Previous Page
Table Of Contents
Next Page

 

 

Many times in India, Baba made me face and endure my helplessness and hopelessness. Here in my home in Myrtle Beach I do not often feel that helplessness as I did in India. Here in my lovely paradise home, I do not feel hopeless; I feel both secure and useful in Baba's Love and in Baba's Cause. I have my work and my life which is in Baba, all protected and sweet with His grace.

 

But in India I felt something else which was not so sweet, for I felt not only helpless but useless. I felt myself a burden on all those around me, my companions and those close ones whom I had come to visit. I felt I had nothing to give. Sometimes I would sit on my bed in this hopeless state just thinking, "Baba, why am I so useless?" I thought, "Is this what the New Life really is? And if it is, then I must smile and laugh with my companions, useless as I feel."

 

My companions were just so loving and considerate all the time. They took care of me in every situation as if I were not a burden to them at all. And I had to ignore this feeling of being useless and a burden. There is no greater helplessness than the helplessness of having to be helped. I would take consolation in thinking, "Just look how Baba in His infinite omnipotence, even Baba had to be helped in those later years."

 

Baba once said to me, "You should be glad to share a little bit in my suffering." Oh, Baba, you were God sitting helplessly as man on an illusion-maddened planet. I know you meant that to share in your suffering is to share in your helplessness.

 

Isn't it amazing that the God-Man when He comes arouses in us, even in our ignorance, feelings of pity and compassion for Him? We have been given the answer, and yet even with that answer we go on asking, "Baba, why must you suffer? How can you, the Lord, be helpless and hopeless?"

 

In India I saw around me thousands of people helpless in their poverty. And yet I felt myself in this land even more helpless than they. I felt helpless in the helplessness of Baba. I was a beggar gone a-begging in a land of beggars, a beggar come across the world to give a gift to the King. What was my gift? It was the gift of seeing the uselessness of my having come again all this way.

 

I came to remind you, Dear Lord, that there is no hope at all but the breaking of Your Silence. Yes, I know, you have broken Your Silence; but the Breaking has been too silent for my poor heart to hear.

 

PART VI. THE SILENCE

 

When the mind finally gives up its relentless clamor, then the voice of Meher Baba's Silence will ring clear, pealing the Avataric Hour of Glorification. That voice rings now, but the mind is full of noise deafening the heart. The Hour is not yet at hand.

 

Perhaps our minds are like one huge clock that was wound up long ago and is simply running out its time. But that clock does not tick on forever because now it is set to ring. At Baba's samadhi one feels that the clock is set to ring, and when it rings we shall all awake to meet a new day.

 

In that moment when I approached Baba and He embraced me and held my face so close to His, at that moment I could actually hear the sound of Baba's breathing, so mighty was the silence. All I could hear was the long, extended rhythm of Baba's breathing. And this sound amplified for me my own awareness of His fathomless Silence. Now that Silence is no more. It is gone, that Silence, from our midst. The illusory silence has given way to the Real Silence.

 

Who can understand that Silence? Surely only the genuine mystics can ever begin to fathom the Reality of that Silence. Listen to the words of Kahlil Gibran:*

 

"I go, but if I go with a truth not yet voiced, that very truth will again seek

 

*The Prophet

 

54

 

Previous Page
Table Of Contents
Next Page