Listen, Humanity

280 Pages·1998·0.916 MB·English

by  Meher Baba, narrated and edited by Don Stevens

LISTEN, HUMANITY

By Meher Baba

NARRATED AND EDITED
By D.E. Stevens

Editions
IN COMPANY WITH MEHER BABA
P.O. Box 721, Denver, Colorado 80201
760 Cumberland Circle, Atlanta Georgia 30306

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Listen, Humanity by Meher Baba
3rd Edition
First Edition published in 1957 by Dodd, Mead
and Company, New York.
Second printing January, 1967
Second Edition published in 1971 by Harper Colophon Books, New York.
Third Edition published in 1985 by In Company With Meher Baba, Atlanta and Denver.
Listen, Humanity Copyright ° 1957 by
Sufism Reoriented Inc.
Copyright c 1982 Avatar Meher Baba
Perpetual Public Charitable Trust
Cover Design by Hervé Mercier Printed in France by l'Atelier d'Impression

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Acknowledgments

A work of this type is brought to completion only with the assistance of many persons. It is difficult to know
just who should be gratefully acknowledged for their part in the collecting and editing of the original essays
which were combined to form the body of Part II of this volume. Certainly Professor C. D. Deshmukh, best
known for his editing of the Discourses, and Adi K. Irani, Meher Baba's tireless secretary and manager of
Meher Publications, played an extremely important role.

In connection with certain other material included in Part II, grateful recognition is also given to Meher
Publications, to Circle Publications and to The Awakener for the use of portions previously printed by them.

Part I, which describes the sahvas programs given by Meher Baba in India during November, 1955, makes
copious use of material faithfully transcribed at that time by Faram and Kishan Singh, and later collated by
Ramju Abdullah. Both Ramju Abdullah and Eruch Jessawalla have made frequent suggestions and assisted
greatly with clarifications in the final text.

The sequence of events given in Part I is approximately that followed by Baba in the first week. However the
various persons, incidents and statements made by Baba were woven together from the entire four weeks'
program. The original on-the-spot translations of Baba's gestures made by Eruch have often been modified in
the interest of continuity and greater ease of perusal.

There are also certain persons who have performed the invaluable service of offering suggestions from the
viewpoint of the public. This especially difficult task has been faithfully performed by Meher Baba's sister,
Manija S. Irani, by Murshida Ivy O. Duce, and by Ben and Shirley Courtright.

Finally, the entire contents of the volume have been approved

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by Meher Baba. It cannot be pretended that therefore everything is as Meher Baba would have described it
himself, nor that Meher Baba necessarily agrees completely with certain expressions of opinion which have
inevitably been the narrator's. However the reader can be assured that the major content of the volume is as
given directly by Meher Baba, and that the remainder finds some point of acceptance or at least tolerance by
him.

D. E. STEVENS
Red Bank, New Jersey
February, 1957

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Introduction

An introduction usually discusses the background of the contents of the volume or of its author. In the present
instance it seems desirable to upset this precedent and discuss the reader instead.

This work is directed towards that very large group of people who want answers to their living problems.
Perhaps it may seem odd to go to India for such answers. Actually it is not. The East has labored for thousands
of years to find the keys to life so that daily living could be patterned in consonance with them.

The East has perhaps not yet found perfection, nor its people the perfect way. However they do provide a
background of sincere effort and insight which is almost unique in the world. From that background one could
expect great individuals to emerge who would be especially fitted to teach us how to live.

Meher Baba is clearly one of those invaluable persons. One has only to be in his presence for a short time to
sense the mighty forces at work in him. One has only to be for a few days with his close disciples to know that
his greatness flows readily into other persons. One has only to be in India for a short time, and to look and listen
with sympathetic eyes and ears, to know that the spiritual greatness of India springs from roots which lie deep in
the hearts of its people.

The rub for the occidental lies in the method of applying these living insights. This is where the present reader
must be discussed. When he thinks of India, he thinks perhaps of a poor people, often illiterate, given to
complicated superstitions. When he thinks of India's religious life, he sees ancient temples populated by many
gods. Or if he plumbs a smaller area of knowledge, he recalls odd yogis and mystics given to strange practices.

This is the screen of partial or incorrect understanding through which one must pierce to draw on India for
insight into western man's problems. The task seems almost too great, for ingrained no-

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tions yield only grudgingly. Yet India does have, buried in the great mass of extrania, a profound knowledge of
man's purpose, and this the West needs desperately.

An astoundingly small proportion of persons in the western world know why they are here. And not knowing
why they are here, few know how to starch their lives with a sense of vigorous, dependable purpose. Instead,
life becomes a matter of energetic effort to solve today's needs. If tomorrow comes to mind, it can only be
looked upon as an extension of today's problems.

