Upcoming Special Presentations on Meher Baba’s Life and Message

The Center is dedicated to being a vibrant source of information about Meher Baba’s life and message. The programs listed below reflect a variety of ways of presenting and sharing this information to all who are interested. For more information on the “Meher Baba’s Life and Message” program, please click here.

May 10th, 2024: 8 p.m. at the Meeting Place.

Journey of the Soul

A Presentation by Daniel Stone

Consciously or unconsciously, all beings are ultimately searching for the answer to “Who am I?” The effort to answer this question inevitably leads each individual through an extensive journey through Creation, whose purpose according to Meher Baba is entirely to provide the medium for enabling each soul to answer this question. Through the book “God Speaks” as well as numerous other places, Meher Baba has provided a comprehensive understanding of the purpose and mechanics of the soul’s journey through Creation. This program will highlight the essential nature of the three-part journey of the soul—through the evolution of consciousness through forms, reincarnation, and involution—that leads each soul to find that the answer to this question is ‘I am God—infinite in consciousness, power, and bliss.’

 

May 18th, 2024: 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. & 1:30 p.m. -3:30 p.m., at the Meeting Place

Meher Baba’s Explanations of Meditation

A Presentation by Richard Blum

 

The Meher Center is for “rest, meditation, and the renewal of the spiritual life.” What did Meher Baba say about meditation?

 Richard Blum will explore that topic in a two part presentation entitled Meher Baba’s Explanations of Meditation. The first session will be a historical overview of the role meditation played during Baba’s advent and an attempt to answer the question: Does Baba want us to meditate? Although Baba deemphasized meditation throughout His advent, He did at times direct His mandali, lovers, and especially the Prem Ashram boys to meditate. Some of His mandali even continued to meditate after He dropped His body. 

The second session will focus on Baba’s explanations of meditation found in His Discourses. According to Baba, the sole aim of meditation is to achieve God realization. Richard will explore how each type of meditation that Baba describes is connected to one or more attributes of God or aspects of Baba’s teachings. Baba also explains that meditation is one of the four major pathways to God, and this presentation will reveal that if one faithfully follows Baba’s guidance on meditation, one will not only traverse that pathway, but one will also traverse the pathways of devotion, knowledge, and service. Meditating according to Baba’s guidance leads one to living a balanced spiritual life.

 

October 18th-20th, 2024 : 10-11:30 a.m. & 2-3:30 p.m., at the Meeting Place

Meher Baba’s New Life: Then and Now

A special presentation by Ward Parks on the History and Significance of Meher Baba’s ‘New Life’ from 16th October 1949 to the Conclusion of Manonash in February 1952.

On the 16th of October 1949, Meher Baba renounced the Old Life that He had lived until then, with all its trappings of Perfect Masterhood, followers, ashrams and so-called “spirituality.” With twenty companions He set out on a New Life of “helplessness and hopelessness.” For two-and-a-half years Baba and His companions wandered around the Indian subcontinent without fixed residence or headquarters, at times begging for food and sleeping under the stars. Baba’s activities encompassed the so-called langoti (langi or loincloth), gypsy, begging, and labor phases. He drafted three major “plans” for His companions, served the poor, worked with the masts and completed major seclusions. The New Life came to a head between October 1951 and February 1952 with what Baba called “Manonash” or the “annihilation of the mind.” Through this radical act Meher Baba drew the New Life to a close, stepping into a new kind of “LIFE” in which the Old and New Lives were both encompassed. This was the “LIFE” that provided the platform for His public declaration of Avatarhood in February 1954.