To truly understand the teachings of Meher Baba one needs to be familiar with his unique teaching about sanskaras.
The very foundation of all my explanations is sanskaras, which no religion has explained. – Meher Baba
‘Sanskara’ is a Sanskrit word that means the impressions left on the mind by past experiences. These in turn color future experiences and thus affect our reactions. Meher Baba uses the words “sanskaras” and “impressions” interchangeably. We will do likewise here.
Virtually all of Baba’s teachings relate in some way to the acquisition and termination of sanskaras (impressions on the mind). They are basic to his explanations of evolution, reincarnation, and God realization. These three phases make up what Baba calls the spiritual journey that each soul must make. So the concept of sanskaras is literally intertwined with Baba’s theme of Creation.
There are two main sources for Baba’s teaching about sanskaras. The first is his book Discourses. The topic is covered in the chapters:
THE FORMATION AND FUNCTION OF SANSKARAS ……………… 32
THE REMOVAL OF SANSKARAS ………………………….. 40
The second is God Speaks. See especially Parts 1 & 2.
STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS ……………… 1
THE INITIAL URGE AND THE JOURNEY OF EVOLVING CONSCIOUSNESS ……………… 9
The page numbers above are from the 7th edition of Discourses and the 1973 2nd edition of God Speaks. Links to free copies of both are provided in the footnotes. So if I don’t do a good job explaining these points the reader has the original sources they can refer to.
Here we’ll be discussing three important implications of sanskaras. The first is how our bodies form in evolution, as well as how they form from one lifetime to the next in reincarnation. The second is how Baba encourages people self-regulate their behavior in terms of an understanding of sanskaras, rather than simply laying down a new set of precepts. And finally why it is that if we understand how sanskaras work we see it is impossible to be ‘trapped in the wrong body,’ a fear that is a symptom of a psychological condition known as ‘dysphoria.’
EVOLUTION
Before we begin to discuss Baba’s teaching on evolution we need to understand something about Baba’s teaching in general. Meher Baba’s teaching describes life in terms of experience. A thing like a cup or a spoon is most truly and fundamentally only an experience of a cup or a spoon. The evolution of the Universe is really an evolution of experience of that Universe. So when Baba refers to the evolving Universe he is referring to our evolving shared experience of it. For Baba there is no underlying substance to things perceived other than their being perceived.
This is a very important thing to grasp when studying Baba’s writing. I originally did not understand it myself. Experience makes the object; the object does not make experience. So when Baba speaks of evolving “forms,” which means “shapes,” he is really speaking about a state of consciousness or Umwelt of a particular species or individual creature. Each new state in that evolution is a new type of experience, which Baba calls a “State of Consciousness.”
What causes these changes in the “State of Consciousness” are sanskaras.
So in the formation of the Universe, it was the sanskaras (impressions) gathered over a lifespan as a particular form that then forged the next media (form) suitable for the expression and exhaustion of those impressions. In other words it is the sanskaras that forge each new form in evolution.
But this next medium or form is always created and moulded of the consolidated impressions of the last species of form with which the soul associated and identified itself and which (impressions) were retained by the consciousness of the soul even when dissociated from the form.
Notice something very important that will come up later. A soul cannot be “in the wrong body.” This is because the body is the result of the impressions, not the other way around. The consolidated impressions gathered by a soul at any particular time make up what we normally mean by who they are. And since the impressions produce the body, the body is always perfectly suitable for each individual.
Baba teaches that the purpose of this evolutionary process is to develop consciousness. Hence the sense of individuality of the soul actually emerges out of this process. With each new experience comes sanskaras that require expression through more and more complex media, and in turn causes greater awareness or consciousness. Once the human form is reached the evolution of consciousness (which was the purpose of evolution) is complete, and thus evolution ends.
REINCARNATION
Once a soul has reached the human state, physical evolution stops because its purpose has been achieved. From that point forward it begins what Baba calls “reincarnation.”
Baba does not teach reincarnation as it has historically been taught in other philosophical and religious traditions such as in ancient Greek metempsychosis (passing of the soul at death into another body, human or animal) or ‘transmigration of the soul’ as taught in Indic religions and Western theosophy. Such teachings envision the soul as a thing in space that moves about and leaves and invades the body. As Baba’s official biographer C.B. Purdom wrote, “Reincarnation is not 'the transmigration of souls', which in its crude form is fantasy.”
