Avatarhood would have little
meaning if it were not connected 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
[pp. 401-02]
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.
[p. 405]
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
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
[pp. 406-07]
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.
[p. 409]
As for the Divine and the human,
that also is a mind-made difficulty. The Divine is there in the human, and the
human fulfilling and exceeding its highest aspirations and tendencies becomes
the Divine. That is what your depression could not understand—that when the
Divine descends, he takes upon himself the burden of humanity in order to
exceed it—he becomes human in order to show humanity how to become Divine. But
that cannot be if there is only a weakling without any divine Presence within
or divine Force behind him—he has to be strong in order to put his strength
into all who are willing to receive it. There is therefore in him a double
element—human in front, Divine behind—and it is that which gives the impression
of unfathomableness of which you complained. If you look upon the human alone,
looking with the external eye only and not willing or ready to see anything
else, you will see a human being only—if you look for the Divine, you will find
the Divine.
[p. 409]
It is true that it is impossible
for the limited human reason to judge the way or purpose of the Divine,—which
is the way of the Infinite dealing with the finite.
[p. 410]
It is not by your mind that you can
hope to understand the Divine and its action, but by the growth of a true and
divine consciousness within you. If the Divine were to unveil and reveal itself
in all its glory, the mind might feel a Presence, but it would not understand
its action or its nature. It is in the measure of your own realisation and by
the birth and growth of that greater consciousness in yourself that you will
see the Divine and understand its action even behind its terrestrial disguises.
[p. 410]
Men's way of doing things well is
through a clear mental connection; they see things and do things with the mind
and what they want is a mental and human perfection. 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.
[pp. 410-11]
If the Divine were not in essence
omnipotent, he could not be omnipotent anywhere—whether in the supramental or
anywhere else. Because he chooses to limit or determine his action by
conditions, it does not make him less omnipotent. His self-limitation is itself
an act of omnipotence....
Why should the Divine be tied down
to succeed in all his operations? What if failure suits him better and serves
better the ultimate purpose? What rigid primitive notions are these about the
Divine!
Certain conditions have been
established for the game and so long as those conditions remain unchanged
certain things are not done,—so we say they are impossible, can't be done. If
the conditions are changed then the same things are done or at least become
licit—allowable, legal according to the so-called laws of Nature, and then we
say they can be done. The Divine also acts according to the conditions of the
game. He may change them, but he has to change them first, not proceed, while
maintaining the conditions, to act by a series of miracles.
[p. 411]
If the Avatars are shams, they have
no value for others nor any true effect, Avatarhood becomes perfectly
irrational and unreal and meaningless. 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. What is
the use of admitting Avatarhood if you take all the meaning out of it?
pp. 411-12]
If your argument is that the
life-actions, struggles of the Avatar (e.g. Rama's, Krishna's) are unreal
because the Divine is there and knows it is all a Maya, in man also there is a
self, a spirit that is immortal, untouched, divine; you can say that man's
sufferings and ignorance are only put on, sham, unreal. But if man feels them
as real and if the Avatar feels his work and the difficulties to be serious and
real?
If the existence of the Divinity is
of no practical effect, what is the use of a theoretical admission? The
manifestation of the Divine in the Avatar is of help to man because it helps
him to discover his own divinity and find the way to realise it. If the
difference is so great that the humanity by its very nature prevents all
possibility of following the way opened by the Avatar, it merely means that
there is no divinity in man that can respond to the Divinity in the Avatar.
[p. 412]
I repeat, the Divine when he takes on the burden of terrestrial nature, takes it fully, sincerely and without any conjuring tricks or pretence. If he has something behind him which emerges always out of the coverings, it is the same thing in essence, even if greater in degree, that is behind others—and it is to awaken that that he is there....
The psychic being does the same for
all who are intended for the spiritual way—men need not be extraordinary beings
to follow it. That is the mistake you are making—to harp on greatness as if
only the great can be spiritual.
