TERMS STARTING WITH
avatar ::: 1. (chat, virtual reality) An image representing a user in a multi-user virtual reality (or VR-like, in the case of Palace) space.2. (CMU, Tektronix) root, superuser. There are quite a few Unix computers on which the name of the superuser account is avatar rather than root. This quirk was originated by a CMU hacker who disliked the term superuser, and was propagated through an ex-CMU hacker at Tektronix.[Jargon File] (1997-09-14)
avatar 1. "chat, virtual reality" An {image} representing a user in a multi-user {virtual reality} (or VR-like, in the case of {Palace}) space. 2. (CMU, Tektronix) {root}, {superuser}. There are quite a few {Unix} computers on which the name of the superuser account is "avatar" rather than "root". This quirk was originated by a {CMU} hacker who disliked the term "superuser", and was propagated through an ex-CMU hacker at {Tektronix}. [{Jargon File}] (1997-09-14)
avatara (avatar) ::: divine incarnation; the "descent into form" of the avatara Godhead (deva, isvara, purus.ottama), "when the divine Consciousness and Power, taking upon itself the human form and the human mode of action, possesses it not only by powers and magnitudes, by degrees and outward faces of itself but out of its eternal self-knowledge" in order "to exemplify the possibility of the Divine manifest in the human being" and "to leave the influence of that manifestation vibrating in the earth-nature and the soul of that manifestation presiding over its upward endeavour"; any of the ten incarnations of Vis.n.u described in the Hindu tradition, regarded by Sri Aurobindo as "a parable of evolution".
avatara (Avatar) ::: Incarnation; the descent into form; the revelation of the Godhead in humanity; the Divine manifest in a human appearance; the word avatara means a descent; it is the coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.
avatar and lord of heroism); Vamana (dwarf
avatar and lord of reason); Paras u Rama (Para-
AVATARA ::: One in whom the Divine Consciousness has descended into human birth for a great world-work; the Incarnation; Spirit descending into man; Descent into form; the revelation of the Godhead in humanity; the Divine who has descended into the human consciousness; coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.
An Avatar, roughly speaking, is one who is conscious of the presence and power of the Divine born in him or descended into him governing from within his will and life action; he feels identified inwardly with this divine power and presence.
He is a realiser, an establisher - not of outward things only, though he does realise something in the outward also, but of something essential and radical needed for the terrestrial evolution which is the evolution of the embodied spirit through successive stages towards the Divine.
There are two sides of the phenomenon of avatarhood, the Divine Consciousness and the instrumental personality in Nature under the conditions of Nature which it uses according to the rules of the game.
The Avatar takes upon himself the nature of humanity in his instrumental parts, though the consciousness acting behind is divine.
avatar ::: n. --> The descent of a deity to earth, and his incarnation as a man or an animal; -- chiefly associated with the incarnations of Vishnu.
Incarnation; manifestation as an object of worship or admiration.
avatars in Vedic lore. [See Avatar.]
AVATAR (Skt) Higher being, 45-self or even higher self, incarnating in mankind to assist us.
avatar&
avatars ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word Avatar means a descent; it is a coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.” *Essays on the Gita
Avatara: Descent; it is a coming down of the Divine into the human plane; incarnation.
Avatar: A Sanskrit term, which in Hindu terminology is used properly in the meaning of “an incarnation of Vishnu.” Theosophists and other believers in occultism and esotericism use it in the general meaning of any divine incarnation. The word is frequently used also to denote one spiritually highly developed through many incarnations on the material plane of existence. (This is the meaning of the term in Rosicrucianism, in particular.)
Avatara(Sanskrit) ::: The noun-form derived from a compound of two words: ava, prepositional prefix meaning"down," and tri, verb-root meaning to "cross over," to "pass"; thus, avatri -- to "pass down," or to"descend." Hence the word signifies the passing down of a celestial energy or of an individualizedcomplex of celestial energies, which is equivalent to saying a celestial being, in order to overshadow andilluminate some human being -- but a human being who, at the time of such connection of "heaven withearth," of divinity with matter, possesses no karmically intermediate or connecting link between theovershadowing entity and the physical body: in other words, no human soul karmically destined to be theinner master of the body thus born.The intermediate link necessary, so that the human being-to-be may have the human intermediate orpsychological apparatus fit to express the invisible splendor of this celestial descent, is supplied by thedeliberate and voluntary entrance into the unborn child -- and coincidently with the overshadowing of thecelestial power -- of the psychological or intermediate principle of one of the Greater Ones, who thus"completes" what is to be the pure and lofty human channel through which the "descending" divinitymay manifest, this divinity finding in this high psychological principle a sufficiently evolved linkenabling it to express itself in human form upon earth.Hence an avatara is one who has a combination of three elements in his being: an inspiring divinity; ahighly evolved intermediate nature or soul, which is loaned to him and is the channel of that inspiringdivinity; and a pure, clean, physical body.
Avatar: A shard of spirit energy, tied to the human soul, perhaps from the Pure One(s) of the long-ago universe. Through the interaction of the Avatar with the universe, a mage performs magic.
Avatara-vada: The doctrine that holds that God takes human form.
Avatar, Avatara (Sanskrit) Avatāra [from ava down + the verbal root tṛ to cross over, pass] That which passes down or descends; the passing down of a celestial energy or an individualized complex of celestial energies — a celestial being — in order to overshadow and illuminate a human being who, at the time of such connection of divinity with matter, possesses no human soul karmically destined to be the inner master of the body thus born. “Hence an Avatara is one who has a combination of three elements in his being: an inspiring divinity; a highly evolved intermediate nature or soul, which is loaned to him and is the channel of that inspiring divinity; and a pure, clean, physical body” (OG 16).
Avatar—in Vedic lore, the avatar was the
Avatar.]
Avatar ::: Sri Aurobindo: “The word Avatar means a descent; it is a coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.” Essays on the Gita
Avatar Storm: (metaplot) Metaphysical storm that made/ makes travel beyond the Gauntlet difficult and dangerous.
Avatar: The “inner god” that guides a mage, an Awakened Avatar allows a mage to rework reality. (See Genius, Seeking.)
Avatar ::: “The word Avatar means a descent; it is a coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.” Essays on the Gita
Avatar ::: We have to remark c
refully that the upholding of Dharma in the world is not the only object of the descent of the Avatar, that great mystery of the Divine manifest in humanity; for the upholding of the Dharma is not an all-sufficient object in itself, not the supreme possible aim for the manifestation of a Christ, a Krishna, a Buddha, but is only the general condition of a higher aim and a more supreme and divine utility. For there are two aspects of the divine birth; one is a descent, the birth of God in humanity, the Godhead manifesting itself in the human form and nature, the eternal Avatar; the other is an ascent, the birth of man into the Godhead, man rising into the divine nature and consciousness, madbhavam agatah. ; it is the being born anew in a second birth of the soul. It is that new birth which Avatarhood and the upholding of the Dharma are intended to serve.
Ref: CWSA Vol.19 , Page: 147-48
TERMS ANYWHERE
7th of the 10 avatars in Vedic Lore. [See Avatar.]
AbhidhammAvatAra. In PAli, "Introduction to Abhidhamma"; a primer of PAli ABHIDHAMMA attributed to BUDDHADATTA (c. fifth century CE), who is said to have been contemporaneous with the premier PAli scholiast BUDDHAGHOSA; some legends go so far as to suggest that the two ABHIDHAMMIKAS might even have met. The book was written in south India and is the oldest of the noncanonical PAli works on abhidhamma. It offers a systematic scholastic outline of abhidhamma, divided into twenty-four chapters called niddesas (S. nirdesa; "expositions"), and displays many affinities with Buddhaghosa's VISUDDHIMAGGA. These chapters include coverage of the mind (CITTA) and mental concomitants (CETASIKA), the various types of concentration (SAMADHI), the types of knowledge (JNANA) associated with enlightenment, and the process of purification (visuddhi, S. VIsUDDHI). The work is written in a mixture of prose and verse.
