The world is visited frequently by stars come from heaven shedding their light throughout the atmosphere of the earth and giving everyone a living fill-up as may be required under the conditions prevailing at that hour. This coming of the divine power under prescribed conditions and circumstances, we call an incarnation, or the sudden rising into action of a luminary, sometimes known as a great sage or a saint. The world 'incarnation' suggests the coming into form or, more popularly, the embodiment in flesh and blood, of that which is essentially formless and capable of assuming any form. A potential which has the ability to work in any fashion whatsoever can work in a given fashion only, under a given condition, as the principle of medicine is a general policy of setting right the functions of the physical organism. But, this generality of medical policy thus manifests itself as a specific prescription under a given condition, an analogy before us of how a formless methodology and a principle can take form for the purpose of activating energies and powers, which are exactly the things required to set in alignment those components which have been placed out of gear, as it were, for some period for certain reasons.

In a broad sense we may say, the powers of the world maintain themselves in a stage of balance, as our bodily physical or psychosomatic conditions try to maintain a balance so that mostly we are healthy people; rarely are we ill. Normally we may say we maintain a balance and that is the usual way of our conducting ourselves physically and mentally. We are not basically sick people. Basically we are healthy. Very rarely do we become ill due to certain abnormal conditions arising in the system for certain specific reasons. In a similar manner, this world maintains an equilibrium of itself. It does not fall sick always. People in the world, living beings in general, are positively happy and they are not always weeping and crying. This is not the natural condition of things. But an occasional situation which may not be regarded as natural may insinuate itself into the normal conditions generally, impelled by certain pressures into whose fundamentals we cannot enter so easily in a few minutes of discussion. It is like asking, "Why do we fall sick at all?" This question is also the question, "Why should there be any trouble in the world?"

The reason behind the troubles and sorrows of life are also the reason why we sometimes have physical illness. We do not have an easy answer to this question, why we fall ill though we may have a tentative answer such as, "I went in the rain and got a cold"; "I walked in the sun and had a headache"; "I travelled in the night and I have ache all over the body"; "I ate a little wrong thing yesterday and have tummy problem". These answers may be ready-made repertory coming as an explanation of the condition though these mentioned causes may be regarded as immediate propulsions for our illness. There are certain susceptibilities in our personality without which toxic matters, even when they enter our body, may not disturb us so badly. Biological science and medical people tell us that disease-producing factors are everywhere. They do not manifest themselves sometimes only for our sake. They are hanging in the air even now at all times throughout the day and night, but we do not feel their presence because of the resistance capacity of our system. Our strength is so much, mentally and physically, that these adverse disease-producing conditions do not make themselves felt mostly by people and they are felt acutely when there is a susceptibility of the organism sometimes for important reasons which each one has to understand for himself or herself. Umpteen are the reasons.

The conditions of life are equivalent to the conditions of our physical body. Whatever obtains to us obtains to people outside and to creation as a whole and so if we have to understand the world and try to find a solution for the difficulties of life, we may have to turn inward into our own selves and see what is our personal problem. How have we got into this rut of a difficulty? Who are the causes? Which are the factors? In these enterprises of ours, we may make a mistake always because rarely do we dispassionately judge because of our personality always coming to the forefront and assuming an abnormal importance for itself always. In every condition we will find we are the most important persons everywhere, in any condition. If you go to a hotel or marketplace or a bus stand or a railway station, you are the most important person there; all others are secondary. This is very difficult to understand: how each one thinks he is the most important person and others are secondary issues, and any kind of neglect of the requirements of a particular individual is an affront to that person on the part of others who remain there just as others and not as people like one's own self.

This is the tragedy of psychological operation in human beings so that we may say psychologically we are not in a state of universal alignment caused by a non-alignment in our own internal psychic apparatus also because the world of human beings is nothing but a constitution of people like me, like you, like everybody else, and may drops make the ocean. Many a non-alignment individually considered is a mass non-alignment politically, socially or economically. We make the world; there is no world independent of us. Many people like us are the world and whatever the world is, is exactly what we are; and therefore any kind of evaluation of circumstances in life may have to start from an evaluation of one's own self because many one's own selves makes the so-called others in the world. Anyway, this is to probe a little bit into the deeper background of general issues manifesting themselves outwardly in our daily life. We are not here now to go into the cosmical condition that may be operating behind the problems of life. The theme of our discussion now is something different, which is more practical in a way, namely, our adjustment in the conditions of the world and in the conditions of our own selves in relation to divine powers that come into action whenever there is a necessity felt for such a descent, when the world finds itself in a state tending towards illness which reveals itself as the problems of life as we call the difficulties of people.

History is supposed to be a study of the movement of human enterprises, thoughts and actions, and those who believe and feel convinced that human history is just what people do of their own accord, of what people are compelled to do by other people, may not be good students of history, because there are independent of and different from the embodiments of human action, as people, there are historical forces. A historical force is not to be confused with the historical personalities. This force, which is the Time Spirit we may say, is the dispensing authority behind the activities of the people and the prompting of the minds of people, which incidentally become the immediate causes of historical occurrences whatever their nature be. We are people seated here considered to be fairly specially blessed ones in the sense of having been endowed with a fair amount of impersonal judgment of things which is what we mean by a person being a spiritual seeker, one who has the power to judge impersonally and dispassionately in a required measure at least by pass marks, to that extent at least, and we  may at least console ourselves that we, who are here in this hall at present, have achieved at least a pass mark in this exam of being endowed with a power to judge things by not unnecessarily protruding oneself into the atmosphere of judgments, and considering also other issues which are equally contributory to the coming into action of any event or experience in life.

God incarnates himself in the world, says the Bhagavad Gita, whenever there is a necessity for introducing the structure of life in the world an administrative authority which is beyond the human capacity, a supernormal power is supposed to manifest itself. There are certain problems which we can ourselves independently set right. Human problems are not always entirely human and there are certain aspects of human difficulty which may not be under the jurisdiction of human endeavour and capacity. When such difficulties arise which are the difficulties of humanity in general, not of me or you in particular, it is not a local difficulty of a community or a family or even a country, but a general issue which torments the minds of all people so that no one can come forward as a remedying element in this condition. No one in this world can be a redeemer under such conditions. A problem which is everybody's problem cannot find a solution from any person in the world because every person is involved in the same problem. Such difficulties sometime arise occasionally in the march of human history. At that time it is such that a supernormal power finds it necessary to emerge.

Such an emergence of a supernormal power is called Avatara, incarnation, the coming into formation and flesh and blood and embodiment of an invisible pervading strength. Now these events have taken place many a time in history, right from the time of creation itself. We read in scriptures that God incarnated himself and mighty leaders were born in this world. There were leaders who shook the whole earth in the different fields of human endeavour. There were mighty political geniuses, statesmen whom we remember even today with admiration. There were wonderous artists, painters and musicians whom we cannot afford to forget even today. There were masters of literature in all the languages of the world whose poetry and writings are a blessing upon the world of intellectuality even today. Many a great genius has come into this world through the process of human history and they came for a certain purpose, the purpose being the filling up a particular lacuna in all round growth of the human personality which is political security, which is aesthetic satisfaction, which is intellectual enjoyment and so on and so forth.

But, the greatest need of the human being, apart from political protection, aesthetic satisfaction, intellectual necessity, etc., is spiritual touch, spiritual security. We may be growing healthily by being blessed with security, politically, aesthetically, intellectually, economically, but spiritually we may be ruined. We may be rich from the point of view of dollars and pounds but bankrupt in the spirit. Then what will happen to us? We will be adorned corpses, decorated physical frames minus life, and you can imagine the world and value of that physical frame-a royal personality dressed in silk and gold and silver minus life, such a condition the world may enter into sometimes. A decorated corpse the world can become, mightily adored in wealth and in every conceivable physical comfort, but the soul has left.

This happened many times in human history and if we may bring the name of God into this issue, we may say God does not act always, the secondary forces of divine operation manage the issues themselves; but God may Himself directly act occasionally, when the whole thing seems to go out of order, like the centre of administration not concerning itself always in minor issues which can be handled by lesser powers. But the crisis of the whole world, which you may call a state of emergency, may call for the central authority to open its eye and unleash all its energies. Occasionally we have certain difficulties of this type. Those who are good students of history will know, how people have lived in this world, right from the dawn of our very knowledge of human history. It is necessary to read history. It is not an unnecessary entertainment merely because, as I tried to point out, history is not a story of people's doing, of the coming and going of Kings and the battles that they wage. Nothing of the kind is human history.

Actually a study of history is the study of the forces operating behind the events you call normally, the recorded history of mankind. This requires a scientific attitude of the student, a philosophic grounding I may say, and it is not just the story of England or India or America or any country. It is not the history of Europe or any particular country as you read in your educational Institutions. That is not history. What happens is one thing, but why it happens in that manner is more important than the knowledge of what happened. Why was that catastrophe required? This is the subject of many great students of history. Many of us do not even know the existence of such great writers of human history. We should be abreast with the conditions that are necessary to make us appreciably educated. I do not say that we can be entirely educated, perhaps that is beyond us. To some measure, at least, to an appreciable extent at least, we must be enlightened in respect of things that are at the back of the operation of things and one of these things is the study of the powers behind human history. There was a time, right from the beginning of the 19th Century, when physical science strode like a peacock and strutted with pride as the be all and end all of all things and mathematics became the explanation of life. It was a Eureka of humanity which began to feel very very wrongly that it had found the solution for the difficulties of life. This was the complacency into which physical science landed itself and it was a great joy of discovery, especially when it was coupled with an Industrial Revolution that took place some time in the middle of the 19th Century and in the beginning of this century. What is physical science telling us and what is mathematics? What is the import behind the Industrial Revolution?