To help understand the ongoing
debate on Peter Heehs’s recent book, The Lives
of Sri Aurobindo, we have to take into consideration that the divergent
interpretations of the Avatar may find an explanation in the Mother’s
definition of atavism, a cardinal tenet of Integral Yoga. Here is a striking
example:
If you want to appraise the real
value of the religion in which you are born or brought up or to have a correct
perspective of the country or society to which you belong by birth, if you want
to find out how relative a thing the particular environment is into which you
happened to be thrown and confined, you have only to go round the earth and see
that what you think good is looked upon as bad elsewhere and what is considered
as bad in one place is welcomed as good in another. All countries and all
religions are built up out of a mass of traditions. In all of them you will
meet saints and heroes and great and mighty personalities as well as small and
wicked people. You will then perceive what a mockery it is to say, “Because I
am brought up in this religion, therefore it is the only true religion; because
I am born in this country, therefore it is the best of all countries.” [1]
The Mother continues as follows:
If we go a little way within
ourselves, we shall discover that there is in each of us a consciousness that
has been living throughout the ages and manifesting in a multitude of forms.
Each of us has been born in many different countries, belonged to many
different nations, followed many different religions. Why must we accept the
last one as the best? The experiences gathered by us in all these many lives in
different countries and varying religions, are stored up in that inner
continuity of our consciousness which persists through all births. There are
multiple personalities there created by these past experiences, and when we
become aware of this multitude within us, it becomes impossible to speak of one
particular form of truth as the only truth, one country as our only country,
one religion as the only true religion. There are people who have been born
into one country, although the leading elements of their consciousness
obviously belong to another. I have met some born in
If your aim is to be free, in the
freedom of the Spirit, you must get rid of all the ties that are not the inner
truth of your being, but come from subconscious habits. If you wish to
consecrate yourself entirely, absolutely and exclusively to the Divine, you
must do it in all completeness; you must not leave bits of yourself tied here
and there. [2]
Here is another example:
You are born in
When things seem contradictory to
you, it is always because you have remained on too low a plane. If you know how
to climb up a few rungs of the ladder, all contradictions disappear, everything
becomes complementary. [3]
Along with the foregoing quotes, it
is of paramount importance to bring to light certain aspects of Avatarhood
according to the way Sri Aurobindo and the Mother themselves define it. No
matter how difficult it is for a certain mentality to accept, without this the
picture would be incomplete, and the in-depth significance of the Divine taking
a human body for Its earthly manifestation not fully understood. The Mother
writes:
The Divine, being all-powerful, can
lift people up without bothering to come down on earth. It is only if it is
part of the world arrangement that he should take upon himself the burden of
humanity and open the Way that avatarhood has any meaning. [4]
She further notes that “… even the
embodied god cannot be perfect on earth until men are ready to understand and
accept perfection”, and explains:
Nevertheless, even the Divine, when
incarnate on earth, is subject to the same law of progress. His instrument of
manifestation, the physical being he has assumed, should be in a constant state
of progress, and the law of his personal self-expression is in a way linked to
the general law of earthly progress. Thus, even the embodied god cannot be perfect
on earth until men are ready to understand and accept perfection. [5]
This is key to understanding the
nature of the Avatar in all its divine complexity. The necessary ‘imperfection’
of the incarnated Divine is an essential aspect of the Avatar, as it clearly
emerges from reading how Sri Aurobindo describes Avatarhood, as well as how he
documents his own sadhana in Volume 26 of the Centenary Edition, On Himself. But first let us examine a
few other statements from the Mother.
The Avatar comes to the earth to
prove that the Divine can... it is not so much to prove by words as to prove by
a certain realization. [6]
She then introduces an essential
distinction between the Divine manifesting in Its “constructive and
preservative” aspect as the Avatars of Vishnu, versus Its “transformative and
destructive aspect”, manifesting as Shiva. Regarding Buddha, the Mother observes
that he “manifested something of the power of Shiva: it was the same
compassion, the same understanding of all the misery, and the same power which
destroys—obviously with the intention of transforming, but destroys rather than
constructs.” She finally concludes with these revealing words, “Now, you see,
this question of the Divine upon the earth: well, quite naturally those who
believed in him have made a god of him. One has only to see all the temples and
all the Buddhist godheads to know that human nature has always the tendency to
deify what it admires. We
are fallible human beings... [6]
Rather than deification, it is
sacrifice in its broadest and most integral sense, including the sacrifice of
perfection, which defines the true nature and mission of the Avatar. Regarding
In the Essays on the Gita Sri
Aurobindo mentions the names of three Avatars, and Christ is one of them. An
Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth. I
heard Sri Aurobindo himself say that Christ was an emanation of the Lord’s
aspect of love.
