AVATAR — EAST AND WEST
A Birthday Message by Francis Brabazon

East and West—the East burdened with the intolerable weight of lifeless religious forms, the West maddened by the insufferable weight of materialism—has cried out to the God it has covered from its eyes with forms, and to the God it has denied in its heart by its enthronement of "Progress"; and its cry has been answered: God has clothed Himself in the form of a Man with the name Meher Baba for the salvation of men.

It is false to say that the East should learn from the West, and that the West should learn from the East. What have men to learn from men? Knowledge is from God; and all knowledge which is not of God is added burden. Already we groan with the knowledge of knowledges — atomic energy. In the West it deprives children of their natural childhood and shackles adults with the fear of physical extermination. The way to purposeful knowledge is not in the "mastery of nature" so that we can the more cunningly enslave one another and the more ruthlessly destroy ourselves, but in the mastery of our own natures so that we can break the bonds of restrictive self and annihilate selfhood in Truth.

The way to Truth ever has been and ever shall be through reverence to the saints and surrenderance and obedience to the Perfect Masters; and when Avatar is with us, by leaving all, including saints and Masters, and surrendering everything to Him in His service.

In "Truth there is no East and West; but you in the East are more fortunate than us of the West—the living breath of saints and Perfect Masters has always nourished your lives while we in the West, by our infatuation with material progress, have shut ourselves off from this living breath of God; and it is in your midst that Avatar has seen fit to take birth. Considering this, it is all the more creditable that some of us in the West have recognized Him and surrendered to His love. It is this love which is our bond and mutual help—it is this love which will be the inspirer of the New Humanity and the eventual unity of East and West.

Avatar is the sole source of knowledge, the Only-One-Ocean of love; so on this occasion of celebration of His birth this time on earth, it will be well for us if we remember that we will be wasting the precious boon