Man-o-nash
or The Annihilation of the Mind
The One All-pervading, All-comprehending, All-powerful God, who is the Self of our selves, and besides whom nothing is real, has helped me and guided me during the manonash period of my work, and now makes me to dictate to you the following:
To try to understand with the mind that which the mind can never understand, is futile; and to try to express by sounds of language and in forms of words the transcendent state of the soul, is even more futile. All that can be said, and has been said, and will be said, by those who live and experience that state, is that when the false self is lost the Real Self is found; that the birth of the Real can follow only the death of the false; and that dying to ourselves — the true death which ends all dying — is the only way to perpetual life.
This means that when the mind with its desires, cravings and longings, is completely consumed by the fire of Divine Love, then the infinite, indestructible, indivisible, eternal Self is manifested. This is manonash, the annihilation of the false, limited, miserable, ignorant, destructible “I”, to be replaced by the real “I”, the eternal possessor of Infinite Knowledge, Love, Power, Peace, Bliss and Glory, in its unchangeable existence.
Manonash results in this glorious state in which plurality goes and Unity comes, ignorance goes and Knowledge comes, binding goes and Freedom comes. We are all in this shoreless Ocean of Infinite Knowledge, and yet are ignorant of it until the mind — which is the source of ignorance — vanishes for ever; for ignorance ceases to exist when the mind ceases to exist.
Unless and until ignorance is removed and Knowledge is gained — the Knowledge whereby the Divine Life is experienced and lived — everything pertaining to the Spiritual is paradoxical.
God, whom we do not see, we say is real; and the world, which we do see, we say is false. In experience, what exists for us does not really exist; and what does not exist for us, really exists.
We must lose ourselves in order to find ourselves; thus loss itself is gain.
We must die to self to live in God: thus death means Life.
We must become completely void inside to be completely possessed by God; thus complete emptiness means absolute Fullness.
We must become naked of selfhood by possessing nothing, so as to be absorbed in the infinity of God: thus nothing means Everything.
— Meher Baba —
All quotes of Meher Baba copyright Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust.