Bhau Kalchuri |
Beloved Meher Baba always would say, when any telegram would come to him, "So-and-so died," so he would say, that "So-and-so has come to Me."(1) And then, it so happened, that people of course, everyone was thinking, whether anyone dies who loves Meher Baba, whether he gets God-Realization. So once we were in Poona, Guruprasad, and people from different places had come with their children. These small children were crawling here and there. And the parents would feel embarrassed. And Baba looked at them, and Baba says, "Why do you feel embarrassed? How have these children come to me now? How is it, they don't know Me, but how have they come to Me? So when I say that so-and-so has come to Me, this is one of the ways they come to Me. 'They come to Me' means, when they drop the body, they come to Me." "Then there are some," Baba says, "who get God-Realization. And there are many who get Liberation."
So, reincarnation is there. Reincarnation--soul is one, indivisible. Soul never takes birth, and soul never dies. It is eternal, and infinite. But the mind, the limited mind, it is--limited, and mind takes birth, but mind does not die.(2) So mind contains all the impressions, and, what are the impressions? Impressions are those, whatever we do, the deeds we perform. And, of course, whatever we think, whatever we speak. All these create impressions in the mind. So those impressions are there. When one drops the body, along with soul, the mind and energy remain there. And because the impressions are there, so according to good and bad impressions... People, of course, one who dies, of course, he has to spend those impressions of the mind.
So hell and heaven, two states are there, these are the states of mind. They are not the places. So suppose one has 80 billion good impressions, and 30 billion bad impressions. So according to good impressions, he enjoys the heaven state. Now he goes on spending, but body is not there. But what happens, if (there is the) thought of anything, just like one takes liquor. And one derives pleasure out of it. But, in heaven state, when one experiences that state, the enjoyment, the thought of liquor, it gives him thousands of times more pleasure, and in this way, he spends those impressions, "sanskaras," quickly. So suppose he has, out of 80 billion impressions,(3) suppose he had spent 40 billion. Now, 40 billion good impressions, and 30 billion bad impressions.
So these impressions are put, if they become equal, good and bad, then of course you will get God-Realization. But it does not happen. So then, of course, he takes birth. So 30 billion bad impressions, 40 billion good impressions, he has to spend. And when he spends those impressions, and performs this or that, then he creates new impressions, but, new impressions for the next birth. As soon as these 30 billion bad impressions and 40 billion good impressions are finished, then one has to drop the body, and new impressions remain there and in this way, one has to come back again and again.
But, this is all a dream. This mind also, because mind is there, mind must go. And how will mind go? When mind will become empty of the impressions. And that's why, even if anyone is bombarded by a hydrogen bomb or atom bomb, mind does not get destroyed. It remains there. And again the same thing happens, he has to come back again and again. And this is called "reincarnation," though it is not there, it is in the (cosmic) dream, but it exists in non-existence.
Footnotes
1) Meher Baba said that he was the Avatar, or God in human form. Thus there is a convention among followers to capitalize the personal pronoun when referring to Baba. In this case for a general audience, I have chosen to follow that convention within quotes, where Baba refers to himself. Baba explained that each and every one of us is God, but we are unconscious of our divinity. It is the same real Self in all; however, the God-Realized master (man become God) and the Avatar (God descended into the realm of cosmic illusion, our realm, as man), experience this Self directly without the medium of any physical, subtle or mental bodies. They experience being the real Self of everyone. This was borne out when people met Meher Baba--over and over, people would report feeling as though Baba understood them like no-one else ever had, like they were meeting a dear friend (example). Don E. Stevens also refers briefly to this experience in "In Another Life." Thus, when the personal pronoun referring to Meher Baba is capitalized, it is not meant to suggest that Meher Baba is God and nobody else is. The meaning is much more profound.
2) According to Meher Baba's teachings, the mind, i.e. the mental body, only dies at the point of achieving God-Realization, in what the Buddhists call "Nirvana." However, it is the mind which takes on and sloughs off a series of physical bodies in the process of reincarnation. The soul, or Atman, remains untouched in the background, as it were, and is neither born nor dies.
3) An arbitrary number given for the sake of discussion.
Note: Although Bhau Kalchuri is highly intelligent and knows Meher Baba's teachings thoroughly, each follower has a slightly different interpretation based on his own perspective. (A similar explanation by Don E. Stevens, who is also a direct disciple, is included in the documentary "In Another Life.") The original teachings, found in Meher Baba's books such as "God Speaks" and "Discourses," are more powerful than any disciple's interpretation and should be studied first-hand. (See also Recommended Books)
--Stephen S.