SECTION
SEVEN
The Purpose of Avatarhood
SURELY for the
earth-consciousness the very fact that the Divine manifests himself is the
greatest of all splendours. Consider the obscurity here and what it would be if
the Divine did not directly intervene and the Light of Lights did not
break out of the obscurity – for that is
the meaning of the manifestation.
An incarnation is the Divine
Consciousness and Being manifesting through the body. It is possible from any
plane.
It is the omnipresent cosmic
Divine who supports the action of the universe; if there is an Incarnation, it
does not in the least diminish the cosmic Presence and the cosmic action in the
three or thirty million universes.
The Descending Power (Avatar)
chooses its own place, body, time for the manifestation.
The Avatar is necessary when a
special work is to be done and in crises of the evolution. The Avatar is a
special manifestation while for the rest of the time it is the Divine working
within the ordinary human limits as a Vibhuti.
Avatarhood
would have little meaning if it were not connected
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with the evolution. The Hindu procession
of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the
Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land
animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf,
small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and
taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna
Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic
mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the
spiritual development – Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries
to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still
negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the
Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces. The progression is
striking and unmistakable.
As for the lives
in between the Avatar lives, it must be remembered that Krishna speaks of many
lives in the past, not only a few supreme ones, and secondly that while he
speaks of himself as the Divine, in one passage he describes himself as a Vibhuti, vrsnīnām vāsudevah. We may therefore fairly assume that in
many lives he manifested as the Vibhuti veiling the
fuller Divine Consciousness. If we admit that the object of Avatarhood
is to lead the evolution, this is quite reasonable, the Divine appearing as
Avatar in the great transitional stages and as Vibhutis to aid the lesser
transitions.
It [the overmind
liberation] can't be supreme if there is something beyond it – but there is a
liberation even in higher Mind. But in speaking of supreme liberation I was
simply taking the Buddhist-Adwaita view for granted and correcting it by saying
that this Nirvana view is too negative. Krishna opened the possibility of
overmind with its two sides of realisation, static and dynamic. Buddha tried to
shoot from mind to Nirvana in the Supreme, just as Shankara did in another way
after him. Both agree in overleaping the other stages and trying to get at a
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nameless and featureless
Absolute. Krishna on the other hand was leading by the normal course of
evolution. The next normal step is not a featureless Absolute, but the
supermind. I consider that in trying to overshoot, Buddha like Shankara made a
mistake, calling away the dynamic side of the liberation. Therefore there has
to be a correction by Kalki.
I was of course
dealing with the ten Avatars as a “parable of the evolution”, and only
explaining the interpretation we can put on it from that point of view. It was
not my own view of the thing that I was giving.
Too much importance need not be
attached to the details about Kalki – they are rather
symbolic than an attempt to prophesy details of future history. What is
expressed is something that has to come, but it is symbolically indicated, no
more.
So too, too much
weight need not be put on the exact figures about the Yugas in the Purana. Here
again the Kala and the Yugas indicate successive periods in the cyclic wheel of
evolution, – the perfect state, decline and disintegration of successive ages
of humanity followed by a new birth – the mathematical calculations are not the
important element. The argument of the end of the Kali Yuga already come or
coming and a new Satya Yuga coming is a very familiar one and there have been
many who have upheld it.
I only took the Puranic list of Avatars and interpreted it as a parable of
evolution, so as to show that the idea of evolution is implicit behind the
theory of Avatarhood. As to whether one accepts
Buddha as an Avatar or prefers to put others in his place (in some lists Balaram replaces Buddha), is a matter of individual
feeling. The Buddhist Jatakas are legends about the
past incarnations of the Buddha, often with a teaching implied in them, and are
not a part of the Hindu system. To the Buddhists Buddha was not an Avatar at
all, he was the soul climbing up the ladder of spiritual evolution till it reached
the final stage of
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emancipation – although Hindu
influence did make Buddhism develop the idea of an eternal Buddha above, that
was not a universal or fundamental Buddhistic idea. Whether the Divine in
manifesting his Avatarhood could choose to follow the
line of evolution from the lowest scale, manifesting on each scale as a Vibhuti is a question again to which the answer is not
inevitably in the negative. If we accept the evolutionary idea, such a thing
may have its place.
If Buddha taught
something different from Krishna, that does not prevent his advent from being
necessary in the spiritual evolution. The only question is whether the attempt
to scale the heights of an absolute Nirvana through negation of cosmic
existence was a necessary step or not, having a view to the fact that one can
make the attempt to reach the Highest on the neti neti as well as the iti iti line.
He [Buddha] affirmed practically
something unknowable that was Permanent and Unmanifested.
Adwaita does the same. Buddha never said he was an Avatar of a Personal God but
that he was the Buddha. It is the Hindus who made him an Avatar. If Buddha had
looked upon himself as an Avatar at all, it would have been as an Avatar of the
impersonal Truth.
I don't know that historically
there could have been any other Buddha. It is the Vaishnava
Puranas, I think, that settled the list of Avatars,
for they are all Avatars of Vishnu according to the Purana. The final
acceptance by all may have come later than Shankara, after the Buddhist-Brahminic controversy had ceased to be an actuality. For
some time there was a tendency to substitute Balarama's
name for Buddha's or to say that Buddha was an Avatar of Vishnu, but that he
came to mislead the Asuras. He is evidently aimed at
in the story of Mayamoha in the Vishnu Purana.
