“Saint Francis of Assisi was the only one of the very few saints in Europe to become a Perfect Master.”

Just before Jesus died, he said; “I am thirsty.” The first thing I said when I came back to life, after seeing the Lord, was; “I’m thirsty.”

Consider Mary Dominica Wieneke and the Order of Saint Francis. In searching for the Blue Angel that appeared to my sisters while they slept, and Kay Coakley, I look to my aunt, June Rice, who took care of me while I had the hooping cough. I almost died several times. I was eleven. I had turned blue and my fingers were contorted when I came into the living room where my aunt Lillian and uncle Dick were sitting. Lillian screamed, and Dick started hitting me on my back.

When June would come to my bed in her nightgown, I saw a blue glow coming from her abdomen. She could not have a child due to some operations. She and Vinnie treated me like their child, and were my patrons. June was a devout Catholic.
I suspect this blue angel is associated with Mother Mary. I wondered if it was her ghost. But, I believe it is the Angel that came to Saint Francis when he died during a terrible illness, and came back.

I suspect I am the embodiment of Saint Francis. When I read about Baba coming to the true cave of Saint Francis, all of a sudden I had a vision. I was sitting in that cave. I heard the dry summer grass being stepped upon. Suddenly Baba’s face is beaming at me. I reached out my wounded hand and cried;

“Father!”

Not the energy around me (click on photo to enlarge) Christine and Brian took photos of me because Christine wanted to do her first portrait of a male. She developed both rolls, and was shocked to see this energy in every image of me. she did not do my portrait because of it.

Baba told his disciples not to touch him when he came out of the cave. Above is Vicki mocking me while I am doing my secret work. She is reaching out with her finger to touch me while I have my eyes closed.

Jon Gregory

Beloved Avatar Meher Baba’s Comment on Saint Francis of Assisi:

{1}. On another occasion, Baba revealed to Filis and Adele his four favorite Christian saints,
“My two favorite women saints are Saint Theresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena; my two favorite men, Francis of Assisi and Saint Augustine.”
[LordMEHER 11-3818]

{2}. Do you know how St. Francis of Assisi loved Jesus and became one with him? He loved him as Jesus ought to be loved; but in Francis’s group there was one who was a glutton.
Juniper loved Francis most, though he did not sit in meditation or think of anything. He gave more trouble to Francis than anyone, yet he loved Francis dearly. When we love from the bottom of our hearts we give all our good and bad, even our troubles; the lover gives everything and demands nothing. I give everything and demand nothing.
Love me like that and Baba is your slave. Even if you can’t do that, don’t worry. As long as you are mine, you need not worry. You are mine, that is why I have drawn you such long distances. If you can’t picture me, don’t worry; if you don’t love me, don’t worry; I love you.
-Avatar Meher Baba
[The God-Man Pg.257]

{3}. If you have the love for Me that Saint Francis had for Jesus, then not only will you realize Me but you will please Me.” -Avatar Meher Baba “Saint Francis of Assisi was the only one of the very few saints in Europe to become a Perfect Master.”
*** Meher Baba said Saint Francis was a Perfect Master.
AFTERWARDS he spoke with Ivy Duce, Don Stevens and others about Saint Francis:
Don Stevens asked, “Baba, you have explained in the Discourses, God Speaks and elsewhere that an individual cannot attain God-Realization without the aid of a living Perfect Master. Since there was no Perfect Master in Europe at that time, how did Saint Francis achieve Realization?”
Baba turned to Ivy and asked, “Have you heard of the ancient Sufi prophet, Khwaja Khizr?” She replied that she had heard Rabia Martin speak of him. Baba explained: “Khwaja Khizr now and then takes on a physical body if there is some spiritual situation that absolutely demands it. The Realization of Francis was such a case, because he had no Perfect Master to give him Realization. So, on the night we read about on Mount La Verna, near Assisi, during which St. Francis also received the stigmata [wounds of the Crucified Christ], Khwaja Khizr, in his temporary human form, gave this beloved Western saint the touch of grace which made him a Perfect Soul – a Qutub or Perfect Master.”
[LordMEHER 14-5011]

{4}. BABA WISHED to stay in seclusion for twenty-four hours somewhere in Italy and chose Assisi for the purpose because it was the homeland of Saint Francis. Baba sent Herbert there on August 1st in search of a cave for the seclusion [LordMEHER 5-1688]

{5}.As you know, I need none of you. I can work my will independently, but I have chosen, for my own reasons, a few to help me in that work. But these few need a love and faith as rare as that of Saint Francis [of Assisi]. Let that same love of his for Christ be your goal, and love me as he loved his Master.
-Avatar Meher Baba [LordMEHER 7-2332]
{6}.12th Way -LOVE…If you have that love for Me that St. Francis had for Jesus, then not only will you realize Me, but you will please Me.
[12 ways of realizing me -Meher Baba]

My reason* for believing there is a significant kernel of truth to these theories of Jesus living in India and being buried in Kashmir, is that my master, Meher Baba, said that was the case.

