Note from Guru Kurt: This chap has made a magnificent spiritual website, including a section about the Avatar, but he is confused about what constitutes an Avatar. He thinks that "all of us are potential Avatars," which illustrates very nicely why the whole world was not told about enlightenment. To some it was told that the Avatar, Jesus, was the Son of God and so we have half the world's people believing that they can become Jesus through illumination, and half the world's people believing that they cannot do anything at all! The truth is somewhere in the middle. The Son of God is a true God, and no human can attain to His illustrious state at any time, now or in the future. Illumined or enlightened persons, however, are sons of God, truly divine beings striding among us in unending bliss, wisdom and freedom like angels. I like to think of the Avatar and the illumined as "God and His angels," for such they truly are. Yet, the chasm between God and the illumined is still vast, and cannot be crossed by any amount of effort. Each man may realize the divinity within himself, but Jesus, the Avatar, is of another order of being entirely, a true God, like the Father. He has a vast array of powers of which none of us can even conceive, not play or pretend powers, but real divine powers essential to the continued existence of life on planet earth. Yet, the Avatar is not harmed by peoples' misconceptions about Him. In a few hundred years, or less, the illumined upon earth will at last be sufficiently mature to see Him shining in glory high above their heads, and then things will be more clear than they are today, where everything is a mass of confusion!
Dear Mr. Kazlev:
I appreciate the work you’ve put into your website. You’re clearly a person who cares deeply about human spiritual evolution. I would guess that you also take it personally, and try to live out religious truths in your own life.
I just wanted to write and describe my belief that of all the potential incarnations on your Avatar page http://www.kheper.auz.com/topics/religion/avatara.htm, only Chaitanya and Ramakrishna are true modern Avatars. I will supply reasons for this belief below. Essentially, it is not hard to find flaws or erroneous statements in the teachings of the others, but I can find no mistake or contradiction in the works of these two.
An Avatar is not a highly evolved human. He is an entirely different kind of being, he is actually God born in human form. The thinking process is entirely different, it is much more profound. It is entirely pure, selfless, and ever-free. He also has divine powers, that may or may not be revealed depending on the circumstances. The message he gives is the message that humanity needs to hear in the particular historical era, no more and no less! He is devoid of self-interest but only wants to represent to humanity the true path to freedom, bliss, and immortality. Such a one is humble beyond human conception. Therefore, this statement of Chaitanya is entirely accurate and clearly demonstrates the divine mind of an Avatar:
One should chant the holy name of the Lord in a humble state of mind, thinking oneself lower than the straw in the street; one should be more tolerant than a tree, devoid of all sense of false prestige and should be ready to offer all respect to others. In such a state of mind one can chant the holy name of the Lord constantly.
I have not read other works of Chaitanya besides his eight precepts, of which this quote is the third, but these eight are flawless and sum up the eternal truths of life very succinctly and sweetly.
Again, Ramakrishna was a very humble soul who made very quiet statements about God. Very quiet, but all 100% accurate. His mission was essentially to appear as a love-Avatar, full of sweetness, mercy, and compassion. One cannot read the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna without tasting the divine nectar of true love of God. Even to hear his statements purifies the mind.
When a human being attains illumination, also called samadhi, union with God, nirvana, or moksha, he has essentially extinguished or blown out his self-will or ego. It is the ego and its attachment to material objects that cause all the misery of life. With the ego removed, God fills the person with divine bliss, and then uses the person as a tool or instrument of his will. Krishna playing on his flute is the most apt analogy. God may be conceived as a being residing in the hearts of all, or he may be considered as existing outside the body. Both are true. The enlightened person has realized his deepest, or truest Self, who emerges to begin a teaching work. Also, the God without smiles down upon such a person, who is now in tune with His will.
The words of an illumined man or woman are full of truth, but they cannot approach the truth revealed by an Avatar. Flaws appear “in the cracks” as it were, for impurities remain in the human soul, a result of many past births. Recall, an Avatar comes from above, and possesses a divine mind. A human comes from below, and his mind has developed through the process of evolution. The more evolved the human soul, the greater the bliss he finds and the closer to real truth he can come in his teaching. Sometimes they can go on for paragraphs without a flaw, but then their human side appears. I’ll show you what I mean with a few examples.
