In plain words
In this way, the Kṛṣṇa Avatāra alone could proclaim Divinity this clearly. Yet we know that, now and then, that Avatāra seemed to meet with defeat. That was only a drama played out to show the world, and nothing else. When many kings came to Kṛṣṇa and begged Him to prevent the war of the Kurus and the Pāṇḍavas, Kṛṣṇa told them that all His efforts had failed. You must not take this to mean that Kṛṣṇa had no power to prevent the war. It was a drama He played to punish the wicked. His going as envoy, the Kauravas' setting His word aside: it all happened precisely according to a plan.
According to the place, the time and the persons, God has to play such dramas now and then. But in this Sai Avatāra there is no place at all for such dramas; for defeat there is no place whatever. Whatever I will must surely come to pass. But for Me there is no need to will. This saṅkalpa rests on the devotee's śraddhā and on his longing.
In a way, I am bound to My devotees. Though I move about with you in the form of an ordinary man, mixing freely with you, playing and singing, even the brilliant and the powerful cannot understand My power and My nature. To make humanity one, to establish the Ātma principle and to raise it to the place of Divinity: this alone is My aim. To make known the bonds of kinship that men have with one another is also My task. To bring home, by way of experience, that Divinity lies within humanity and is being made manifest: this too is one of My duties. It is not greatness only when learning is displayed, nor is it the less merely because it is not displayed. However hard, however tangled the problems may be, I can solve them in a moment.
If My powers are the size of an elephant, these mahimas (miracles) are the size of a mosquito. Unable to understand the meaning of My miracles, people give My miracles importance, and at this I laugh within Myself; to whom shall I tell this? What is within Me, what no measure can reach, what is beyond all size, what no research can touch, is Prema alone. No one can say it is this much or that much; only those who have recognised and experienced this principle of Prema can know Me to some extent.
To reach the Paramātma, Prema alone is the royal road: the nectar called Prema is found only at the lotus feet of the Paramātma. The lotus is born in the mud and grows in the water. But the lotus stays above both of these. The mud does not cling to it. If there is no water for a moment, the lotus withers; yet it lives without letting the water into itself. To be born in the mud called the round of births, to live in the water called saṃsāra, and yet not to be touched by this mud and not to take in this water: this alone is the sign of Divinity.