Meher Baba - The Everything and the Nothing

Born on 25 February 1894, Meher Baba attained God-realization at the age of 19. He embarked on his mission as a Spiritual Master in the early 1920s. On 10 July 1925 he began his silence and did not speak again for the remainder of his physical lifetime. The decades that followed witnessed the establishment of centers at Meherabad and Meherazad (near Ahmednagar, India) and other places. He worked intensively with the poor, lepers, and with spiritually advanced souls known as masts. Meher Baba held many mass darshan programs. Toward the end of his life he remained in seclusion, for the most part, to complete his Universal Work. In 1954 Meher Baba declared that he is Avatar of the age. He dropped his physical form on 31 January 1969.

Quote:

People ask God for forgiveness. But since God is everything and
everyone, who is there for Him to forgive? Forgiveness of the
created was already there in His act of creation. But still people
ask God's forgiveness, and He forgives them. But they, instead of
forgetting that for which they asked forgiveness, forget that God
has forgiven them, and, instead, remember the things they were
forgiven — and so nourish the seed of wrongdoing, and it bears its
fruit again. Again and again they plead for forgiveness, and again
and again the Master says, I forgive.

But it is impossible for men to forget their wrongdoings and the
wrongs done to them by others. And since they cannot forget,
they find it hard to forgive. But forgiveness is the best charity.
It is easy to give the poor money and goods when one has plenty,
but to forgive is hard; but it is the best thing if one can do it.

Instead of men trying to forgive one another they fight. Once they
fought with their hands and with clubs. Then with spears and
bows and arrows. Then with guns and cannon. Then they
invented bombs and carriers for them. Now they have developed
missiles that can destroy millions of other men thousands of miles
away, and they are prepared to use them. The weapons used
change, but the aggressive pattern of man remains the same.

Now men are planning to go to the moon. And the first to get there
will plant his nation's flag on it, and that nation will say,
It is mine. But another nation will dispute the claim and they will
fight here on this earth for possession of that moon. And whoever
goes there, what will he find? Nothing but himself. And if people
go on to Venus they will still find nothing but themselves. Whether
men soar to outer space or dive to the bottom of the deepest ocean
they will find themselves as they are, unchanged, because they will
not have forgotten themselves nor remembered to exercise the charity
of forgiveness.

Supremacy over others will never cause a man to find a change in
himself; the greater his conquests the stronger is his confirmation
of what his mind tells him — that there is no God other than his
own power. And he remains separated from God, the Absolute Power.
But when the same mind tells him that there is something which
may be called God, and, further, when it prompts him to search
for God that he may see Him face to face, he begins to forget
himself and to forgive others for whatever he has suffered from
them.

And when he has forgiven everyone and has completely forgotten
himself, he finds that God has forgiven him everything, and he
remembers Who, in reality, he is.

Meher Baba