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God to Man and Man to God
The discourses of Meher Baba
Edited by C. B. Purdom
London, Victor Gollancz LTD, 1955
Chapter VII
AVATAR
CONSCIOUSLY OR UNCONSCIOUSLY, every
living creature seeks one thing. In the lower forms of life
and in less advanced human beings, the quest is unconscious;
it is conscious in advanced human beings. The object of the
quest is called happiness, peace, freedom, truth, love,
perfection, self-realization, God-realization or union with
God. Essentially it is a search for all of these, for all
are aspects of one thing. Everyone has moments of happiness,
glimpses of truth, fleeting experiences of union with God.
Everyone wants to make these moments, or glimpses, or
experiences, permanent, so that he may have abiding reality
in the midst of change.
This search is based on a memory,
dim or clear, as the individual's evolution may be low or
high, of his unity with God; for every living thing is a
manifestation of God, conditioned by lack of knowledge of
its true nature. The entire process of evolution is from
unconscious divinity to conscious divinity, a process in
which God himself, eternal and unchangeable, assumes an
infinite variety of forms, enjoys an infinite variety of
experiences, and transcends an infinite variety of
self-imposed limitations. Evolu-don, from the standpoint of
divinity is a divine sport, in which the Unconditioned tests
the infinitude of his absolute knowledge, power and bliss in
the midst of all conditions. But evolution, from the
standpoint of the creature, with limited knowledge, limited
power, limited capacity for bliss, is an epic of alternating
rest and struggle, joy and sorrow, love and hate, until, in
the perfected man, God balances the opposites and transcends
duality. Then creature and Creator recognize themselves as
one; changelessness is established in the midst of change,
eternity is experienced in the midst of time. God knows
himself as God, unchangeable in essence infinite in
manifestation, ever experiencing the supreme bliss of S
elf-realization in continually fresh awareness of himself by
himself.
This realization takes place only
in the midst of life, for only in the midst of life can
limitation be experienced and transcended, and subsequent
freedom from limitation enjoyed. This freedom from
limitation assumes three forms.
Most God-realized souls leave the
body at once, and forever, and remain eternally merged in
the unmanifest aspect of God. They are conscious only of the
bliss of union. Creation no longer exists for them. Their
round of births and deaths is ended. This is known as mukti
or liberation.
Those God-realized souls who retain
the body for a time, but are not conscious either of their
bodies or of creation, experience the infinite bliss, power
and knowledge of God, but they cannot consciously use them
in creation or help others to attain to liberation. That
particular type of liberation is called mukti or liberation
with the body.
Those God-realized souls who keep
the body, yet are conscious of themselves as God in both his
unmanifest and his manifest aspects, experience themselves
as God apart from creation, as God the Creator, Preserver
and Destroyer of creation, and as God who has accepted and
transcended the limitations of creation. They enjoy to the
full the divine sport of creation. Knowing themselves as God
in everything, they are able to help everything spiritually,
and to make other souls realize God, either as Muktas or
Majzubs, as they themselves are called.
The God-realized ones though one in
consciousness are different in function. For the most part,
they live and work apart from and unknown to the general
public, but there are always five, who act (in a sense) as a
directing body, work in public, and attain public prominence
and importance. In Avataric periods, the Avatar, as a
supreme God-realized one, takes his place as the head of
this body and of the spiritual hierarchy as a
whole.
Avataric periods are the
spring-tide of creation. They bring a new release of power,
a new awakening of consciousness, a new experience of life
not merely for a few, but for all. Qualities of energy and
awareness, which had been used and enjoyed by only a few
advanced souls, are then made available for all humanity.
Life, as a whole, is lifted to a higher level of
consciousness and geared to a new rate of energy. The
transition from sensation to reason was one such step; the
transition from reason to intuition will be another. In
intuition the opposites are resolved.
This influx of the creative impulse
through the medium of a divine personality is an incarnation
of God in a special sense and called Avatar. This Avatar was
the first individual soul to emerge from the evolutionary
process, and is the only Avatar who has ever manifested or
will ever manifest. Through him, God first completed the
journey from unconscious divinity to conscious divinity, in
him he first unconsciously became man in order consciously
to become God. Through him, periodically, God consciously
becomes man for the liberation of mankind.
The Avatar appears in different
forms under different names, at different times, in
different parts of the world. As his appearance always
coincides with the spiritual birth of man, so the period
immediately preceding his manifestation is one in which
humanity suffers from the pangs of the approaching birth.
When man seems more than ever enslaved by desire, more than
ever driven by greed, held by fear, swept by anger, when
more than ever the strong dominate the weak, the rich
oppress the poor, and large masses of people are exploited
for the benefit of the few in power, when individual man
finds no peace or rest and seeks to forget himself in
excitement~ when immorality increases, crime flourishes,
religion is ridiculed, when corruption spreads throughout
the social order, class and national hatreds are aroused and
fostered, when wars break out, and humanity grows desperate,
when there seems to be no possibility of stemming the tide
of destruction at this moment the Avatar appears. Being the
manifestation of God in human form, he is a gauge against
which man measures what he is and what he may become. He
corrects the standards of human values by interpreting them
in terms of divine-human life.
The Avatar is interested in
everything, but not concerned about anything. The slightest
mishap commands his sympathy; the greatest tragedy does not
upset him. He is beyond the alternations of pain and
pleasure, desire and satisfaction, rest and struggle, life
and death, for to him, they are equally illusions from which
he has come to free those who are bound. He uses every
circumstance as a means to lead others towards the
realization of the Truth.
He knows that men do not cease to
exist when they die, and therefore, is not concerned with
death. He knows that destruction must precede construction;
that out of suffering is born peace and bliss; that out of
struggle comes liberation from the bonds of action. He is
concerned only about unconcern.
In those who contact him he awakens
a love that consumes selfish desires in the flame of the one
desire to serve him. Those who consecrate their lives to him
become identified with him in consciousness. Little by
little their humanity is absorbed into divinity, and they
become free.
Those who are closest to him are
known as his Circle. Every Master has an intimate circle of
twelve disciples, who, in realization, are made equal to the
Master himself though they differ from him in function and
authority. In Avataric periods, the Avatar has a Circle of
one hundred and twenty disciples, all of whom experience
realization, and work for the liberation of others. Their
work is not only for contemporary humanity, but for
posterity. The unfoldment of life and consciousness for the
whole Avataric cycle, mapped in the creative world before
the Avatar took form, is endorsed and fixed in the formative
and material worlds during the Avatar's life on
earth.
The Avatar awakens contemporary
humanity to a realization of its spiritual nature, gives
liberation to those who are ready and quickens the life of
the spirit in his time. To posterity is left the stimulating
power of his divinely human example, the nobility of life
supremely lived, of love unmixed with desire, of power
unused except for others, of peace untroubled by ambition,
of knowledge undimmed by illusion. He has demonstrated the
possibility of the divine life of humanity, the heavenly
life on earth. Those who have the necessary courage and
integrity follow when they will. Those who are spiritually
awake have been aware for some time that the world is at
present in the midst of a period such as precedes Avataric
manifestations. Even unawakened men and women are becoming
aware of it. From their darkness they are reaching for
light, in sorrow they are longing for comfort, from the
midst of the strife into which they have found themselves
they are praying for peace and deliverance. Yet they must be
patient. The wave of destruction must rise still higher and
spread still further. But when, from the depths of his
heart, man desires what is more lasting than wealth, more
real than material power, the wave will recede. Then peace,
joy, light will come.
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