Keyboarding

This is not a very original thought I have next. I have heard it pointed out by many people. But I thought it would be fun to put into pictures.

From 1925 until 1954 Meher Baba communicated silently using an alphabet board, pointing to the letters on it.

There are lots of good pictures of Baba communicating through his alphabet board. In the image below he is giving his famous message to the West using his alphabet board on a London park bench from a 1932 Paramount Newsreel.

Meher Baba, London, 1932, communicating by
alphabet board though translator Charles Purdom.
Paramount Newsreel

It is an interesting coincidence many have noticed that have wondered about him doing so, that today more and more people around the world communicate at least at some point silently, using a keyboard that does not look all that different.

In fact the use of keyboarding, and now texting, in which people communicate without speaking, is becoming increasingly present in everyday life.

CRANDALL ~ New Model Made By The
Crandall Machine Company, Croton, N.Y. 1886

Keyboards are not especially new. The typewriter was actually invented in 1868. Here is a nice Crandal "New Model" from 1886.

What is new is the use of keys for communication, the use of pointing to letters on a board to talk while remaining silent.

Prior to all this keyboarding, people did communicate without speaking, though. It was of course called writing, and of course before that there was painting, mime, and dance.

Sumerian inscription, c. 26th century BC

Baba's book is of course titled "God Speaks." It was transmitted in silence (on an alphabet board), typed in silence, typeset in silence, and it is read mostly in silence. Silent communication.

Pablo Picasso communicating a fish silently

Charlie Chaplin communicating depth in the climactic final
moment of City Lights, 1931

Things that are real are given and received in silence. — Meher Baba

What is left to say after that?

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Update 6/6/12

The following was a post that is so interesting I add it here as well as an addendum to this post.

The Alphabet Board – Precursor of Laptop Cyber Language

A year and a half after entering silence, on January 1st 1927, Meher Baba stopped writing reading, and for some decades not even signing his name.Vishnu now ingeniously devised a thin plywood laptop alphabet board pasted with English letters and numbers – so simple. A digital space-age version of it is on my lap now as I type, telling you of it. Through this board, Baba silently began speaking once again.At first he used his 4th right hand finger and later his index finger, moving musically and speedily. With no breaks in his conversation, he spelt out, “The world is dancing every moment to the signs of my fingers.” Thus in 1927, the age of “texting” was quietly ushered in. The world caught on to this with their own devices 75 years later. www.lordmeher.org.p.896, How a Master Works, P.119(Although it is my own theory, history may interpret Baba’s alphabet board in the exact same way. It is significant that the world’s first multiple-site computer network, created in 1969, uttered its first word: “lo, as in “lo and behold. This was the year Baba finished his work on earth and dropped his physical form. When I mentioned this to Bhau Kalchuri, he thought for a moment and said, “Yes, you’re right; there is something to that.”)What made it difficult was his dictating in Gujarati, Marathi and English, at times switching between all three. I actually see this as Meher Baba’s pre-figuring and ushering in the age of digital typing, laptop computer, cyber language, internet and cell-phone texting – the biggest jumps in the history of communications the world has ever seen, by simply inaugurating a crude laptop alphabet board to text all his messages. This is how God works.It’s not coincidence or stretching the imagination that countless millions of peopleare daily using little alphabet boards to instantly communicate with each other anywhere in the world? One must remember that when the Avatar does some action on what appears to be a small, individual scale – like using a simple alphabet board to point to letters – he is actually working universally, and the results are eventually felt and manifest on a worldwide, planetary scale. Baba himself in 1930 openly pointed to this when he dictated:
Haven’t you noticed how all nations have been brought into instant communication with each other during this modern epoch? Railways, steamships, telephone, telegraph, radio, newspapers [motion pictures, TV and now the internet] have caused the whole world to become a closely woven unit . . . . There’s a special reason why all these developments are taking place. The time is soon coming to give mankind a universal spiritual belief which will serve . . . people in every country . . . . The way is being prepared to enable me to deliver a worldwide message to humanity.www.lordmeher.org p.134 — Ed Flanagan

Second Update 6/6/12

This second update is simply to add some novel interest to this blog. Prior to Baba's life if someone mentioned an "alphabet board," they may have easily meant a "hornbook." The following is from Wikipedia on hornbooks.

"A hornbook is a book that serves as primer for study. The hornbook originated in England in 1450 . . . The term has been applied to a few different study materials in different fields. In children's education, in the years before modern education materials were used, it referred to a leaf or page containing the alphabet, religious materials, etc., covered with a sheet of transparent horn (or mica) and fixed in a frame with a handle."

One of Meher Baba's alphabet boards is shown below, now framed. Click to enlarge. Image is from

http://www.pbase.com/junglegeorge/merabadphotos

For a couple newly added pictures on this subject, go here.