So if Baba did not teach reincarnation as transmigration of the soul, how did he explain it? In Baba’s teaching it is the sanskaras acquired in the previous life that forge the new body. And the only connection between the soul and the body is one of identification. Thus what we call ‘birth’ is really the soul identifying with the body or associating with the body, and what we call ‘death’ is really the soul simply disassociating from it. Nothing comes or goes.
This identification of God in tum gives rise to an apparently unending chain of associations and dissociations, or the so-called births and deaths, of forms and beings which continue to form and assert and then dwindle away in the Nothingness, leaving behind the legacy of impressions which in tum again lead the evolving consciousness of God to identify Himself with yet another form moulded of the very impressions left behind by the form that dwindled away.
Note that such a psychic connection between the soul and body completely eliminates the Cartesian mind-body problem in philosophy.
So both in an evolutionary and reincarnational context, it is the impressions that forge new media. In reincarnation sanskaras gathered from past experience also color and shape how we look upon future experiences and because of this they strongly determine how we react to new experience and hence they are the cause of karma.
ETHICS
This finally brings us to how sanskaras are intertwined with Baba’s approach to teaching how to make wise moral judgments about right and wrong action. In other words, his approach to ethics.
To understand Baba’s ethics one needs to first understand what Baba teaches is the purpose of life and how one can achieve it. That goal he calls “God-realization” and it is the realization eventually achieved by every soul that it is in fact God. This is not simply an intellectual idea one gets, but is an actual experience that occurs when all of the sanskaras acquired over the course of evolution and reincarnation are wiped out. Baba teaches that all souls reach this goal eventually. There is no eternal damnation in Baba’s teaching. Today’s sinner is tomorrow’s saint.
So what stands as good and bad action? According to Baba, if we understand what the purpose of life is, we are best weighing our actions in terms of how swiftly and straightforwardly they lead to the spiritual goal. And what we might call bad is what retards that progress and leads to more suffering.
As just said, for Baba the goal is God-realization. God-realization means the eternal emancipation of the soul from all sanskaras and therefore all limitation and suffering to exist in eternal bliss. This occurs only when all of the sanskaras acquired through one’s lengthy evolution and reincarnation process are finally completely expunged, exhausted, or wiped out. This wiping out of the final traces of mental conditioning caused by the sanskaras can be achieved in many ways and by many methods called yogas. But even without effort, it is a foregone conclusion that every soul will eventually achieve this sublime state because it is the very purpose of Creation.
The happiness of God-realization is self-sustained, eternally fresh and unfailing, boundless and indescribable; and it is for this happiness that the world has sprung into existence.
Notice that Baba’s method to prescribing the best behavior is very different from how religions have usually done so in the past. In the past religious leaders attempted to moral behavior by laying down precepts. Precepts are a general rules intended to regulate behavior and thought. To see an example one need look no further than the Ten Commandments.
- Thou shalt honor thy father and mother.
- Thou shalt not not kill.
- Thou shalt not commit adultery.
- Thou shalt not steal.
These are excellent precepts. But people often do not understand why they are doing them, except out of religious duty. Baba commented on this very point. According to him, it had to do with the limitation of people’s intellectual capacity in the past. Speaking of the ancient Indian Rishis he said:
Looking at the average mentality of the masses of their time, the Rishis could do no better than issue cut and dried instructions as to prayers, penance and austerities, investing the whole affair with a religious importance rather than give a rational and spiritual elucidation.
But times have changed. Today, people are more educated than in the past and thus more capable of grasping difficult concepts such as sanskaras and their formation and effect. Ideas like psychology, processes, and evolution, which would have made no sense to people of the past, are now par for the course.
Therefore, Baba goes beyond the simple practice of laying down new precepts for people to follow. He delves into why we have the propensities we do, and what the spiritual consequences of certain actions are.
Some actions add binding, meaning they produce more complex sanskaras that are hard to unwind later. Other actions leave light sanskaras, easy to remove, or even help to unwind previous sanskaras. So good and bad are determined by how well they move us toward the real goal. Bad actions are things like murder, promiscuity, dishonesty, etc. which Baba says are very binding. Good actions are things like forgiveness, charity, kindness, and so forth, that help to unbind us.
