When I say I am the Avatar, there are a few who feel happy, some who feel shocked, and many who hearing me claim this, would take me for a hypocrite, a fraud, a supreme egoist, or just mad. If I were to say every one of you is an Avatar, a few would be tickled, and many would consider it a blasphemy or a joke. The fact that God being One, Indivisible and equally in us all, we can be nought else but one, is too much for the duality-conscious mind to accept. Yet each of us is what the other is. I know I am the Avatar in every sense of the word, and that each one of you is an Avatar in one sense or the other. It is an unalterable and universally recognized fact since time immemorial that God knows everything, God does everything, and that nothing happens but by the Will of God. Therefore it is God who makes me say I am the Avatar, and that each one of you is an Avatar. Again, it is He Who is tickled through some, and through others is shocked. It is God Who acts, and God Who reacts. It is He Who scoffs, and He Who responds. He is the Creator, the Producer, the Actor and the Audience in His own Divine Play.

As a rule each action of an ordinary person is motivated by a solitary aim serving a solitary purpose; it can hit only one target at a time and bring about one specific result. But with the Avatar, He being the Centre of each one, any single action of His on the gross plane brings about a network of diverse results for people and objects everywhere.

Leadership is Idealism in Action. The Avatar comes to reveal man to himself, to restore him his birthright of Atmic (Divine) Bliss. He does not come to found a new creed, to breed a new faction, to install a new god. The Avatar comes as Man in order to demonstrate that Man is Divine, in order to be within reach of man. I have come to restore Love among mankind, to cleanse it of narrowness, and restrictive attitudes. That is the main task in the revival of Dharma (Righteousness). Be assured that the Lord has come to save the world from calamity. Your duty is to keep calm, and pray for the happiness and prosperity of all. You cannot be happy when the rest of mankind is unhappy. I offer help; never receive it. My Hand always gives; it never takes. Conclude from this that this must be Divine, not human power. I do not mention about Sai Baba in any of My discourses, though I bear the name as Avatar of Sai Baba. I do not appreciate in the least the distinction between the varied appearances of God: Sai, Rama, Krishna, Christ, Nanak, Buddha etc. I do not proclaim that this is more important or that the other is less important. Continue your worship of your chosen God along the lines already familiar to you. Then you will find that you are coming nearer and nearer to Me, for all names are Mine and all forms are Mine. There is no need to change your chosen God and adopt a new one when you have seen Me and heard Me. Come just one step forward, I shall take a hundred steps towards you. Shed just one tear, I shall wipe a hundred from your eyes. I bless only thus: May your Ananda, may your Bliss grow. I have come to give you the Key of the treasure of Ananda or Bliss, to tell you how to tap that spring, for you have forgotten the way to blessedness.
I never exult when I am extolled, nor shrink when I am reviled. Few have realized My Purpose and Significance, but I am not worried. When things that are not in Me are attributed to Me, why should I worry? When things that are in Me are mentioned, why should I exult? For Me, it is always, "Yes, yes, yes." IF you give up all and surrender to the Lord, He will guard you and guide you. The Lord has come just for this very task. Many hesitate to believe that things will improve, that life will be happy for all and full of joy, and that the Golden Age will recur. Let me assure you that this Dharmaswarupa, this divine body, has not come in vain. It will succeed in averting the crisis that has come upon humanity.

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 Ancient One — the Highest of the High. This Eternally One and the Same Avatar repeats His manifestation from time to time, in different cycles, adopting different human forms and different names, 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.

The Avatar does not as a rule interfere with the working out of human destinies. He will do so only in times of grave necessity — when He deems it absolutely necessary from His all — encompassing point of view. For a single alteration in the planned and imprinted pattern in which each line and dot is interdependent, means a shaking up and a re-linking of an unending chain of possibilities and events.

