Sathya Sai Baba The World-Avatar Teaching and Revelations

Avatars
Krishna said: “When the sun is seen in a mirror, he does not lose either
his status or his glory. He is unaffected, his glory is undiminished. So
also I am reflected in nature; and that does not diminish any of my glory
or status. (...)
I am birthless, immortal. Humans are born as a result of the merit and
demerit of previous births. Perhaps you think that this holds true for
Avatars also, No. You are born of ignorance; mine is a Divine game
(leelajanma). Prayers of the good are the cause of my coming. The
misdeeds of the wicked are also the cause!” (2-63/64)
The Avatar have no merit or demerit accumulated in former births,
which like ordinary mortals they have to pay off in this birth. (...)
As a result of the coming of the Lord, the good will be happy and the
bad will suffer. The Avatar, however, has no joy or grief, even when it
is enveloped in the body it has assumed. The Avatar is not constituted
of the five elements; it is spiritual not material; it can never be disturbed
by egoism or the sense of “mine” and “thine”; it is untouched by the delusion
born of ignorance. Though men may mistake an Avatar as just
human, that does not affect the nature of the embodiment; it has come
for a task and it is bound to accomplish it. (2-65)
There are gurus with far higher stature and far deeper capabilities than
these learned and cultural masters. They are the Avatars, the human
incarnations of God. They confer, by mere willing, the blessing of spiritual
strength. They command and by the very force of that command,
the lowest of the low rises to the status of one who has attained. Such
persons are the gurus of all gurus. They are the highest manifestations
of God in the human form.
Man can visualize God in no other form except the human. God appears
in human form in answer to human prayer, since man can experience
only that vision as real. When he tries to picture God and visualize
God in any other form, he has to contemplate some crooked
ugly form and make great effort to believe that form which is lower than
the real one as he. (...)
So long as you are humans, you will be unable to picture, through imagination,
any form of God beyond the human. So, one has to wait for
the chance of perceiving the reality of the person by oneself reaching
a stage above and beyond the human level.
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