Volume 6 Number 3 Page 3

mechanism of expressive forms. Attachment to the rigid forms of external expression of love for God not only limits the love itself, but creates separative divisions between one religion and another. Rituals and ceremonies often bind the soul to ignorance and illusory separateness and become an obstacle to real illumination. The true spiritual aspirant is, therefore, more keen about the inner life. Inner life is based on love for God, and it is this love that annihilates all desires, keeping in fact only one desire and longing—that of Union with the Beloved God. He has no obsessions for expressing His reverence in any set forms. Such obsessions twist the real life. The free soul is never entangled in any of these inessentials, and never allows itself to be overpowered by the separative tendencies released by attachment to rituals and ceremonies.

Message of Shri Meher Baba at the Opening Ceremony of "Babawadi and Godugdhalaya" of the Lokesh Vidnyan Mandir on October 25, 1948.

The Chairman Mr. V. S. Modak of the Lokesh Vidnyan Mandir and in particular, the originator of the idea, Mr. Goma Ganesh Phatak [sic], are to be congratulated for the present phase of their activity.

Selfless work, as you all know, has many aspects in the social and the political field. Each aspect thereof, though tinged by a particular cultural background, has its own merit and consequential reward.

But the work relating to the welfare of babies is in a class by itself. Babies and infants, everywhere in the world, are the very epitomes of God's purity and innocence. They are guileless and helpless―and yet they desire and expect nothing. Why do men see and recognize the enemy and the criminal outside? Because the so-called enemy and the criminal are within them. Babies have no criminal or enemy within and therefore see none outside.

I am also called Baba, which endearingly means a baby; and in fact, all God-realized souls are unsophisticated like babies. I therefore see and enjoy my purity and colorlessness in the unselfconscious ones—the babies.

This is what is real selfless service—when you are serving the little selfless ones―and this is tantamount to rendering service directly unto God. The Biblical statement, “And whoso shall receiveth one such little child in my name, receiveth me," bears out what I have said.