In Human Form
In a Gurupoornima discourse, Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba explained the difference between the ordinary body and the body of an avatar. This year Gurupoornima [full moon festival honoring the spiritual teacher] falls on July 7th.
A great yogi (liberated person), resolving to delve into the glory of the divine principle, retreated to the depth of a silent forest. He started ascetic practices; he sat in the lotus posture; he kept his eyes closed. He held his fingers in correct chin-mudra (hand posture with thumb and index fingers joined and other three fingers stretched out). His tapas (penance) continued for five long years. God wanted to test his sincerity and his earnestness. So He came before him as a young boy. At that time, the yogi’s eyes were partially open. The boy asked him, “Grandpa! Why have you shut your eyes thus? To whom are you praying? Have you found out how God appears?” The yogi replied, “Boy! I have seen Him only as much as my eye is open.” Thereafter the yogi’s eyes were half open. The boy returned again and asked him, “Grandpa! How much of God have you seen now?” He replied, “Boy! I have known half of Him.”
A year later the boy came again. By that time, the yogi had his eyes fully open. “Grandpa! Have you seen and known God?” was the question, and the answer was, “Yes! I have known.” So the boy demanded, “Tell me what you have understood.” And the yogi said, “I have understood that He is beyond understanding.” Now, God was before this yogi in human form but he could not identify or recognize Him.
Sai’s love is of a thousand mothers
When God assumes the human form and is behind, before, and beside you, speaking to you and moving with you, and allows you to cultivate attachment of various kinds with Him, you do not recognize Him. The Divine cannot be easily recognized, when It is embodied. The Divine proclaims, “I am not a mass of flesh and blood; I am not a bundle of desires, which the mind is; I am not the heap of delusion that the imagination is; I am the Paramatma (supreme soul), the origin and the end.”
“I am the urge within you, the knowledge which you seek as a result of the urge, of your own Self. One word of Swami grants the treasure of all riches. A single glance of Swami bestows all boons; it is the parijata (wish-fulfilling flower-tree) glance. The arms of Sai confer the hai (soft comfort) the mother gives, not one mother, no, the prema (divine love) of a thousand mothers!” This Sathya Sai is such prema dayi (one who bestows love). When the Divine plays and sings with us, meets us, and eats with us, we should not be misled into the belief that It is just human and nothing more. We generally forget the truth.
Embodiments of divine love! You must be clear about the distinction between birth in general and the advent of the Avatar (divine incarnation). Karma (the cumulative consequence of deeds and thoughts) is the cause of ordinary birth. Birth in the human body is the reward for the merit acquired by worthy karma (past deeds). What is the karma that has caused the advent of the Avatar? That, too, must have some karma as the antecedent, it may be said. Well! In your case, you earn the type of life which the good and bad karmas you have done entitle you to have. Unless you go through the mass of consequence, you cannot change the vehicle or instrument. For, it is a role you have been assigned in the cosmic drama on the world stage. The role is part of a play. You may appear in the first scene, but you cannot change your make-up.
But God is not bound or affected by karma. He takes on a role, as a consequence not of any karma, but to reward good karma and impose retribution for bad karma. God incarnated as Narasimha (half man-half lion: an incarnation of Vishnu) as a consequence of the bad deeds of Hiranyakasipu, and the good deeds of his son, Prahlada. The truth is, the body that the Avatar wears is not a karma deha (body), designed according to the nature of the individual’s deeds in past lives.
God, as the Avatar, can mold or change the body in any way He wills. He can develop it or discard it, as and when He wills. No other power or person can affect it. Everything happens as He desires, as He decides. To look upon the Avatar as the body it has assumed is not correct. The guru has, as his duty, to teach mankind this great truth of the Paramatma and the atma (self) and of the glory and compassion of God.
Source: Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 16
