As a critical edition, Creation and its Causes has been compiled and edited from an assortment of primary manuscripts, some of them in the Avatar Meher Baba Trust Archives and others housed in other archival collections around the world. This section provides facsimile reproductions of all significant manuscript sources used in the editorial process, as well as descriptions of these sources and explanations of their significance.
Sources for Creation and its Causes
The opening section of Creation and its Causes, entitled “A Short History of the Meher and Prem Ashrams” (pp. 1–82), has drawn on various published sources, including Ramjoo Abdulla’s Sobs and Throbs, Kaikhushru Afseri’s Kashf-ul-Haqayeq (“The Discovery of Truth”), and Bhau Kalchuri’s Lord Meher. the most important sources, however, have been Chanji’s Diaries, particularly nos. 1, 19, 28, 30, and 31.
The second section, “Creation and its Causes” (pp. 91–305), comprises the thirty-four lectures delivered by Meher Baba to the Meher Ashram boys between 2nd December 1927 and 14th January 1928. There are reasons to believe that Chanji’s original diary record of these lectures has been lost. But it was on basis of this lost diary that someone (again, probably Chanji) wrote up a literary draft that was typed out in a manuscript bearing the title “Shree’s Explanations on Creation and the Universe.” Actually, this manuscript descends to us in three copies, a typed top-sheet copy and two carbon copies. These have served as the base text for the third part of Creation and its Causes. But in addition, two handwritten manuscripts by Ramjoo Abdulla provide important supplementation; and later drafts of some of this content in the Meher Message, the Meher Baba Journal, and Ramjoo’s 1933 booklet Shree Meher Baba: His Philosophy and Teachings have significant evidentiary value.
The third section of Creation and its Causes, entitled “Six Discourse-Articles,” is based on two sources. One of these is a series of handwritten drafts by Ramjoo. The other is a typewritten copy that reproduces the content of the handwritten drafts closely.
A full review of the sources and derivatives relevant to the editorial compilation of the texts in this book can be found is the essay “Textual Sources, Philosophy, and Editorial Practices,” esp. pp. 383–412, and Appendix 1, “Notes on the Citation of Sources,” pp. 439–65.
Chairman’s “Foreword’ and Editor’s “Introduction”
All the original source materials used in the compilation of the final edited text are reproduced in facsimile.
The forty-one full-color figures in Creation and its Causes are artistic re-creations based on (usually hand-drawn) diagrams in the source manuscripts, or sometimes in the later derivative magazine or book publications or things described in words in the text. All of this material is reproduced in facsimile here.
The endnotes to Creation and its Causes reproduced in their entirety here, provide a discussion of the main textual cruxes, with detailed references to the original source manuscripts. For pdf, version click here.
Notes on the Citation of Sources