New Fourth Edition, published in 2024.
An epic poem by Francis Brabazon.
Softcover, 176 pages.
This newest Fourth Edition, published by Avatars Abode, was edited with minor corrections by Ward Parks. Ward wrote the new introduction entitled “The Writing of Stay with God: A Brief History” and the “Glossary”.
In November 1955, Meher Baba held a four-week sahavas program at Meherabad, which Francis Brabazon was invited to attend. At the end of his stay, Baba called him for an interview and asked if he had enjoyed the experience. When Francis responded enthusiastically, Baba instructed him to write about what he had seen and heard. Francis had just published a volume powerfully chronicling in verse his experiences with Meher Baba from the year before. “After the Andhra tour, you wrote Journey with God,” Baba said, quoting the title of that book. “Now I want you to write, Stay with God.” The first edition was eventually published in 1959.
Stay with God has five sections or "books": a biography of Baba’s life through 1955 which includes an account of the 1955 Sahavas; a very personal love song to Meher Baba as the Divine Beloved; a metaphysical narrative of the journey of the soul from the Whim of God to God-realization; a meditation on the approach to the spiritual path; and a large-scale argument on the role of art in a civilization’s relation to the Divine.
Meher Baba said that Stay With God was “Second only to God Speaks and even gives God Speaks life," and that every family should have more than one copy. Baba had this book read to Him three times, saying He was memorizing it, so that when He came again He would be quoting from Brabazon instead of Hafiz as He had done throughout this advent.
It is indeed beautiful writing and it is easy to see why Francis is known as “Baba’s Poet.”
