Some Poorly Understood Words in God Speaks

On page 9 of God Speaks Baba says something important. In spite of a word confusing many, including the book's editors, Baba didn't change it. The editor's note at the bottom of the page trying to clarify the word's meaning, has only served to further confuse and mislead readers more. But the fact is that this confusion is only a temporary situation. We are approaching a new Yuga, exiting the age of Muhammad and coming to the age of Meher Baba himself. Baba dated and characterized this coming Yuga. The Yuga Baba came to bring about begins in the year 2039 (in 20 years) and is characterized by philosophers paying homage to him. This is a curious prediction for Baba to make. For currently philosophers haven't the least interest in what Baba is purported to have taught. This is because what philosophers have been told and assumed he taught is not his true teaching. What Baba actually said and meant will peak their interest suddenly as it comes to the surface. Baba never says, as his lovers and hence disinterested philosophers assume, that God created the world. Baba said that the world was never really created at all -- but only appeared to God (in State 3) to be created. In actuality, Baba teaches, the universe is appearance only.

So now here is the line from p. 9.

Through this most finite point of manifestation of the first urge (also most finite), the shadow of the Infinite (which shadow, when of Reality, is infinite) gradually appeared* and went on expanding. (GS p. 9)

It is unfortunate that the editor of God Speaks did not look up the word 'appear' in a philosophical dictionary, or any dictionary for that matter. For it has a specialized meaning. And that is why Baba did not change it when it was questioned.

Appear:
verb [no object]
1 come into sight; become visible

2 seem; give the impression of being

In Baba, there is not 'a god' that created 'a world,' but rather only God and through his whim to know and subsequent impressions perceived a world that never existed.

Had Baba said the same old story as Abrahamic religions for 5000 years, why would philosophers pay attention? Philosophers are not impressed by old ideas in new bottles.

Baba said that the change in how we think is going to be as great as the change from sensation to reason (from animal to human). All history of religion can be seen to be leading up to this one change.

On their own men imagined things were alive, animism, and this gave way to living but invisible deities abiding in nature, animal and human spirits, and these gave way to the notion of gods, pantheism, which Baba said was madness.

Now every avatar since Zoroaster has worked to replace pantheism with monotheism, a single Creator. However, Baba is going beyond monotheism, the notion of a Creator god. Look and you will not find Baba ever using the word "monotheism." And he denounces the notion that God created the world. There is no 'god' for there is only God. And there is no Creation for nothing was created. It only appeared to be through the sanskaras.

So how should we actually conceive of what is being said on p. 9 of God Speaks? First, let's reconsider the words precisely again. 

Through this most finite point of manifestation of the first urge, the shadow of the Infinite [the universe] gradually appeared and went on expanding. (GS p. 9)

You should imagine yourself as God perceiving a world appearing and going on expanding from out of yourself, from your own eye. You should not try to imagine the event of creation as one witnessable from a second perspective 'outside of' God. In fact, in Infinite Intelligence, Baba equates the Om Point with the pupil of an eye. It is from this, metaphorically, that the universe expands. We know this is Baba's meaning because God's is the only possible vantage point in Baba's reality -- since there is nothing and no one except God to be doing this perceiving up of the world.

Through the gathering impressions, the world appears to come into being. Baba used precisely the correct word, and had he truly meant 'ooze' (as editor's footnote tries to "clarify" for us) he would have been entirely capable of using that word.

A second word in this quote has equally been misinterpreted, i.e. we have read our modernist materialist assumptions into it. It is the word "point."

This . . . point of manifestation of the latent first urge is called the “Om” Point or Creation Point and this point is unlimited. (GS p. 9)

Some have thought that the word point, it refers to the location of the Big Bang. Baba does not corroborate a big bang. In fact he expressly denies it by saying this "point" is without limit. The location of the so-called "big bang" is nothing but limit. So he's not speaking of the same thing. What has confused people is the word "point," causing them to picture a point in space. But this is absurd as the Om Point preceded space.

