AMBPPCT sponsored focus group event to be held at Sufism “Re-reoriented”

In a major coup for Sufism Re-reoriented and their sympathizers, the Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Trust, based in India, is planning to have Sufism Re-reoriented host a focus group on the development of a long range plan for the Trust. This focus group is one of four such events planned, the others being in Myrtle Beach, SC, London, England, and Avatar’s Abode, Australia. This focus group is to be led by Daniel Stone and Merwan Dubash, a trustee of AMBPPCT.

Needless to say to readers of my blog, this is a fiasco. SR does not speak for anyone but themselves- they are not a Baba group per se, but a cult. They have adopted an intermediary- a so called murshida, stated to be on the 6th plane of consciousness, in defiance of Meher Baba’s order to not interpose any spiritual authority- real or assumed, between him and his lovers, at this time.

This decision to allow SR to host this event was made unilaterally by the president of the Meher Baba Center of Northern California, Janet White, that is to say without including all of  the group’s board of directors and without canvassing membership opinion.  Alan Talbot, a member of this group, facilitated this decision.

So, what is wrong with this?

SR has a rogue political/ spiritual ambition that must be countered. In conversation today with the chairman of AMBPPCT, Shridhar Kelkar, in Moraga, CA at the home of Alan Talbot, I reminded him that when we last met in Australia for the 60th anniversary of Meher Baba visiting Avatar’s Abode, that the murshida of SR, Carol Conner, had a statement read out by a surrogate, that the reason why SR never took root in Australia was because Francis Brabazon lacked the resources to accomplish this. She also said that SR would one day remedy this deficiency.

This is a complete falsification of the facts. Meher Baba expressly divorced Francis Brabazon and the Abode from SR,  just as he did with the Meher Center in Myrtle Beach, SC. That Carol Conner got this wrong speaks volumes. This so called Baba group is in the grip of spiritual fascism.

So, what is to be done?

If the plan goes ahead as planned- that SR hosts the only Trust sponsored focus group on the future of the Trust, the vast majority of non SR Baba lovers in northern CA will not attend. We remember- even if  Baba lovers generally do not, the severe exception that all of Meher Baba’s mandali took to the occult makeover of SR as documented in the 1980 “Bell of Warning”.

 

 

 

 

 

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Ten Thousand Chernobyls rise to bless us

Ten thousand Chernobyls rise to bless us
For the Kali Yuga machine age of Progress.

Energy is dirty when it promotes desire,
When it starts smoking after smoking fire.

The car has carried us to the precipice of disaster
With no one to stop it, not even the Master.

Gog and Magog lead us in Cadillac comfort
Into carbon deserts- without water for our thirst.

Like lemmings we race into blind and cruel chaos
To celebrate the supremacy of Thanatos.

We happily drove away with a honeymoon whore
And now, now we still cry out for more, and more.

Darvish walks into a flaming dark green horizon
With the beloved’s name his only orison.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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We walk and walk with the friend by our side

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I long to visit the cool arctic before it melts

https://vimeo.com/341145828

I long to visit the cool arctic before it melts
Away in a heat wave that inspires fascist dolts.

The end of the world is coming faster than you think
In a flood of stupidity that will drown the quick.

Unless you can learn the Irish heel and toe it
And drink from the crystal cup of the beloved.

Aye, we can dance and sing as the world retires,
And celebrate the sweet song that never expires.

Let us the people sing a song of longing love
For the beauty that endures as the world dissolves.

Love will rise and sing as flowers of pure liberty
From the heat of heartless and fascist tyranny.

When tears of ice at last flow down Darvish’s face,
The Master will bless his song with coolest grace.

 

 

 

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The Master has said most of the world will perish

The Master has said most of the world will perish;
Don’t let this bamboozle you, but his name cherish.

Earth, millions and millions of times passes away
Into nothing; But the mind survives gross decay.

And takes birth again and again a billion time
until mind and soul become one and the same.

When the mind drowns in the ocean of divine soul,
mind is destroyed at last, and God becomes the goal.

Only love survives times great shifts with elegance:
Stone dreams of animal longing for human embrace.

When you breathe your last, remember the beloved;
All other desire is but tepid and insipid.

Darvish says the world is a place to forge longing
for the Master’s name with poetry and singing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The path of remembrance vs. the path of yoga based on Meher Baba’s teachings

Yoga is very big these modern days as the development of physical culture based on the practice of asana, or yogic posture. Asana, in fact, has almost nothing to do with the path of traditional yoga which is primarily based on the practice of pranayama, or breath control, as a path to progressively deeper states of samadhi, or yogic concentration.

The yogic path develops breath control as a means to temporarily still the mind and induce bliss; This is possible because the mental body (the seat of all impressions, including desire), is energized by the subtle body (the seat of Pran, or energy). When a yogi becomes adept at breath control, he or she can temporarily put the desire-mind to sleep by depriving it of agitation, so to speak. Samadhi is a trance state. There are many grades of samadhi reflecting progressively deeper states of concentration and consequent stilling of the desire-mind. (The desire-mind is like a drunken monkey bit by a thousand hornets. Yoga attempts to placate the monkey by removing one sting at a time).

