Sufism Reoriented/Meher Baba

By: Dr. John Ankerberg, Dr. John Weldon; ©2001

Meher Baba teaches that awareness that God alone exists and that man in his true being is one with God.

Sufism Reoriented/Meher Baba

Info at a Glance

Name: Sufism Reoriented.

Purpose: Achievement of God-realization: awareness that God alone exists and that man in his true being is one with God.

Founder: Meher Baba (1894-1969).

Source of authority: Meher Baba.

Claim: Meher Baba is the avatar, the God-Man of the age.

Examples of occult potential: Eastern meditation, psychic powers, spiritism.

Attitude toward Christianity: Rejecting.

Quotes:

“I am God” (Meher Baba, in Purdom, The God-Man, p. 329).

“If you think Baba is the Devil, say it. Do not be afraid” (Meher Baba, in Purdom, The God-Man, p. 218).

Note: Meher Baba gave up verbal communication in 1925 and communicated only by an alphabet board and later by gestures only. Most of his books are by dictation or gesture. All, however, were reputedly confirmed by him as accurate. Meher Baba spent much of his life among the masts, pronounced “musts,” the insane of India, who achieved this state through devotion to God or Hindu spiritual practice:

The masts are in various stages of involution of consciousness and may be found on any of the “planes.” They include those who are totally unconscious of physical life, those who are dimly conscious of it, and those who are, at times, more or less fully aware of their surroundings and of what they are doing; among them are various types of yogis, saliks, sadhus and others. The God-merged and God-mad are the important masts, being the most advanced; they of three main types. (1) Those whose minds become unbalanced through unceasing dwelling upon thoughts about God so that they neglect all normal human requirements. (2) Those whose minds become unbalanced by sudden contact with a highly advanced spiritual being. (3) Those who seek spiritual experience and meet a crisis from which they do not recover. What characterizes all is concentration upon the love of God. (Disciple and biographer C. B. Purdom describing the Masts, Meher Baba’s beloved, in The God-Man, p. 138. Baba declared, “I shall bow down to… the masts whom I worship” [p. 199]. The term is apparently derived from the Persian “Masti,” “overpowered.”)

Doctrinal Summary

God: Indescribable unconsciousness.

Jesus: A God-Man or Master.

The Christ: Jesus’ spiritual awareness.

Salvation: By works; attaining God-realization.

Man: Inwardly God.

Sin: Error, ignorance, lower consciousness; sanskaras.

Death: Ultimately beneficial.

Heaven and Hell: Temporary states of consciousness after death.