IMPRISONMENT

 
God is unchangeable, unmade, unborn; he is imperishable, beginningless and endless. God is great. He is eternal and infinite, and he alone exists. There is nothing besides God, and all that appears to be is illusion.

God, who is real, descends into illusion as the Avatar to help humanity see and know that he is real, and the universe is false. But, since humanity's consciousness remains in the abyss of illusion, it is difficult for human beings to recognize him. Some abuse and mock him, and a few accept him and worship him.

Since everything is his, he remains unaffected by praise or abuse, and so his work is always effective — it helps people. The Avatar is the Highest of the High and this status cannot be elevated by praise, or diminished by abuse. He is what he is — the Lord of the universe and the Protector of creation. He protects all in evolution and all of humanity — good or bad.

If a lunatic praises you, you will remain unaffected by his praise because you know that he is mad. If the same lunatic abuses you, you will still remain unaffected because you know that he is a madman. The lunatic's abuse or praise has no meaning. You are unaffected by either and conclude, "The poor fellow is mad."

Similarly, when the Avatar comes amidst humanity most of us appear mad before him. We are all mad because of our false existence in illusion. The Avatar remains unaffected by either our praises or our abuses, because he knows that we are his mad children. Despite our madness, he continues to shower the grace of his love and knowledge upon us, and this enables us to follow the path towards Truth.

The Avatar being all-knowing, knows why a particular person behaves in a peculiar manner. He knows the history of each one of us from beginning to end. Thus, he cannot condemn any one, because he knows everything. He knows why everything is happening.

The duty of the Avatar is to reveal the reason for everything. This is the divine law of Knowledge. Therefore, being all-knowing, he is bound by his divine law to give a reason for why we exist, and a reason for each individual's existence. But he cannot reveal the reason until, in the end, he frees one from the bondage of the prison of illusion. Each one's reason for being imprisoned becomes clear after eternal freedom is gained; therefore it is necessary first to realize and experience that one is imprisoned by illusion.

An ordinary man of the world, though free, cannot enjoy freedom, because he does not know what freedom means. But, if the same man is arrested and placed in a concentration camp, he suffers because his freedom has been taken away. When the man has been released from the concentration camp, he realizes what freedom is, and then he enjoys his freedom even more. Very few people, however, are aware that this very world is a prison of illusion.

When the Avatar works for the world, he gives a push in consciousness to every person. This push makes individuals aware that the world they are in is the prison of illusion, and the Avatar works out the ways to set individuals free from the gross world, the subtle world and the mental world.

When individuals escape from one world to a higher world, or into Reality, it is because of the work already done by the Avatar. At that time the divinity of the Avatar is manifesting at every level of human consciousness and the prison walls of the three worlds of illusion are beginning to crumble.