abhisaMdhi. (T. ldem por dgongs pa; C. miyi; J. mitchi/mitsui; K. mirŭi 密意). In Sanskrit, "implied intention," a term used in hermeneutics to classify the types of statements made by the Buddha. In the MAHAYANASuTRALAMKARA, there are four such abhisaMdhi listed. (1) The first is implied intention pertaining to entrance (avatAranAbhisaMdhi). The Buddha recognizes that if he were to teach HĪNAYANA disciples that, in addition to the nonexistence of the self (ANATMAN), DHARMAs also did not exist (DHARMANAIRATMYA), they would be so terrified that they would never enter the MAHAYANA. Therefore, in order to coax them toward the MahAyAna, he teaches them that a personal self does not exist while explaining that phenomena other than the person do exist. (2) The second is implied intention pertaining to the [three] natures (laksanAbhisaMdhi). When the Buddha said that all phenomena are without own-nature, he had in mind the imaginary nature (PARIKALPITA) of phenomena. When he said that they were neither produced nor destroyed, he had in mind their dependent nature (PARATANTRA). When he said that they were inherently free from suffering, he had in mind their consummate nature (PARINIsPANNA). (3) The third is implied intention pertaining to antidotes (pratipaksAbhisaMdhi). In the hīnayAna, the Buddha teaches specific antidotes (PRATIPAKsA) to various defilements. Thus, as an antidote to hatred, he teaches the cultivation of love; as an antidote to sensuality, he teaches meditation on the foul, such as a decomposing corpse; as an antidote to pride, he teaches meditation on dependent origination; and as an antidote to a wandering mind, he teaches meditation on the breath. He indicates that these faults can be completely destroyed with these antidotes, calling them a supreme vehicle (agrayAna). In fact, these faults are only completely destroyed with full insight into non-self. Thus, the Buddha intentionally overstated their potency. (4) The final type is implied intention pertaining to translation (parinAmanAbhisaMdhi). This category encompasses those statements that might be termed antiphrastic, i.e., appearing to say something quite contrary to the tenor of the doctrine, which cannot be construed as even provisionally true. A commonly cited example of such a statement is the declaration in the DHAMMAPADA (XXI.5-6) that one becomes pure through killing one's parents; the commentators explain that parents are to be understood here to mean negative mental states such as sensual desire. See also ABHIPRAYA; SANDHYABHAsA.
According to the belief of most Advaita-Vedantists, Sankaracharya, the great Indian philosopher and sage, is held to be an avatara of Siva.
Acintyastava. (T. Bsam gyis mi khyab par bstod pa). In Sanskrit, "In Praise of the Inconceivable One"; an Indian philosophical work by the MADHYAMAKA master NAGARJUNA written in the form of a praise for the Buddha. In the Tibetan tradition, there are a large number of such praises (called STAVAKAYA) in contrast to the set of philosophical texts (called YUKTIKAYA) attributed to NAgArjuna. Among these praise works, the Acintyastava, LOKATĪTASTAVA, NIRAUPAMYASTAVA, and PARAMARTHASTAVA are extant in Sanskrit and are generally accepted to be his work; these four works together are known as the CATUḤSTAVA. It is less certain that he is the author of the DHARMADHATUSTAVA or DHARMADHATUSTOTRA ("Hymn to the Dharma Realm") of which only fragments are extant in the original Sanskrit. The Acintyastava contains fifty-nine stanzas, many of which are addressed to the Buddha. The first section provides a detailed discussion of why dependently originated phenomena are empty of intrinsic nature (NIḤSVABHAVA); this section has clear parallels to the MuLAMADHYAMAKAKARIKA. The forty-fifth verse makes reference to the term PARATANTRA, leading some scholars to believe that NAgArjuna was familiar with the LAnKAVATARASuTRA. The second section describes wisdom (JNANA); the third section sets forth the qualities of the true dharma (SADDHARMA); the fourth and final section extols the Buddha as the best of teachers (sASTṚ).
adhisthAna. (P. adhitthAna; T. byin gyis brlabs pa; C. jiachi; J. kaji; K. kaji 加持). In Sanskrit, lit. "determination" or "decisive resolution" and commonly translated as "empowerment." Literally, the term has the connotation of "taking a stand," viz., the means by which the buddhas reveal enlightenment to the world, as well as the adept's reliance on the buddhas' empowerment through specific ritual practices. In the former sense, adhisthAna can refer to the magical power of the buddhas and bodhisattvas, in which contexts it is often translated as "blessing" or "empowerment." As the LAnKAVATARASuTRA notes, it is thanks to the buddhas' empowerment issuing from their own original vows (PRAnIDHANA) that BODHISATTVAS are able to undertake assiduous cultivation over three infinite eons (ASAMKHYEYAKALPA) so that they may in turn become buddhas. The buddhas' empowerment sustains the bodhisattvas in their unremitting practice by both helping them to maintain tranquillity of mind throughout the infinity of time they are in training and, ultimately, once the bodhisattvas achieve the tenth and final stage (BHuMI) of their training, the cloud of dharma (DHARMAMEGHA), the buddhas appear from all the ten directions to anoint the bodhisattvas as buddhas in their own right (see ABHIsEKA). ¶ In mainstream Buddhist materials, adhisthAna refers to the first of a buddha's six or ten psychic powers (ṚDDHI), the ability to project mind-made bodies (MANOMAYAKAYA) of himself, viz., to replicate himself ad infinitum. In PAli materials, adhitthAna is also used to refer to the "determination" to extend the duration of meditative absorption (P. JHANA; S. DHYANA) and the derivative psychic powers (P. iddhi; S. ṚDDHI).
Aebel-Zivo (Gnostic) Employed by the Nazarene Gnostics in the Codex Nazaraeus, equivalent to the Hebrew Metatron, Shaddai in one of its forms, the angel Gabriel, and the Legatus (ambassador) who is sent by the Lord of Celsitude as the first messenger of light. A manifestation of the divinity in man, a conscious union of the personal man with his inner god, as in the case of an avatara like Jesus, or an illuminated leader like Moses (IU 2:154).
Airyanem Vaejo is the primeval land of innocence and bliss of the Vendidad, similar to the Sveta-dvipa (white island) of Puranic literature or to Mount Meru. In this “beautiful land,” by the river Daitya, “the stars, the moon, and the sun are only once (a year) seen to rise and set” (Vendidad). Blavatsky equates it with the cradleland of physical humanity, and locates it in Central Asia. It is identical to Sambhala and to Arghya Varsha from which the Kalki avatara is expected (SD 2:416; BCW 4:526-7).
Also the name of a legendary muni and physician, born in Panchanada, Kashmir, said to have been the physician of Indo-Scythian King Kanishka (1st or 2nd century). Once Sesha, the King of the Serpents, visiting the earth, found only sickness and suffering everywhere. Being the recipient from a divine source of the Ayur Veda and having knowledge of all cures, he became filled with pity and determined to incarnate as the son of a muni in order to alleviate the ills of mankind. Named Charaka, as he had come to the earth as a wanderer, he then composed a new work on medicine based on the older works of Agnivesa. He is commonly accepted as an avatara of the Serpent Sesha, “an embodiment of divine Wisdom, since Sesha-Naga, the King of the ‘Serpent’ race, is synonymous with Ananta, the seven-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu sleeps during the pralayas. Ananta is the ‘endless’ and the symbol of eternity, and as such, one with Space, while Sesha is only periodical in his manifestations. Hence while Vishnu is identified with Ananta, Charaka is only the Avatar of Sesha” (TG 78).
A more mystical significance is founded in the fact that when a buddha or avatara appears or whenever an effort is made to aid mankind along spiritual lines, the powers of darkness automatically react along their own lines. This corresponding tendency to evil is the fundamental significance of Antichrist — Christos being the name of the high initiate in whom was imbodied a ray of the Logos.
Amsamsavatara (Sanskrit) Aṃśāṃśāvatāra [from aṃśāṃśā (aṃśa + aṃśa) portion of a portion, fragment + avatāra descent from ava-tṝ to cross over down, descend] The descent of a part of a part; applied to the numerous manifestations of Vishnu and Brahma; in the Vishnu-Purana more particularly to Krishna and to the “actions he performed as a part of a part [amsamsavatara] of the Supreme, upon the earth” (5:1). An avatara or so-called divine descent is never a “descent” or incarnation of the wholeness or entirety of a divinity, but only of a part of it; so that every avatara involves a descent only of a part of a part, and hence, strictly speaking, may be called an amsamsavatara. Obviously, the greater the avatara, the greater in influence though not necessarily of form is the amsa or portion which descends (cf MB Adiparvan 7).
amsavatara ::: a partial Incarnation [avatara].
". . . 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.” Letters on Yoga
“… 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.” Letters on Yoga*
“… 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.” Letters on Yoga
"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.” Letters on Yoga
“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.” Letters on Yoga
and avatars. I felt somewhat like Dante, in the opening canto of The Divine Comedy, when,
Anham. (安含) (c. 579-640). Korean pilgrim-monk of the Silla dynasty. According to the HAEDONG KOSŬNG CHoN, in 600, Anham attempted with a fellow monk by the name of Hyesuk to travel to China in search of the teachings of the Buddha but had to turn back due to a heavy rainstorm. The following year, a royal decree permitted him to accompany a Silla envoy to China. At the behest of the Chinese emperor, he studied various scriptures at the monastery of Xingshengsi in the imperial capital of Chang'an for five years. Anham returned to Silla in 605 with foreign monks from Khotan, Serindia, India, and China. While residing at the monastery of HWANGNYONGSA, these monks are claimed to have translated together a scripture known as the Zhantanxianghuo xingguang miaonü jing, which emphasizes the efficacy of a DHARAnĪ called zhantanxiang shen. Anham might also be identical to another Korean monk by the name of Anhong who is said to have brought the LAnKAVATARASuTRA, sRĪMALADEVĪSIMHANADASuTRA, and relics of the Buddha to Korea in 576. Anham was renowned for his superknowledges (ABHIJNA) and was worshipped as one of the "ten worthies of Silla" (Silla sipsong) at Hwangnyongsa. A text known as the Tongdo songnip ki ("Record of the Establishment of the Eastern Capital") is attributed to Anham.
