THE AVATAR

 
For man there is a limitation of time and space. For God there is no limitation of time and space because He is everywhere at all times. For the God-Man or Avatar, there is no limitation of time and space as God; but as man He assumes the limitation of time and space to make man free of his limitations.

The Avatar is unique inasmuch as He is one with and conscious of everything and every being at all times. He is unique because He is commonly not understood yet most commonly lives in everything and every being. He is the Lord of all. He is the Master of Servitude of all.

He has a physical body, alternating His descent in different human forms on earth with the exigency of time and the needs of man. He has a subtle body to balance Universal Energy to the requirements of man. He has a mental body to focus the Universal Mind for the guidance of individual minds. He has a Universal Body to always maintain His link with the earth for a periodical descent on it in an individual body. He has the Universal ego and the Universal Consciousness to sustain His individuality and consciousness of God.

What an all-comprehensive existence and life! Nothing is excluded from Him. Everything is included in Him. Even God, in His beyond the Beyond state, fails to fulfill the condition of being God-and-illusion-conscious at one and the same time. God, having divested His consciousness to the state and authority of the Avatar, exists and lives consciously at all times as the Avatar.

For Avatar Meher Baba, His body was not for Himself but for others. The difference for us is between the joy of our looking at His face, at His inimitable smile, and the pain of our missing Him. We have to reconcile the Truth of His physical existence with His eternal life to which we owe a conviction — the conviction that has been given to us by Him in His oft-repeated message, "Hold on to My daaman till the very end."

What is the end? The end is not that of our body but of our desires and eventually of our minds. The death of the physical body is the life of the mind, and the death of the mind is God-consciousness.

The evolution of the latent consciousness in God was a necessary urge. The urge created an impression and the impression created a mind. The mind gave rise to a gross body as a medium of expression. Of course the mind outlasts the body.

When millions of bodies are taken up and discarded from stone, metal and vegetation to fish, insect, bird, beast and man, the mind remains the same. It changes only in its texture, not in substance. It is born once and dies once. When the mind dies, pure consciousness remains, and that is God-consciousness.

The Avatar is at all times the sole balancing power between Absolute God and illusion. He ever resides in both and is in perfect identity with them.

Our prayers to God should be to bless us to exceed the limitations of our minds so that we can experience His true glory. Our prayers to God eventually are responded to by the Avatar in whom is vested the supreme command of creation. Then why not pray to the Avatar in a more direct way?