THE GOD-MAN The Life, Journeys and Work of Meher Baba with an ...

see the Avatar ill, he has actually fallen ill and has literally become ill·THE MAN 391A Perfect Master behaves as the creature of that level' whereas the Avatar becomes as the creature of thatlevel. (God Speaks, pp.141-2)The Perfect Master takes on the karma of individuals, the Avatar does not, 'his Godhood functionsuniversally' (Ibid. p.229) The Avatar is beyond limits of function: in him God becomes a man for allmankind, simultaneously God becomes a sparrow for all sparrows. (Ibid. p.129)(2)The literature upon God-Men and Avatars is extremely small in any language to which I have access, andalmost invariably what is written seems to maintain confusion between the realization of God (as in PerfectMasters) and the 'descent' of God as man, an incarnation. 1 What are regarded as manifestations of God arefrequently not distinguished from God manifesting himself, for instance the Persian poet, Jalalu'l-Din-Rumi,whose lines on the God-Man I have used to introduce this book, seems to be writing about what I should callthe Man-God. That is understandable, for, in a sense, there is no difference, as Baba says. Indeed, at times heseems to say more. When I was with him at Poona in 1954, he said to me quite unexpectedly, 'You arebothered about the idea of Avatar. There is no need to be, for we are all Avatars.' This was an instance of hisknowing what was in one's mind before one had given expression to it, or even thought of doing so. Hefollowed this remark ten days later by a declaration which read as follows:1 The articles on 'Incarnation' in Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (1914) contain the bestsurvey and illustrate the confusion. Sir James Frazer's chapter on 'Incarnations' in his famous work TheGolden Bough (The Magic Art, vol. i, ch. vii), gives many instances from accounts of primitive peoples ofincarnations of or possession by a god. But Frazer, as a scientist, was interested in phenomena and indrawing deductions from their analysis and comparison, without sufficient if any regard for their innersignificance, as though it were possible to understand a fact in human society without participating in theminds of those to whom the fact was representation. He assumes that these particular phenomena areevidence of ignorance or delusion, ignoring the possibility that they may represent a reality that is hidden, oran imperfect knowledge that has been lost. He finds the idea of a God-Man to be 'nothing very startling forearly man', which surely is a highly significant discovery.