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EXCERPT FROM MEHER BABA AND HIS MAD-MASTS

Dr. C. D. Deshmukh

 
Those who would grasp the real significance of Meher Baba's work in connection with the Mad-Masts must always keep in mind that most of the Mad-Masts whom He has been attending to are of an extraordinary type. The Mad-Masts must not be confused with ordinary mad persons in whom there has been insufficient development of mentality.

There are many mental hospitals all over the world which seek to give psychic and medical help to the feebleminded and to the mentally ill; and this in itself constitutes one of the most noble activities which in modern civilization has sprung out of philanthropic motives. But the work of Meher Baba in connection with his Mad-Masts is fundamentally different from this philanthropic work.

Meher Baba has Himself pointed out....

"... The Mad-Masts often exhibit incapacity to attend to and deal with the ordinary situations of life and are in this respect comparable to those who are deranged in mind; but the departure from normal behaviour and responses is not due to lack of sufficient development or any chaotic forces of disruption, but is due to the suspension of interest from the ordinary pursuits of life and absorption in the spiritual realities encountered on the path towards God-realization.

"From the purely theoretical point of view, even these cases could be shown as cases of mental conflicts; but ordinary mental derangement is due to acute and insoluble conflict between incompatible sanskaras in connection with the world; whereas the unusual psychic states of the Mad-Masts are due to the dispersion of sanskaras by the powerful urge to realize God-states.

"The advancing urge to realize the highest brings about the shattering of the given mental structure with all its normal tendencies and corresponding capacities; and this condition of inhibited mind is called Unmani state. The successful termination of this urge initiates the aspirant into the supra-mental state of integral understanding and direct realization of the supreme self."


TREASURES FROM THE MEHER BABA JOURNALS (1938-1942), pp. 136-138, ed Jane Barry Haynes
1980 © Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust

               

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