soul consciously knows itself as being identical with God, Who is the unity and the reality of all souls.
Life in the Truth of the unity of all brings with it freedom from all limitations and sufferings. It is the self-affirmation of the Infinite as infinite. In this state of spiritual freedom and perfection, the ego-life is finally and completely surrendered in order to experience and release the divine life in the Truth, and God is known and affirmed as the only reality which is worth living for.
To realize God is to dwell in eternity. It is a timeless experience. But spiritual work must be done for the souls who are caught up in the mazes of creation, which is bound by time. Spiritual workers cannot ignore the element of time in creation. To ignore time would be to ignore the spiritual work itself. It is imperative to be discriminatingly aware of the flow of time in creation, and to
appreciate fully the supreme importance of the moment in the near future which will witness the universal dispensation of the Truth of spiritual wisdom.
The task for spiritual workers is to help me in this universal dispensation of the Truth to suffering humanity. You have not only to prepare humanity to receive this Truth, but also to get established in it. It is extremely important to remember that you can help others to gain spiritual freedom and to come out of the illusion of duality, only if you yourself do not miss this idea of unity while working for others, who are inclined to create divisions where they do not exist, and who allow no respite to spiritual workers.
The minds of the people have to be completely purged of all forms of selfishness and narrowness if they are to inherit the life in Eternity which I bring. It is by no means an easy task to persuade people to give up their selfishness and narrowness. It is not by accident that people are divided into the rich and the poor, the pampered and the ruled, the leaders and the masses, the oppressors and the oppressed, the high and the low, the winners of laurels and the recipients of ignominy. These differences have been created and sustained by those who, through their own spiritual ignorance, are attached to them and are so much settled in their perverse thinking and feeling that they are not even conscious of their perversity. They are accustomed to look upon life as divided into inviolable compartments, and they are unwilling to give up their separate attitude. When you launch upon your spiritual work you will be entering into a field of divisions to which people desperately cling, which they accentuate, and which they strive to perpetuate consciously or unconsciously.
Mere condemnation of these divisions will not enable you to destroy them. The divisions are nourished by separative thinking and feeling, which can yield only to the touch of love and understanding. You have to win people to the life of the Truth; you cannot coerce them into spirituality. It is not enough that you should have unimpaired friendliness and untarnished good will in your own hearts. If you are to succeed in your work, you have to bring home to them the faith and the conviction that you are helping them redeem themselves from bondage and suffering and to realize the highest, to which they are rightful heirs. There is no other way to help them attain spiritual freedom and enlightenment.”
Baba then offered hints of how to go about the work and explained about the help of the Master:
Descend to the lower level of understanding of those whom you are trying to help; speak in terms they can understand. Do not divide life into departments and deal with each department separately and exclusively. Departmental thinking is an obstacle to integral vision.
Spiritual progress is not a process of accumulating from outside; it is a process of unfoldment from within. The Master is absolutely necessary for anyone to arrive at self-knowledge, but the true significance of the help given by the Master consists in the fact that he enables others to come into the full possession of their own latent possibilities.
Baba concluded his statement by discussing the overcoming of obstacles and affirming the outcome of spiritual work:
It has been seen that spiritual workers must necessarily be confronted with many obstacles, but obstacles are meant to be overcome. Even if some of them appear to be insuperable, you have to do your best to help others irrespective of results or consequences. Obstacles and their overcoming, success and failure, are all illusions within the infinite domain of unity. Your task is already done when it is performed wholeheartedly. You are steadfast and one-pointed in your desire to help my cause of awakening humanity to the sole Reality and the ultimate worthwhileness of God and God alone, and you will get many opportunities for spiritual work. There is ample scope for work in this field.
You must do your work without worrying about consequences, irrespective of success or failure, but you may be sure that the result done in this spirit and with this understanding is certain. Through the untiring activities of spiritual workers, humanity shall be initiated into the new life of abiding peace and dynamic harmony, unconquerable faith and unfading bliss, immortal sweetness and incorruptible purity, creative love and infinite understanding.
Lord Meher, Original Publication, Bhau Kalchuri. Vol. 7 & 8 Pp. 2846 – 2849.