DISCOURSES & TALKS BY MEHER BABA

 

ZARATHUSTRA

 

 

 

7 February, 1928

 

 

Two Zoroastrian priests, N. Namdar Dastur, of Bombay, and Sheheryar Irani, of Persia, met Baba on the 7th, and the Master explained to them about Zoroaster:

 

The prayer books of all religions — Avesta of the Parsis, the Koran of Islam, Bible of the Christians, et cetera — are all written by priests and have nothing whatsoever to do with the Truth. Zoroaster meant for agni [fire] to burn your "heart" in love of God. The dasturs murdered the meaning and changed it to burning in the external sense of the sacred fire. So also, other religious dogmas and doctrines of kusti, prayers of the Avesta — are all ceremony and rituals.

 

Take one name of God sincerely, lovingly, devotedly for a few minutes each day without the thought of anything else and that is much more beneficial than hours of prayers recited mechanically, the mind being all the while engaged and occupied in worldly affairs.

Zoroaster had fourteen disciples whom he Realized. There was one whom he Realized after the fourteen. From him, the knowledge and experience of God was passed on from father to son for 700 years. But after Dastur Azar Kaivan [who became a Perfect Master], a false, deceitful dastur obtained the sacred gaadi and started collecting money. Those dasturs who followed him decreed as they thought. After them, until the present, there has been no Realized person among Zoroastrians.

 

Whatever religious books [Avesta] the Zoroastrians have got now are books of these dasturs and not of Zoroaster. Zoroaster taught and gave out gems of Truth — gems of Sufism — but they are not known to people. To his special fourteen disciples he gave real Knowledge and Experience. To others (i.e., the world) he gave them tariqat of Sufism — laws, rules, regulations, etc. There were tremendous changes in the doctrines set down by Zoroaster made by the false dasturs. The same is true with Christ's Bible, Muhammad's Koran, et cetera.

 

Suppose after I give experience to some, the members of my circle go out in the world and lecture before people. These lectures will be taken down by people and they will hereafter be taken as to constitute the next Avesta, Bible, Koran, Vedas, et cetera. These, too, will undergo various changes under different hands as time goes by.

So my best advice to you is to create love for God. Earn something by your own efforts and in my contact. Otherwise, if you spend your time in discussions on religious doctrines and dogmas, it will take you nowhere.

 

It is all rigmarole and will waste your precious time, which might better be used in thinking of God, meditating, and creating love. Love is the sum and substance of all religions and the only essential of all creeds. Leave the rigmarole alone.

 

For example, the alphabet is taught to a child to make him begin to learn the language. But if he merely learns the alphabet without any efforts at proceeding further, he will learn practically nothing. It is the same in religion. The shariat, doctrines, and dogmas are given as a preliminary beginning — like the alphabet — to reach the ultimate aim of the Realization of the Truth. After one masters the fundamentals, one advances; but if a person merely sticks to religious ceremonies and rituals and believes that religion is that alone, then he does not advance at all. God and Truth are far, far above shariat, doctrines and dogmas, rituals and ceremonies.

 

 

 

Lord Meher On-line p. 903-4

Lord Meher Vol.3  p 1020