Ansamsavatara. See AMSAMSAVATARA
Apollonius of Tyana First-century neo-Pythagorean, known for his ascetic life, moral teachings, and occult powers. His biography is a Hermetic allegory, though based on facts. A theurgist and adept of high powers, he studied Phoenician sciences as well as Pythagorean philosophy. He traveled widely, journeying to Babylon and India where he associated with the Chaldeans, Magi, Brahmans, and Buddhists. His life was spent preaching noble ethics, prophesying, healing, and performing many well-attested phenomena or “miracles.” Before his death he opened an esoteric school at Ephesus. Blavatsky states that he was a nirmanakaya rather than an avatara.
are past, except Kalki the 10th avatar, who will
Arghyavarsha (Sanskrit) Arghyavarṣa [from arghya worthy, valuable + varṣa raining, cloud, division of the earth separated by a mountain range from vṛṣ to rain, bestow abundantly] Land of libations; “the mystery name of that region which extends from Kailas mountain nearly to the Schamo Desert — from within which the Kalki Avatar is expected” (SD 2:416n). See also AIRYANMEN VAEJA
Arthur, King (Welsh) A dual figure: historical ruler who held up for forty years or so the Saxon incursions; said to have passed (not died) at or after the Battle of Camlan (540 AD). The mythological Arthur was the son of Uther Pendragon, or Uthr Ben, the Wonderful Head. In Prydwen, his Ship of Glass, he made an expedition into Annwn (the underworld) to obtain the Pair Dadeni, or cauldron of reincarnation, the symbol of initiation. As the king that was and shall be, he appears in the Welsh version of the coming of the Kalki-avatara, which will come to pass at the end of the present yuga. After Camlan he was taken to Ynys Afallen (Apple-tree Island), to be healed of his wounds and to await his return. But the apple tree of the island, as we see in the 6th-century poem “Afallenan” by Myrddin Gwyllt, is the Tree of Wisdom. The poem tells how the tree had to be hidden and guarded, but the time would come when it should be known again: then Arthur would return, and Cadwalaor, and then “shall Wales rejoice; bright shall be her dragon (leader). The horns of joy shall sound the Song of Peace and serenity. Before the Child of the Sun, bold in his courses, evil shall be rooted out. Bards shall triumph.”
As a proper name, a reformer of the Vaishnava sect in India (1485-1527), regarded in Bengal as an avatara of Krishna. One of his chief teachings was the duty of bhakti (attachment, devotion, or love) for Krishna so strong that no caste-feeling implying sectarian division could exist with it.
As cosmic evolution was taught in the Orphic Mysteries by allegory, so was the evolution of the individual soul or microcosm, centering in the mythos of Zagreus, later Zagreus-Dionysos, the Greek savior, which the Greek Dionysian Mysteries sought to unfold in dramatic and veiled or symbolic literary form. “Dionysos is one with Osiris, with Krishna, and with Buddha (the heavenly wise), and with the coming (tenth) Avatar, the glorified Spiritual Christos . . .” (SD 2:420).
As Sri Aurobindo once wrote to Dilip Kumar Roy, (I paraphrase) ‘ The earth is a conscious being and the world is only the form it takes to manifest.’ This statement of the Avatar, predating the GAIA theory by many years and far surpassing it in its infinite scope, promises an earth returned to beauty to manifest, unknown to man, an inconceivable perfection. I once wrote to Mother with a question about what would happen to plants and flowers in the New Creation. Her reply filled me with joy and gratitude for She said that the flowers would be among the first to change (be transformed) because their entire life is an aspiration for light. Imagine the beauty to come with flowers brilliant with the Divine Light, colours such as never seen before, fragrances that can transofrm suffering and sorrow into a life free of pain and filled with joy.
avatar ::: 1. (chat, virtual reality) An image representing a user in a multi-user virtual reality (or VR-like, in the case of Palace) space.2. (CMU, Tektronix) root, superuser. There are quite a few Unix computers on which the name of the superuser account is avatar rather than root. This quirk was originated by a CMU hacker who disliked the term superuser, and was propagated through an ex-CMU hacker at Tektronix.[Jargon File] (1997-09-14)
avatar 1. "chat, virtual reality" An {image} representing a user in a multi-user {virtual reality} (or VR-like, in the case of {Palace}) space. 2. (CMU, Tektronix) {root}, {superuser}. There are quite a few {Unix} computers on which the name of the superuser account is "avatar" rather than "root". This quirk was originated by a {CMU} hacker who disliked the term "superuser", and was propagated through an ex-CMU hacker at {Tektronix}. [{Jargon File}] (1997-09-14)
avatara (avatar) ::: divine incarnation; the "descent into form" of the avatara Godhead (deva, isvara, purus.ottama), "when the divine Consciousness and Power, taking upon itself the human form and the human mode of action, possesses it not only by powers and magnitudes, by degrees and outward faces of itself but out of its eternal self-knowledge" in order "to exemplify the possibility of the Divine manifest in the human being" and "to leave the influence of that manifestation vibrating in the earth-nature and the soul of that manifestation presiding over its upward endeavour"; any of the ten incarnations of Vis.n.u described in the Hindu tradition, regarded by Sri Aurobindo as "a parable of evolution".
avatara (Avatar) ::: Incarnation; the descent into form; the revelation of the Godhead in humanity; the Divine manifest in a human appearance; the word avatara means a descent; it is the coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.
avatar and lord of heroism); Vamana (dwarf
avatar and lord of reason); Paras u Rama (Para-
AVATARA ::: One in whom the Divine Consciousness has descended into human birth for a great world-work; the Incarnation; Spirit descending into man; Descent into form; the revelation of the Godhead in humanity; the Divine who has descended into the human consciousness; coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.
An Avatar, roughly speaking, is one who is conscious of the presence and power of the Divine born in him or descended into him governing from within his will and life action; he feels identified inwardly with this divine power and presence.
He is a realiser, an establisher - not of outward things only, though he does realise something in the outward also, but of something essential and radical needed for the terrestrial evolution which is the evolution of the embodied spirit through successive stages towards the Divine.
There are two sides of the phenomenon of avatarhood, the Divine Consciousness and the instrumental personality in Nature under the conditions of Nature which it uses according to the rules of the game.
The Avatar takes upon himself the nature of humanity in his instrumental parts, though the consciousness acting behind is divine.
avatar ::: n. --> The descent of a deity to earth, and his incarnation as a man or an animal; -- chiefly associated with the incarnations of Vishnu.
Incarnation; manifestation as an object of worship or admiration.
avatars in Vedic lore. [See Avatar.]
AVATAR (Skt) Higher being, 45-self or even higher self, incarnating in mankind to assist us.
avatar&
avatars ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word Avatar means a descent; it is a coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.” *Essays on the Gita
av {avatar}
Avesa (Sanskrit) Āveśa [from ā-viś to enter into] An entering, entrance, or taking possession of, as in the instance of an obsession; in later times used to denote a fit of anger or demoniacal frenzy. In occult literature used for the temporary occupancy of a human body for specific purposes by an adept, or to refer to an avatara during the presence of the divine influence on earth. Thus it is similar in meaning to the Tibetan tulku. Avesa, therefore, means the taking possession of, or temporary imbodiment in, a body, human or other, by an outside entity or power, whether divine or evil.
Balarama (Balaram) ::: [the elder brother of Krsna, sometimes regarded as an avatara of Visnu].
Balarama (Sanskrit) Balarāma Elder brother of Krishna, regarded by some as an avatara of Vishnu, by others as the incarnation of the great serpent Sesha. He spent his childhood with Krishna and during his life performed many daring exploits. Krishna, the indigo-complexioned, was considered to be a relatively full avataric manifestation of Vishnu, while Balarama, said to have been of fairer complexion, is known as a partial avataric incarnation of Vishnu.
.Bali2 ::: a daitya or Titan subdued by Vis.n.u in his fifth avatara, at the first stage of fully human evolution, when he incarnated in "man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence"; Bali is associated in the Record of Yoga with obstinacy of the will (hat.ha) as a quality needed in the complete psychological state.
Bali (Sanskrit) Bali Daitya king who through devotion and penance became ruler of the three worlds (heaven, the upper air, and patala). Vishnu as the dwarf avatara regains these for the gods by means of his three superhuman steps or strides. (BCW 13:158, 4:367). See also VAMANA-AVATARA
Barah (the bear avatar); Narsinha (man-lion
Barah—the “boar avatar,” one of the 10
Avatara: Descent; it is a coming down of the Divine into the human plane; incarnation.