Now, Baba teaches that all actions create some sanskaras. But sanskaras that result from good actions are easier to unravel oneself from than the sanskaras made from bad actions such as cruelty, stealing, and promiscuity. Baba gives the analogy of having one’s hands and feet bound vs. having only one’s feet bound. If one’s feet alone are bound one still has one’s hands to untie them.
So this is, in essence, the ethical approach of Baba. Actions are best guided by an understanding of sanskaras in light of the underlying purpose of life to become free of all binding impressions. But I should add a few caveats to this.
Naturally, Baba’s discourses on good and evil are not simply limited to a consideration of sanskaras. It would be hard to be inspired to higher actions simply by such a technical concept. Therefore Baba also sometimes says to be good simply for the sake of goodness — which is even higher than just consideration of one’s own consequences. Another way Baba tried to inspire higher actions was to suggest that if one loved his master, he should try to do only those actions he would do in the presence of his master.
Another way Baba inspires goodness is to constantly emphasize love. For instance he suggests that people try to love everyone the way one loves the one they love the most. This is interesting, because even tyrants love someone. So he comes to where people live.
And there is also loving him as a master. For those who love Baba, he said, “If you have the love for me that Saint Francis had for Jesus, then not only will you realize me, but you will please me.” Such love for the master in India is called Bhakti yoga.
See also Baba’s Twelve Ways of Realising Me and How to Love God messages.
All these are techniques that Baba gave for keeping one’s focus on doing good or higher actions and avoiding lower ones. But underlying all of them remains the principle of emancipation from sanskaras in pursuit of the spiritual goal.
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern. – William Blake
DYSPHORIA
In psychiatry dysphoria refers to a feeling of being ill at ease. The sensation is often accompanied by a feeling of being uncomfortable in one’s body or of being in the wrong body. In recent decades the term ‘gender dysphoria’ has been popularized to describe the feeling that one is a female trapped in a male body or visa versa. It increasingly afflicts young people. There are significant upticks in diagnoses and individuals seeking treatment for gender dysphoria in recent years. While actual incidence may be rising, the increased visibility and acceptance of transgender identities and a greater societal openness to diverse gender expressions likely also contribute to the higher numbers of people identifying and seeking help for gender dysphoria.
Although they are not aware of it, the idea that it is possible to be stuck in the wrong body is actually a byproduct of Cartesian dualism, an old but still popular superstition about the connection between the soul and the body. In such dualism, the soul is imagined to be a kind of invisible thing that enters the body at birth and departs it after death.
In this conception, the soul sits somewhere inside the body and sort of drives it about. The conception is famously the cause of the so-called ‘mind-body problem.’
In Meher Baba’s teaching there is no such thing as thins mind-body connection or soul-like thing inside the body. I’ve described description of the association between the soul and the body. The soul is omnipresent and eternal and it merely associates itself with the body and experiences itself as its body when alive. Death is merely the disassociation with the body when the body fails. It is not the departure of a thing.
Secondly, the body one with dysphoria imagines he or she is “in” is not some random body. The sanskaras (which include one’s attitudes and sense of identity) left behind at the end of the previous life serve as the mould for the new body. In other words it is the closest we could ever come to the ‘authentic personal self’ that creates the body. For that reason no one could ever be in the ‘wrong’ body.
Because our culture remains fixated on outmoded notions of mind-body dualism, instead of giving these young people suffering from dysphoria the counseling they need to come to terms with reality and accept their bodies, many in the psychiatric community actually encourage the young people to pursue the idea — normalizing dysphoria. In fact, gender dysphoria has become so normalized that the term ‘gender incongruence’ is becoming preferred over dysphoria in the view that dysphoria connotes a judgment. ‘Incongruent’ simply means incompatible. Thus the new wording sends the message that the feeling one is in the ‘wrong body’ might actually reflect a metaphysical fact, implying the adolescent suffering from the condition might actually be misplaced in his or her body.
As a result of this absurd normalization of an epidemic of dread based purely on a superstition, young people are increasingly being advised to seek ‘gender reassignment’ procedures.
Baba would explain that all of this is nonsense. From the point of view of sanskaras a person cannot be in the “wrong body” because one’s body is the product of one’s own sanskaras. And it is thus the perfect instrument for you to work out what you need to in your present life.
Baba actually referred to gender dysphoria, calling it a delusion.
It is a self-delusion for any being in male form to imagine itself as a female, and vice versa.
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