At this juncture Shri gave a beautiful and practical illustration to explain the types of realized and unrealized persons. Suppose for the purposes of explication, he said, referring to the place where we were all sitting at the time, that:
1. This room represents the seventh plane—the Sat-Chit-Anand or Realization state.
2. The three articles of clothing hung on the wall opposite the entrance represent the three highest attributes —that is, eternal Knowledge, Bliss, and Power.
3. The threshold (umbar) represents the junction—the boundary line—between the farthest end and outreach of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh plane.
4. The six steps outside the room represent the six planes.
5. The level ground and the scenery all around represent the outside world.
Then leading all the mandali outside and taking his seat there on the level ground at the bottom of the steps with his face turned away in the opposite direction and his back towards the steps and the Room, Shri proceeded to explain:
The ordinary people of the world always look away in this the opposite direction, towards the bungalow there and the scenery spread all around, not knowing what store of eternal Knowledge, Bliss, and Power lies at their back. For these worldly people are so enraptured and entangled in the clutches of Maya (of the world and its surroundings and connections which are all nothing but an illusion) that they do not give even the slightest thought to what lies on the other side of things—that is, what lies at their back—let alone caring to make sincere endeavors to know or realize it. Hence they are perpetually groping in the dark and grasping at the shadow of a shadow while missing the substance (which is Truth or the Realized), even though this very Truth and the highest Knowledge, Power, and Bliss which it has imbibed and taken into itself”—this actually exists and is real. Or rather, as one might say, nothing exists in reality except the Truth.
– “Meher Baba’s Tiffin lectures”, p321
28-November-1926; Lonavala