DISCOURSES & TALKS BY MEHER BABA

BABA'S   FAVOURITE  AUTHORS

 3 November, 1927

Later that morning, the topic of literature arose when Dastur asked Baba who his favorite authors were, especially poets. Baba related that his favorite writers were:

Hafiz in Persian, and [William] Shakespeare, [John] Milton and [Percy Bysshe] Shelley in English. Shakespeare is presently reincarnated in India; he is now a Brahmin taking a leading part in politics, but one of the most sincere, selfless workers for the country. His thought force of the past has now been transformed into action. He was a genius and all the controversies over whether he was the original author of his works are meaningless. He wrote all the plays — no one else. It was entirely the result of his giant intellect. There is not a whiff of the spiritual in all his dramas and poetry, yet he was a genius. The writer Kalidas would rightly be called India's Shakespeare.

Milton was spiritually advanced, but did not attain beyond the second plane in the subtle world. He could see heaven and hell and that was how he was able to write Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. His books about heaven and hell depict the result of his personally seeing them.

Shelley, though not spiritually advanced, was a thorough gentleman, a lover of God and nature.  But Hafiz not only excelled in spiritual writings, for he was Perfect, but also in poetic meters and style, better than Firdausi or Shaikh Saadi. Shams-e-Tabriz and Jalal al-Din Rumi, too, were God-realized, though Omar Khayyam was not.

Lord Meher On-line page 849

Lord Meher Vol.3 p.970