THE AVATAR PRINCIPLE

 

It is popularly known that the avatar comes from a higher plane of existence to the lower plane to protect and uplift the lower. He teaches love for and dedication to truth in order that we recollect (smritirlavdha-Arjuna) what we are, and understand the significance of His work for our regeneration. Though He can achieve all that by just willing it, He plans his entire avatar time to teach us how to achieve it ourselves. In other words, he wants to convince us that the quality of our own lives and the life around us can be vastly improved, and we have the means for that, if we allow our higher nature to take over. That means, he wants us to believe that the essential human nature is a participant of the divine, and in order to manifest that we must live accordingly.

If we look at it closely, and examine the idea, we shall notice that to bring into this earth-life, dominated by fear, hate, selfishness, suffering and death the quality of love, happiness, health and beauty is the purpose of the avatar principle, and we are not aliens to it. We would like to do so, but when we are seized by fear and doubt, we fail to visualize the strength inherent in us and thus we turn away from the Avatar in us. When the tremendous possibility inherent in a human being is misdirected, a Ravana, and a Kamsa is born. They follow their own grammar in order to obtain brute power which ends in their own destruction, and destruction of peace and happiness of the humanity. Tapas is an unfailing means of achieving any end. If the power of Tapas is used for establishing a dharmic kingdom on earth peace and happiness would be phenomenal. But they changed the direction of their tapas power, and dissipated all of it. Their objective was to establish their suzerainty, and exclusivity, which is not the basic nature of life. Avatar comes to re-establish life’s grand inclusivity.

 The avatar willingly dons human frailty to restructure our strength. True strength lies in connecting with our true nature, which is wholesome life, not life in pieces.  When we understand that, we begin to practice the principle in smaller fields; we begin to love more unselfishly, sacrifice more willingly, work towards establishing order where disorder ruled, and live more transparently. The Avatar assumes human nature to teach us how to reconnect with Him, and reconnect with life.

The avatar principle, therefore, is the principle of life. Life always seeks and needs to expand, not live only for itself, but live with others. Therefore Swami always said Expansion is my life. All that we need for this ceaseless expansion we receive from the higher planes; we hold them in our non-physical cup, but we need to pour it on our physical nature if we would transmute it. This action is very similar to the avatar work. The principle of avatar is built into the nature of life; the divine nature descends unto the human to bridge the differences. Therefore the Avatar is so close to us, and we to him. Swami once wrote to a devotee, “You are the God of universe, creating it out of yourself, and absorbing it unto yourself”.

 That takes us to another dimension of our lives. If the Avatar embodies the shadowless truth of life, why does he want to engage with unreal shadows? The physical life, anyway, does not define the possibilities of life, except that it can at best be a useful stopover in its journey towards its own completeness. Then why doesn’t the Ultimate Truth stay in his own completeness without involving itself in life’s apparent self-deception? Avatars have never said that this earth life is unreal, and is to be dumped. This earth life is an extension of the Supreme truth which Avatar embodies. It is like the shadow which proves the Original image, and we have to learn to see it like that. Otherwise why should God care for it, and Avatars come to reconnect the shadow with its reality? Truth is not exclusive, it is all-inclusive; that which is apparently unreal also has its roots in reality. Even that which is not, arises from that which is; in fact ‘not’ is part of ‘is’. Therefore the avatar appears to don the incompleteness of human life in order to give us a glimpse of totality of life, its pains and its ecstasies, its immanence and its transcendence. The avatar doesn’t destroy evil completely, because complete destruction of evil is also complete destruction of good, and each individual has to achieve that in their own lives in order to experience life in its fullness. Avatars stitch us back to our real nature.

The avatar teaches us love, sacrifice, faith, compassion, detached happiness by helping us open the valve which we had closed in fear. He removes this fear by living a life which is completely fearless. All that makes life touch its own fullness is within access, stored up on another plane. The avatar teaches us how to access this plane and let it fill our empty cups. He does not import it from another loka. He virtually tells us that just as he connects all levels, all lokas, we too can; if he is God, we too share the same identity. He comes as avatar to awaken his own nature in us, embedded in the very structure of our lives.

Therefore, we have our avatar moments when we connect with the divine in us, though briefly. Everyone has their moments when they get intimations from the higher nature within themselves, and become aware of what has been missing in their lives. With this descent of awareness they feel filled with joy, happiness, understanding and strength to deal with life. At these rare moments they touch a beauty and fullness which, they feel, had never been alien to them, momentarily forgotten though. Wordsworth writes in his ‘Intimations of Immortality’ ode The Soul that rises with us…. / Hath had elsewhere its setting, / trailing clouds of glory do we come / From God, who is our home. During such avatar moments he travelled back to his own childhood, and relived the innocence and sweetness of the essential nature of life. This ‘rise of soul’ is the awakening of the primeval memory embedded in every creature. That is what Arjuna refers to when he wakes up from depression, and tells the avatar, “I have got back my memory”. That is the avatar moment when the inherent divinity in man is awakened, and the lower nature is ‘put to flight’ as Omarkhayyam describes it cryptically.

Just as we have our avatar moments, we have our evil moments too. When the higher nature is blocked by the lower nature, and life is covered with darkness, suffering and death, it can be very alarming; it can overshadow our memory like Rahu. It is a sort of Rahukalam in human life. Then we cry out for God to bring light into this darkness. This is one part of life crying out to unite with the other part. When individual nature is overwhelmed by greed, selfishness, and the powers of ego, the evil moment dominates. This had happened to Angulimala. When he was sent out of the school by his guru for

some misunderstanding, and the society rejected him, the devil caught him, and he remained in its grip till he met the Buddha, and the avatar moment awakened in him. Even if that person is unaware of the avatar moment which alone can save them, the avatar moment awaits almost round the corner for some sincere desire to connect it. And then it happens. At the descent of the divine the individual receives a flash of recognition, of memory of another loka they are not unaware of, and starts to turn around. It is not destruction of the lower nature, the shadow is gone. The higher nature is not external to us, neither is the lower nature. The struggle is within, growing from the human to the divine, the prodigal son coming back to his father’s house, we return to our origin, and He celebrates it.

But no growth is achieved without going through the grind. We have seen how Swami willingly went through the ‘human woes’; he hardly had any ‘comfort’ in his life, took upon himself innumerable onslaughts of our lower nature without batting an eyelid, but stayed grounded in his highest nature. That is the message of the avatar – transmute your lives holding on to your avatar nature, through pain and suffering if need be. Sri Rama too had hardly any ‘comfort’ in his life. The epic is therefore described as built on Karuna Rasa, the experience of pain and suffering as a purifying agent. I think Jesus Christ too invoked this karuna rasa through his own crucifixion in order to awaken the divine nature in his followers. Even the Greeks had conceived of tragedy as a purifying experience, a catharsis.

A Rama, Krishna, Sai Baba at Shirdi or Puttaparthi is not only worshipped, he is held so dear, because we are in reality not a divided existence. Swami has so often reiterated this. We feel a surge of love and devotion in their presence, and carry it in our hearts to renovate our lives. Bhakti helps us open the valve for our own avatar nature to take over. Isn’t that renovation of Dharma, and protection of that which is incorruptible in us?

 

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