To lead men and women to the heights of Realization, we must help them to overcome fear and greed, anger and passion. These are the result of looking upon the self as a limited, separate, physical entity, having a definite physical beginning and definite physical end, with interests apart from the rest of life, and needing preservation and protection. The self in fact is a limitless, indivisible, spiritual essence, eternal in its nature and infinite in its resources. The greatest romance possible in life is to discover this Eternal Reality in the midst of infinite change. Once one has experienced this, one sees oneself in everything that lives, one recognizes all of life as his life, everybody's interests as his own. The fear of death, the desire for self-preservation, the urge to accumulate substances, the conflict of interests, the anger of thwarted desires, are gone. One is no longer bound by the habits of the past, no longer swayed by the hopes of the future. One lives in and enjoys each present moment to the full. There is no greater romance in life than this adventure in Realization. There is no better medium to portray it than the moving pictures.

Plays which inspire those who see them to greater understanding, truer feeling, better lives, need not necessarily have anything to do with so-called religion. Creed, ritual, dogma, the conventional ideas of heaven and hell and sin, are perversions of the truth and confuse and bewilder, rather than clarifying and inspiring. Real spirituality is best portrayed in stories of pure love, of selfless service, of truth realized and applied to the most humble circumstances of our daily lives, raying out into manifold expression, through home and business, school and college, studio and laboratory — evoking everywhere the highest joy, the purest love, the greatest power — producing everywhere a constant symphony of bliss.

This is the highest practicality. To portray such circumstances on the screen will make people realize that the spiritual life is something to be lived, not talked about, and that it — and it alone — will produce the peace and love and harmony which we seek to establish as the constant rule of our lives.

Message read by Mr. Meredith Starr at the reception given in honour of Shri Meher Baba at the residence of Mr. Phelps Stokes. New York on May 22, 1932.

I am so very pleased to see you again. Among you are many of the first Americans I met last time I was here; so I regard you as old friends.

No doubt, some of you have seen various newspaper reports about myself and my work. Many of these are misleading. But it is not to be wondered at if journalists do not understand my work or pander to the desire for sensation.

I do not intend to found any religion, cult, creed or society. There are already far too many of these organizations. I have come to help people realize their ideals in daily life. The wide-spread dissatisfaction in modern life is due to the gulf between theory and practice and between the ideal and its realization on earth. The spiritual and material aspects of life are widely separated instead of being closely united. There is no fundamental opposition between spirit and matter, or if you like, between life and form. The apparent opposition is due to wrong thinking, to ignorance. Hence the remedy lies in the continuous practice of right thinking, to permanent illumination resulting from the balance between the head and heart. This is the illumination which I intend to give.

The greatest mystics have realized through personal experience that God alone is real and everything is God. This means that (though you may not be aware of it) the Highest is latent in each one of you. But in order for it to be lived and experienced in consciousness, it must be manifested.

Intellectual conviction of this Truth is not enough. True Knowledge consists in Illumination which finally culminates in union with the Ultimate Reality. This last is the state of Christ Consciousness which is my permanent condition.