BOOK REVIEWS

This year we have two very valuable new books of reminiscences of years with Meher Baba by His close ones . . . The first is by Margaret Craske who came to Baba in 1931 and spent the significant war years with Him in India. The second is a fine collection of pieces from the old Meher Baba Journals, which were published in the late thirties and early forties. Besides stories by Elizabeth Patterson, Norina Matchabelli, Nadine Tolstoy, Dr. Ghani Munsiff and others, there are questions answered, and some of His messages, plus an introduction by Adi K. Irani, a foreword by Charles Haynes. Again, feeling our readers prefer a "taste" to a static "review" of this type of book, we give the following excerpts.

TREASURES from the Meher Baba Journals. 246 pp. Paperback,

$6.95, Sheriar Press.

Excerpt from "Lectures Delivered in Mysore and Bangalore" by Princess Norina Matchabelli

Meher Baba says, "I have come not to teach but to awaken." By the Divine Love that flows continuously through Him, He transforms the consciousness of the individuals who come to Him for liberation, that they may know through experience what the philosophers of all times have tried through theory to teach. Only the Ancient One, who is the veritable incarnation of Love Divine, can awaken in the individual the fire of love that consumes in its flames the lesser desires of mind, body and world, all of which must be relinquished before we can attain Perfection.

Meher Baba says: "The highest human love is not the highest absolute love. Divine Love is the highest aspect of all-pervading love. One who gets this love get God. Divine Love is beyond reason and intellect. Nobody can create this highest aspect of love in himself. Divine Love is given and not created. It is grace from the God-Man.

"It is the real side of religion and the only element which reveals or unfolds the emotionality of the spiritual path. The highest love is the one which is perfectly selfless and disinterested, devoid of all desires and expectations. It is fire — an infinite fire in itself and those who burn in it get purified.

"Philosophies and intellectual gymnastics make one intellectually certain about the existence of God; but it is only the love for God, Divine Love, that enables one to find Him, to feel Him and to become one with Him."

We must first fall in love with God, then will we be given to love man; that is, "to love one another." This is indeed the highest demonstration of the fulfillment of the divine theme. Meher Baba makes us realize the truth. He makes us realize Oneness in manyness. He makes us realize that spirit and matter, spiritual life and material life, go hand in hand. He says: "When head and heart, intellect and feeling are equally developed and balanced, then the apparent antithesis is resolved into one divine consciousness."

Meher Baba has not come to make man different, but to draw man back to the divine source. Through His example, He will help man to find real happiness and liberation within, free from prejudices and unattached to life and its play through opposites.