Avatar: A Sanskrit term, which in Hindu terminology is used properly in the meaning of “an incarnation of Vishnu.” Theosophists and other believers in occultism and esotericism use it in the general meaning of any divine incarnation. The word is frequently used also to denote one spiritually highly developed through many incarnations on the material plane of existence. (This is the meaning of the term in Rosicrucianism, in particular.)
Avatara(Sanskrit) ::: The noun-form derived from a compound of two words: ava, prepositional prefix meaning"down," and tri, verb-root meaning to "cross over," to "pass"; thus, avatri -- to "pass down," or to"descend." Hence the word signifies the passing down of a celestial energy or of an individualizedcomplex of celestial energies, which is equivalent to saying a celestial being, in order to overshadow andilluminate some human being -- but a human being who, at the time of such connection of "heaven withearth," of divinity with matter, possesses no karmically intermediate or connecting link between theovershadowing entity and the physical body: in other words, no human soul karmically destined to be theinner master of the body thus born.The intermediate link necessary, so that the human being-to-be may have the human intermediate orpsychological apparatus fit to express the invisible splendor of this celestial descent, is supplied by thedeliberate and voluntary entrance into the unborn child -- and coincidently with the overshadowing of thecelestial power -- of the psychological or intermediate principle of one of the Greater Ones, who thus"completes" what is to be the pure and lofty human channel through which the "descending" divinitymay manifest, this divinity finding in this high psychological principle a sufficiently evolved linkenabling it to express itself in human form upon earth.Hence an avatara is one who has a combination of three elements in his being: an inspiring divinity; ahighly evolved intermediate nature or soul, which is loaned to him and is the channel of that inspiringdivinity; and a pure, clean, physical body.
Avatar: A shard of spirit energy, tied to the human soul, perhaps from the Pure One(s) of the long-ago universe. Through the interaction of the Avatar with the universe, a mage performs magic.
Avatara-vada: The doctrine that holds that God takes human form.
Avatar, Avatara (Sanskrit) Avatāra [from ava down + the verbal root tṛ to cross over, pass] That which passes down or descends; the passing down of a celestial energy or an individualized complex of celestial energies — a celestial being — in order to overshadow and illuminate a human being who, at the time of such connection of divinity with matter, possesses no human soul karmically destined to be the inner master of the body thus born. “Hence an Avatara is one who has a combination of three elements in his being: an inspiring divinity; a highly evolved intermediate nature or soul, which is loaned to him and is the channel of that inspiring divinity; and a pure, clean, physical body” (OG 16).
“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.” Letters on Yoga
Avatar—in Vedic lore, the avatar was the
Avatar.]
Avatar ::: Sri Aurobindo: “The word Avatar means a descent; it is a coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.” Essays on the Gita
Avatar Storm: (metaplot) Metaphysical storm that made/ makes travel beyond the Gauntlet difficult and dangerous.
Avatar: The “inner god” that guides a mage, an Awakened Avatar allows a mage to rework reality. (See Genius, Seeking.)
Avatar ::: “The word Avatar means a descent; it is a coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.” Essays on the Gita
Avatar ::: We have to remark c
refully that the upholding of Dharma in the world is not the only object of the descent of the Avatar, that great mystery of the Divine manifest in humanity; for the upholding of the Dharma is not an all-sufficient object in itself, not the supreme possible aim for the manifestation of a Christ, a Krishna, a Buddha, but is only the general condition of a higher aim and a more supreme and divine utility. For there are two aspects of the divine birth; one is a descent, the birth of God in humanity, the Godhead manifesting itself in the human form and nature, the eternal Avatar; the other is an ascent, the birth of man into the Godhead, man rising into the divine nature and consciousness, madbhavam agatah. ; it is the being born anew in a second birth of the soul. It is that new birth which Avatarhood and the upholding of the Dharma are intended to serve.
Ref: CWSA Vol.19 , Page: 147-48
Benkenmitsu nikyoron. (辯顯密二教論). In Japanese, literally "Distinguishing the Two Teachings of the Exoteric and Esoteric"; a relatively short treatise composed by the Japanese SHINGON monk KuKAI in the early ninth century. The text is commonly known more simply as the Nikyoron. As the title suggests, the central theme of the Benkenmitsu nikyoron is the elaboration of the difference between the exoteric and esoteric teachings of Buddhism and the demonstration of the latter's superiority. The text begins with a brief introduction, followed by a series of questions and answers, and a short conclusion. The Benkenmitsu nikyoron describes the relation between the exoteric teachings preached by the NIRMAnAKAYA of the Buddha and the esoteric teachings preached by his DHARMAKAYA as that between provisional words spoken according to the different capacities of sentient beings and ultimate truth. By meticulously citing scriptural references, such as the LAnKAVATARASuTRA, the Benkenmitsu nikyoron shows that the dharmakAya, like the nirmAnakAya and SAMBHOGAKAYA, can indeed preach and that it does so in a special language best articulated in such esoteric scriptures as the MAHAVAIROCANABHISAMBODHISuTRA. Whereas the nirmAnakAya speaks the DHARMA with reference to the six perfections (PARAMITA), the dharmakAya employs the language of the three mysteries: the body, speech, and mind of MAHAVAIROCANA expressed in MUDRA, MANTRA, and MAndALA. Like many of kukai's other writings, the arguments presented in his Benkenmitsu nikyoron helped him legitimize the introduction and installment of the new teachings, now known as MIKKYo or esoteric Buddhism, which he had brought back from China. There are several commentaries on the text, including those composed by Seisen (1025-1115), Raiyu (1226-1304), Yukai (1345-1416), and Kaijo (1750-1805).
bhagavad gita. ::: Song of the Bhagavan or Song of the Lord; a 700-verse episode composed about 200 BC and incorporated into the hindu epic Mahabharata in which Sri Krishna, the 8th Avatar of Vishnu, expounds the doctrine of selfless action done as duty, not for profit or recognition, but in a spirit of dedication to the one supreme being
bhumi. (T. sa; C. di; J. ji; K. chi 地). In Sanskrit, lit. "ground"; deriving from an ABHIDHARMA denotation of bhumi as a way or path (MARGA), the term is used metaphorically to denote a "stage" of training, especially in the career of the BODHISATTVA or, in some contexts, a sRAVAKA. A list of ten stages (DAsABHuMI) is most commonly enumerated, deriving from the DAsABHuMIKASuTRA ("Discourse on the Ten Bhumis"), a sutra that is later subsumed into the massive scriptural compilation, the AVATAMSAKASuTRA. The bodhisattva does not enter the ten bhumis immediately after generating the aspiration for enlightenment (BODHICITTOTPADA); rather, the first bhumi coincides with the attainment of the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA) and the remaining nine to the path of cultivation (BHAVANAMARGA). The ultimate experience of buddhahood is sometimes referred to (as in the LAnKAVATARASuTRA) as an eleventh TATHAGATABHuMI, which the MAHAVYUTPATTI designates as the samantaprabhAbuddhabhumi. The stage of the path prior to entering the path of vision is sometimes referred to as the adhimukticaryAbhumi ("stage of the practice of resolute faith"), a term from the BODHISATTVABHuMI. An alternative list of "ten shared stages" of spiritual progress common to all three vehicles of sRAVAKA, PRATYEKABUDDHA, and bodhisattva is described in the *MAHAPRAJNAPARAMITASuTRA and the DAZHIDU LUN (*MahAprajNApAramitAsAstra). An alternative list of seven bhumis of the bodhisattva path, as found in MAITREYANATHA and ASAnGA's Bodhisattvabhumi, is also widely known in MahAyAna literature. For full treatment of each the bhumi system, see BODHISATTVABHuMI, DAsABHuMI; sRAVAKABHuMI; see also individual entries for each BHuMI.
Bija (Sanskrit) Bīja Sometimes Vīja. Seed or life-germ, whether of animals or plants; esoterically the original or causal source of the urge of life to express itself. “Whether it be a kosmos or universe, or the reappearance of god, deva, man, animal, plant, or mineral, or, indeed, elemental, the seed or life-germ from and out of which any one of these arises is technically called Bija, and the reference here is almost as much to the life-germ or vehicle itself, as it is to the self-urge for manifestation working through the seed or life-germ. Mystically and psychologically, the appearance of an Avatara, for instance, is due to an impulse arising in Maha-Siva, or in Maha-Vishnu (according to circumstances), to manifest a portion of the divine essence, . . . Or again, when from the chela is born the Initiate during the dread trials of initiation, the newly-arisen Master is said to have been born from the mystic Bija or Seed within his own being” (OG 18).
