Study Program 2020
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Baba’s activities encompassed the so-called langoti, gypsy, begging, and labor phases. He drafted three major “plans” for His companions. He served the poor and worked with the masts, and He completed major seclusions. The New Life came to a head between October and February 1951-52 with what Baba called “Manonash” or the “annihilation of the mind.” And through this radical act Meher Baba drew the New Life to a close, stepping into a new kind of “LIFE” in which the Old and New Lives were both encompassed. This was the “LIFE” that provided the platform for His public declaration of Avatarhood in February 1954.
While the community of Baba’s lovers generally agrees that the New Life holds a special place in the progression of Baba’s life and somehow prepares the ground for a New Humanity in the ages to come, it remains profoundly enigmatic and often baffling. What exactly was the New Life? Most of Baba’s statements describe it in purely negational terms, setting forth rules and restrictions and prohibitions. Yet amid the impossible difficulties, in the years afterwards some of the “companions” that we met said that this was the freest time during all their years with Meher Baba. How to reconcile such stark contradictions? How to fathom the essence of a life that exhibits no visible positive content and indeed eludes unequivocal terms of characterization?
And what are we to make of Baba Himself, and the roles He played, through this three-year interlude? During the Old Life, He generally presented Himself as a God-realized Sadguru. At the outset of the New Life He stepped down from this office and became an ordinary seeker of God. But through the course of Manonash He seems to have regained His divine station, and indeed, augmented it, to the point of establishing the grounds of His Avatarhood. What work was He engaged in through this strange process? Who was this Man? Was the Meher Baba of the New Life the same One that His lovers pray to today and relate themselves to as their Friend and Beloved and Master?
The course of study. Since the New Life produced few texts of a “philosophical” variety, this year the study program will be historically grounded and segmented chronologically, with much attention given to “tales of the New Life” and their meaning. The main periods that we will focus on are these:
In each of these New Life stages, we will review the external history and narrative, identify some of significant episodes and questions, and try to relate what we find to the overarching themes of the seminar.
The focal texts. Our principal text will be Bhau Kalchuri’s Meher Baba’s New Life (2008). We will also devote attention to some of the significant publication from that period, particularly The New Life Circulars and some shorter pamphlets published by Ramjoo Abdulla and others. Participants are encouraged to peruse other accounts as well, particularly the reminiscences of Eruch, Mani, Mehera, and other companions in Tales of the New Life; vol. 2 of Bal Natu’s Glimpses of the God Man; and the volume devoted to the New Life in Lord Meher.
The New Life Today? In one of His immortal New Life messages, Meher Baba declared, “This New Life will live by itself eternally, even if there is no one left to live it.” This brings us to the present moment and makes explicit the question hovering in the background of any study program devoted to this crucial phase of Meher Baba’s life. What does the New Life mean to us today? Does Baba actually want us to live it? How would we do so? And if we were to try, how do we extract guidance from the forbidding and yet strangely attractive life undertaking that Baba Himself followed through on between 1949 and 1952? Amid all the unpacking and savoring of the narrative and historical materials connected with Meher Baba’s New Life, this may indeed prove to be the real governing theme of the 2020 Meherana study program.
REGISTER
If you would like to be included in the 2020 Study Program email list, please email [email protected] and we will send you further detailed information as it becomes available. If you were on the previous year's study program list we will continue to send information to you for the 2020 Study Program.
While the community of Baba’s lovers generally agrees that the New Life holds a special place in the progression of Baba’s life and somehow prepares the ground for a New Humanity in the ages to come, it remains profoundly enigmatic and often baffling. What exactly was the New Life? Most of Baba’s statements describe it in purely negational terms, setting forth rules and restrictions and prohibitions. Yet amid the impossible difficulties, in the years afterwards some of the “companions” that we met said that this was the freest time during all their years with Meher Baba. How to reconcile such stark contradictions? How to fathom the essence of a life that exhibits no visible positive content and indeed eludes unequivocal terms of characterization?
And what are we to make of Baba Himself, and the roles He played, through this three-year interlude? During the Old Life, He generally presented Himself as a God-realized Sadguru. At the outset of the New Life He stepped down from this office and became an ordinary seeker of God. But through the course of Manonash He seems to have regained His divine station, and indeed, augmented it, to the point of establishing the grounds of His Avatarhood. What work was He engaged in through this strange process? Who was this Man? Was the Meher Baba of the New Life the same One that His lovers pray to today and relate themselves to as their Friend and Beloved and Master?
The course of study. Since the New Life produced few texts of a “philosophical” variety, this year the study program will be historically grounded and segmented chronologically, with much attention given to “tales of the New Life” and their meaning. The main periods that we will focus on are these:
- The preparatory phrase, from Baba’s Great Seclusion in June-July 1949 through the Meherabad meetings in August to the actual inauguration of the New Life in October;
- The training period, from October 16th through the end of December, with its begging, gypsy, and langoti phases;
- The residence at Majri Mafi in north India, the three plans, the companions’ “New Life Ghee” business in the labor phase, and Baba’s work at the Kumbha Mela, from January through June 1950;
- The shift to south India between June and December 1950, including the great meeting in Mahabaleshwar on 16th October in which Baba stepped out of the New Life for a day;
- Baba’s great seclusion in Mahabaleshwar the early months in 1951 and the subsequent meeting with Old Life devotees in Hyderabad that August;
- Baba’s Manonash phase, which began in October 1951 in the Manonash Cave in Hyderabad and concluded in Meherazad on 16th February 1952; and
- The three “Free Lives”—the “Complicated Free Life,” the “Full Free Life,” and the “Fiery Free Life”—that extended from February 1952 through April 1953 and that appear to have paved the way to Baba’s declaration of Avatarhood in February 1954.
In each of these New Life stages, we will review the external history and narrative, identify some of significant episodes and questions, and try to relate what we find to the overarching themes of the seminar.
The focal texts. Our principal text will be Bhau Kalchuri’s Meher Baba’s New Life (2008). We will also devote attention to some of the significant publication from that period, particularly The New Life Circulars and some shorter pamphlets published by Ramjoo Abdulla and others. Participants are encouraged to peruse other accounts as well, particularly the reminiscences of Eruch, Mani, Mehera, and other companions in Tales of the New Life; vol. 2 of Bal Natu’s Glimpses of the God Man; and the volume devoted to the New Life in Lord Meher.
The New Life Today? In one of His immortal New Life messages, Meher Baba declared, “This New Life will live by itself eternally, even if there is no one left to live it.” This brings us to the present moment and makes explicit the question hovering in the background of any study program devoted to this crucial phase of Meher Baba’s life. What does the New Life mean to us today? Does Baba actually want us to live it? How would we do so? And if we were to try, how do we extract guidance from the forbidding and yet strangely attractive life undertaking that Baba Himself followed through on between 1949 and 1952? Amid all the unpacking and savoring of the narrative and historical materials connected with Meher Baba’s New Life, this may indeed prove to be the real governing theme of the 2020 Meherana study program.
REGISTER
If you would like to be included in the 2020 Study Program email list, please email [email protected] and we will send you further detailed information as it becomes available. If you were on the previous year's study program list we will continue to send information to you for the 2020 Study Program.