"Hearing" Baba in Your Head

The version of Meher Baba’s principle book God Speaks used in these footnotes is the 1997 printing, which is the same as the online version. It will be abbreviated as “GS.”
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Can Meher Baba talk to people now that he has dropped his physical body? Can Meher Baba, now that he has left his physical body as he did in 1969, talk to his lovers or his mandali in any way at all, including through visions, dreams, audible voices, mediums, channels, etc? Can Meher Baba be channeled?

The answer, believe it or not, is a resounding and definite “no.”

If Baba is the Avatar, then a voice claiming now to be Him speaking to any of us cannot possibly be Him. This is because it would contradict Baba’s own teaching about God and the Perfect Masters and the Avatar. Belief that a Perfect Master or the Avatar can drop his physical body and still intermingle with the affairs of the world, in spite of being a common image in our culture, absolutely and unambiguously contradicts Baba’s own teaching on the Ten States of God. (GS 157-189)

Before elaborating to explain this, a short background on what Baba means by “God” might be a little bit helpful.

In understanding Baba’s explanations about God, it is not quite right to say there is 'a God’ or even ‘only one God.’ Rather, there is only God. For Baba, “God alone is real” (GS 74). The apparent mental, subtle, and gross worlds are merely illusions.

But as the world and all of its experiences are illusory, so is the spiritual path that leads to Reality. The former may be termed false illusion and the latter real illusion. Nevertheless, despite the vast difference between them, they are both illusions, for God alone is the only Reality. --Meher Baba (GS 68)

If all the dimensions of our experience – mental, subtle, and gross – are illusion, then in what sense is God Everything? The answer Baba tells us is that God is the real Everything, which is imperceptible. “Existence is imperceptible; whereas, life is deceptive" (GS 271).  “real Everything = God the Infinite” (GS 97). This real Everything (that God is) is not experienced as phenomenon (either as images or acoustic sounds like voices, whether subtle or gross).

But the funny thing is that God who is not illusion, but the only Reality, while experiencing Himself as passing through the dream to know Himself, actually experiences the illusion to be everything and takes Himself to be a part in it.

So for instance, God experiencing Himself as a worm or an insect or a man or a woman, is in fact invisible, silent, eternal God, even though His experience of all that is around Him, the sounds and sights and smells etc., as well as what he takes himself to be in that dream, is an illusion.

Now to picture this, understand that Baba says each progressive State of God (from his original Unconscious State to His ultimate State of Knowing Himself as Himself) are in truth all “States of God.” It may seem ironic to us that God is in many of his states fooled by his own illusion, but this is how Baba explains Reality to us. This does not mean that the shapes and sounds we see or hear with our gross or subtle senses are God. They are illusion, Baba says. But rather the States of Consciousness in which these experiences are taken are States of God.

But now we need to take special note of something Baba tells us that is new. The incarnate Perfect Master is unusual in that He is the only State in which God Knows Himself as Himself, yet can at the same time experience the illusion and thereby help others to advance toward the goal. In fact Baba teaches us that if God did not condescend back to human consciousness from His exalted State of Knowing only Himself, in the form of an incarnate Perfect Master, then man could not converse with God at all and thus could not gain His direct help. This is why Baba always emphasized the importance of seeking out a living embodied Perfect Master. Baba said there is no substitute for the living embodied Perfect Master. This, Baba tells us, is why the Perfect Masters condescend back to human consciousness from their exaltation and why the Avatar painfully takes birth, in order to help human beings to find God in themselves.

There is no communication between God and man (as separate or apart from the person, such as a voice or appearance) other than in a Perfect Master. This is what Baba’s disciple Francis Brabazon meant when he wrote in Stay With God,

Guru is the only God you’ll ever see on this plane – Guru, God’s act to men. (Brabazon, 1990, p. 96)

To see clearly that Baba is absolutely unequivocal about this fact, let us look closely at the states of God as Baba gives them in God Speaks.

Baba teaches that in total there are ten states of God. Of these, there is just one in which God experiences his Divine Attributes of Power, Knowledge, and Bliss as well as uses them for the benefit of others. That is in the state of God manifest in the grossly embodied Man-God or God-Man. Baba calls this “State X”. (GS 186)

In the list below is explained why only in State X (embodied incarnate Perfect Master) can God know Himself as God and at the same time interact with us in illusion.

Detail, Ten States of God chart,
God Speaks p. 157.

I. Beyond-Beyond In this state God cannot converse with us in illusion because He is neither conscious nor unconscious of either illusion or Himself. (GS 160)

II. Beyond This state of God has three Sub-States, A, B, and C. See following.

A. In Sub-State A God cannot talk to us because He is aware of Himself but not aware of illusion.
B. In Sub-State B God cannot talk to us for the same reason as in A.
C. In Sub-State C God can absolutely converse openly with us, because He is humanly incarnate as a living Perfect Master, with a gross physical body. This State corresponds precisely with State X. (GS 167)

III. God as Emanator, Sustainer and Dissolver. (GS 167) (These three attributes are expressed in every conscious soul immersed in illusion; each human being is his own Creator, Sustainer and Destroyer in the very act of experiencing the illusion. In this state God is Unconscious of Himself (Reality). (GS 91-93)

IV. God as Embodied Soul (pre-evolutionary gas-like forms). (GS 174)

V. God as Soul in the State of Evolution (stone through monkey).

VI. God as human soul in the State of Reincarnation (gross conscious human being immersed in illusion).

VII. God in the State of Spiritually Advanced Soul (experiencing Himself as a pilgrim or wayfarer on the first six planes of consciousness).

VIII. God as the Divinely Absorbed (experiencing Himself as a 7th plane Majzoob, i.e. unconscious of the world). (GS 184)

IX. God as Liberated Incarnate Soul (God passing through the Divine Junction. The God-realized souls in a human body in this State are either Majzoob-Salik or Salik-Majzoob). (GS 185)

X. God as Man-God or God-Man (Perfect Master or Avatar in a gross physical human body living on earth). (GS 186)

We therefore see that there is no State of God experiencing Itself as God and also the world that is without a physical body. The only One that has experience of Its divine trio-nature of Power, Knowledge and Bliss, and uses them, is an embodied living Perfect Master.

Therefore, if we wanted to believe that Baba could interact with us in illusion and continue to work directly with us in illusion using his Divine attributes of Power, Knowledge and Bliss after dropping his physical body, in order to justify the belief we are channeling Him, then we would need to invent an 11th State of God, which would have to read as follows:

Warning! The following is NOT a real State of God by Meher Baba, but given for demonstration purposes only.

State XI: God in Beyond state, but without a body, i.e. unmanifest. God in this State would consciously experience His trio-nature of infinite power, knowledge and bliss, and use them without need of a body.

However, Baba does NOT describe such a state in God Speaks, and it is not one of His Ten States of God. Therefore, any belief that such a state exists is one’s own, and has no basis in Baba’s teaching as given in God Speaks.