The newspapers had anticipated his arrival, and at a press conference held at 1:00 P.M. on the day he arrived, Baba gave the following message:
So much has been said and written about the "Highest Consciousness" and God-realization that people are bewildered as to the right process and immediate possibility of attainment. The philosophical mind, wading laboriously through such literature, only ends up learning a few intellectual gymnastics. The highest state of consciousness is latent in all. The Son of God is in every man but requires to be manifested.
The method of attaining this great consciousness must be very practical and adapted to the existing mental and material conditions of the world. The rituals and ceremonies instituted by the priest-ridden churches have made the process of attainment too dry; and that accounts for the lack of interest felt all over the world toward religious things in general. India, in spite of its high state of spirituality, at the present moment is very caste-ridden because of the enforcement by various cults of a plethora of rituals and ceremonies, which maintain the form but kill the spirit. Forms and ceremonies, instead of diminishing the ego, strengthen it. The stronger the ego, the more aggressive it becomes. In the anxiety to become conscious of a separate self through thinking thoughts such as "I am in the right ... I am the favored one ... I only have the right to live," one becomes destructive.
The furious race for armaments by the Christian world, evincing an utter disregard for the commandment of Jesus that if one cheek is smitten, the other should be offered, shows clearly what I mean by the ego. In the evolutionary ascent from the mineral, vegetable and animal life, the latent mind gradually expands and develops till full consciousness is reached in the human form. To create this very consciousness, the universe emanated from the Infinite Ocean of knowledge and bliss — namely, God the Absolute.
In the human form, however, [with the mind fully developed] a difficulty is confronted, to remove which prophets and Spiritual Masters have periodically visited this earthly plane. Besides full consciousness in the human form as a result of previous conditions of life, the ego, the I, is evolved.
The ego is composed of fulfilled and unfulfilled desires and creates the illusion of feeling finite, weak and unhappy. Henceforth, the soul can only progress through the general suppression of this finite ego and its transformation into the Divine Ego, the One Infinite Self, but retaining in full the consciousness of its human form.