Avatâras, Annie Besant [first ebook reader txt] 📗

lectures that he gave on the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_ put to you a certain view of the Avatâra, that it was a descent of I´shvara--or, as he said, using the theosophical term, the Logos, which is only the Greek name for I´shvara--a descent of I´shvara, uniting Himself with a human soul. With all respect for the profound learning of the lamented pandit, I cannot but think that that is only a partial definition. Probably he did not at that time desire, had not very possibly the time, to deal with case after case, having so wide a field to cover in the small number of lectures that he gave, and he therefore chose out one form, as we may say, of self-revelation, leaving untouched the others, which now in dealing with the subject by itself we have full time to study. Let me then begin as it were at the beginning, and then give you certain authorities which may make the view easier to accept; let me state without any kind of attempt to veil or evade, what is really an Avatâra. Fundamentally He is the result of evolution. In far past Kalpas, in worlds other than this, nay, in universes earlier than our own, those who were to be Avatâras climbed slowly, step by step, the vast ladder of evolution, climbing from mineral to plant, from plant to animal, from animal to man, from man to Jîvanmukta, from Jîvanmukta higher and higher yet, up the mighty hierarchy that stretches beyond Those who have liberated Themselves from the bonds of humanity; until at last, thus climbing, They cast off not only all the limits of the separated Ego, not only burst asunder the limitations of the separated Self, but entered I´shvara Himself and expanded into the all-consciousness of the Lord, becoming one in knowledge as they had ever been one in essence with that eternal Life from which originally they came forth, living in that life, centres without circumferences, living centres, one with the Supreme. There stretches behind such a One the endless chain of birth after birth, of manifestation after manifestation. During the stage in which He was human, during the long climbing up of the ladder of humanity, there were two special characteristics that marked out the future Avatâra from the ranks of men. One his absolute bhakti, his devotion to the Supreme; for only those who are bhaktas and who to their bhakti have wed gnyâna, or knowledge, can reach this goal; for by devotion, says Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, can a man "enter into My being." And the need of the devotion for the future Avatâra is this: he must keep the centre that he has built even in the life of I´shvara, so that he may be able to draw the circumference once again round that centre, in order that he may come forth as a manifestation of I'shvara, one with Him in knowledge, one with Him in power, the very Supreme Himself in earthly life; he must hence have the power of limiting himself to form, for no form can exist in the universe save as there is a centre within it round which that form is drawn. He must be so devoted as to be willing to remain for the service of the universe while I´shvara Himself abides in it, to share the continual sacrifice made by Him, the sacrifice whereby the universe lives. But not devotion alone marks this great One who is climbing his divine path. He must also be, as I´shvara is, a lover of humanity. Unless within him there burns the flame of love for men--nay, men, do I say? it is too narrow--unless within him burns the flame of love for everything that exists, moving and unmoving, in this universe of God, he will not be able to come forth as the Supreme whose life and love are in everything that He has brought forth out of His eternal and inexhaustible life. "There is nothing," says the Beloved, "moving or unmoving, that may exist bereft of me;"[1] and unless the man can work that into his nature, unless he can love everything that is, not only the beautiful but the ugly, not only the good but the evil, not only the attractive but the repellent, unless in every form he sees the Self, he cannot climb the steep path the Avatâra must tread.

[Footnote 1: _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_, x. 39.]

These, then, are the two great characteristics of the man who is to become the special manifestation of God--bhakti, love to the One in whom he is to merge, and love to those whose very life is the life of God. Only as these come forth in the man is he on the path that leads him to be--in future universes, in far, far future kalpas--an Avatâra coming as God to man.

Now on this view of the nature of an Avatâra difficulties, I know, arise; but they are difficulties that arise from a partial view, and then from that view having been merely accepted, as a rule, on the authority of some great name, instead of on the thinking out and thorough understanding of it by the man who repeats the shibboleth of his own sect or school. The view once taken, every text in Shruti or Smṛiti that goes against that view is twisted out of its natural meaning, in order to be made to agree with the idea which already dominates the mind. That is the difficulty with every religion; a man acquires his view by tradition, by habit, by birth, by public opinion, by the surroundings of his own time and of his own day. He finds in the scriptures--which belong to no time, to no day, to no one age, and to no one people, but are expressions of the eternal Veda--he finds in them many texts that do not fit into the narrow framework that he has made; and because he too often cares for the framework more than for the truth, he manipulates the text until he can make it fit in, in some dislocated fashion; and the ingenuity of the commentator too often appears in the skill with which he can make words appear to mean what they do not mean in their grammatical and obvious sense. Thus, men of every school, under the mighty names of men who knew the truth--but who could only give such portion of truth as they deemed man at the time was able to receive--use their names to buttress up mistaken interpretations, and thus walls are continually built up to block the advancing life of man.

