Preface

In 1965, I was called to India to meet the Divine Master, Meher Baba. Baba was in seclusion but I went because I was called. I went obeying that call and I went fully convinced before going that Meher Baba is Christ in every sense of the word. I went prepared to stake my life on that conviction. I did not go to be convinced. Let it be understood that I needed no convincing. It was by His grace that I needed no convincing even from the first moment that I ever heard His name. Perhaps it is because of this that I was among the very few Western people who were allowed to meet the Beloved during the last six years of His earthly life.

I went to see Meher Baba believing Meher Baba is Christ, but the impact of my meeting with Him is what gave me my present understanding of what it means to say Meher Baba is Christ. It means this: That here is a human being who became one hundred percent taken over by the One Infinite Existence in Its Infinite Awake Power, Knowledge, and Bliss and through whose personal Presence God is made manifest to men as the Divine Beloved. What is called the Will of God (which is the very impulse of Existence in its totality and oneness), acts clearly and directly and in full consciousness through that human being.

I declare in the full clarity and sanity of mind I was called to India in this modern day and age specifically to bear witness to the Presence once again of the Christhood amidst mankind.

Before I met Meher Baba I claimed that Meher Baba is Christ, but I did not know what that meant; but now the claim is simply that God exists. We live in an age when the claim of God's existence must be substantiated. To have it substantiated there must be a witness, one who must see with his eyes before he can understand with his heart. Such a one was I to whom God said, "Come and look into My eyes and sit at My feet that you may forget in the intoxication of My Presence, the foolish worlds of false enchantments, that you may find your footing upon the sweet soil of Truth, that you may come to Know Who I am and be a true witness to My Oceanic Love."

So it came to pass that I met Meher Baba during a time when it was hardly possible for anyone to see Him. His Christhood lay in the fact that He was by His deepest nature a perfect instrument of God, one who utters truth because He is Truth, one who reveals love because He is Love. Of saints, true saints, there are many, but who could care less than I, for I have no saint but Baba, who alone is one Baba, singular and supreme, the one God of Gods, who is called Christ-Avatar.

This is the age chosen by God to resurrect Himself in the sleeping hearts of humanity. At first a few, but eventually millions, ― for who can resist when the tide of love comes in? All this was begun by the life, the suffering and the sacrifice of Meher Baba. Baba’s life was but the continuation of the life of Mohammed. Mohammed’s life was but the continuation of the life of Jesus. Baba, you are all things; you are the fire of Mohammed and the sweetness of Jesus. You looked into my eyes with the fire of Mohammed; yet you touched my face with cool gentleness of Jesus, and you let me sit a while with the wondrous Buddha. And so I became your witness, a witness to the advent of divine majesty brought down into perfect humility, perfect selflessness and your unfathomable simplicity, which teaches without words that your very presence is the contentment of Eternity.

How do we know the Christ when He comes? I will tell you: the saints can give us what we want; God alone can take away desires and sow the seeds of Divine Love in their place. The Christ when He comes at the close of each cycle of human history works and extends Himself far beyond the narrow limitations of His own time and space. Thus His manifestation is an unfolding in gradual stages of the mind of Christ in the minds of men, resulting finally in His full glorification.

Meher Baba’s last Darshan in silence marked, in my opinion, the beginning of