Avatar Meher Baba declared himself to be the Prophet and Christ of our age. Avatar means incarnation of God in Sanskrit. Baba explained that the Avatar is God become man, and that the Perfect Master (sadguru or ensan-e-kamel) is man become God.
Every 700 to 1,400 years the Perfect Masters, of which there are always 5 embodied at any given time, bring down or effect the descent of God into human form as the Avatar. The Avatar, or Prophet, then becomes the sole functioning of God in the universe. When the Avatar drops the body, shortly thereafter the current five Perfect Masters resume spiritual control of the universe.
Meher Baba has explained that Sufism began with Zoroaster who lived about 6,000 years ago and continues to be represented by subsequent Perfect Masters and Avatars/Prophets: he defines Sufism by the person of the Perfect Master and Avatar, because only the Perfect Master and the Avatar represent God. Sufism is solely defined as the reality of God in human form.
Even the exalted saint does not fully represent Sufism; only the Perfect Master and the Prophet define Sufism. Sufism as an exalted lineage only properly refers to Perfect Masters and Avatars- who may be of any or no identifiable religious background. Sufism, in the definition provided by Meher Baba, does not exclusively refer to Islam.
Meher Baba asserts that he is the successor to Muhammad as the present Prophet/Avatar of the age, and that he has come to universalize Sufism as a non-partisan spiritual reality and path available to one and all.
Sufism as a spiritual path will always be available to those who submit to the One God embodied in the Prophet/Avatar and Perfect Master. It need not even have the name of Sufism attached to it. Sufism simply trefers to the relationship of the devotee to the Prophet/Avatar and Perfect Master. That’s it. Nothing more nor anything less.
