DISCOURSES & TALKS BY MEHER BABA

YOGIC  POWERS

29th November, 1926

Baba gave many explanations that day. At one point, Baba asked the men to imagine that the room in which they were seated represented the seventh plane and the six steps at the front of the bungalow represented the six planes. Asking everyone to stand up, Baba then led the mandali outside. He sat down at the bottom of the steps. With his back to the steps and facing the opposite direction, he said:

Ordinary people always look towards the neighboring bungalow, the scenery all around, not knowing what store of eternal Knowledge, Bliss, and Power lay at their back. Such worldly people are so enraptured and entangled in the clutches of maya that they do not even think about what is at their back [the room], much less care to make any sincere endeavors to know or realize it. Hence they are always groping in the dark, grasping the shadow, and losing the substance.

Yogis, to a certain limited extent, come to know of the false existence of this universe, and, because of their past sanskaras, they renounce the world and do not care to look in the direction that ordinary people look. The yogis turn their eyes away from maya with an extreme longing to see what lies in this other direction. This turning towards the real Truth, and the combination of their longing with their sincere efforts and exertions, enable them to make some progress — which takes the form of the acquisition of some knowledge and experience of the planes through which they rise step by step, just as we do here.

With these words Baba turned and began to climb, step by step.

Eventually, after tremendous trials and untold difficulties, they succeed in rising, at the most, to the sixth plane, from which point they see the real Truth, the Fountain of Light Eternal — just as we from the sixth step can now see into the room, which, as you recall, represents the Satchitanand [seventh plane] state. The sixth step, or the sixth plane, is the limit for such yogis. They must be satisfied with only the seeing of the Truth. From this point, they can't proceed further through their own efforts, as they did up until now. They can proceed only by the grace of the Sadguru who has experienced and realized that Truth, who has not only seen but become one with the Truth, and who has again been able to come down from that exalted state for the sake of the duty of making others experienced as he himself is and for the sake of enabling them to become one with that Light and Truth.

Such, then, is the limit of what the yogi can achieve.

LM O/N p.749 - 750