Thursday, June 24, 2021

The purpose of Avatarhood

My heart feels an undivided reverence for all the Masters of all times and whether feminine or masculine in their physical appearance, whom I had the privilege of knowing or reading  their teaching. 
All of them have a place in my heart, and I treasure the pearls of wisdom of their teaching as coming from God Itself.
This undivided reverence, which is spontaneous, builts a synthetic approach to the universal Teaching.
Of none of them I could say "I'm his disciple", and yet my heart is filled with reverence  for each of them as they each were my Masters.
My mind, my soul and the whole of my being refuse to say that "this Master is greater than the other", my personal appreciation is out of place here, they each are a perfil of the One Divine in a human shape and came to realize their part each adding of their own to the immortal Teaching.
 They together bring and present the manyfold teaching appeared in the epochs, each at his moment is the right Master,  even the beggar, the unholy or a shining star. 
They all create a synthetic Truth which is the synthetic Truth of the Kalki Avatar, the Avatar of Synthesis.
 A message of synthesis needs to be exactly that, a unifying principle where nothing and no one is excluded.  
The last and greatest teaching of the Kalki Avatar after reuniting all the different paths, would not only be that of the confirmed doctrines, religions and yogas but the path of the carpenter or the shoemaker or the housewife as all paths conducting to the only God, because nothing else than this  movement can be possible and is realized- either knowingly or unknowingly- as each soul is called to fulfil the purpose of its existence of knowing the God who created it and  knowing the very purpose of the existence of the human being on earth that every life is but a step in that direction, making the approach ever greater and wider, all-embracing and all inclusive. 
That would be the proclamation of the Avatar within everybody.

The ultimate creation of the Kalki Avatar would be the proclamation of the Avatar in every individual and each individual a path and an ascent towards the Divine. 
It is not only the synthesis of the religions or the yogas and all the spiritual paths, but the realization that even ordinary life and mundane occupations are the path the Avatar chose to create a greater and all-embracing synthesis, leading the march that the humanity has to follow to become each individual the Avatar. 
The everlasting promise of the Avatar is not just liberation, but the inner realization that only being an Avatar the humanity as a whole will be an immortal race fulfilling the very purpose of our existence here and the reason why this planet and this life was created. 
 
In writings and conversations Sri Aurobindo has convincingly affirmed that an avatar would be of no use as an example for the human march if it were since the beginning conscious of his own power.
In fact -he continues-  an avatar conscious of his divine purpose would undergo the hard human trail with a considerable advantage on his human fellows, an avatar has to toil, suffer and hope like a human being.

Sri Aurobindo in answering disciples´s questions about Avatarhood:

 My own idea of the matter is that the Avatar's life and actions are not miracles, and if they were, his existence would be perfectly useless, a mere superfluous freak of Nature. He accepts the terrestrial conditions, he uses means, he shows the way to humanity as well as helps it. Otherwise what is the use of him and why is he here?

 There are two sides of the phenomenon of Avatarhood, the Divine Consciousness behind and the instrumental personality. The Divine Consciousness is omnipotent but it has put forward the instrumental personality in Nature, under the conditions of Nature, and it uses it according to the rules of the game – though also sometimes to change the rules of the game. If Avatarhood is only a flashing miracle, then I have no use for it. If it is a coherent part of the arrangement of the omnipresent3 Divine in Nature, then I can understand and accept it.

I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness – if nobody can follow the Way, then either our conception of the thing, which is also that of Christ and Krishna and Buddha also, is all wrong or the whole life and action of the Avatar is quite futile. X seems to say that there is no way and no possibility of following, that the struggles and sufferings of the Avatar are unreal and all humbug, – there is no possibility of struggle for one who represents the Divine. Such a conception makes nonsense of the whole idea of Avatarhood; there is then no reason in it, no necessity in it, no meaning in it. The Divine being all-powerful can lift people up without bothering to come down on earth. It is only if it is a part of the world-arrangement that he should take upon himself the burden of humanity and open the Way that Avatarhood has any meaning.

The Avatar is not supposed to act in a non-human way – he takes up human action and uses human methods with the human consciousness in front and the Divine behind. If he did not his taking a human body would have no meaning and would be of no use to anybody. He could just as well have stayed above and done things from there.

 An Avatar even does not manifest all the Divine omniscience and omnipotence; he has not come for any such unnecessary display; all that is behind him but not in the front of his consciousness.
 As for the Vibhuti, the Vibhuti need not even know that he is a power of the Divine.

 When they think of a manifestation of Divinity, they think it must be an extraordinary perfection in doing ordinary human things – an extraordinary business faculty, political, poetic or artistic faculty, an accurate memory, not making mistakes, not undergoing any defeat or failure. Or else they think of things which they call superhuman like not eating food or telling cotton-futures or sleeping on nails or eating them. All that has nothing to do with manifesting the Divine... These human ideas are false.The Divinity acts according to another consciousness, the consciousness of the Truth above and the Lila below and It acts according to the need of the Lila, not according to man's ideas of what It should or should not do. This is the first thing one must grasp, otherwise one can understand nothing about the manifestation of the Divine.

The Divine does not need to suffer or struggle for himself; if he takes on these things it is in order to bear the world-burden and help the world and men; and if the sufferings and struggles are to be of any help, they must be real. A sham or falsehood cannot help. They must be as real as the struggles and sufferings of men themselves – the Divine bears them and at the same time shows the way out of them. Otherwise his assumption of human nature has no meaning and no utility and no value. It is strange that you cannot understand or refuse to admit so simple and crucial a point. What is the use of admitting Avatarhood if you take all the meaning out of it?

 The Divine when he takes on the burden of terrestrial nature, takes it fully, sincerely and without any conjuring tricks or pretence.

The Avatar is not bound to do extraordinary actions, but he is bound to give his acts or his work or what he is – any of these or all – a significance and an effective power that are part of something essential to be done in the history of the earth and its races.

An Avatar is not at all bound to be a spiritual prophet – he is never in fact merely a prophet, he is a realiser, an establisher – not of outward things only, though he does realise something in the outward also, but, as I have said, of something essential and radical needed for the terrestrial evolution which is the evolution of the embodied spirit through successive stages towards the Divine.

 Ramakrishna's earlier period was that of one seeking God, not aware from the first of his identity.

Why should the Avatar proclaim himself except on rare occasions to an Arjuna or to a few bhaktas or disciples? It is for others to find out what he is; though he does not deny when others speak of him as That, he is not always saying and perhaps never may say or only in moments like that of the Gita, “I am He”.





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