Meher, she is laughing when your lovers come along;

            but Meher, she'll be shining when her Baba sings His Song.

           "Meher; You give her starlight when the winter sky is blue; and

            Meher, You give her lamplight when a summer day is through; oh and

            Meher, You give her God s Light, for her love for You is true; but

            Meher, she's Your darling, and so all she wants is You.

            "Meher, she is nodding when the evening light grows long; and

             Meher, she is smiling when the flower smell is strong; oh and

             Meher, she is laughing when your lovers come along; but

             Meher, she'll be shining when her Baba sings His Song"

PART IV. THE HUMAN SIGHT OF GOD — TO MEHERA

In my paintings of Meher, pigment in and of its very substance, becomes by His Grace the alive image of His actual Love manifested as Art.

Art, as you know, was meant for the glorification of God-Man. But art, as was inevitable, gradually became entangled in illusion, and the artist fell under its hypnotic spell. And when he fell, all of the beautiful elements of painting fell apart, and chaos ruled painting.

I came to Baba, looking neither to one side nor the other but straight into His eyes. And He sent me back straightway into the world of painting to gather up the scattered elements of painting and bring them to Him, so that He could remake them into an art of His own liking, an art forged in the fire of His Love on the anvil of His Truth.

Painting is made from the interpenetration of light, color and form. But when painting loses its hold on the Personal God as Avatar, it loses its power of ex­pression and so falls into confusion and aimlessness. If the aim of life is to love God, then surely the aim of painting must become once again to see the Beauty of Avatar and express that Beauty through the elements of sight.

Before I knew of Meher Baba, painting was my religion; I knew no other. On that blessed day when Baba sent that long gaze into my eyes, He made Himself the substance of my religion. That was the day when the painter and the artist met. Baba is the only Artist, and when we left His presence, the Artist said, "I am always with you."

What does it mean to make a painting of the God-Man? Perhaps I had come to India to find out what this means. Baba is saying, "Look, look! I am man; I have become a man!" That is what painting Baba means. The Divine can never be seen fully except in a man. The Divine is fully manifest only in a man — nowhere else.

What did I discover by going to India? I understood what Baba meant when He said, "I am either an ordinary man or I am the Highest of the High, but I am nothing in between." It means that God stooped down to become an ordinary man. Baba was in the truest sense an ordinary man. So profoundly ordinary was He in His human form that He created all around Him marvelous and amazing specimens of ordinary men and women. Only a "Perfectly" ordinary man can create a truly ordinary person. A truly ordinary person is one who gives no importance to himself and all importance to the Divine Beloved. Such an ordinary person is the most extraordinary that can be found! Mandali are those rare ones, ordinary people reduced to the natural state of being just human and nothing more. Just to go and touch these ordinary ones is in itself a holy thing.

I know that Baba wants me to think of Him and hold on to Him as being com-