Listen, Humanity

280 Pages·2012·3.5 MB·English

LISTEN, HUMANITY
Third Edition (1985)
By
Meher Baba
An Avatar Meher Baba Trust eBook
June 2011
Copyright © 1957 by Sufism Reoriented, Inc.
Copyright © 1982 Avatar Meher Baba Trust

Source: This eBook reproduces the third edition of Listen, Humanity, published by In Company
with Meher Baba (Atlanta, Georgia) in 1985. Listen, Humanity was originally published by
Dodd, Mead (New York) in 1957.

eBooks at the Avatar Meher Baba Trust Web Site

The Avatar Meher Baba Trust’s eBooks aspire to be textually exact though non-facsimile
reproductions of published books, journals and articles. With the consent of the copyright holders,
these online editions are being made available through the Avatar Meher Baba Trust’s web site,
for the research needs of Meher Baba’s lovers and the general public around the world.
Again, the eBooks reproduce the text, though not the exact visual likeness, of the original
publications. They have been created through a process of scanning the original pages, running
these scans through optical character recognition (OCR) software, reflowing the new text, and
proofreading it. Except in rare cases where we specify otherwise, the texts that you will find here
correspond, page for page, with those of the original publications: in other words, page citations
reliably correspond to those of the source books. But in other respects—such as lineation and
font—the page designs differ. Our purpose is to provide digital texts that are more readily
downloadable and searchable than photo facsimile images of the originals would have been.
Moreover, they are often much more readable, especially in the case of older books, whose
discoloration and deteriorated condition often makes them partly illegible. Since all this work of
scanning and reflowing and proofreading has been accomplished by a team of volunteers, it is
always possible that errors have crept into these online editions. If you find any of these, please
let us know, by emailing us at
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

i
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

ii
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

iii
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

iv
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-

v
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

vi
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.

vii
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-

viii