Bija (sometimes Vija)(Sanskrit) ::: This word signifies "seed" or "life-germ," whether of animals or of plants. But esoterically itssignification is far wider and incomparably more abstruse, and therefore difficult to understand withoutproper study. The term is used in esotericism to designate the original or causal source and vahana or"vehicle" of the mystic impulse or urge of life, or of lives, to express itself or themselves when the timefor such self-expression arrives after a pralaya, or after an obscuration, or again, indeed, duringmanvantara. Whether it be a kosmos or universe, or the reappearance of god, deva, man, animal, plant,mineral, or elemental, the seed or life-germ from and out of which any one of these arises is technicallycalled bija, and the reference here is almost as much to the life-germ or vehicle itself as it is to theself-urge for manifestation working through the seed or life-germ. Mystically and psychologically, theappearance of an avatara, for instance, is due to an impulse arising in Maha-Siva, or in Maha-Vishnu(according to circumstances), to manifest a portion of the divine essence, in either case, when theappropriate world period arrives for the appearance of an avatara. Or again, when from the chela is bornthe initiate during the dread trials of initiation, the newly-arisen Master is said to have been born from themystic bija or seed within his own being. The doctrine connected with this word bija in its occult andesoteric aspects is far too profound to receive more than a cursory and superficial treatment.
Bka' gdams. (Kadam). An early sect of Tibetan Buddhism. In Tibetan, BKA' (ka) is the word of the Buddha or an enlightened master, and gdams (dam) means "to instruct"; traditionally the compound is parsed as "those who take all of the Buddha's words as instruction." Another etymology associates the word bka' with the words of ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNANA, whose followers began the early sect of Tibetan Buddhism, and in place of gdams "to advise" understands dam "to bind," hence, "those who hold his sacred words as binding." The origins of the sect are traced back to the founding of RWA SGRENG monastery in 1056 by Atisa's foremost disciple and interpreter 'BROM STON RGYAL BA'I 'BYUNG GNAS. The three main students of 'Brom ston pa are Po to ba Rin chen gsal (Potowa), Spyan mnga' ba Tshul khrims 'bar (Chen Ngawa), and Bu chung ba Gzhon nu rgyal mtshan (Bu chungwa), from whom originate the three principal Bka' gdams lineages (bka' babs): (1) the authoritative treatises (gzhung) lineage, (2) the essential instruction (gdams ngag) lineage, and (3) the oral instruction (man ngag) lineage, respectively. Po to ba's authoritative treatise lineage emphasized the close study of six paired fundamental Buddhist treatises: the BODHISATTVABHuMI and MAHAYANASuTRALAMKARA, the BODHICARYAVATARA and sIKsASAMUCCAYA, and the JATAKAMALA and UDANAVARGA. The teachings of the lineage of oral instructions are collected in the BKA' GDAMS GLEGS BAM PHA CHOS BU CHOS. The sect is probably best known for its strict discipline and austerity of practice, but the Gsang phu ne'u thog Bka' gdams lineage that is traced back to the founding of the monastery of GSANG PHU NE'U THOG in about 1073 by RNGOG LEGS PA'I SHES RAB, an immediate disciple of Atisa, and his nephew, the translator RNGOG BLO LDAN SHES RAB, gave the Bka' gdams a well-deserved reputation as a sect of great learning. Monks from Gsang phu ne'u thog like PHYWA PA CHOS KYI SENG GE wrote important works on PRAMAnA (logic and epistemology) and formalized debate (rtsod rigs). The Bka' gdams was responsible for the distinctive Tibetan BSTAN RIM (tenrim) ("stages of teaching") genre, based on Atisa's seminal work, the BODHIPATHAPRADĪPA. This genre was later adapted and popularized by TSONG KHA PA in his influential LAM RIM CHEN MO. Tsong kha pa idealized Atisa as the perfect teacher and his early DGE LUGS PA followers, first called Dga' ldan pa (Gandenpa) after the DGA' LDAN monastery he founded, were also known as the new Bka' gdams pa. After the rise of the Dge lugs sect, the Bka' gdams disappeared from Tibetan history, for reasons still not fully understood, with only the monasteries of Rwa sgreng and SNAR THANG retaining their original affiliation.
Blavatsky says that “rebirths may be divided into three classes: the divine incarnations called Avataras; those of Adepts who give up Nirvana for the sake of helping on humanity — the Nirmanakayas; and the natural succession of rebirths for all — the common law. The Avatara . . . is a descent of the manifested Deity — whether under the specific name of Siva, Vishnu, or Adi-Buddha — into an illusive form of individuality, an appearance which to men on this illusive plane is objective, but it is not so in sober fact. That illusive form having neither past nor future, because it had neither previous incarnation nor will have subsequent rebirths, has naught to do with Karma, which has therefore no hold on it” (BCW 14:373-4).
blo sbyong. (lojong). In Tibetan, "mind training"; a tradition of Tibetan Buddhist practice associated especially with the BKA' GDAMS sect and providing pithy instructions on the cultivation of compassion (KARUnA) and BODHICITTA. The trainings are based primarily on the technique for the equalizing and exchange of self and other, as set forth in the eighth chapter of sANTIDEVA's BODHICARYAVATARA, a poem in ten chapters on the BODHISATTVA path. The practice is to transform the conception of self (ATMAGRAHA), characterized as a self-cherishing attitude (T. rang gces 'dzin) into cherishing others (gzhan gces 'dzin), by contemplating the illusory nature of the self, the faults in self-cherishing, and the benefits that flow from cherishing others. The training seeks to transform difficulties into reasons to reaffirm a commitment to bodhicitta. Dharmaraksita's Blo sbyong mtshon cha'i 'khor lo (sometimes rendered as "Wheel of Sharp Weapons"), translated into Tibetan by ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNANA and 'BROM STON, founders of the Bka' gdam sect, in the eleventh century; Glang ri thang pa's (Langri Thangpa) (1054-1123) BLO SBYONG TSHIG BRGYAD MA ("Eight Verses on Mind Training"); 'CHAD KA BA YE SHES RDO RJE's BLO SBYONG DON BDUN MA (Lojong dondünma) ("Seven Points of Mind Training"), and Hor ston Nam mkha'i dpal bzang's (1373-1447) Blo sbyong nyi ma'i 'od zer ("Mind Training like the Rays of the Sun") are four among a large number of widely studied and practiced blo sbyong texts. The Blo sbyong mtshon cha'i 'khor lo, for example, compares the bodhisattva to a hero who can withstand spears and arrows, and to a peacock that eats poison and becomes even more beautiful; it says difficulties faced in day-to-day life are reasons to strengthen resolve because they are like the spears and arrow of karmic results launched by earlier unsalutary actions. From this perspective, circumstances that are ordinarily upsetting or depressing are transformed into reasons for happiness, by thinking that negative KARMAN has been extinguished. The influence of tantric Buddhism is discernable in the training in blo sbyong texts like the Mtshon cha'i 'khor lo that exhorts practitioners to imagine themselves as the deity YAMANTAKA and mentally launch an attack on the conception of self, imagining it as a battle. The conception of self is taken as the primary reason for the earlier unsalutary actions that caused negative results, and for engaging in present unsalutary deeds that harm others and do nothing to advance the practitioner's own welfare.
blue lotus of the Idea. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "It can be taken as the (Avatar) incarnation on the mental plane.” Visions of Champaklal
Boar One of the avataras of Vishnu or Brahma as Prajapati; in Hindu symbology the boar “which plunges into the ‘waters’ of space and lifts up the earth upon his tusks, and so bears it for the remainder of the manvantara, signifies not only the fourth-plane physical vitality, but likewise the cosmical vitality which infills and sustains the earth, rooted as this vitality is in the spiritual life of the god of our solar system” (FSO 493). See also AVATARA
BodhicaryAvatAra. (T. Byang chub sems dpa'i spyod pa la 'jug pa; C. Putixing jing; J. Bodaigyokyo; K. Porihaeng kyong 菩提行經). In Sanskrit, lit. "Introduction to the Practice of Enlightenment," a.k.a. BodhisattvacaryAvatAra, "Introduction to the Bodhisattva Practice"; a poem about the BODHISATTVA path, in ten chapters, written by the Indian poet sANTIDEVA (fl. c. 685-763). The verse is regarded as one of the masterpieces of late Indian MAHAYANA Buddhism, eliciting substantial commentary in both India and Tibet. The most influential of the Indian commentaries is the BodhicaryAvatArapaNjikA by PRAJNAKARAMATI. The text is especially important in Tibetan Buddhism, where it has long been memorized by monks and where stanzas from the text are often cited in both written and oral religious discourse. The poem is an extended reverie on the implications of the "aspiration for enlightenment" (BODHICITTA) that renders a person a bodhisattva, and on the deeds of the bodhisattva, the six perfections (PARAMITA). In the first chapter, sAntideva distinguishes between two forms of bodhicitta, the intentional (PRAnIDHICITTOTPADA) and the practical (PRASTHANACITTOTPADA), comparing them to the decision to undertake a journey and then actually setting out on that journey. In the fifth chapter he provides a famous argument for patience (KsANTI), stating that in order to walk uninjured across a surface of sharp stones, one can either cover the entire world with leather or one can cover the sole of one's foot with leather; in the same way, in order to survive the anger of enemies, one can either kill them all or practice patience. In the eighth chapter, he sets forth the technique for the equalizing and exhange of self and other, regarded in Tibet as one of the two chief means of cultivating bodhicitta. The lengthiest chapter is the ninth, devoted to wisdom (PRAJNA). Here sAntideva refutes a range of both non-Buddhist and Buddhist positions. On the basis of this chapter, sAntideva is counted as a PRASAnGIKA in the Tibetan doxographical system. According to legend, when sAntideva recited this chapter to the monks of NALANDA monastery, he began to rise into the air, leaving some questions as to precisely how the chapter ends. The final chapter is a prayer, often recited independently.
