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DIVINE THEME BY MEHER BABA - Meher Book House

Meher mownavani publications

DIVINE THEME BY MEHER BABA

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INTRODUCTION
TO THE SECOND EDITION

For a five-day period from May 14, 1943, Meher Baba called together 125 of his close male followers from throughout India for a special gathering at Meherabad.The daily meetings were focused primarily on two charts which Rano Gayley had prepared during the previous month under Baba’s direction, charts which Baba explained in detail at the gathering on May 17 and which served as the object of a twelve- hour silent meditation the next day. Sometime during this same year these two charts with detailed accompa- nying explanation were published by Baba’s secretary Adi K. Irani as a sixteen-page booklet entitled Divine Theme (with Charts): Evolution, Reincarnation, Realisation.* In 1955 this same material was incorporated into the supplement of God Speaks:TheTheme of Creation and Its Purpose; and since that time most people have come it from the source.
Despite its brevity as a literary work,Divine Theme stands as a significant exposition of Meher Babas' cosmology and metaphysics.It belongs to the same line of development in Meher Babas' "teaching" that gave rise to Infinite Intelligence in 1926,How It all Happened (the film scenariao) in 1934 ,Meher Babas' fourth discource on meditation first published in the Meher Baba Journal in 1941(and later incorporated in the collected Discources), and God Speaks itself. Yet the 1943 booklet has elements of content that appear no where else among Meher Babas' books and messages.The series of circles with their concentric rings in chart 2 ,for example,provides an analysis of the structure of individuality and its development through the course of evolution,reincarnation, and involution that  will undoubtedly become a major focus of study among philosophers, psychologists, and other students of Meher Baba’s work in future generations.
Though the content of DivineTheme was faithfully reproduced in its republication in the supplement of God Speaks, certain small changes were made. Naturally the charts were redrawn and the text reflowed.The original 1943 charts had incorporated handwritten explanatory matter, much of it paraphrasing and some- times quoting verbatim from the booklet’s main text; the explanations continue from one chart to the next, so that the commentary broken off at the bottom left of Chart 1 resumes at the top left on Chart 2. All of this textual content has been eliminated from the redrawn charts in God Speaks. The editors of God Speaks also made many slight emendations in the principal text, almost all of them in the areas of punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and font. At three points God Speaks emends the original text in a more substantial way. While leaving the original text as it was, we have marked the places where these questions arise with endnotes in this present edition.
Because of its signal importance as an early and definitive exposition of a central idea in Meher Baba’s cosmology, we have decided to republish Divine Theme in a form closely corresponding (in size, layout, and general appearance) to that of the original 1943 booklet. Apart from this introduction, other front and back matter, the insertion of three endnote numbers, and the interpolation of a bracketed preposition ("of") on p. 24, the original text has been reproduced in facsimile without correction or emendation.The original charts too have been reproduced in facsimile as foldouts inside the front and back covers, as in the 1943 original.
Through this faithful near-facsimile republication we hope to bring back into the public awareness not only a renewed experience of the charm of the original booklet but a deepened appreciation of the historical and philosophical importance of Divine Theme as one of the major statements of this Avataric Advent.
Ward Parks
for the Avatar Meher Baba
Perpetual Public Charitable Trust
 

 

 


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