Avatar Meher Baba Center Southern California
In Concert With
The Oral History Archive Project
Ward Parks
God Speaks Video Sessions
Session Six
God Speaks: The Avatar is always One and the same because God is always
One and the same, the eternal, indivisible, infinite One who manifests
Himself in the form of man as the Avatar, as the Messiah, as
the Prophet, as the Buddha, as the Ancient One—the Highest of the
High. This eternally One and the same Avatar is made to repeat His
manifestation from time to time, in different cycles, adopting different names and different human-forms, in different places, to reveal
Truth in different garbs and different languages, in order to
raise humanity from the pit of ignorance and help free it from the
bondage of delusions.
From Wikipedia the infinitely free encyclopedia part six:
States of Divine Consciousness
When the soul has gained Self-consciousness, it merges with God in one of three distinct states:
Either by dropping immediately all its illusory bodies or by retaining them for some time, yet remaining absolutely unconscious of them, the atma eternally enjoys individualized experience of the infinite power, knowledge and bliss of God, without ever using their attributes.
Retaining its gross, subtle and mental bodies and consciousness of them, simultaneously with Self-consciousness, the atma experiences the infinite power, knowledge and bliss of God, as well as God's shadow (gross, subtle and mental worlds of illusion), but does not use their attributes for other atmas whose consciousness is still within these illusory worlds and so it is independent.
This state is the same as the previous one, except that the atma uses its infinite power, knowledge and bliss for advancing gross-conscious atmas to subtle consciousness, subtle conscious atmas to mental consciousness and mental-conscious atmas to Self-consciousness. It may even bring gross-conscious atmas directly to Self-consciousness.
Each of these states is an eternal state for the consciousness which has overcome all illusion. Yet from the point of view of souls still within the domain of illusion, they have a sequence in time. Therefore from its point of view, a God-realized soul first "passes away into God" or "becomes God" (as in state 1), yet outwardly it is in a divine coma, oblivious to the phenomenal world. Most souls in this state soon drop their body. A few souls, however, continue to be in this divine coma for quite a while, until, with the help of other Perfect Masters, they regain consciousness of illusion (as in state 2). They are said to have gone through the "second journey" ("first" being the traversing of the spiritual path, before merging with God). In this state they are "abiding in God" or "they are God".
In Sufi terms this state is called Baqaa. According to Meher Baba, at any time on Earth there are always exactly five who have arrived at the final state of "living God's life" (as in state 3) and these are the five Perfect Masters. This state is described as the Man-God state, or in Sufi terms, Qutubiyat. These five Perfect Masters can use their (God's) attributes of infinite power, knowledge and bliss to help others progress on the spiritual path and beyond. When one of the five Perfect Masters drops his body, he is said to "pass-away as God".[18] In Avataric times, there is one additional perfect master who is the descent of God, the Avatar, or God-man, whose work is for the spiritual elevation of all of humanity and everything in creation. "The direct descent of God on Earth as Avatar is that independent status of God when God directly becomes man."