Where is Meher Baba Now?
Meditations by Francis Brabazon

He is everywhere, but only to you where you let Him be, because you can only see Him where you put Him – although at the same time He is everywhere everyone else has put Him.

He is within you, but you cannot be with Him when you are out visiting your friends The Wants. Or you are at home entertaining your relations The Desires, and the Beloved is outside knocking so softly and discreetly on your door; but you cannot hear Him, because of the uproar in your mind. And so you cannot have the privilege of bringing God into your house and washing His feet with your tears and drying them with your hair — although its for that that your growing it long – didn’t you know? You cannot be having your time with the Beloved at the same time as the time of your life or the pleasures of your miseries.

Meher Baba’s men mandali at Guru Prasad in 1969. Francis Brabazon is standing second from right.

Why are the kids herding to everything that’s “in” ? Because they are outsiders in a world they haven’t made and hope that at some “in” they will find Him. Why do they spill over from the bubble — pots of cities and hitch along the roads to nowhere? Because their hearts have told them that along some road somewhere is a little wine shop where the real stuff can be bought.

He is everywhere. But He is nowhere to you unless you put Him somewhere. Why not put Him — or just let Him be — where He has always been since the big bang of creation — in your own heart, That’s where (when it is nice and empty and clean) He will feel most comfortable and be most happy — and remain in His eternal Steady State.

Really speaking, only those who saw Him in His Man-form can be asking, “Where is Meher Baba now?” They saw Him, they spoke with Him, they touched Him. And then He was no longer there to see and speak with and touch. They were looking forward to seeing Him again soon. He had given them an appointment. But he did not keep it in His Man – form. They surely must be asking “ Where is He?”

But those of us who do not see the Beloved and speak with Him and touch Him are not asking the question, “Where is Meher Baba?” for we had not had time to confine Him to a particular place either within us or without. We had heard His name and seen pictures of Him. One day we would go to some place and see Him — He might even come to our homes. But that day didn’t come. Now He is where each keeps Him. And if we keep on serving Him, loving Him and singing His name, He will stay with us until His Grace merges us in Him forever.
The Lord is my Brother

Many of us despairing at the failure of each and every solution put forward for the betterment of world conditions and becoming more and more alarmed at the direction the world affairs are taking, become increasingly doubtful of the ability of man himself to solve the problems he himself has raised; and we tend to think in terms of some superior man, some world- messenger, an Avatar, occurring in our midst to lead us out of our night of chaos into a dawn of well being — such a person as occurred in every great period of darkness and confusion in man’s history and became the guiding light and inspiration of a new era such as the One as was Zoroaster in the dawn of a world many civilizations ago, as was Krishna and Buddha and Jesus, and Mohammed in more modern times.

It is natural to cry out in pain and seek relief from it, but we forget that if we sincerely practiced his precepts “Good thoughts,” “Good words” and “Good works” we would not be in the condition of suffering in which we are and in the position of threatened destruction which we face. When we hear that such a Man is in our midst we tend to deny Him out of fear that He might disturb even our insecurity or accept Him as one who will save us from further pain and establish us in better conditions or grant us bliss or liberation. So those of us who accept are nearly as selfish as those who deny.

We forget that He is also our brother. The world is the stage of His divine play on which He does not appear in the role of a Saviour and bestower of boons, remaining aloof from the rest of the play as a spectator merely approving, encouraging, correcting, condoling and rewarding the efforts of the players; He involves Himself with us in the play as the intimate actor within each of us — as the Hero within our hero, the Heroine within our heroine experiencing with us the entire action of the play, our playing becomes the means of our becoming conscious of our real brotherhood in each other and of our ultimate destiny of God-consciousness or Self–realization. God as author of the play is our Father but God as Avatar at the same time is the holder of the thread of our lives and our fellow-player.

The Lord is our brother.
This is how the greatest of the saints like Chaitanya and Tukaram in India and Francis of Assissi in the West approached and taught others to approach God — not as saviour, but as a brother, an intimate friend without whom one could not live.
All our troubles and problems in this modern world of ours are traceable to two things: our neglect of our brother in life and our making him our Lord.

To neglect our brother is the inhumanity of being indifferent to his condition — that he is starving while we eat, that he is shelterless while we have comfortable houses. Apart from the hardening of our sensibilities that this inhumanity causes, its foolishness is obvious as it always rebounds on us in the form of disease, economic upheavals and war.

From the experience of the results of the inhumanity have arisen the “humanist” movements of revolution and reform. But from recognition that our brother is our brother we have gone on and elevated him to the position of being our Lord. Man, which includes our brother and ourselves, becomes our God before whose altar all our energies are poured out in service.

Our brother can never become our Lord nor we our own God. God can and does become us, and our Lord becomes our brother. In our confusion and fear we cry out to the concrete God of our own creating or to the dim God handed down by religion to save us from the folly of our selfishness instead of realizing that He is our brother, and as such, welcoming Him in selfless service.

The Avatar is our eternal Lord and play-fellow. He loves the play He Himself has created. He loves our playing of the roles of this play and He loves playing with us in these roles. When we realize this, our fears will vanish, and there will be no saviour to seek — only our Brother to serve in surrenderance and joy. In this surrenderance we will discover that our brother in life is our brother, not our enemy and competitor or means whereby to obtain more and more of the world’s goods and in this realization there will occur the dawn of a new humanity in which “Good thoughts,” “Good words,” and “Good works” will be the normal commerce among men.