Now let me take one example from one of the greatest names, one who knew the truth he spoke, but also, like every teacher, had to remember that while he was man, those to whom he spoke were children that could not grasp truth with virile understanding. That great teacher, founder of one of the three schools of the Vedânta, Shrî Râmânujâchârya, in his commentary on the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_--a priceless work which men of every school might read and profit by--dealing with the phrase in which Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa declares that He has had बहूनिजन्मानि [Sanskrit: bahUnijanmAni] "many births," points out how vast the variety of those births had been. Then, confining himself to His manifestations as I´shvara--that is after He had attained to the Supreme--he says quite truly that He was born by His own will; not by karma that compelled Him, not by any force outside Him that coerced Him, but by His own will He came forth as I'shvara and incarnated in one form or another. But there is nothing said there of the innumerable steps traversed by the mighty One ere yet He merged Himself in the Supreme. Those are left on one side, unmentioned, unnoticed, because what the writer had in his view was to present to the hearts of men a great Object for adoration, who might gradually lift them upwards and upwards until the Self should blossom in them in turn. No word is said of the previous kalpas, of the universes stretching backward into the illimitable past. He speaks of His birth as Deva, as Nâga, as Gandharva, as those many shapes that He has taken by His own will. As you know, or as you may learn if you turn to _Shrîmad-Bhâgavata_, there is a much longer list of manifestations than the ten usually called Avatâras. There are given one after another the forms which seem strange to the superficial reader when connected in modern thought with the Supreme. But we find light thrown on the question by some other words of the great Lord; and we also find in one famous book, full of occult hints--though not with much explanation of the hints given--the _Yoga Vâsiṣhṭha_, a clear definite statement that the deities, as Mahâdeva, Viṣhṇu and Brahmâ, have all climbed upward to the mighty posts They hold.[2] And that may well be so, if you think of it; there is nothing derogatory to Them in the thought; for there is but one Existence, the eternal fount of all that comes forth as separated, whether separated in the universe as I´shvara, or separated in the copy of the universe in man; there is but One without a second; there is no life but His, no independence but His, no self-existence but His, and from Him Gods and men and all take their root and exist for ever in and by His one eternal life. Different stages of manifestation, but the One Self in all the different stages, the One living in all; and if it be true, as true it is, that the Self in man is

प्रजो नित्यः शस्वतोऽयंपुराणो [Sanskrit: prajo nityaH SasvatoayaMpurANo]

"unborn, constant, eternal, ancient," it is because the Self in man is one with the One Self-existent, and I´shvara Himself is only the mightiest manifestation of that One who knows no second near Himself. Says an English poet:


Closer is He than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.


[Footnote 2: Part II., Chapter ii., Shlokas 14, 15, 16.]

The Self is in you and in me, as much as the Self is in I´shvara, that One, eternal, unchanging, undecaying, whereof every manifested existence is but one ray of glory. Thus it is true, that which is taught in the _Yoga Vâsiṣhṭha_; true it is that even the greatest, before whom we bow in worship, has climbed in ages past all human reckoning to be one with the Supreme, and, ever there, to manifest Himself as God to the world.

But now we come to a distinction that we find made, and it is a real one. We read of a Pûrṇâvatâra, a full, complete, Avatâra. What is the meaning of that word "full" as applied to the Avatâra? The name is given, as we know, to Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa. He is marked out specially by that name. Truly the word "pûrṇa" cannot apply to the Illimitable, the Infinite; He may not be shown forth in any form; the eye may never behold Him; only the spirit that is Himself can know the One. What is meant by it is that, so far as is possible within the limits of form, the manifestation of the formless appears, so far as is possible it came forth in that great One who came for the helping of the world. This may assist you to grasp the distinction. Where the manifestation is that of a Pûrṇâvatâra, then at any moment of time, at His own will, by Yoga or otherwise, He can transcend every limit of the form in which He binds Himself by His own will, and shine forth as the Lord of the Universe, within whom all the Universe is contained. Think for a moment once more of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, who teaches us so much on this. Turn to that great storehouse