Meher Baba

A new friend has introduced me to Meyer Baba, whose writings are proving to be a revelation.

I am currently reading his amazingly lucid "Discourses." The topics Meher Baba discusses may not be new in spiritual terms, but his way of communicating them is surprisingly accessible.

He speaks of the ego as an "affirmation of separateness," and says:


The ego affirms its separateness through craving, hate, anger, fear or jealousy. When a person craves the company of others, he is keenly conscious of being separate from them and thus feels his own separate existence intensely. The feeling of separation from others is most acute when there is a great and unrelieved craving.


Of these attitudes mentioned, most spiritually oriented people would agree that craving, hate, anger and fear are characteristics to be actively opposed through prayer, fasting, conscious renunciation, etc.

However, there is often a strange permissiveness or acceptance surrounding jealousy, as though this emotion is somehow more justifiable. Someone makes us jealous by the betrayal (real or perceived) of our claim to their exclusiveness and loyalty.

Meher Baba zeroes in on this dynamic with uncanny accuracy. He writes:


The feeling of separateness finds most poignant expression in jealousy. There is a deep and imperative need in the human soul to love and identify itself with other souls. This is not fulfilled in any instance where there is craving or hate, anger or fear.

In jealousy, in addition to the nonfulfillment of this deep and imperative need for identification with other persons, there is a belief that some other soul has successfully identified itself with the person whom one sought. This creates a standing and irreconcilable protest against both individuals for developing a relationship that one really wished to reserve for oneself.

All exclusive feelings bring about a narrowing down of life and contribute to the limitation and restriction of consciousness.


With craving, hate, fear and anger we bind ourselves, but with jealousy we also bind others as well. No doubt this contributes to the emotive force of that experience and makes it more difficult to overcome.

Recognizing that jealousy is a tool of the ego for reinforicng its identity and sense of separateness may help to counteract this,

but ultimately the heart must come to know that in loving all

it can possesses none.