At the Beloved’s Feet
From a letter written by Francis Brabazon from Poona to his group of Baba lovers in Australia in 1959

The other day, according to the Hindu Calendar, was Guru’s Day, which occurs once a year. Baba had all of us pray collectively to God to help us hold onto Baba to the end. Baba is not a Guru in the sense that He teaches us. He had said, “I have come not to teach but to Awaken.” But He is our Guru in the sense that He takes over the direction of our lives. Thus he is at the same time our Personal Guru and AVATAR to the whole creation.

In the evening He sent for me to come to His room and among other things He said, “Your stay with Me so far has been entirely fruitful for Me, for you and your group.” That ‘your group’ surprised Me.

Francis Brabazon photographed by Ralph Jackson in 1978 at Meherazad.

I had always felt since 1956 when you all (the Australian Sufis: Editor) met Him, that there was no longer any ‘group’ but that each one was under his ‘own steam.’ But, the point that makes me happy is that ‘somehow’ my being with Baba had been of benefit to all, because I have always felt that the final fruit of anything He does for an individual will be when all enjoy it. Even when I have seen him giving the blessings of His embrace to thousands, I have not been able not to think about ‘the millions.’ The answer, apparently, is that through the thousands He does touch the millions — and this touch is a preparation for when He breaks His silence and manifests His full Divinity.

The longer one is with Baba the more one realizes that the only solution to the condition of the world is a New Humanity; a humanity oriented to a completely different set of values than that which humanity has now; a humanity oriented with ‘new ears for music’, this new music of ‘love God and each other as oneself’; an end of the piggish separateness of ‘mine and the world’ — and the beginning of the NEW WORLD. The trouble is the beginning of this New Humanity cannot be effected until Baba breaks His silence — which means dropping His body. One cannot imagine a world without Baba, a Man-Baba Unit.

Then again, when one sees daily what is one iota of His suffering, one cannot help but wish He would drop His body. One really feels like begging Him to finish His suffering, and let the whole world, (including myself) go to hell or annihilate itself through war. Then again — one sees that oneself is a mere infant before the Ever-blissful, Ever-suffering God and He will do what He will when He wills. But Baba tells us we can allay some of His suffering and even help Him with His work by trying not to do anything that might displease Him, and be obedient to His orders and be happy. BE HAPPY. (Something like this: “Daddy has a lot of work to do. So do happily whatever little jobs He gives us to do and when He calls us, come with smiling faces.”)

Baba takes time off His work to play with us and often reminds in the play that He is God, and that God is playing with us: that we should be careful not to allow His familiarity with us to become the cause of our slackness in obedience to Him. A few weeks ago, Baba took us to see Charlie Chaplin’s film, “Limelight” and He enjoyed it. Afterwards He said, “How fortunate Charlie is that I have seen his film and enjoyed it.” Since that time most mornings we have seen films. These consist of Eruch reading out selected pieces of newspaper articles — both tragic and comic. Baba particularly enjoyed one little article about two married partners travelling in a railroad carriage when an argument developed into a free-for-all fight about which way an electric fan should be directed — each party wanting it. Just at the height of it a man appeared with a gun and threatened to shoot them all. Baba, himself enacted the ‘tough with the gun’ perfectly.

Baba uses the film to show us the ‘unreality of the world.’ We go to see the films and if we enjoy it we get so much absorbed into it what we imagine real men and women are doing it. When it ends we recognize the unreality of it — no actual existence — appearance only. Creation itself is only a ‘film’ with each individual life just one ‘little film’ — all within a great film. Our little joys and sorrows, successes and failures, our likes and dislikes — in short — all our personal pre-occupations with ourselves and others — in relation to ourselves seems so real. Eventually the film must end and we pass away. So on until we awaken to the fact that we are all ‘only acting’ in a little film. As the film unrolls we then realize ourselves as the eternal Infinite existence. So long as we identify ourselves with it, it continues to keep unrolling along.

Baba is not only a ‘perfect mimic’ but His mimicry of others is perfect also. He often entertains us mimicking our peculiarities of manner. What a loss to the world’s stage that none of our great actors have become Baba lovers! For that matter if any artist in any form or any field could only realize that the secret of their success is contained in His physical person. I have treated fully with this in “ Stay with God “.

We take turns entertaining, also when Baba orders us to do so — command performance — either to whistle a tune or make some other sort of noise, after which Baba singles out the very weakest performer and has them perform singly. It may be making a speech in an unfamiliar tongue (Kaka’s lecture on New York in English was excellent) or we tell stories, etc. I am ordered sometimes to do a piece of mimicry, other times rhymed verses on the different Mandali.

These command performances are a wonderful idea of what Baba means by obedience. We usually think of obedience as doing some job, or not doing as ordered. But He does mean to start immediately to do whatever He asks them to do — even bursting out with laughter or simulating tears.

July 19th (1959) was the “ Family Darshan” for the Poona devotees — their final opportunity to see their Beloved during His period here. Baba gave them His whole day and many brought picnic lunches. On August 7th Baba will return to Pimpalgaon. The other day I was taken out to see if I required any dental work and to shop for necessary things as I am to return with Baba. Baba wishes me to have no further correspondence until the end of October unless it is absolutely essential in connection with my book, “ Stay with God.” May I add here that Baba considers this book second only to “ GOD SPEAKS “ and that it will help greatly in understanding His book. So whatever any of you feel like doing in making it known to others I may say will be regarded as Baba’s work. Baba sends all his love...