FORWARD

By Dr. W. Y. Evans-Wentz

This small, but precious, volume of American-born messages from Meher Baba, the illustrious Sadguru of India, should prove to be, not only to his own disciples, but to all pilgrims who have entered upon the Path, a source of unending inspiration. Every such book adds, in its own peculiar way, to the spiritual heritage of our One Humanity, and thereby advances Right Knowledge, not only in this generation, but in all generations yet to come.

These messages constitute an authentic record of Meher Baba's transcendent thought as he traveled across the United States, meeting his many followers, during three weeks of the summer of 1956, and observed the complex phantasmagoria of life in that part of the world. All the while strictly maintaining his silence, which has now been unbroken for thirty-two years, the Teacher delivered the messages by means of hand gestures rather than with the aid of his alphabet board.

Much that Meher Baba observed then in America seems to have served, metaphorically, for the setting forth of his teachings. This is suggested by the section entitled "Theory and Practice," on page 23, where he likens spiritually undirected thinking, talking and writing to the steam which escapes through the whistle of a railway engine. The whistling makes a noise, but no amount of it can set the engine in motion. Only by a different application of its steam can the engine with its train attain a distant destination. Likewise, without wisely directed discipline there can be no spiritual progress. Mere theorizing will never advance the disciple; it is practice, not theory, that produces results. This yogic truism is further emphasized on page 52 in "Knowledge Through Experience"; and, also, in a more subtle manner, on page 37 in "Tuition and Intuition." On page 23, the differences between the slow goods train, the oft-stopping ordinary passenger train, and the special train are cleverly applied to the three classes of devotees.
One of the most original of these metaphorical applications is set forth on page 25, in "Humility Disarms Antagonism": the disciple when meeting with aggression "should be like the football that is kicked, for the very kicking raises it aloft and propels it onward till the goal is reached." The late Mahatma Gandhi, too, would say, as Meher Baba in this context does, "True humility is strength, not weakness. It disarms antagonism and ultimately conquers it." Once the leaders of the nations see that this is so, human warfare will be ended.
"Control," on page 26, very succinctly, in sixty-six words, expounds the whole essence of applied yoga. No wiser definition of the term God has ever been formulated than that set forth on page 13:
Philosophers, atheists and others may affirm or refute the existence of God, but as long as they do not deny the existence of their own being they continue to testify to their belief in God-for I tell you, with divine authority, that God is Existence, eternal and infinite. He is EVERYTHING.
As Einstein mathematically demonstrated, energy and matter equal one another; and now Meher Baba enunciates, in "Control of Mind Over Energy and Matter," on page 38, that energy and matter are begotten of mind, a truth towards which Western Science appears to be rapidly advancing.

Of the many golden precepts contained herein, the three which follow suffice to indicate the profundity of their author's insight:
It is not so much that you are within the cosmos as that the cosmos is within you.
The saints of the present are the sinners of the past.
While wine leads to self-oblivion, Divine Love leads to self-knowledge.
In the firm conviction that the fifty-eight messages of Meher Baba, which comprise this volume, will be found to be, as has been said of the messages of Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa, "a feast of delight to them who uphold the Dynasty of Gurus by living according to their commandments," I conclude this Foreword with "The Final Account," on page 58:
When the goal of life is attained, one achieves the reparation of all wrongs, the healing of all wounds, the righting of all failures, the sweetening of all sufferings, the relaxation of all strivings, the harmonizing of all strife, the unraveling of all enigmas, and the real and full meaning of all life—past, present and future.