I tell you all, with my Divine Authority, that you and I are not “WE,” but “ONE.” You unconsciously feel my Avatarhood within you; I consciously feel in you what each of you feel. Thus every one of us is Avatar, in the sense that everyone and everything is everyone and everything, at the same time, and for all time. There is nothing but God. He is the only Reality, and we all are one in the indivisible Oneness of this absolute Reality. When the One who has realized God says, “I am God. You are God, and we are all one,” and also awakens this feeling of Oneness in his illusion-bound selves, then the question of the lowly and the great, the poor and the rich, the humble and the modest, the good and the bad, simply vanishes. It is his false awareness of duality that misleads man into making illusory distinctions and filing them into separate categories.

The Avatar appears in different forms, under different names, at different times, in different parts of the world. As his appearance always coincides with the spiritual birth of man, so the period immediately preceding his manifestation is always one in which humanity suffers from the pangs of the approaching birth.

I am the last Avatar in this present cycle of twenty-four, and therefore the greatest and most powerful. I have the attributes of five. I am as pure as Zoroaster, as truthful as Ram, as mischievous as Krishna, as gentle as Jesus, and as fiery as Muhammad.

An ordinary physical action of the Avatar releases immense forces in the inner planes and so becomes the starting point for a chain of working, therepercussions and overtones of which are manifest at all levels and are universal in range and effect.

The Avatar model, on the other hand, has a larger range of human development than the Savior's, from the Language of possibilities of the Asat (Chaos) where all geometries of possible human forms are waiting to be born as heroes, gods, humans etc., to the Language of Sacrifice and Images, where all forms are to be sacrificed … The gods are this side of creation and they are interior embodiments of a multiplicity of brains at work. Inner acts, rather than names, are at work. These acts are so efficient that they may create new 'gods,' new centers of action, to guide humans to make wise decisions. There are no a priori norms of ethics to accommodate to …

Infinite God, age after age, throughout all cycles, wills through His Infinite Mercy to effect His presence amidst mankind by stooping down to human level in the human form, but His physical presence amidst mankind not being apprehended, He is looked upon as an ordinary man of the world. When He asserts, however, His Divinity on earth by proclaiming Himself the Avatar of the Age, He is worshipped by some who accept Him as God; and glorified by a few who know him as God on Earth. But it invariably falls to the lot of the rest of humanity to condemn Him, while He is physically in their midst. Thus it is that God as man, proclaiming Himself as the Avatar, suffers Himself to be persecuted and tortured, to be humiliated and condemned by humanity for whose sake His Infinite Love has made him stoop so low, in order that humanity, by its very act of condemning God's manifestation in the form of Avatar should, however, indirectly, assert the existence of God in His Infinite Eternal state.

Being the Avatar, I have come to awaken mankind, and would like the entire world to come to me. Real saints are dearest and nearest to my heart. Perfect Ones and lovers of God adorn the world, and will ever do so. The physical presence of the Perfect Masters throughout eternity is not necessarily confined to any particular or special part of the globe. My salutations to all — the past, present and future Perfect Masters, real saints — known and unknown — lovers of God, and to all other beings, in all of whom I reside, whether consciously felt by them or not.

God is all. God knows all, and God does all. When the Avatar proclaims he is the Ancient One, it is God who proclaims His manifestation on earth. When man utters for or against the Avatarhood, it is God who speaks through him. It is God alone who declares Himself through the Avatar and mankind.

The Avatar model, on the other hand, is earlier than the Savior's. It dates from the times of the oral Rig Veda (5,000 to 2,500 B.C.) It has a larger range of human development than the Savior's, from the Language of possibilities of the Asat (Chaos) where all geometries of possible human forms are waiting to be born as heroes, gods, humans etc., to the Language of Sacrifice and Images, where all forms are to be sacrificed… The gods are this side of creation and they are interior embodiments of a multiplicity of brains at work. Inner acts, rather than names are at work. These acts are so efficient that they may create new "gods", new centers of action, to guide humans to make wise decisions. There are no a priori norms of ethics to accommodate to…