On January 13th, 1959, Baba met a group of newspaper reporters. He stated: “I am happy to be able to meet this group of intelligentsia who possess a warm heart for the spiritual aspect of life.”
Baba gave the following short message:
Our very life should be such as to be God’s message of Truth in the world. If, in our everyday life, we manifest love, service and honesty, renunciation is achieved without renouncing the world.
The reporters were then introduced to Baba individually. At the end of their ten-minute audience, one of them asked, “Meher Baba, what is the spiritual path, and what is the criteria for one being on the path?”
Baba smiled, for they had been instructed not to ask questions, but nevertheless, he explained:
When you begin to think of yourself as being on the Path, then you are not. The Path is not a defined direction set apart from yourself. It begins and ends within yourself. It is not so much more of a path added, but so much less of the veil of ignorance. In short, the Path is “I want nothing.”
But, although this denotes a freedom from wanting anything, even this desire for nothing is a want and a binding that has ultimately to be effaced before you reach the Goal and attain that total freedom from all want.
One of the reporters remarked, “Although one makes a determined beginning, one’s enthusiasm slowly wanes when there seems nothing to show for the efforts, and this is followed by a feeling of mental depression.”
Baba answered through Eruch:
Yes, this is quite common. Whatever the efforts you make, whatever the failures that seem to result, whatever the despair that follows, all have their roots in the fact that you love yourself more than you love God. In loving yourself as wholeheartedly as you should have loved God, failures and despair stand up prominently before you. This is quite natural.
Therefore, do not let the fact of your depression depress you. Have you given thought as to where this depression was prior to its appearance? It has emerged unasked, and as such, it must vanish. Your forced efforts to overcome it will only imprint itself all the more on your mind and create further binding. So be completely indifferent to it and it will disappear.
The solution is to love God as He should be loved. Love for God alone counts.
Lord Meher, Original Publication, Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 16, pp. 5520 – 5521.