"Manonash Baba" This image is one of the few where the image of Meher Baba himself is not modified at all. It's even been left in the original tones of gray to contrast softly with the colors of the image. In some art pieces I don't start with any ideas at all. I choose an image of Baba that appeals to me and look at it until I think of something to add. Then look at it again for awhile until another aspect suggests itself In this piece I became entranced with Baba gazing out the window. The first thing I wanted to do was cut out just Baba and the window. Then I wanted to add the infinite ocean with the bright sun. I don't recall if I next added the words of Baba's discourse on "manonash", the destruction of the ego-mind that awakens the living spirit within. Perhaps I added the golden lilies, reflecting the sunlight coming through the curtains. The full text of the words in this image can be found in Lord Meher, pages 3760-3761. The part of the quote included in the image starts with the seventh paragraph below which begins: "we are all permanently lodged . . . ."
MEANING OF MANONASH"
God is within us and knows everything. God is without us and sees everything. God is beyond us and IS everything. The One, All-pervading, All-comprehending, All-powerful God, Who is the Self of ourselves and besides Whom nothing is real, has helped me and guided me during this Manonash period of my work, and now makes me dictate to you the following: To try to understand with the mind that which the mind can never understand is futile. To try to express by sounds of language and in the form of words the transcendental state of the Soul is even more futile. All that can be said and has been said and will be said by those who live and experience that State is that when the false self is lost, the Real Self is found; that the birth of the Real can only follow the death of the false; and that dying to ourselves --the true death which ends all dying--is the only way to Perpetual Life. This means that when the mind with its satellites--desires, cravings, longings--is completely consumed by the fire of divine love, then the infinite, indestructible, indivisible, eternal Self is manifested. This is Manonash, the annihilation of the false, limited, miserable, ignorant, destructible "I" to be replaced by the "Real I," the Eternal Possessor of Infinite Knowledge, Love, Power, Peace, Bliss and Glory in its unchangeable existence. Manonash is bound to result in this glorious state in which plurality goes and Unity comes, ignorance goes and Knowledge comes, binding goes and Freedom comes. We are all permanently lodged in this shoreless Ocean of Infinite Knowledge, and yet are infinitely ignorant of it until the mind--which is the source of this ignorance--vanishes forever; for ignorance ceases to exist when the mind ceases to exist! Unless and until ignorance is removed and Knowledge is gained--the Knowledge whereby the Divine Life is experienced and lived--everything pertaining to the spiritual seems paradoxical. God, whom we do not see, we say is real; and the world, which we do see, we say is false. In experience, what exists for us does not really exist, and what does not exist for us really exists. We must lose ourselves in order to find ourselves. Thus loss itself is gain We must die to self to live in God. Thus death means Life. We must become completely void inside to be completely possessed by God. Thus complete emptiness means absolute Fullness. We must become naked of selfhood by possessing nothing, so as to be absorbed in the infinity of God. Thus nothing means Everything. ©This text is copyright of the Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust
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