The Final Declaration
Given by Meher Baba on 30 September 1954
I am very happy to have you all here.
I know that many of you have come to Meherabad under very difficult circumstances. Some of you have covered thousands of miles, and even crossed continents to be at Meherabad today. It is your deep love for me that has braved all obstacles and prompted you to sacrifice your comforts and conveniences to honor my call and to be near me today.
I am deeply touched by your devotion, and I am proud of the hearts that contain such love and loyalty.
There are many more devoted hearts like yours yearning to be present here, but these are not to be seen in your midst today. I know that in spite of their intense desire to be near me, they could not possibly come for one reason or another. Therefore they depend on you to convey to them in detail all that you see and hear during these two days of unique opportunity that has fallen to your lot. I trust you will not fail them.
Although you are present here with all love and faith in me, and though you feel blessed to have my personal contact, yet I know that you will not realize today, as you ought to, the true significance of my call and your presence here at this juncture. Time alone will make most of you realize, not many months from now, the significant importance of this assembly.
The time is fast approaching when all that I have repeatedly stressed, from time to time, will definitely come to pass. Most of you will witness those events, and will recall very vividly all that transpires during these two days of your stay at Meherabad.
I have not come to establish anything; I have come to put life into the old. I have not come to establish retreats or ashrams. I create them for the purpose of my Universal work, only to repeatedly dissolve them once that purpose has been served.
The universe is my ashram, and every heart is my house, but I manifest only in those hearts in which all other than me ceases to live.
When my universal religion of love is on the verge of fading into insignificance, I come to breathe life into it, and to do away with the farce of dogmas that defile it in the name of religions, and stifle it with ceremonies and rituals.
The present universal confusion and unrest has filled the heart of man with greater lust for power and a greed for wealth and fame, bringing in its wake untold misery, hatred, jealousy, frustration and fear. Suffering in the world is at its height, in spite of all the striving to spread peace and prosperity to bring about lasting happiness.
For man to have a glimpse of lasting happiness, he has first to realize that God, being in all, knows all; that God alone acts and reacts through all; that God, in the guise of countless animate and inanimate entities, experiences the innumerably varied phenomena of suffering and happiness. Thus, it is God who has brought suffering in human experience to its height, and God alone who will efface this illusory suffering and bring the illusory happiness to its height.
Whether it manifests as creation or disappears into Oneness of Reality, whether it is experienced as existing and real, or is perceived to be false and nonexistent, illusion throughout is illusion. There is no end to it, just as there is no end to imagination.
There are two aspects experienced in illusion – manyness and oneness. While manyness multiplies manyness, oneness goes on magnifying itself. Manyness is the “religion” of illusion on which illusion thrives.
In the illusory beginning of Time, there was no such state of mess in illusion as there is today. When the evolution of consciousness began, there was oneness, in spite of the diversity in illusion. With the growth of consciousness, manyness also went on increasing, until now it is about to overlap the limit. Like the wave that reaches its crest, this height of manyness will dissolve itself and bring about the beginning of oneness in illusion. Suffering at its height will cause the destruction of this climax of manyness in illusion.
The time has come for the preordained destruction of multiple separateness which keeps man from experiencing the feeling of unity and brotherhood. This destruction, which will take place very soon, will cause three-fourths of the world to be destroyed. The remaining one-fourth will be brought together to live a life of concord and mutual understanding, thus establishing a feeling of oneness in all fellow beings, leading them toward lasting happiness.
Before I break my silence, or immediately after it, three-fourths of the world will be destroyed. I shall speak soon to fulfill all that is shortly to come to pass.
To affirm religious faiths, to establish societies, or to hold conferences will never bring about the feeling of unity and oneness in the life of mankind, now completely absorbed in the manyness of illusion. Unity in the midst of diversity can be made to be felt only by touching the very core of the heart. This is the work for which I have come.
I have come to sow the seed of love in your hearts so that, in spite of all superficial diversity which your life in illusion must experience and endure, the feeling of oneness through love is brought about amongst all the nations, creeds, sects and castes of the world.
In order to bring this about, I am preparing to break my silence. When I break my silence, it will not be to fill your ears with spiritual lectures. I shall speak only one Word, and this Word will penetrate the hearts of all men, and make even the sinner feel that he is meant to be a saint, while the saint will know that God is in the sinner as much as He is in himself.
When I speak the Word, I shall lay the foundation for that which is to take place during the next seven hundred years. When I come again after seven hundred years, the evolution of consciousness will have reached such an apex that materialistic tendencies will be automatically transmuted into spiritual longing, and the feeling of equality in spiritual brotherhood will prevail. This means that opulence and poverty, literacy and illiteracy, jealousy and hatred, which are in evidence today in their full measure, will then be dissolved through the feelings of the oneness of all men. Prosperity and happiness will then be at their zenith.
This does not mean that oneness in illusion shall remain so eternally. This is because all this that is, is illusion. The consciousness of oneness, as well as manyness in illusion, is part of the process of evolution. The time is bound to recur when there will be again the same beginning, growth and culmination of the heights of manyness and oneness in illusion.
My next advent, after I drop this body, will be after seven hundred years, and that will mark the end and the beginning of a cycle of cycles. All cycles of time in illusion end and begin after seven hundred to fourteen hundred years. There have been and will be millions and billions of such cycles in a cycle of cycles. Thus, there is no end to illusion, which always remains illusion.
Age after age, I come amidst mankind to maintain my own creation of illusion, thereby also awakening humanity to become aware of it. The framework of illusion is always one and the same, but the designs in illusion are innumerable and ever-changing. My advent is not to destroy illusion because illusion, as it is, is absolutely nothing. I come to make you become aware of the nothingness of illusion. Through you I automatically maintain illusion, which is nothing but the shadow of my Infinite Self, and through me you automatically discard illusion, when you are made aware of its falseness.
My manifestation as the Avatar of the time will be of short duration. This short period will, in quick succession, cover my humiliation, the breaking of my silence, my glorification and my violent physical end. Everlastingly, with all the divine bliss within me, I eternally suffer for one and all – thus I am crucified eternally and continually for all.
During this short period, my Word of words will touch the hearts of all mankind, and spontaneously this divine touch will instill in man the feeling of the oneness of all fellow beings. Gradually, in the course of the next seven hundred years, this feeling will supersede the tendency of separateness and rule over the hearts of all, driving away hatred, jealousy and greed that breed suffering, and happiness will reign.
— Meher Baba —
All quotes of Meher Baba copyright Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust.