which we so desperately need. He is telling us that death is dead, because we are the inheritors of life without death, if we would only die to ourselves to be born into that deathless life.

And if life has an ultimate purpose or goal, as Baba assures us that it does, then life, or God-in-life, probably has a plan in mind for reaching that destination. Just as we, when we go from New York to San Francisco in our cars, chart our course on a road map, so God, we can speculate, has decided all the details of how He wants to get to where He wants to go, and therefore knows the story of the journey in advance. Indeed, in a previous descent, the Avatar as Jesus told His disciples that just as they could be assured that God knew when the tiniest sparrow fell, so even the very hairs on their head were numbered by Him. And we are told by those who were with Baba in Italy when He meditated all night in a cave once used by His beloved Saint Francis, that He emerged saying He had planned the destiny of the world for the next 2000 years.

And if all is known to Him, then it would certainly be most prudent of us to try our best to live in accordance with His plan for us. So again the Avatar comes to instruct us in the infinitely ticklish business of how to live in accordance with the plan of life. Because we are such beginners even at asking, "How should I live?" and because we don't know the plan in its entire scope, we are in tremendous need of one who can give us expert advice about living wisely. That one is the Avatar.

God, — we are told by the scriptures as well as by the Avatars, — is beyond conception. If He could be conceived, he could not be Infinite, as He is. But if God is beyond the ability of our minds to fathom Him, what inkling may we have of His existence? Here the saints, Perfect Masters, and Avatars tell us, from their own actual experience of God, that He does intersect our own finite world. Thus the Avatar bears witness to the existence of God and to the realms of consciousness which lie beyond our everyday, elementary experiences. We are inclined to accept the testimony of the Avatar because we sense in Him something so powerful, so loving, so beautiful, and so trustworthy that we are satisfied intuitively that we have seen One who does incarnate a deeper reality than the one we know. And this Avatar, in his "bible", God Speaks, has gone so far as to outline in detail, for the satisfaction of our intellectual curiosity, the dynamics of the consciousness which lies beyond our own.

The acquisition of that deeper, perfect consciousness is the goal of creation. But no man can reach the goal unassisted. The consummation of consciousness necessitates the destruction of the individual ego. But no ego can do itself in. It would be, says Baba, like a man trying to summersault over himself. Only One who is egoless can bring a man to infinite consciousness. This function can be performed by a Perfect Mas-