Read Book - Avatar Meher Baba Trust

24 THE PATH OF LOVE
same two individualities directly begin to function, individually
and collectively, according to the dictates of the Avatar himself.
With every advent of the Avatar on earth, the 12 men of
the Inner Circle and its appendage of two women, gather round
the personality of the Avatar, as the self-same 14 types of individualities.
These fourteen different individualities, in the shape
of different personalities, always occupy their respective offices,
whenever the Avatar manifests on earth; and during and after the
life-span of the Avatar, they – individually and collectively –
function in the same way as their predecessors, who had held,
and functioned in, the same offices of the Inner Circle during
the past advents of the Avatar.
Therefore it would not be wrong to say that with Christ’s
coming again, come Peter, Judas, and all his apostles. But this
can never mean that the very same Peter, or the self-same Judas,
reincarnates again and again. These can never reincarnate, as all
of the twelve individual personalities of the Avatar’s Inner Circle
attain God-realization in every Avataric period, either during or
soon after the life span of the Avatar.
Once God-realization is attained, reincarnation is impossible.
The only exception to this rule is the Avatar himself, who
comes again and again to redeem humanity.
It is not the same individualized personalities of the Inner
Circle that reincarnate; it is the individualities of their particular
offices that come with every advent of the Avatar. It is because in
all the Avatar’s advents each of the twelve men and two women
of the Inner Circle hold exactly the same office and function in
exactly the same manner, that it is said the Avatar always brings
with him the same Circle.