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If a Divine Consciousness and
Force descended and through the personality we call Buddha did a great work for
the world, then Buddha can be called an Avatar – the tapasya
and arriving at knowledge are only an incident of the manifestation.
If on the other
hand Buddha was only a human being like many others who arrived at some
knowledge and preached it, then he was not an Avatar – for of that kind there
have been thousands and they cannot be all Avatars.
Krishna is not the supramental
Light. The descent of Krishna would mean the descent of the overmind
Godhead preparing, though not itself actually, the descent of supermind and
Ananda. Krishna is the Anandamaya; he supports the evolution through the overmind leading it towards the Ananda.
One can be the head of a
spiritual organisation or the Messiah of a religion or an Avatar without in
this life reaching the supermind and beyond.
Yuge yuge1 may be used in a general sense, as in English
“from age to age” and not refer technically to the yuga proper according to the Puranic computation. But the bahūni 2 has an air of referring to very numerous lives
especially when coupled with tava ca. In that
case all these many births could not be full incarnations, – many may have been
merely Vibhuti births carrying on the thread from
incarnation to incarnation. About Arjuna's
accompanying him in each and every birth, nothing is said, but it would not be
likely – many, of course.
1 About his many births Krishna says in the Gita, sambhavāmi yuge yuge. See Gita, Ch. IV, 8.
2 Bahūni me vyatitāni janmāni tava cārjuna. Gita, Ch. IV, 5.
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But each being in a new birth
prepares a new mind, life and body – otherwise John Smith would always be John
Smith and would have no chance of being Piyusha Kanti Ghose. Of course inside
there are old personalities contributing to the new life – but I am speaking of
the new visible personality, the outer man, mental, vital, physical. It is the
psychic being that keeps the link from birth to birth and makes all the
manifestations of the same person. It is therefore to be expected that the
Avatar should take on a new personality each time, a personality suited for the
new times, work, surroundings. In my own view of things, however, the new
personality has a series of Avatar births behind him, births in which the
intermediate evolution has been followed and assisted from age to age.
I suppose very few recognised him [Krishna] as an Avatar, – certainly it was
not at all a general recognition. Among the few those nearest him do not seem
to have counted – it was less prominent people like Vidura
etc.
Those who were with Krishna
were in all appearance men like other men. They spoke and acted with each other
as men with men and were not thought of by those around them as gods. Krishna
himself was known by most as a man – only a few worshipped him as the Divine.
An Avatar, roughly speaking, is
one who is conscious of the presence and power of the Divine born in him or
descended into him and governing from within his will and life and action; he
feels identified inwardly with this divine power and presence.
A Vibhuti is supposed to embody some power of the Divine and
is enabled by it to act with great force in the world, but that is all that is
necessary to make him a Vibhuti: the power may
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be very great, but the
consciousness is not that of an inborn or indwelling Divinity. This is the
distinction we can gather from the Gita which is the main authority on this
subject. If we follow this distinction, we can confidently say from what is
related of them that Rama and Krishna can be accepted as Avatars; Buddha
figures as such although with a more impersonal consciousness of the Power
within him. Ramakrishna voiced the same consciousness when he spoke of Him who
was Rama and who was Krishna being within him. But Chaitanya's
case is peculiar; for according to the accounts he ordinarily felt and declared
himself a bhakta of Krishna and nothing more, but in
great moments he manifested Krishna, grew luminous in mind and body and was
Krishna himself and spoke and acted as the Lord. His contemporaries saw in him
an Avatar of Krishna, a manifestation of the Divine Love.
Shankara and
Vivekananda were certainly Vibhutis; they cannot be reckoned as more, though as
Vibhutis they were very great.
It was not my intention to
question in any degree Chaitanya's position as an
Avatar of Krishna and the Divine Love. That character of the manifestation
appears very clearly from all the accounts about him and even, if what is
related about the appearance of Krishna in him from time to time is accepted,
these outbursts of the splendour of the Divine Being
are among the most remarkable in the story of the Avatar. As for Sri
Ramakrishna, the manifestation in him was not so intense but more many-sided
and fortunately there can be no doubt about the authenticity of the details of
his talk and action since they have been recorded from day to day by so
competent an observer as Mahendranath Gupta. I would
not care to enter into any comparison as between these two great spiritual
personalities: both exercised an extraordinary influence and did something
supreme in their own sphere.
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He [Ramakrishna] never wrote an
autobiography – what he said was in conversation with his disciples and others.
He was certainly quite as much an Avatar as Christ or Chaitanya.
Mahomed
would himself have rejected the idea of being an Avatar, so we have to regard
him only as the prophet, the instrument, the Vibhuti.
Christ realised himself as the Son who is one with the Father – he must
therefore be an amśāvatāra,
a partial incarnation.
What Leonardo da
Vinci held in himself was all the new age of Europe on its many sides. But
there was no question of Avatarhood or consciousness
of a descent or pressure of spiritual forces. Mysticism was no part of what he had
to manifest.
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