THE GOD-MAN The Life, Journeys and Work of Meher Baba with an ...

THE TEACHING 419the world; rarely he remains, and re-enters normal life in illusion, knowing it to be illusion; he may thenenter upon a 'second journey' which starts with fluctuating experiences of the divine and human until the'abiding-in' God state is established; he may then start a 'third journey', at the end of which as Perfect Masterhe lives in the world as God and man simultaneously, the Man-God freed from illusion.At the end of the first, second or third journey, in a 'fourth and final journey' man 'passes away as' God,physical, subtle and mental experiences are dropped, infinite power, knowledge and bliss are enjoyed, theinfinite individuality is retained.(e)(5)The above is the briefest possible summary of what could only be conveyed at all adequately in a workwholly devoted to it, but I think it may have value as far as it goes. There are several important points to bekept in mind: (i) I have made the first part relating to the Godhead and God very brief, because what can besaid about the Everything and Nothing amounts to no more than words written in darkness about thedarkness. The Light that enters into creation is to our eyes in shadow, which is not penetrable by the probingof philosophical enquiry, only by intuition or revelation; what we get from Baba is necessarily clothed inmystery, and I cannot hope to do justice to it in the space available to me here. The idea of God in theBeyond beyond the Beyond is familiar in Western and Eastern mysticism, for beyond all symbols of God, allpersonalizations, all attributes, is the Unknown. Eckhart speaks of 'meeting God through God', we enter intothe Unknown through the God whom we know in prayer, in insight, even in denial and atheism. The Beyondis ever beyond, only Being and Existence are to be known. (ii) Note that the original 'sound sleep' includesconsciousness and unconsciousness, the original emptiness includes everything, and the original infinitudeincludes finiteness. (iii) God remains one and the same, although referred to as 'projecting', 'proceeding', andpassing through the 'processes' of evolution and involution. Thus the act of creation is not a separating offfrom God, neither is it an emanation, nor as the planting of a seed: the soul in contraction is God. (iv) At themost finite point, the embodied soul in creation (or contraction into finiteness) refers not merely to this earthbut to the innumerable galaxies. (v) The act of creation is not to be