… the death of Christ was the
starting-point of a new stage in the evolution of human civilisation. … The
story of Christ, as it has been told, is the concrete and dramatic enactment of
the divine sacrifice: the Supreme Lord, who is All-Light, All-Knowledge, All-
Power, All-Beauty, All-Love, All-Bliss, accepting to assume human ignorance and
suffering in matter, in order to help men to emerge from the falsehood in which
they live and because of which they die. [9]
The Mother further states that “Men
tolerate the presence of the Divine upon earth only on condition that He
suffers there.” [10] And, in another poignant message, she observes that “Only
when men depend exclusively on the Divine and on nothing else, will it no
longer be necessary for the incarnate god to die for them.” [11]
This leads back to the very raison
d’être of the Avatar. The Mother recalls that:
I could speak to you of a very old
tradition, more ancient than the two known lines of spiritual and occult
tradition, that is, the Vedic and Chaldean lines; a tradition which seems to
have been at the origin of these two known traditions, in which it is said that
when, as a result of the action of the adverse forces—known in the Hindu
tradition as the Asuras—the world, instead of developing according to its law
of Light and inherent consciousness, was plunged into the darkness,
inconscience and ignorance that we know, the Creative Power implored the
Supreme Origin, asking him for a special intervention which could save this
corrupted universe; and in reply to this prayer there was emanated from the
Supreme Origin a special Entity, of Love and Consciousness, who cast himself
directly into the most inconscient matter to begin there the work of awakening
it to the original Consciousness and Love.
In the old narratives this Being is
described as stretched out in a deep sleep at the bottom of a very dark cave,
and in his sleep there emanated from him prismatic rays of light which
gradually spread into the Inconscience and embedded themselves in all the
elements of this Inconscience to begin there the work of Awakening.
If one consciously enters into this
Inconscient, one can still see there this same marvellous Being, still in deep
sleep, continuing his work of emanation, spreading his Light; and he will
continue to do it until the Inconscience is no longer inconscient, until
Darkness disappears from the world—and the whole creation awakens to the
Supramental Consciousness. [12]
This Being in “a deep sleep at the
bottom of a very dark cave”, whose “prismatic rays of light” “embedded
themselves in all the elements of this Inconscience to begin there the work of
Awakening”, the Mother explains, is “the first universal Avatar”, “the origin
of all Avatars”, “a conscious intervention of the Supreme in the darkest matter
… in order to awaken this Matter to the receptivity of the Divine Forces.” She
continues:
In fact, this is the origin of all
Avatars. He is, so to say, the first universal Avatar who, gradually, has assumed
more and more conscious bodies and finally manifested in a kind of recognised
line of Beings who have descended directly from the Supreme to perfect this
work of preparing the universe so that, through a continuous progression, it
may become ready to receive and manifest the supramental Light in its entirety.
In every country, every tradition,
the event has been presented in a special way, with different limitations,
different details, particular features, but truly speaking, the origin of all
these stories is the same, and that is what we could call a direct, conscious
intervention of the Supreme in the darkest matter, without going through all
the intermediaries, in order to awaken this Matter to the receptivity of the
Divine Forces.
The intervals separating these
various incarnations seem to become shorter and shorter, as if, to the extent
that Matter became more and more ready, the action could accelerate and become
more and more rapid in its movement, more and more conscious too, more and more
effective and decisive.
And it will go on multiplying and
intensifying until the entire universe becomes the total Avatar of the Supreme.
[13]
Self-sacrifice, the Avatar’s most
supreme expression of love… I will next present how Sri Aurobindo’s words in On Himself and Letters on Yoga are the highest self-witness of the Divine who,
upon taking a human body, necessarily assumes the burden of unregenerate human
nature, so as to show to humanity the way to self-perfection.
References
Note: The Mother’s quotes are taken
from the second edition of the Collected
Works of the Mother, 2003. The date is followed by the volume’s number,
then the page’s number.
[1] 9 June 1929, Vol. 3, pp. 82-3
[2] 9 June 1929, Vol. 3, 83-4
[3] 16 November 1955, Vol. 7, 371
[4] 6 March 1935, Vol. 15, 18
[5] Bulletin,
April 1953, Vol. 12, 64
[6] 7 September 1955, Vol. 7, 292-3
[7] 3
June 1960, Vol. 10, 61
[8] 16 June 1960, Vol. 10, 61
[9] Ibid.
[10] Vol. 15, 18
[11] 2 August 1952, Vol. 15, 18
[12] 28 May 1958, Vol. 9, 332-3
[13] 28 May 1958, Vol. 9, 333-4