Here is a quote I obtained from Adi Da’s website:
It has been My Intention to make books of My Word so profound that the mere reading of them could convert any being on earth (or anywhere else) from the egoic life of "self-possession", mortality, and darkness to the life of Divine Love-Bliss, without requiring the slightest qualification in the case of any being that moves, or is.I am not apart or separate, you see. Nor are you. This secret is in these books, and not a fraction of what is required for your Realization of Me has been denied to you. Nor will it ever be. So these books go to all with My Blessing.
There is some good in this statement. It is correct to assert that the goal is to go from an egoic life to one filled with divine bliss. However, it is not correct to assert that this goal may be acquired without effort other than the reading of books. Reading books will give one a taste of truth, but no more. To be fully immersed in divine bliss and joy requires a long period of sadhana, and even then it can only come through God’s grace. Some teachers do not requires much sadhana because of the virtue of past births, and Adi Da is such a one. To realize God, one must truly want God and God alone, and to develop such single-mindedness requires daily effort in all aspects of one’s life. Books can be an aid in this process, but no more.
Furthermore, his statement about not being separate from others is vague and indefinite. Indeed, it is plainly false. This is a very common error among illumined teachers. All beings, by virtue of being essentially spiritual creatures, are separate from one another. It is this separateness that gives rise to individual joy and happiness. How happy would you really be if you thought God were “thinking” all your thoughts, performing all your actions for you, as he seems to claim here? The God you discover within acts within your separate spirit to produce a god-like being, but he preserves your unique traits. To do other than this would be some kind of “soul-smear” in which individuality is lost. God loves the individual; he loves the uniqueness of each creature. All are not one, each one is unique.
The attainment of enlightenment results in a great magnification of faculties, not their erasure, or merging into God himself. What comes into harmony is the purpose of the individual, which is no longer mean and selfish, but divine. How can anyone hope to actually merge in God, who created the entire universe, with its hundreds of billions of galaxies? To contain even a fraction of this power would immediately kill any human being. Yet, he can make his glories shine forth in the illumined person because he is infinitely tender, and infinitely precise.
Finally, to assert that all necessary divine wisdom could be contained in a series of books is obviously false. The divine mind is immense. It puts all the Cray supercomputers on earth to shame in a millisecond. Can you even imagine knowing all the quadrillions of humans, animals, and lower forms of life on the planet intimately? God knows the hearts and thoughts of each man and woman on earth – all of them! He knows their intentions and tendencies, he keeps track of their past deeds. The divine mind is endlessly creative, and will never run out of new things to tell humanity, new revelations, new approaches, new attitudes. It is limitless and infinite, and will be so forever. As man evolves, God will always be there, one step ahead, to show him the true path to happiness and freedom in light of the current situation on earth.
You are correct in your analysis of Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi Shri Mataji. You said “Seems to me she started out as a basically decent even if self-deluded lady, got caught up in the guru power trip. Seriosly inflated ego resulting in her (& her followers) belief that she is the avatar of this age. Not an enlightened being.” The Avatar does not come as a woman, although he may take a consort as in Rama – Sita, and Krishna – Radha. An Avatar is actually a fragment of a much larger spiritual being, and does not contain within his human form his entire store of spiritual knowledge, although he has access to it. Her claims about knowing everything about everyone are therefore ludicrous. God and his power are essentially masculine in nature. His power is immense, and he is not womanly, not shy or reticent. To appear as a woman would be to denigrate himself. Ramakrishna called women the embodiment of world-bewitching maya, meaning that women are symbolic of the attraction of the material world. A man caught in this net of attraction has no time or energy to devote to the quest for God-realization. His mind is trapped in thoughts of his wife and family, how to provide for their needs, how to satisfy them. He is enslaved by them at the expense of his very soul. Again for the woman, man may be said to be maya’s embodiment. Both man and woman should strive to attain God, and should try not to be tightly bound in their relationship. Each should respect the other’s spiritual freedom.
I was also reading Sai Baba. He is a little more difficult to pin down, mostly because his statements often lack real substance, although they appear meaningful at first glance. His tendency to promulgate himself is alarming. He also seems to base his ministry on the Vedas. A real incarnation stands on his own feet, and does not rely on previously revealed truth. An incarnation is the source of truth, for he is God himself. He also is the embodiment of compassion, which seems to be largely missing in Sai Baba.
Here is a quote from one of Sai Baba’s talks (http://www.sathyasai.org/search/volume22/sss22-08.pdf):