Real Birth and Real Death

On May 26, 1958, Baba was carried into the Barn on His lift-chair. After a brief chat and the reading of a discourse, He commented, “All the so-called births and deaths are only sleeps and awakenings. The difference between sleep and death is that when you sleep, you awake and find yourself in the same body. But after death, you awake in a different body. You never die; only the blessed ones die and become one with God,” (Lord Meher, 4389).

On August 19, 2019, a woman named Aarti arrived at the Meher Spiritual Center from India for the first time. Her path to Baba had been a long one. Years before, her son had died unexpectedly. Though she and her husband were ravaged by grief, she felt that her son was still with her— and in fact, that he was guiding her to connect with Meher Baba. Though she had never considered following a Master, she and her husband began to learn about Baba, and visited Meherabad. They both felt themselves transforming in ways they had never imagined possible.

Then, Aarti’s husband died unexpectedly. Through the pain, Aarti continued to find refuge in the arms of the One she had come to know. People started to notice that there was something different in the way she was coping with the two unimaginable tragedies, a sort of light. It gave Aarti chance after chance to talk with people about Meher Baba, about the reality she truly believed was underlying this transitory existence— these “so-called births and deaths.”

Last year, Aarti’s other son, her only remaining blood relative, announced that he wanted to go to school in the U.S. In some ways, Aarti felt this would leave her totally alone. As soon as she heard the news, Aarti knew how she needed to start this new period of her life. “I’ll drop you off at college, and then I’ll go to the Meher Spiritual Center— Meher Baba’s home in the West.”

Arti dropped her son off at school in Chicago, and then traveled— her first time traveling by herself— to Myrtle Beach. “I didn’t know what to expect,” she says, “but at the same time it was like, ‘Baba, I’m in your hands, so nothing can go wrong.’”

When she got to the gates of the Center, Aarti felt, “I am home.” She was driven down the driveway to a place where every tree and building was humming with Baba’s love. And far from being lonely and alone, from the very start she found that she continuously ran into people whom she connected with— that in fact she was barely alone for an instant. “It was amazing,” she says, “I felt like I was being held in the palm of His hand, close to His heart.”

When saying goodbye to her son in Chicago, Arti hadn’t cried at all. And throughout her initial time at the Center, she felt buoyed up with connection. It was only at Baba’s house that the tears finally came. “I don’t know what it is over there,” she says, “that overpowering sense of love that you feel, that is what I feel in Baba’s House, and it just expressed in the form of tears. So I had no thought when I went there, but as soon as I put my head down I was bawling.”

During that same morning in the Barn in 1958, Baba had a discourse read entitled “Real Birth and Real Death.” In it, He talked about what brought Aarti through all these changes in her life; what welled up the tears in Baba’s house; and what she, her husband, her son, and all of us are moving inevitably toward. “Ultimately, consciousness totally free of all limitations experiences the Unlimited Reality eternally. Real dying is equal to real living. Therefore I stress: ‘Die for God and you will live as God,’” (Lord Meher, 4388).