Baba Vs. Human Addictions

The message on this white board would apply to Meher Baba as much as Jesus.

I live with the Baba followers. It was my fate. I was born into it. But if I were younger I would move away. They have this trope. They say all the time, "They're going to make it a religion." I wrote a blog post about this phrase. But it is the people who say this that are creating one, one Baba would not recognize.

Virtually all my posts that have to do with Meher Baba's teaching are attempts to address and correct ideas that his followers have made up to replace what he really wrote in his books. I even did a recent post showing how easy it is for us to examine his actual teachings, as opposed to the followers of past religions who essentially have to do forensic research now to discover it.

I have tried to analyze why people feel the need to replace what their master said with their own primitive assumptions from the past -- very often the very ideas that master came to help people see past and overcome. I believe it is that the needs and desires of ordinary people aren't met by these teachings. Instead of a new way of looking at things, they want their cultural addictions affirmed. 

I'll give some examples. Baba's early Western followers were already attached to and convinced by occult books of the 19th and early 20th century, including things like Theosophy. They were always looking to syncretize whatever he said to those teachings, even though he said those teachings were mostly false and silly. Then Baba's hippy followers came in the 60s and 70s. They interpreted every teaching by Baba through New Age and the Human Potential Movement (HPM) worldviews. 

Of course my writing does no good. Quoting Baba where he fully contradicts these past philosophical trends doesn't reach people. It passes in one ear and out the other, even though they can easily look up what Baba said, and I usually give the exact source to make it easy. That's why I call this an 'addiction.' You can hardly help a person get sober simply by telling them the dangers of intoxication and the benefits of sobriety. No matter how rational you are, the addiction is far, far stronger than reason.

The real Baba doesn't scratch the itch they have, the need for experiences, dreams, secret doctrines, and self-importance. They are chasing a feeling they once had in their youth, a feeling Baba does not help them relive. And I can't see anything anyone can do about that. As they say, 'It is what it is.'

So when I see that white board, it saddens me. For the ones complaining some mysterious 'they' are going to come along and ruin Baba by making him a religion are the very ones doing so before our eyes.