As per Sufi way, and susequently as per Barry's teaching, 'Meher Baba directed his own disciples and followers to lead simple, natural lives, attending faithfully to worldly responsibilities while remembering God or the Master inwardly and dedicating all action to Him.'
Excerpt from Barry Long's autobiography:
"My plan, as soon as the van arrived, was to visit Meher Baba, the Sufi sage at his ashram at Ahmadnagar, about 500 miles north-west of Madras. From there we would make our way north to the Himalayas. Meher Baba was one of the five Indian teachers whose works had helped me. (His Discourses, if you can get them, are extremely good.)"
Book 1. Excerpts beginning at, and following Page 127...
“The experience of the first stage of fana is of the nirvana state. Nirvana is that state where apparently “God Is Not.” This is the only state where “God Is Not” and “Consciousness Is.” This experience of the first stage of fana is what Buddha emphasized, but later on it was misinterpreted as Buddha having emphasized that there was no God.
[This sounds to me like the first stage of enlightenment as I understand and describe it, where one feels as if they are 'nothing' or 'no one'.]
“The reality, however, is that God Is; but in the absolute vacuum state of the first stage of fana only consciousness remains, experiencing absolute vacuum. As it can never happen for God not to exist, in the state of nirvana God plays the part of consciousness itself, which consciousness is sometimes termed super-consciousness or mahachaitanya.
“The second stage of fana follows this nirvana state and the “I am God” state is experienced consciously....
“Therefore [in the second stage] God, Who was originally unconscious, now becomes oblivious of oblivion itself [in the first stage] and gets the real and final answer to His original First Word—“Who am I?”—as “I am God.” Thus in the gross, subtle and mental spheres God becomes actually what He really is not; and in vidnyan He becomes actually what He really is. Originally God was God; now God has become God. Just because God, after “passing-away-in” His original state of absolute vacuum in the first stage of fana, realizes His own infinite state of “I am God” in the second stage of fana, this fana (i.e., fana-fillah) becomes and is the goal. Attainment of this goal means the end of the First Divine Journey, which began with gnosis and which ended, after traversing all planes of consciousness, in deification.
[And this sounds like the second stage as I experienced and described it, in which one becomes the - energy of - the universe. Here 'I am everything'.]
“The second stage of fana is deification which means man has become God. Man now is God and experiences God’s knowledge, God ’s powers and God’s bliss; but this is not “Perfection” as yet, although it is the goal. At the second stage of fana or the fana fillah, which is the end of the first divine journey, man has entered God and thus has become God, but has not yet entered God’s life. Man at the end of the first divine journey simply realizes that he is God and simply experiences the “I am God” state together with the experiences of infinite power, knowledge and bliss, and enjoys the state of infinite bliss.
“After the Goal [as above] is attained at the end of the first divine journey, but very rarely however, God as man, now in the God state, can leave infinite bliss and come down to normal consciousness from the super-conscious “I am God” state and begin to experience the state of baqa, thus entering the second divine journey.”
The Sufi term “baqa” means “abiding-in.”21
...The third type of fana-baqa is of the seventh plane of the final involution of consciousness and is the real fana-fillah of the Reality and the real baqa-billah of the Divinity. When the impressioned consciousness of individualized life is totally and finally relieved of all impressions of the Illusion, and when this unburdened or impressionless individualized Self consciously “passesaway-in” the original, divine absolute vacuum to gain the fana -fillah or the “I am God” state, the goal is finally attained. This is the state of real majzoobiyat.
The only but infinite difference between the fanas of all the different individualized species and states of illusory life and the final and real fana of the divine life is that in the former the consciousness is nil while in the latter full consciousness prevails. After the state of fana-fillah, the state of baqa-billah is established by some individualized selves to live the life of God as “ManGod ” on the earth. Such a “Man-God” lives at one and the same time in all states of life and in all planes, the life of man in Illusion—knowing Illusion as Illusion—and of God in Reality. This is the state of real sulukiyat .
After attaining the state of fana-fillah and before establishing the state of baqa-billah, there is also a state of turiya avastha at the Divine Junction between fana-fillah and baqa-billah. In this state there is sometimes the experience of real majzoobiyat of the fana fillah and sometimes the experience of real sulukiyat of the baqa billah. This is the state of the real Majzoob-Salik or Salik-Majzoob as the case may be.
[Is this the in-between stage which I referred to as Brahman Consciousness?]
Consequently, in God’s state of baqa-billah, the same consciousness simultaneously experiences the dual experiences of “I am God” and “I am human.” Along with this dual experience the same consciousness spontaneously also experiences, without break, the infinite knowledge, power and bliss of God along with the experiences of the weaknesses and sufferings of humanity. It follows that in God’s state of baqa-billah, God, in the form of an ordinary human being, establishes Himself in His divine life or, man “abides-in” the life of God. In short, baqa-billah is that state of God where “abiding-in” or getting established in God is experienced by those who are defined as “Saliks” or “ Jivanmukta s.” The Salik continually and consciously experiences simultaneously the dual experience of the “I am God” state and “I am human” state...
[And this sounds like the final stage sometimes called Para-Brahman. In This final stage, one comes back to the world, again accepting it as an aspect of the entirety of what one is. and all levels or stages are accepted and form the whole.]
In baqa-billah, the life of God-in-human being established, man as God experiences the sahaj samadhi. This means that man as God simultaneously, without the least effort, has continually and automatically the dual experience of God and of man. This is the state of Perfection. Perfection generally carries with it the sense of the highest pitch of, or the extreme type of, accomplishment, and Perfection as such cannot become more perfect. But when the term “Perfection” is used in terms of Divinity, there are three types of Perfection in the state of sulukiyat of baqa-billah:...
