Perception of Avatarhood is an individual matter, and that perception might be governed by the cultural, historical, philosophical, religious, even temporal, or spiritual factors. But there is also a hope that these factors can be set aside when one comes in contact with the inner or higher reality which, and nothing else, should indeed count for an individual. If this is done then we keep all danger away from us, rather all danger is kept away from us.
In this context, let us make another observation here. In the April 2007 issue of Auroville Today we have the following statement, a statement which rather stuns one greatly: “…there's a danger that an over-reliance on the psychic being and surrender to the Divine, as it is practised … can devolve into passivity.” We must say that there can never be over-reliance on the psychic being and surrender to the Divine. Wasn’t that the Mantra of the Mother, particularly “What Thou Willest, What Thou Willest” when she was busy with the cellular transformation? If somewhere, and sometimes,—and it is immaterial where that somewhere could be and when that sometimes was or will be,—it is not practised ‘properly’ it cannot be the fault of the principle, of the occult and spiritual truth that is there behind it. People in their too confident a manner of intellectualsing things are generally in a hurry and mix up emotions and sentiments of the vital with the psychic perceptions; surrender to the Divine is something altogether diffrent. There is no cure for that, and perhaps one could just ignore such statements. Instead, let us read the following from Sri Aurobindo’s Essays on the Gita:
“In the Avatar, the divinely-born Man, the real substance shines through the coating; the mark of the seal is there only for form, the vision is that of the secret Godhead, the power of the life is that of the secret Godhead, and it breaks through the seals of the assumed human nature; the sign of the Godhead, an inner soul-sign, not outward, not physical, stands out legible for all to read who care to see or who can see; for the Asuric nature is always blind to these things, it sees the body and not the soul, the external being and not the internal, the mask and not the Person. In the ordinary human birth the Nature-aspect of the universal Divine assuming humanity prevails; in the incarnation the God-aspect of the same phenomenon takes its place. In the one he allows the human nature to take possession of his partial being and to dominate it; in the other he takes possession of his partial type of being and its nature and divinely dominates it. Not by evolution or ascent like the ordinary man, the Gita seems to tell us, not by a growing into the divine birth, but by a direct descent into the stuff of humanity and a taking up of its moulds.”
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