But this stilling of the mind which results in a trance state full of bliss is temporary. When the ecstatic state is over, the mind reverts to its usual drunken agitated self. Samadhi does not eradicate the desire-mind, but effects only its temporary suppression. Moreover, there is the great danger and likelihood that the bliss experienced as the result of a temporarily and relatively stilled mind will be mistaken for spiritual advancement. Thus, the yogi becomes enormously proud of his capacity to access samadhi. Think of it this way: The desire-mind is like a permanent migraine and samadhi like a miracle pill giving temporary relief. It is the penultimate pain killer, but not in fact a cure for the condition, ie. the desire-mind. The yogi is very much a drug addict who wants nothing more than his fix of bliss.

The path of remembrance is based on nam-jap or zikr, the repetition of the name of God or the Avatar/ Prophet. It is a devotional path that opens the heart by recalling, at its best, the Perfect Master or one of the Avatar’s incarnations: Zoroaster, Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Christ, Muhammad and Meher Baba.

This path drowns all thought and desire in the longing for the Perfect Master or Avatar, who is God in human form. This path creates the pain of longing for the Master; The lover wants more and more love for the supreme beloved with whom he longs to be united. This was the path of St. Francis for Jesus, of Rumi for Shams-e-Tabrizi, of every ardent lover of the Master whose grace made him a Master in turn.

The path of remembrance is diametrically opposed to the path of yoga. The path of yoga is an intermediary and provisional path of breath technology whose aim is to escape the orbit of earth and suffering. But which can never be achieved in this way. The path of remembrance longs to die with every breath by ever greater suffering at the feet of the Master, and which requires the Master’s grace. Only the Perfect Master or the Avatar can release a soul from the wheel of birth and rebirth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Happy 125th birthday on Feb. 25th, Avatar Meher Baba

The fall from grace that is a shooting star
recalls the highest heaven from afar;
O the Lord and Master has taken birth
to bless man and creature and holy Earth!

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Fire as the power of love

In Zoroastrian cosmology, Ahuramazda and Ahriman vie in eternal conflict over the moral and spiritual universe. The principles of light and darkness are ever circling each other in eternal conflict. One of the most interesting points about Zoroastrian cosmology is that Ahuramazda requires human intervention to subdue Ahriman. It is not possible for the power of light and beneficence to dominate darkness and greed without man’s help. When man agrees to the precepts of “good thoughts”, “good words” and “good deeds”, the power of light ascends; when man refuses to follow these precepts, Ahriman ascends.

Zoroaster lived, according to Zoroastrian oral tradition, some 9 to 10 thousand years ago. (Western scholarship avers he lived only some 2,500 years ago.) It is the world’s oldest religious/ spiritual tradition. Zoroastrians believe that Abraham was a Zoroastrian and prophet who gave rise to Judaism, and in turn gave rise to Christianity and Islam, through their respective prophets.

Zoroastrianism holds the elements sacred, especially the element fire. It is the original primordial tradition in which Nature is held to be a direct manifestation of God; but fire is the most tangible manifestation of God’s presence as it represents the power of love to defeat darkness and confusion. Thus, Zoroastrians are said to worship fire in their fire temples.

When Ahriman ascends, Nature becomes unstable. When man no longer holds the divine precepts and no longer regards fire as the burning symbol of divine love, chaos erupts across the land. Kings and rulers become tyrants, and the people suffer.

When fire is corrupted and becomes infernal, when as a symbol it is inverted and becomes a power of greed and darkness, all the elements rebel in protest.

We are now living in that time when all the elements, and especially fire, have gone mad in grief for their abuse at the hands of humans who no longer hold the precepts of good thoughts, good words and good deeds.

Global warming is an infernal hymn to Ahriman, the power of greed, destruction and chaos. And only humans can intervene on behalf of Ahuramazda.

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I walk up the hill

I walk up the hill
To hear the loud still
Voice of my master:
In your heart I dwell.

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Mother Kali

One of the great literary treasures of the last century is “The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna”. This magnificent diary by one of Ramakrishna’s Bengali disciples is a magical window into the spiritual beauty and veracity of traditional Indian spirituality as personified by this singular Perfect Master. This book is priceless: There is no other book like it for its power to convey para bhakti, or supreme divine love.

Ramakrishna was devoted to Kali, whom he considered his Mother. Kali is the most marvelous and perfect illustration of the divine as the power of Nature in the Indian pantheon. Kali is mythic in that she does not take birth (form), except to manifest to her devotee; She is thus unlike Vishnu who takes birth as the Avatar, or the God-Man, i.e. the Christ, the Buddha, the Prophet, Rama and Krishna, etc.

Kali is the shakti (power) of Lord Shiva, who along with Brahma and Vishnu comprise the Indian Godhead; She is popularly considered a terrifying goddess of destruction who can confer boons that ease suffering to her devotees. But her spiritual meaning refers to her role as Mother Nature as the destroyer of form (bodies) so as to facilitate the growth of consciousness, life after life. She thus represents the inexorable drive for greater and greater consciousness through millions and millions of forms and lives that define creation: gas, stone, vegetable, worm, fish, bird, animal and human. She is the divine recycler.

Thus, to worship Kali is to worship the divine life force that animates and sustains all of life in its journey through form (bodies) toward union with God. Kali is the divine Mother inspiring all of her progeny to return to God and become God.

All death and destruction is a prelude to greater life. This is Kali.

We are now in the end phase of the Kali Yuga, the Machine Age. This is the age of greatest adharma, i.e. unrighteousness. This is the age of the greatest destruction of truth and harmony and well being of the Earth. This is the age of fire and the wrath of Kali as She destroys like never before the ignorance that worships form and not the spirit that would return to God as Bliss.

Kali is the supreme Mother whose love for creation will annihilate it, to liberate it.

 

 

 

 

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