bodhicitta. (T. byang chub kyi sems; C. putixin; J. bodaishin; K. porisim 菩提心). In Sanskrit, "thought of enlightenment" or "aspiration to enlightenment"; the intention to reach the complete, perfect enlightenment (ANUTTARASAMYAKSAMBODHI) of the buddhas, in order to liberate all sentient beings in the universe from suffering. As the generative cause that leads to the eventual achievement of buddhahood and all that it represents, bodhicitta is one of the most crucial terms in MAHAYANA Buddhism. The achievement of bodhicitta marks the beginning of the BODHISATTVA path: bodhicitta refers to the aspiration that inspires the bodhisattva, the being who seeks buddhahood. In some schools of MahAyAna Buddhism, bodhicitta is conceived as being latent in all sentient beings as the "innately pure mind" (prakṛtiparisuddhacitta), as, for example, in the MAHAVAIROCANABHISAMBODHISuTRA: "Knowing one's own mind according to reality is BODHI, and bodhicitta is the innately pure mind that is originally existent." In this sense, bodhicitta was conceived as a universal principle, related to such terms as DHARMAKAYA, TATHAGATA, or TATHATA. However, not all schools of the MahAyAna (e.g., some strands of YOGACARA) hold that all beings are destined for buddhahood and, thus, not all beings are endowed with bodhicitta. Regardless of whether or not bodhicitta is regarded as somehow innate, however, bodhicitta is also a quality of mind that must be developed, hence the important term BODHICITTOTPADA, "generation of the aspiration to enlightenment." Both the BODHISATTVABHuMI and the MAHAYANASuTRALAMKARA provide a detailed explanation of bodhicitta. In late Indian MahAyAna treatises by such important authors as sANTIDEVA, KAMALAsĪLA, and ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNANA, techniques are set forth for cultivating bodhicitta. The development of bodhicitta also figures heavily in MahAyAna liturgies, especially in those where one receives the bodhisattva precepts (BODHISATTVASAMVARA). In this literature, two types of bodhicitta are enumerated. First, the "conventional bodhicitta" (SAMVṚTIBODHICITTA) refers to a bodhisattva's mental aspiration to achieve enlightenment, as described above. Second, the "ultimate bodhicitta" (PARAMARTHABODHICITTA) refers to the mind that directly realizes either emptiness (suNYATA) or the enlightenment inherent in the mind. This "conventional bodhicitta" is further subdivided between PRAnIDHICITTOTPADA, literally, "aspirational creation of the attitude" (where "attitude," CITTA, refers to bodhicitta), where one makes public one's vow (PRAnIDHANA) to attain buddhahood; and PRASTHANACITTOTPADA, literally "creation of the attitude of setting out," where one actually sets out to practice the path to buddhahood. In discussing this latter pair, sAntideva in his BODHICARYAVATARA compares the first type to the decision to undertake a journey and the second type to actually setting out on the journey; in the case of the bodhisattva path, then, the first therefore refers to the process of developing the aspiration to buddhahood for the sake of others, while the second refers to undertaking the various practices of the bodhisattva path, such as the six perfections (PARAMITA). The AVATAMSAKASuTRA describes three types of bodhicitta, those like a herder, a ferryman, and a king. In the first case the bodhisattva first delivers all others into enlightenment before entering enlightenment himself, just as a herder takes his flock into the pen before entering the pen himself; in the second case, they all enter enlightenment together, just as a ferryman and his passengers arrive together at the further shore; and in the third, the bodhisattva first reaches enlightenment and then helps others to reach the goal, just as a king first ascends to the throne and then benefits his subjects. A standard definition of bodhicitta is found at the beginning of the ABHISAMAYALAMKARA, where it is defined as an intention or wish that has two aims: buddhahood, and the welfare of those beings whom that buddhahood will benefit; the text also gives a list of twenty-two types of bodhicitta, with examples for each. Later writers like Arya VIMUKTISENA and HARIBHADRA locate the AbhisamayAlaMkAra's twenty-two types of bodhicitta at different stages of the bodhisattva path and at enlightenment. At the beginning of his MADHYAMAKAVATARA, CANDRAKĪRTI compares compassion (KARUnA) to a seed, water, and crops and says it is important at the start (where compassion begins the bodhisattva's path), in the middle (where it sustains the bodhisattva and prevents a fall into the limited NIRVAnA of the ARHAT), and at the end when buddhahood is attained (where it explains the unending, spontaneous actions for the sake of others that derive from enlightenment). KarunA is taken to be a cause of bodhicitta because bodhicitta initially arises and ultimately will persist, only if MAHAKARUnA ("great empathy for others' suffering") is strong. In part because of its connotation as a generative force, in ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA, bodhicitta comes also to refer to semen, especially in the practice of sexual yoga, where the physical seed (BĪJA) of awakening (representing UPAYA) is placed in the lotus of wisdom (PRAJNA).
bodhicittotpAda. (T. byang chub kyi sems bskyed pa; C. fa puti xin; J. hotsubodaishin; K. pal pori sim 發菩提心). In Sanskrit, "generating the aspiration for enlightenment," "creating (utpAda) the thought (CITTA) of enlightenment (BODHI)"; a term used to describe both the process of developing BODHICITTA, the aspiration to achieve buddhahood, as well as the state achieved through such development. The MAHAYANA tradition treats this aspiration as having great significance in one's spiritual career, since it marks the entry into the MahAyAna and the beginning of the BODHISATTVA path. The process by which this "thought of enlightenment" (bodhicitta) is developed and sustained is bodhicittotpAda. Various types of techniques or conditional environments conducive to bodhicittotpAda are described in numerous MahAyAna texts and treatises. The BODHISATTVABHuMI says that there are four predominant conditions (ADHIPATIPRATYAYA) for generating bodhicitta: (1) witnessing an inconceivable miracle (ṛddhiprAtihArya) performed by a buddha or a bodhisattva, (2) listening to a teaching regarding enlightenment (BODHI) or to the doctrine directed at bodhisattvas (BODHISATTVAPItAKA), (3) recognizing the dharma's potential to be extinguished and seeking therefore to protect the true dharma (SADDHARMA), (4) seeing that sentient beings are troubled by afflictions (KLEsA) and empathizing with them. The Fa putixinjing lun introduces another set of four conditions for generating bodhicitta: (1) reflecting on the buddhas; (2) contemplating the dangers (ADĪNAVA) inherent in the body; (3) developing compassion (KARUnA) toward sentient beings; (4) seeking the supreme result (PHALA). The Chinese apocryphal treatise DASHENG QIXIN LUN ("Awakening of Faith According to the MahAyAna") refers to three types of bodhicittotpAda: that which derives from the accomplishment of faith, from understanding and practice, and from realization. JINGYING HUIYUAN (523-592) in his DASHENG YIZHANG ("Compendium on the Purport of MahAyAna") classifies bodhicittotpAda into three groups: (1) the generation of the mind based on characteristics, in which the bodhisattva, perceiving the characteristics of SAMSARA and NIRVAnA, abhors saMsAra and aspires to seek nirvAna; (2) the generation of the mind separate from characteristics, in which the bodhisattva, recognizing that the nature of saMsAra is not different from nirvAna, leaves behind any perception of their distinctive characteristics and generates an awareness of their equivalency; (3) the generation of the mind based on truth, in which the bodhisattva, recognizing that the original nature of bodhi is identical to his own mind, returns to his own original state of mind. The Korean scholiast WoNHYO (617-686), in his Muryangsugyong chongyo ("Doctrinal Essentials of the 'Sutra of Immeasurable Life'"), considers the four great vows of the bodhisattva (see C. SI HONGSHIYUAN) to be bodhicitta and divides its generation into two categories: viz., the aspiration that accords with phenomena (susa palsim) and the aspiration that conforms with principle (suri palsim). The topic of bodhicittotpAda is the subject of extensive discussion and exegesis in Tibetan Buddhism. For example, in his LAM RIM CHEN MO, TSONG KHA PA sets forth two techniques for developing this aspiration. The first, called the "seven cause and effect precepts" (rgyu 'bras man ngag bdun) is said to derive from ATIsA DIPAMKARAsRĪJNANA. The seven are (1) recognition of all sentient beings as having been one's mother in a past life, (2) recognition of their kindness, (3) the wish to repay their kindness, (4) love, (5) compassion, (6) the wish to liberate them from suffering, and (7) bodhicitta. The second, called the equalizing and exchange of self and other (bdag gzhan mnyam brje) is derived from the eighth chapter of sANTIDEVA's BODHICARYAVATARA. It begins with the recognition that oneself and others equally want happiness and do not want suffering. It goes on to recognize that by cherishing others more than oneself, one ensures the welfare of both oneself (by becoming a buddha) and others (by teaching them the dharma). MahAyAna sutra literature typically assumes that, after generating the bodhicitta, the bodhisattva will require not one, but three "incalculable eons" (ASAMKHYEYAKALPA) of time in order to complete all the stages (BHuMI) of the bodhisattva path (MARGA) and achieve buddhahood. The Chinese HUAYAN ZONG noted, however, that the bodhisattva had no compunction about practicing for such an infinity of time, because he realized at the very inception of the path that he was already a fully enlightened buddha. They cite in support of this claim the statement in the "BrahmacaryA" chapter of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA that "at the time of the initial generation of the aspiration for enlightenment (bodhicittotpAda), complete, perfect enlightenment (ANUTTARASAMYAKSAMBODHI) is already achieved."