However, Meher Baba was also clear that Jesus was the Avatar of that era. The Avatar is God descended into our realm of cosmic illusion as a man, the ideal or perfect man. Thus he is both God and man simultaneously.

Jesus the Christ The author of this website appears to have a bias (we all have biases) that Jesus was a man only, and that any suggestion that he was divine or of divine origin is a matter of myth. I think his thesis that Jesus’s memory was embellished to make the new religion more palatable to gentiles who were already familiar with similar myths, is plausible. Again, for my bottom-line evaluation, I personally, as a follower of Meher Baba, turn to his explanations rather than to scholarship. (You of course are welcome to give your own weight to various sources.) According to Meher Baba, Jesus was conceived and was born “the usual way,” i.e., the virgin birth was a myth added later on. Jesus did not die from the crucifixion in the sense we usually think of death, but what he did was also not something possible for an ordinary man–he entered the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi and then returned after the crucifixion, and went to India. If you study the life of Sri Ramakrishna, you will find that he often entered this State, as for example when something would remind him strongly of some particular attribute of God, or when devotional songs were sung in his presence. Nirvikalpa Samadhi is the state of God-Realization or Self-Realization. Jesus, as Avatar, would have had this state along with his ordinary consciousness of being a man, simultaneously. Nirvikalpa Samadhi is only attained by the real death of the limited mind and ego. Jesus already possessed this state of Realization (having been unveiled from it by John the Baptist). So in a sense, Jesus died the real death on the cross, not the faint shadow of it that we consider to be death. One could also say that Jesus was already “dead” in a sense; or one could equally say that he was already beyond death and in the state of being fully alive, so that it was impossible for him to die in the usual sense.** In this sense, whether Jesus took up his same physical body after the crucifixion or didn’t, would not change who Jesus IS one iota. He could take it up again or not take it up again and he would remain the Avatar. In the same way, he was the Avatar before his incarnation as well–“Before Abraham was, I am.” The entire matter is really beyond words to describe adequately, and it comes as no surprise to me how 2,000 years of interpreting and trying to codify it into a rigid doctrine resulted in what has come down to us.

Meher Baba also makes no mention of Jesus being married, but instead refers to him as being single. Comparing events in the life of Meher Baba, the story in the Tomb of Jesus website of the king insisting on Jesus having a companion, and Jesus finally agreeing to allow a woman to assist him, is plausible. However, his having had sexual relations with the woman is not consistent with the behavior of spiritual teachers who have attained this degree of spiritual advancement. I would guess it was assumed on the basis of gossip, by people who could not conceive of a man living with a woman and not having relations with her. If you study the lives of spiritual masters who have achieved this state of consciousness, you find that some of them marry and some do not, but they never get entangled in casual sexual relations. While it is true that spiritual masters of this calibre may have a significant other, very often even this is a chaste relationship. Such was the case with Sri Ramakrishna and his wife Sarada Devi, and one may interpret that it was also the case with St. Francis (who Meher Baba said achieved this state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi) and his beloved Clare.

My main point here is that one must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Though it may turn out that Jesus physically survived the crucifixion, and it may also be true that his history was embellished in the manner of myths that had also been applied to other historical figures, this does not mean that he was not an Incarnation of God. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he was simply a prophet, a man, who lived through the crucifixion and then died later as an ordinary man. It also doesn’t mean that there aren’t important truths embedded in the myths that have been preserved as traditional Christian doctrine. It does mean that these myths contain distortion and embellishment, and that it will be a painful and disorienting process for traditional Christians to sort through it and find the truth of it. When the “dust has settled,” I think they will find that Jesus was and is more than traditional Chuch doctrine has portrayed him to be, not less. (Just as the true goal of religion, God-Realization, is much more than living in paradise forever in linear time.) What will emerge, I believe, is not that Jesus was just an ordinary man; nor that he was the only son of an anthropomorphic God. Jesus will finally be let out of both the little conceptual box of materialism, and the little conceptual box of Christian dogma, in which boxes he has been imprisoned for centuries.