[p. 412]
I have no intention of entering
into a supreme defence of Rama—I only entered into the points about Bali etc.
because these are usually employed nowadays to belittle him as a great
personality on the usual level. But from the point of view of Avatarhood I
would no more think of defending his moral perfection according to modern
standards than I would think of defending Napoleon or Caesar against the
moralists or the democratic critics or the debunkers in order to prove that
they were Vibhutis. Vibhuti, Avatar are terms which have their own meaning and
scope, and they are not concerned with morality or immorality, perfection or
imperfection according to small human standards or setting an example to men or
showing new moral attitudes or giving new spiritual teachings. These may or may
not be done, but they are not at all the essence of the matter.
[pp. 414-15]
No time for a full answer to your
renewed remarks on Rama tonight. You are intrigued only because you stick to
the modern standard, modern measuring-rods of moral and spiritual perfection
(introduced by Seely and Bankim) for the Avatar—while I start from another
standpoint altogether and resolutely refuse these standard human measures. The
ancient Avatars except Buddha were not either standards of perfection or spiritual
teachers in spite of the Gita which was spoken, says Krishna, in a moment of
supernormal consciousness which he lost immediately afterwards. They were, if I
may say so, representative cosmic men who were instruments of a divine
Intervention for fixing certain things in the evolution of the earth-race. I
stick to that and refuse to submit myself in this argument to any other
standard whatever.
[p. 418]
By sattwic man I do not mean a
moral or an always self-controlled one, but a predominantly mental (as opposed
to a vital or merely physical man) who has rajasic emotions and passions, but
lives predominantly according to his mind and its will and ideas. There is no
such thing, I suppose, as a purely sattwic man—since the three gunas go always
together in a state of unstable equilibrium—but a predominantly sattwic man is
what I have described. My impression of Rama from Valmiki is such—it is quite
different from yours. I am afraid your picture of him is quite out of focus—you
efface the main lines of the characters, belittle and brush out all the lights
to which Valmiki gave so much value and prominence and hammer always at some
details and some parts of shadow which you turn into the larger part of Rama.
That is what the debunkers do—but a debunked figure is not the true figure.
By the way, a sattwic man can have
a strong passion and strong anger—and when he lets the latter loose, the
normally vicious fellow is simply nowhere.
Witness the outbursts of anger of
Christ, the indignation of Chaitanya—and the general evidence of experience and
psychology on the point.
The trait of Rama which you give as
that of an undeveloped man, viz., his decisive spontaneous action according to
the will and the idea that came to him, is a trait of the cosmic man and many
Vibhutis, men of action of the large Caesarian or Napoleonic type.
[p. 419]
The question was if certain
perfections must not be demanded of the Divine Manifestation which seemed to me
quite irrelevant to the reality. I put forward two propositions which appear to
me indispensable unless we are to reverse all spiritual knowledge in favour of
modern European ideas about things: first, the Divine Manifestation, even when
it manifests in mental and human ways, has behind it a consciousness greater
than the mind and not bound by the petty mental and moral conventions of this
very ignorant human race—so that to impose these standards on the Divine is to
try to do what is irrational and impossible. Secondly, this Divine
Consciousness behind the apparent personality is concerned with only two things
in a fundamental way—the truth above and here below the Lila and the purpose of
the incarnation or manifestation, and it does what is necessary for that in the
way its greater than human consciousness sees to be the necessary and intended
way.
[pp. 421-22]
What do you mean by lust? Avatars
can be married and have children and that is not possible without sex; they can
have friendships, enmities, family feelings, etc., etc.,—these are vital
things. I think you are under the impression that an Avatar must be a saint or
a yogi.
[p. 422]
In the yoga we do not strive after
greatness. It is not a question of Sri Krishna's disciples but of the
earth-consciousness. Rama was a mental man, there is no touch of the overmind
consciousness (direct) in anything he said or did, but what he did was done
with the greatness of the Avatar. But there have since been men who did live in
touch with the planes above mind—higher mind, illumined mind, intuition. There
is no question of asking whether they were “greater” than Rama; they might have
been less “great”, but they were able to live from a new plane of
consciousness. And
[p. 422]