Meher Baba: God is Love. And Love must love. And to love there must be a Beloved. But since God is Existence infinite and eternal there is no one for him to love but Himself as the Beloved whom He as the Lover imagines He loves. (THE EVERYTHING AND THE NOTHING, p 1.) So, as Ramprasad sings, “The world is nothing but Her play.” It’s an enormous game of hide and seek that She has set up. She hides from Herself while she also plays the role of each individual in ignorance of his or her true nature. The game is to gradually figure out who we are. What an incredibly loving reunion it finally is when the soul comes back to its real self. The path back to Herself is not easy. She is infinite power. Why should she make it easy for Herself? Thus, we should be confident about the infinite power lurking within each of us.
So, this is how I see it: It’s not the official approved story but my version of the story. And since I have not yet realized the truth myself, I’m really only guessing. But here goes: To start with there must first be delusion about our real nature. Mother appoints the six con men, also called the six passions, to accomplish this. They are delusion, lust, greed, pride, anger and jealousy. Delusion is the ringleader. Delusion says, “I am a separate being and I want to do what will build me up and make me, my separate self, greater.” “I want to aggrandize myself.” How can the individual get built up? First with lust. One sees a member of the opposite sex and feels a great longing to be physically united with that person. But why just that one person? With all attractive members of the opposite sex. Sultans, with their harems, go a long way to achieving this. We throw flowers at this process and call it “Love.” What incredible pleasure this gives. (And what tremendous pain.) What a (temporary) relief to the great physical tension building within us. Then with greed. We, as separate beings, need food, shelter and clothing. These all cost money and so a certain minimum is necessary. If one wants a member of the opposite sex to be one’s partner and have children with that person, then one needs even more money. Then there is pride. One wishes to be special, a superior person. This affects the first two con men. You think people will look up to you if your partner is very attractive; also, they will look up to you if you have a fancy dwelling and fancy clothing and go on fancy vacations and have expensive pastimes.
The final two con men are kind of derivative to pride, lust and greed. Someone insults you; you will become angry. Your pride is hurt. Guys used to have duels to the death over insults. Poor Alexander Hamilton who insulted Aaron Burr. You are protecting your precious individuality with your anger. Your partner has a headache and doesn’t want to be intimate. You are frustrated and fly into a rage. “I want what I want when I want it.” You are running a business and your profit margin is slim. One of your employees asks for a raise and you become furious. That would hurt your bottom line. Your secret feeling, ”To cut into my income is like sucking my blood.” Anger is like the soldiers protecting the castle of the individual separate self.
Then finally the green-eyed monster, jealousy. Your friend’s husband is very handsome and successful while you are single and lonely. Also, you can tell her husband does like you. You, being a physician, know what medicines can kill. You knock off your “friend” and marry her now widower husband. This is a real case in Carl Jung’s book, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, an extreme case of jealousy.
So, these six con men have one thoroughly engrossed in the material world searching for pleasure, money and prestige and furious and jealous when these wishes are frustrated. Ironically it’s one of the con men, pride that starts the homeward journey. The road back to God starts with hearing about how great it is to be a generous person. This excites one’s pride with a desire to be looked up to as such a person. So, at first one has an ulterior reason for generosity but eventually an actual taste for good deeds begins to grow and thus an upward spiral starts. Although you can’t take money, fame or your lover with you when you die, you can take your good karma, and in one’s next life it is there to help you along. Finally, you hear about the joy of loving God and not just being good. Once you begin to seek God you’ve entered the home stretch. It will no doubt be many lives, but the arrival home is inevitable.