It is no wonder that nervousness and irritability are produced. It is also no wonder that thinking, feeling people
are dissatisfied, and ask in their hearts what it is all about. But where can they find the answers? Apparently not
in a wild, negative bout with life. That was tried in the 1920's, and the results were so unsatisfactory that the
next generation turned its back and began again to look for a positive answer.

Apparently the answers can't be found in ritual, form or ceremony. This is a matter of the spirit, and to tend to
the needs of spirit requires men of spirit. But there are not too many of these. Where can they be found, and
how can their answers be turned into answers for us? This is the great dilemma of a war-weary, soul-weary age.

If India has clues which could be of help, how can they be used? Certainly it is not in harmony with western
traditions to build temples with many-armed gods and goddesses. Nor is it in the western tradition to engage in
strange practices of breath or posture so that one may do impossible physical feats. Rather than attracting the
occidental, such habits are apt to repel him.

If the East is to be of any help, it must be able to give western man something which can be welded into his
practical, daily life. It cannot divorce him from his family and turn him into a lone whirling dervish, nor can it
give him odd notions which will not allow him to earn a living in conventional business.

This is the real problem in trying to translate any eastern answers into western words.

It has often been said that the great world religions are furthest apart in their formal parts, and closest together
in their true spirit. This seems true, and provides a clue by which the West may draw

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on the heritage of the East. It is the spirit which is needed, and form becomes only a meaningless husk to be
discarded.

It is not necessary for the occidental to take up breathing exercises, postures, diets or the murmuring of sacred
phrases. It is true that an unbiased analysis of such practices usually leads to the conclusion that they do produce
astonishing results. However, in large part they are aside from the matter of spirit, which is the nub of the issue.

The first part of this volume describes how the great contemporary spiritual leader, Meher Baba, transferred
something of this spirit to a picked group of his close followers in India. The western reader will be struck by
the fact that there was almost nothing of ritual, dogma or strange practices involved. Yet the sessions produced
results—often remarkable results. The narrator for instance, who has perhaps been a rather crusty person over
the years, was told by many friends upon his return how much more enjoyable he had "suddenly" become. Such
comments were made both by persons who knew of the nature of his stay in India as well as those who did not.

Apparently, then, there is a way of transferring some shade of spiritual greatness without use of the elaborate
form and ritual which would be repugnant to much of western civilization. Further, there are apparently such
resources presently available in the world which can be drawn upon. This is an important fact to each person
who searches for a more certain meaning to life.

The first contribution to a searching reader can then be the reassurance that such wholesome answers exist. The
second contribution, given in Part II, is a description of the nature of life and death, sleep and waking, love and
obedience.

The third contribution is a very intriguing one, which is first suggested early in the sahvas program described in
Part I. Meher Baba makes no bones about referring to himself as the Avatar or Christ of his age. Nothing could
be more surely calculated to arouse the argumentative instincts of the occidental.

In the first place, many doubt that there ever was such a person as Jesus Christ, or at least that He had anything
of the stature attributed to Him. Second, the time for such events always seems to be in the past. To have
someone jolt the present with such a rude claim seems a deliberate challenge to a sense of modern rationality.

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A third attitude often encountered is that Jesus Christ was the one and only Son of God, and there will not be
another. Finally, there is a deeply ingrained conviction that if Christ should come again, good breeding would
cause Him to avoid claiming that He was the Christ.

For all of these reasons it is upsetting to find a man of undoubted stature state with candor that he is the Christ.
It is always easier to deal with such claims in the past. To have them occur today presents a challenge of
frightening dimensions.

There is hardly a person reared in Christendom who has not jeered in his heart at the Pharisees for not having
recognized Christ's stature, or at least for not having treated Him fairly. By implication, if one condemns a
person who may turn out to be the modern Christ, then one becomes a modern counterpart of the biblical
Pharisee. On the other hand, if one mistakenly accepts a man to be Christ then one has committed a major
blunder which may have far-reaching consequences in one's personal life.

This peculiar dilemma in which the individual is placed, explains largely the violent explosivity of the issue.
The greater the obvious caliber of the man, the greater the explosivity. And Meher Baba is certainly no mean
man.

Section I is liberally sprinkled with Meher Baba's references to his divine stature. It is suggested that the reader
deliberately put this question "on file" as he reads Part I, and allow the personality and the heart of the man to
speak for themselves. Part II will provide much additional material to estimate Meher Baba's qualities. Part III
in turn is an attempt on the part of the narrator to describe his own estimation of this extremely important and
knotty subject.

The age of jet transport and atomic power does not render the question of Christhood obsolete, but brings it
more insistently to the forefront. Mankind will need such a superhuman force in the world to dispense the
clarity and balance needed to equate against the superhuman questions it now faces.

If God did not provide a means for answering the questions He allows man to raise, it would be an unreasonable
world in which He forces us to live. But there is reason to believe that those answers do exist in the great nation
which specializes in the inner springs of man's nature: India. Stripped of the refuse which the centuries pro-

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