Pray for Peace

Seems that as the years go by I realize more and more how little I know—how the knowing I never questioned, because I assumed I knew, comes under question. Take peace for example. My neighbor has a little flag in her front yard that my greyhound Adi and I walk by daily. It says, “Pray for Peace.” Nice sentiment right? But what does it mean? I still give the old hippie peace sign to people when I walk down the street. But what do I mean? What did it even mean way back then in the sixties?

A long lost cousin of mine told me that she had been seeking inner peace. My unspoken response was; “How can you acquire something you already have?” My thinking was, if inner peace resembles the tranquil state of calm water, does the tranquility really go away when the water is stirred? And, what stirs the water in the first place? And why?

In God Speaks, Meher Baba explains the most-original state of God. He calls this state the Beyond the Beyond state of God—God before creation, God before the Word. He likens this state to an infinite, unbounded, and absolutely tranquil—absolutely at peace— ocean that is so beyond, beyond both everything and nothing that it defies description or explanation—even by those who have experienced it.

So, there is the old philosophical question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” Overlooking for a moment the fact that a time when no one is there to hear it fall is an impossibility—because any definition of no one would have to include not only human beings, but all other life-forms that have to exist in order to create a forest for the tree to be there in the first place—we can still apply the question to the Beyond the Beyond state of God as well. In other words, “If absolute peace and tranquility exist in the Beyond the Beyond state of God, but there is no one there to experience it, is there really peace and tranquility at all?”

Meher Baba explains that the one thing missing in the Beyond the Beyond state of God is consciousness. He says that in the Beyond the Beyond state of God neither consciousness nor unconsciousness exists, and without consciousness God cannot be aware—cannot experience—His most Original state—Himself. So, that’s it, end of report; God is asleep in the Beyond the Beyond state, because what can conceivably cause Him to wake up?

Meher Baba calls it the lahar. The English word that perhaps comes closest is whim. Whim arises in and of itself. The mighty dynamic of cause and effect that moves creation is not yet in play. Lahar—whim—just arises in the Beyond the Beyond state of God in the form of the question “Who am I?” and sets in motion God’s dream, the creation, in order for Him to wake up—in order for Him to experience peace, or should I say Peace—because, as we know, it is impossible to pass from the state of deep sleep to the awake state, without first passing through the intermediate state of dreams.

So, “Pray for Peace?” Pray that God as us all awakens and experiences the peace that always was, always, is, and always will be. “Pray for peace?” Indeed, Indeed.