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The Avatar 39
important question and demands a considered answer. If he is an incarnation of God he is the greatest being in the world and indeed the greatest being who could possibly exist.
Like others born and bred in a humanistic environment, 1 find the idea scarcely credible. I am bewildered and perplexed by the implications. I have lived long enough to learn a few lessons, not many perhaps, but sufficient in number and magnitude to convince me of the limitations of my understanding. I know too little either to affirm or deny the possibility of a miracle — and the incarnation of God would certainly be a miracle. We have no right to assert that the infinite intelligence cannot assume a finite embodiment of itself. For if the attributes of divinity are omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience, God’s assumption of human shape is a very simple exercise of his power.
However much my skeptical but limited intellect may want to reject the notion of an Avatar, the deeper insight into reality afforded by imagination and intuition does not allow me to deny that Sai Baba may indeed be an incarnation of God. Many witnesses testify to the extraordinary effect, which Sai Baba’s presence has on them. It is not merely the subtle influence of a God-intoxicated man but a much more powerful and direct emanation and outflow of indescribable bliss which transforms the consciousness of those present.
As I have never been in Sai Baba’s presence I cannot assess the effect to which I have referred. But, as this book includes numerous quotations and extracts from his teachings, I can comment on their content and quality. The style in which they are written is clear and concise. As I read them I was conscious of an immediate impact which seemed to penetrate the very depth of my mind. The emphasis is always on God and his inexhaustible love.2
The concept of the Avatar will undoubtedly seem unbelievable, foreign, perhaps primitive, even repugnant to the intellect of many behavioral scientists. Some may consider it an example of not just wishful but magical thinking. Add to this the resistance I feel many have to spirituality3 in general—at a time when we have been enticed by a long line of charismatic spiritual figures from both East and West, claiming large followings and extraordinary powers yet in a while proving to have feet of clay, or worse—and it is easy to see why the sophisticated intellectual would be highly skeptical of yet another claim.


































































































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