For more information on Meher Baba, see my article, “A Tapestry of Meher Baba’s Connections with the West.”

*Another clue is that when Jesus appeared to the disciples, he appears to have had a body with the same wounds. It makes no sense to me that Jesus would have resurrected a body with the wounds. It further makes no sense to me that Thomas would have thrust his hands into the wound in Jesus’s side, literally, as per the Biblical account, simply because no-one who loved Jesus as the disciples did would have caused him excruciating physical pain just to satisfy their own selfish doubts. Therefore the account must be exaggerated (another clear indication of editing in the New Testament). Nonetheless, we are probably safe in assuming that this much is accurate, that Jesus’s body bore the wounds from the crucifixion when he returned. Under those circumstances, it is a much simpler and more logical interpretation that he survived the crucifixion than that his body was supernaturally resurrected.
**My interpretation of the crucifixion, based on studying Meher Baba’s life and teachings, is that Jesus was vicariously taking on the suffering of the world, so as to make the world’s load of karma bearable for us. (Meher Baba said that the Avatar did not take on the karma of the world per se, which I interpret to mean that he took on the suffering that resulted from the karma but not the karma itself.) The external crucifixion of Jesus was thus an outward and visible sign of the real inward crucifixion, of the inner spiritual work that Jesus was doing for humanity and for all of Creation. Thus the real inner crucifixion was much, much more than just the outward event of the physical crucifixion.

“Finally we arrived at Assisi at 5 P.M. to find a rather agitated Herbert waiting for us, because we were three hours late in arriving. After a rather restless and depressing week, he had made most successful arrangements for Baba’s retirement (which he tells in much better words than mine).

“Several kilometers from the town, up in the hills on the slopes of Monte Subasio, lies the famous Hermitage of Carceri built by St. Francis and his fellow monks. Below in the woods are several small caves or retreats where people go for meditation. Herbert discovered one of these half-protected by an outside wall. He had hidden this with branches so that it was difficult to find.

“This was one that was actually used by St. Francis himself. At 6:30 P.M. we had a light meal at the Windsor Hotel and drove in a car most of the way. The last part we walked on foot and, finally, scaled a low wall and plunged into the woods led by Herbert down an intricate winding path.

path.

“The cave we found was an ideal spot and perfectly suited to Baba’s requirements. Herbert had thought out everything with such care that there was nothing left to be desired. Herbert is always very meticulous and careful in all he undertakes. The light was beginning to go a little as we entered the woods. It was just after sunset. I remember the birds and their song dying away gradually.

We settled Baba in and he told us that no one must look at him and, above all, not to touch him.

“It was arranged that Herbert and Chanji were to keep watch outside the cave during the night, to be relieved by Kaka and myself at 9 o’clock the next morning. Baba said that Kaka and I were to go to mass at 7 A.M. the next morning and then we were to kiss the Tomb of St. Francis. We bade them goodnight and found our intricate way out of the woods.

“After mass we shouldered our rucksacks and toiled up the streets through Assisi to the hills of Monte Subasio. As we got out of town, it began to get warmer and warmer.

“Poor Kaka was laden down, and not in such good training as I, so we had to stop from time to time for him to rest and get his breath and cool off. At last we arrived, a little late —about 9:15, and we were glad to reach the cool shade of the wood where we found Herbert and Chanji waiting for as after a wakeful night.

“Nothing had transpired and there had been no interruptions of the calm and peace which pervaded the woods. We settled down to our vigil outside the cave. Herbert and Chanji returned to Assisi to rest.

“The sun rose higher, but we were well shaded from the heat by the trees. An intense calm was everywhere, but the woods were alive with birds whose song was deafening. As if in memory of St. Francis, they seemed to throng around us. Butterflies were often near; several lit on our hands and bodies.

“Gradually it grew warmer, and even in the deep shade, one felt the heat of midsummer.

“Towards midday I heard sounds from inside the cave. Forgetting Baba’s instructions about not looking at him, I saw him stand up with his eyes shut and face the sun. He made strange noises. Not daring to look again, I lay quiet.

“At one o’clock he clapped his hands. We pulled away the branches from the entrance. Taking the board he spelt out directions, telling Kaka to go to Assisi and ask Herbert and Chanji to be with him at 4:30, but that I was to call him there.

“Baba came out of the cave but told us not to come near him or touch him. He walked about alone in the woods for half-an-hour and then went into the cave again.