Come hear a talk on "Reincarnation and the Purpose of Life" and join in the discussion at the Ojai Library on Thursday, October 23, 2014, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.  

Man's search for immortaility is as old as man himself. Does the spirit - the subjective experience of the personal "I" - continue after the death of the physical body?

Avatar Meher Baba has explained that the spirit never perishes, and the Self at the root of all our individual selves is, indeed, eternal.

The discussion led by scholar Dr. Ward Parks will focus on Meher Baba's revelations on reincarnation and its purpose in the achievement of the goal of life. Dr. Parks will speak for about an hour followed by a question-and-answer session.  

The Ojai Library is at 111 East Ojai Avenue in Ojai, CA. The event is free and open to the public.

The program is sponsored by Meher Mount, a universal spiritual day retreat in Ojai dedicated to Avatar Meher Baba.  Meher Mount welcomes visitors on Wednesday through Sunday from Noon to 5:00 p.m. The address is 9902 Sulphur Mountain Road, Ojai.

For more information on the talk or about Meher Mount, contact Buzz & Ginger Glasky, Manager/Caretakers at 805-640-0000 or info@mehermount.org. 

We look forward to seeing you at the talk.

Click here for a short overview of Avatar Meher Baba's life.

Photo: Avatar Meher Baba in Cannes, France in 1937.

Dr. Ward Parks is an author and one of the foremost scholars on the writings of Avatar Meher Baba, an Indian spiritual master (1894-1969) who declared himself to be God in human form.

For the past several years, Dr. Parks has been traveling around the world giving multi-day, intensive seminars on Infinite Intelligence and reincarnation.

He was the editor or co-editor of the following Meher Baba books: In God's Hand (Beloved Archives, New Jersey, 2000); Infinite Intelligence (Sheriar Foundation, 2005); the Revised Sixth Edition of Discourses by Meher Baba (Sheriar Foundation, 2007); Early Messages to the West (Sheriar Foundation, 2009); and Divine Theme, second edition (Hyderabad: Meher Mownvani, 2010). He is currently working on Meher Baba's discourses known as the "Tiffin Lectures." 

Before going to India in 1993 for spiritual training, Dr. Parks was a tenured associate professor of medieval studies for 10 years, specializing in Old English at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge.

He earned his BA in English Literature from Harvard University (1974) and a MA in English from Emory University (1977). His PhD in English Literature is from the University of Missouri.

His most important academic book is Verbal Dueling in Heroic Narrative: The Homeric and Old English Traditions, published by Princeton University Press in 1990. He has also published around 35 scholarly articles.

Dr. Parks first heard of Meher Baba in 1970 when he was a freshman at Harvard. He made his first pilgirmage to Meher Baba's home in India in 1972.

In 1993, Dr. Parks left the academic world to become a spiritual trainee in India at the Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust. Since 1997, his principal work at the Trust has been editing Meher Baba's words.

Dr. Parks is also a prolific composer of music, writing more than 400 songs and ghazals (a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, each line sharing the same meter). 

This is Dr. Parks' first time speaking in Ojai. He looks forward to sharing and discussing Meher Baba's words on reincarnation.