Through the decades, Mark Griffin and the Hard Light Center would go on break following the New Year’s retreat. The new study cycle would begin again in late January. As the anniversary of the Mahasamadhi of Avatar Meher Baba, also known as Amartithi, or Deathless Day, occurs on January 31st, it was often the case that the first Intensive of any given year was dedicated to celebrating the existence of the Original Soul.
We all come from different religious, spiritual, philosophical, and personal traditions. Through our lives and studies, everyone involved in the pursuit of self-discovery has had to form some notion of God’s existence or non-existence. I was raised in an Irish Catholic family heavily invested in Catholic doctrine and practices. From a very young age, I attended Mass most mornings. I went to Catholic school for 14 years. When I was in grade school, I joined the choir. During the holiest of occasions, with the candles burning, the incense wafting, and the priests and choir singing Latin prayers in haunting melodies, the God Shakti was a thrilling and magnificent presence.
As I progressed into my teenage explorations of spirituality in the ’60s, I began to relate to God and Christ independently of the Catholic Church. I had no difficulty in separating the two. In my Herman Hesse, Be Here Now, psychedelic-infused mind, it made utter sense to me that we were born to realize our innate God nature.
In the 1970s, having moved to the Bay-Area for school, I noticed that pictures of this jovial being with a mustache and dark blazing eyes started to show up around town. I first ran into Meher Baba’s poster with the slogan, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” in a Mexican restaurant in Berkeley, California. Meher Baba says of his manifestation in a human form:
“Of the 56 God-realized souls on earth, the five Perfect Masters are the most important. And the one who is the highest of all is the Avatar, myself. In spite of appearing as five different Persons, they are and always remain one God, as each one has exactly the same supreme experience of God-Consciousness. I never come of my own wish. It is always the five Perfect Masters who bring me down [into human form] in each Avataric period. Those five hold the key to all of creation, which contains an infinite number of universes. All the five Perfect Masters, BABAJAN, NARAYAN MAHARAJ, TAJUDDIN BABA, SAI BABA, and UPASNI MAHARAJ put together, mean ME — THE AVATAR.”
Mark first took the Hard Light Center to visit the samadhi shrine of Meher Baba in 2001 on our initial pilgrimage to India. In the state of Maharastra were the samadhi shrines of three of the five Perfect Masters. At the time, I had little conception of the Perfect Masters nor their relationship to the very existence of the embodied Avatar.
As with just about every other gem of wisdom that Mark Griffin shared through the decades, his teachings about the Original Soul are finally finding their way into conscious integration. Mark states that during the Avataric incarnation, incoming energy from the highest plane displaces the substance of the Wheel of Samsara. During our recent study of the Universe, we learned that this world system, Jambudvipa, Endurance, the Tolerable, is made tolerable by the presence of the Avatar.
We have visited the Samadhi shrine of Meher Baba many times since that initial visit in 2001. Meher says that for the first 100 years following the dropping of his physical form, to visit the samadhi shrine is no different than being with him in his human form. The Ocean of Consciousness and the Infinite Creation reverberate in every atom and in every moment.
The Avatar speaks the language of Love. As we touch the Truth of Eternity, profound Love gives you the means to accept it. Mark says that the Hard Light Center is “beloved of God.”
Love is the Way.
Jai Baba.
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