The way to understand the word "point" then in this context is as a "vantage point" or "perspective point," or "point of view."

That I am definitely correct that the point Baba keeps referring to is akin to the vantage of an eye, is clearly attested to in Baba's own words in the original Intelligence handwritten notebooks, p. 118.

As long as the sanskaras exist, the glass is sure to be present before the eye according to the sanskaras, and so the eye when open naturally sees the shadow through the glass.

Now here is the footnote by the editor of God Speaks at the bottom of p. 9 that clearly shows he did not understand this.

*The sense to be conveyed [by the word "appeared"] is that the shadow of the Infinite seeped through or oozed out of the most finite point. (GS p. 9)

Why would Baba have conveyed this false idea to the editors. Because it was not time to get into the philosophy, and there was absolutely no need for them to understand him when future generations easily would. This time, Baba kept repeating, is just to love him. But a time is fast coming when these things will naturally be revealed, and it is such revelation of the true underlying meaning of Baba's words that will bring about the onrush of new thought.

Seventy years after I drop my body, this place will turn into a place of pilgrimage, where lovers of God, philosophers and celebrities will come to pay homage. (Meher Baba, 1958)

The notion of a seeping or oozing is, however, informative in that Baba is denying any sudden blast of creation as in the atheist Big Bang Theory. The only sudden event was the Whim to Know. But the process by which the answer echoed back took an eternity. It is impossible to picture this first event and point, for you yourself are the point. You never really left it, for all that came after was merely apparent.

apparent:
     • seeming real or true, but not necessarily so

Currently there is a lot of commotion about Baba's prediction of pilgrims flooding Meherabad in 20 years. But all the emphasis is on preparing for the crowds. No attention is place on the other half of the prediction that includes philosophers. For they have no idea what would interest philosophers -- being still in a Big Bang interpretation of God Speaks. This crazy idea that Baba has come to integrate the new atheist physics with spirituality has been around since the first publication of God Speaks. It is absurd to think such a thing would hold any interest for anyone! Only by a sudden aha, that Baba is saying something entirely new, will interest surge in his words.

And it is not meant that this be broadly understood now. For we are in a very critical period, where Baba is for his lovers and not the philosophers and celebrities.

The concept of something oozing or seeping out of a hole was a convenient image for Baba to provisionally give the visually minded oil industry editors of God Speaks, and thus Baba's reference to "seeped through or oozed out" naturally satisfied their concern over the unfamiliar philosophical term "appeared." The following are actual oil manifestations in the Earth, that are technically referred to in the oil industry as petroleum seeps, where oil oozes out of the ground.

Had Baba's editors been philosophers, instead of oil aficianados, his use of the word "appeared" would have immediately brought to mind the 1893 book Appearance and Reality by F. H. Bradley, a book that attempted to, but never could satisfactorily, integrate reality with mere appearances. Baba was in fact answering questions that had been abandoned as intractable by 1955 when he wrote God Speaks.

And I must reiterate, I see all this as natural and Baba's own intention that these things not be revealed until the right time.

Imagining God places one separate from God

This last point might help the reader grasp the difference being conveyed between a world appearing to manifest from the vantage of the soul (who is none other than God and the only witness), and the notion provisionally given to the editors by Baba of picturing in their minds an ooz or seep coming out of a point somewhere.

Note that in order to picture an ooz (the Universe coming into being) one must imagine it as if one is outside of it, looking back at it. But where is this 'else' one could possibly be to witness such a thing. In such a misconception the person is hypostatizing (imagining as a real physical thing) their own self as something separate and apart from the Om Point. This completely misunderstands Baba.

To do so you would have to be another god witnessing God creating 'his' Universe, but your Universe would subsume his. This is what Eruch calls in his conclusion "Convulsions of the mind" for which God Speaks will inevitably be the best cure.