Saturday, August 1, 2009

Rolling in the dust

The following is an excerpt from a letter by Eruch Jessawala on February 1st, 1963, conveying Baba's reply to questions about how to conduct worship at a Meher Baba Center being opened in India. [from LM 6075-6]

Baba often stressed that he has come again as the Avatar of this Age to cut clean through the thongs which restrict the voice of true worship to God to the point of strangulation.

Beloved Baba further clarifies that when love for God is expressed spontaneously, then it is worshiping Him indeed, and such outbursts of true worship can be seen sometimes in the form of an offering of flowers and garlands, in singing hymns and bhajans and arti, in ecstatic dancing or rolling in the dust, et cetera. When such expressions are spontaneous – not formal – and are in praise of the Highest of the High, they constitute true worship of God, for this reaches Him and is acceptable to Him.

But when the mind expresses itself in patterns of formal rites and rigid ceremonies, it is nothing more than an empty echo of the habit of countless generations, performed automatically without "heart." Baba says that such a worship not only does NOT reach Him, but holds the worshiper more firmly in the grip of ignorance.


Also Baba said,

Bhakti-marg, which is the sum and substance of every religion, makes us frigidly rigid over "right is right" and "wrong is wrong," leading to a dry-as-dust, brittle and boring attitude of the mind.

(Meher Baba - The Path of Love, pp. 45-46)

1 comment:

  1. I want to become dust, not roll in it.
    (Play on Ramakrishna's saying “I want to taste sugar, not be sugar.”)

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