Bodhidharma. (C. Putidamo; J. Bodaidaruma; K. Poridalma 菩提達磨) (c. late-fourth to early-fifth centuries). Indian monk who is the putative "founder" of the school of CHAN (K. SoN, J. ZEN, V. THIỀN). The story of a little-known Indian (or perhaps Central Asian) emigré monk grew over the centuries into an elaborate legend of Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of the Chan school. The earliest accounts of a person known as Bodhidharma appear in the Luoyang qielan ji and XU GAOSENG ZHUAN, but the more familiar and developed image of this figure can be found in such later sources as the BAOLIN ZHUAN, LENGQIE SHIZI JI, LIDAI FABAO JI, ZUTANG JI, JINGDE CHUANDENG LU, and other "transmission of the lamplight" (CHUANDENG LU) histories. According to these sources, Bodhidharma was born as the third prince of a South Indian kingdom. Little is known about his youth, but he is believed to have arrived in China sometime during the late fourth or early fifth century, taking the southern maritime route according to some sources, the northern overland route according to others. In an episode appearing in the Lidai fabao ji and BIYAN LU, after arriving in southern China, Bodhidharma is said to have engaged in an enigmatic exchange with the devout Buddhist emperor Wu (464-549, r. 502-549) of the Liang dynasty (502-557) on the subject of the Buddha's teachings and merit-making. To the emperor's questions about what dharma Bodhidharma was transmitting and how much merit (PUnYA) he, Wudi, had made by his munificent donations to construct monasteries and ordain monks, Bodhidharma replied that the Buddha's teachings were empty (hence there was nothing to transmit) and that the emperor's generous donations had brought him no merit at all. The emperor seems not to have been impressed with these answers, and Bodhidharma, perhaps disgruntled by the emperor's failure to understand the profundity of his teachings, left for northern China, taking the Yangtze river crossing (riding a reed across the river, in a scene frequently depicted in East Asian painting). Bodhidharma's journey north eventually brought him to a cave at the monastery of SHAOLINSI on SONGSHAN, where he sat in meditation for nine years while facing a wall (MIANBI), in so-called "wall contemplation" (BIGUAN). During his stay on Songshan, the Chinese monk HUIKE is said to have become Bodhidharma's disciple, allegedly after cutting off his left arm to show his dedication. This legend of Bodhidharma's arrival in China is eventually condensed into the famous Chan case (GONG'AN), "Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?" (see XILAI YI). Bodhidharma's place within the lineage of Indian patriarchs vary according to text and tradition (some list him as the twenty-eighth patriarch), but he is considered the first patriarch of Chan in China. Bodhidharma's name therefore soon became synonymous with Chan and subsequently with Son, Zen, and Thièn. Bodhidharma, however, has often been confused with other figures such as BODHIRUCI, the translator of the LAnKAVATARASuTRA, and the Kashmiri monk DHARMATRATA, to whom the DHYANA manual DAMODUOLUO CHAN JING is attributed. The Lidai fabao ji, for instance, simply fused the names of Bodhidharma and DharmatrAta and spoke of a BodhidharmatrAta whose legend traveled with the Lidai fabao ji to Tibet. Bodhidharma was even identified as the apostle Saint Thomas by Jesuit missionaries to China, such as Matteo Ricci. Several texts, a number of which were uncovered in the DUNHUANG manuscript cache in Central Asia, have been attributed to Bodhidharma, but their authorship remains uncertain. The ERRU SIXING LUN seems to be the only of these texts that can be traced with some certainty back to Bodhidharma or his immediate disciples. The legend of Bodhidharma in the Lengqie shizi ji also associates him with the transmission of the LankAvatArasutra in China. In Japan, Bodhidharma is often depicted in the form of a round-shaped, slightly grotesque-looking doll, known as the "Daruma doll." Like much of the rest of the legends surrounding Bodhidharma, there is finally no credible evidence connecting Bodhidharma to the Chinese martial arts traditions (see SHAOLINSI).
Bodhiruci. (C. Putiliuzhi; J. Bodairushi; K. Poriryuji 菩提流支) (fl. sixth century). A renowned Indian translator and monk (to be distinguished from a subsequent Bodhiruci [s.v.] who was active in China two centuries later during the Tang dynasty). Bodhiruci left north India for Luoyang, the Northern Wei capital, in 508. He is said to have been well versed in the TRIPItAKA and talented at incantations. Bodhiruci stayed at the monastery of YONGNINGSI in Luoyang from 508 to 512 and with the help of BuddhasAnta (d.u.) and others translated over thirty MAHAYANA sutras and treatises, most of which reflect the latest developments in Indian MahAyAna, and especially YOGACARA. His translations include the DHARMASAMGĪTI, SHIDIJING LUN, LAnKAVATARASuTRA, VAJRACCHEDIKAPRAJNAPARAMITASuTRA, and the WULIANGSHOU JING YOUPOTISHE YUANSHENG JI, attributed to VASUBANDHU. Bodhiruci's translation of the Shidijing lun, otherwise known more simply as the Di lun, fostered the formation of a group of YOGACARA specialists in China that later historians retroactively call the DI LUN ZONG. According to a story in the LIDAI FABAO JI, a jealous Bodhiruci, assisted by a monk from SHAOLINSI on SONGSHAN named Guangtong (also known as Huiguang, 468-537), is said to have attempted on numerous occasions to poison the founder of the CHAN school, BODHIDHARMA, and eventually succeeded. Bodhiruci is also said to have played an instrumental role in converting the Chinese monk TANLUAN from Daoist longevity practices to the PURE LAND teachings of the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING.
BodhisattvacaryAvatAra. (T. Byang chub sems dpa'i spyod pa la 'jug pa). An alternate title of the BODHICARYAVATARA by sANTIDEVA. See BODHICARYAVATARA.
bodhisattvapranidhAna. (T. byang chub sems pa'i smon lam; C. pusa yuan; J. bosatsugan; K. posal won 菩薩願). In Sanskrit, "bodhisattva vow"; the vow to achieve buddhahood in order to liberate all beings from suffering. Following the BODHICARYAVATARA, the MAHAYANA commentarial tradition considers this vow to be the point at which one makes a public pronouncement of one's aspiration to achieve buddhahood (PRAnIDHICITTOTPADA), which is distinguished from the subsequent practice of this aspiration (PRASTHANACITTOTPADA), i.e., cultivating specific bodhisattva precepts (see BODHISATTVASAMVARA) and mastering the six perfections (PARAMITA). In MahAyAna sutras, which tend to be less systematized, this vow is typically made before a buddha, who then offers a prediction (VYAKARAnA) that the aspirant will succeed in his quest; the person is then called one who will not turn back, or "irreversible" (AVAIVARTIKA). The recitation of the bodhisattva vow is a central component in many MahAyAna liturgies. See also BODHICITTOTPADA.
Brahma-Vaivarta Purana (Sanskrit) Brahma-Vaivarta Purāṇa The metamorphosis of Brahma; one of the 18 principal Hindu Puranas, dealing with Brahma in the form of the avatara Krishna and containing prayers and invocations addressed to Krishna, with narratives about his love for Radha, the gopis, etc.
Branding: A punishment in which the mage’s Avatar is marked.
Buddha ::: [a great sage, sometimes considered to be one of the avataras of Visnu]; the awakened spirit.
