A LETTER FROM ADI

Dear Mr. _______ :

Your letter dated September 8 has just reached me. The main impression on me of your resume was the deep and sincere "searching" of your soul towards the higher. As Baba is now in seclusion again and neither sees people nor answers questions, it was not possible for me to present your statement to Him. However, in the light of our understanding, absorbed during the many years' stay with Him, I feel I can attempt to give an answer. I cannot promise it will be satisfactory, for at best our knowledge is derived second-hand from proximity to Him Who is the very Source, but at least I can make a sincere effort—though you will be the first to agree how difficult it is to express in words that which is so much more effortlessly understood by the heart!

You are right when you say the written word is sadly insufficient. In Baba's own words, He has come "not to teach, but to awaken." In His supreme knowledge, He tells us "anything intellectually comprehensible can never touch the fringe of Reality." But man, today highly evolved intellectually, particularly in the West, is hungry for an "explanation" to everything, even that which can only be given to us through actual experience. It is for this that Baba, in His mercy (which His very name, Meher, signifies), explains to us at times in discourses and words, bringing the Un-understandable within some measure of our intellectual grasp, at least as far as it can possibly be thus comprehended. In His words printed in the recently published "God Speaks," He has done this, helping us to better know the entire pattern of the necessary illusion called Creation, with colored charts than can be easily understood.

One thing we have understood very clearly from Baba is the deep and fundamental difference between the values of "spiritualism" and "spirituality." The "paranormal phenomena" you refer to is of the former, and of little value in bringing man to his one and only goal—God-Realization. Spiritualism is not the kindergarten of spirituality, it is a different subject altogether. Man's innate love of the phenomenal drives his seeking mind towards a channel that is not necessary for the Path of spirituality he must ultimately enter, and indeed may result to his detriment if caught up in self-delusion.