Buddha [Budh Avatar]
Buddhadatta. (fl. c. fifth century CE). A prominent PAli scholar-monk from South India who is presumed by the tradition to have been a personal acquaintance of the preeminent PAli commentator BUDDHAGHOSA. Buddhadatta lived and wrote his several works at BhutamangalagAma monastery in the Cola country (Tamil Nadu) of South India, although it is also said he trained at the MAHAVIHARA in ANURADHAPURA in Sri Lanka. Buddhadatta is best known as the author of the ABHIDHAMMAVATARA, the oldest of the noncanonical PAli works on ABHIDHAMMA (S. ABHIDHARMA). The text is a primer of PAli abhidhamma, divided into twenty-four chapters called niddesa (S. nirdesa; "exposition"), which displays many affinities with Buddhaghosa's VISUDDHIMAGGA. Other works attributed to Buddhadatta include the Vinayavinicchaya, the Uttaravinicchaya, and the RupArupavibhAga. Some authorities also attribute to him the MadhuratthavilAsinī and the JinAlankAra.
Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. A term coined by the Sanskritist FRANKLIN EDGERTON, who compiled the definitive grammar and dictionary of the language, to refer to the peculiar Buddhist argot of Sanskrit that is used both in many Indic MAHAYANA scriptures, as well as in the MAHAVASTU, a biography of the Buddha composed within the LOKOTTARAVADA subgroup of the MAHASAMGHIKA school. Edgerton portrays Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit texts as the products of a gradual Sanskritization of texts that had originally been composed in various Middle Indic dialects (PRAKRIT). Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit (BHS) texts were not wholesale renderings of vernacular materials intended to better display Sanskrit vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, but rather were ongoing, and often incomplete, reworkings of Buddhist materials, which reflected the continued prestige of Sanskrit within the Indic scholarly community. This argot of Sanskrit is sometimes called the "GATHA dialect," because its peculiarities are especially noticeable in MahAyAna verse forms. Edgerton describes three layers of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit based on the extent of their hybridization (and only loosely chronological). The first, and certainly earliest, class consists solely of the MahAvastu, the earliest extant BHS text, in which both the prose and verse portions of the scripture contain many hybridized forms. In the second class, verses remain hybridized, but the prose sections are predominantly standard Sanskrit and are recognizable as BHS only in their vocabulary. This second class includes many of the most important MahAyAna scriptures, including the GAndAVYuHA, LALITAVISTARA, SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, and SUKHAVATĪVYuHASuTRA. In the third class, both the verse and prose sections are predominantly standard Sanskrit, and only in their vocabulary would they be recognized as BHS. Texts in this category include the AstASAHASRIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA, BODHISATTVABHuMI, LAnKAVATARASuTRA, MuLASARVASTIVADA VINAYA, and VAJRACCHEDIKAPRAJNAPARAMITASuTRA.
Budh Avatar (Buddha); Kalki Avatar. All these
Budh Avatar (Buddha)—the 9th of the 10
cali ::: n. --> The tenth avatar or incarnation of the god Vishnu.
Candrakīrti. (T. Zla ba grags pa) (c. 600-650). An important MADHYAMAKA master and commentator on the works of NAGARJUNA and ARYADEVA, associated especially with what would later be known as the PRASAnGIKA branch of Madhyamaka. Very little is known about his life; according to Tibetan sources, he was from south India and a student of Kamalabuddhi. He may have been a monk of NALANDA. He wrote commentaries on NAgArjuna's YUKTIsAstIKA and suNYATASAPTATI as well as Aryadeva's CATUḤsATAKA. His two most famous and influential works, however, are his PRASANNAPADA ("Clear Words"), which is a commentary on NAgArjuna's MuLAMADHYAMAKAKARIKA, and his MADHYAMAKAVATARA ("Entrance to the Middle Way"). In the first chapter of the PrasannapadA, he defends the approach of BUDDHAPALITA against the criticism of BHAVAVIVEKA in their own commentaries on the MulamadhyamakakArikA. Candrakīrti argues that it is inappropriate for the Madhyamaka to use what is called an autonomous syllogism (SVATANTRAPRAYOGA) in debating with an opponent and that the Madhyamaka should instead use a consequence (PRASAnGA). It is largely based on Candrakīrti's discussion that Tibetan scholars retrospectively identified two subschools of Madhyamaka, the SVATANTRIKA (in which they placed BhAvaviveka) and the PrAsangika (in which they placed BuddhapAlita and Candrakīrti). Candrakīrti's other important work is the MadhyamakAvatAra, written in verse with an autocommentary. It is intended as a general introduction to the MulamadhyamakakArikA, and provides what Candrakīrti regards as the soteriological context for NAgArjuna's work. It sets forth the BODHISATTVA path, under the rubric of the ten bodhisattva stages (BHuMI; DAsABHuMI) and the ten perfections (PARAMITA). By far the longest and most influential chapter of the text is the sixth, dealing with the perfection of wisdom (PRAJNAPARAMITA), where Candrakīrti discusses the two truths (SATYADVAYA), offers a critique of CITTAMATRA, and sets forth the reasoning for proving the selflessness of phenomena (DHARMANAIRATMYA) and the selflessness of the person (PUDGALANAIRATMYA), using his famous sevenfold analysis of a chariot as an example. Candrakīrti seems to have had little influence in the first centuries after his death, perhaps accounting for the fact that his works were not translated into Chinese (until the 1940s). There appears to have been a revival of interest in his works in India, especially in Kashmir, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, at the time of the later dissemination (PHYI DAR) of Buddhism to Tibet. Over the next few centuries, Candrakīrti's works became increasingly important in Tibet, such that eventually the MadhyamakAvatAra became the locus classicus for the study of Madhyamaka in Tibet, studied and commented upon by scholars of all sects and serving as one of the "five texts" (GZHUNG LNGA) of the DGE LUGS curriculum. ¶ There appear to be later Indian authors who were called, or called themselves, Candrakīrti. These include the authors of the Trisaranasaptati and the MadhyamakAvatAraprajNA, neither of which appears to have been written by the author described above. Of particular importance is yet another Candrakīrti, or CandrakīrtipAda, the author of the Pradīpoddyotana, an influential commentary on the GUHYASAMAJATANTRA. Scholars often refer to this author as Candrakīrti II or "the tantric Candrakīrti."
carita. (T. spyod pa; C. xing; J. gyo; K. haeng 行). In Sanskrit and PAli, "conduct," "behavior," or "temperament"; an alternative form is Sanskrit caryA (P. cariyA). As "behavior," carita is typically bifurcated into either good (sucarita) or bad (S. duscarita; P. duccarita) conduct. As "temperament," carita is used to indicate six general character types, which are predominantly biased toward the negative temperaments of greedy (RAGA), hateful (S. DVEsA; P. dosa), and deluded (MOHA), or the more positive temperaments of faithful (S. sRADDHA; P. saddhA), intelligent (BUDDHI), and discursive (S. VITARKA; P. vitakka), a taxonomy found in the VISUDDHIMAGGA. The first three types of temperaments are negative and thus need to be corrected. (1) A greedy temperament is constantly searching out new sensory experiences and clings to things that are not beneficial. (2) A hateful temperament is disaffected, always finding imaginary faults in others; along with the intelligent temperament, he is less prone to clinging than the other character types. (3) A deluded temperament is agitated and restless, because he is unable to make up his mind about anything and follows along with others' decisions. The latter three types of temperaments are positive and thus need to be enhanced. (4) A faithful temperament is like a greedy type who instead cultivates wholesome actions and clings to what is beneficial. (5) An intelligent temperament is like a hateful type who performs salutary actions and points out real faults; along with the hateful temperament, he is less prone to clinging than the other character types. (6) A discursive temperament is characterized by a restlessness of mind that constantly flits from topic to topic and vacillates due to his constant conjecturing; if these discursive energies can be harnessed, however, that knowledge may lead to wisdom. The Visuddhimagga also provides detailed guidelines for determining a person's temperament by observing their posture, their preferences in food, and the sort of mental concomitants with which they are typically associated. This knowledge of temperaments is important as a tool of practice (BHAVANA), because in the Visuddhimagga's account of visualization (P. KASInA) exercises, the practitioner is taught to use an appropriate kasina device or meditation topic (P. KAMMAttHANA) either to mitigate the influence of the negative temperaments or enhance the influence of the positive ones. Thus, a practitioner with a greedy temperament is advised to emphasize the cemetery contemplations on foulness (S. AsUBHABHAVANA; P. asubhabhAvanA) and mindfulness of the body (S. KAYANUPAsYANA; P. kAyAnupassanA; see also SMṚTYUPASTHANA); the hateful temperament, the four divine abidings (BRAHMAVIHARA) and the four color kasinas (of blue, yellow, red, white); the deluded temperament, mindfulness of breathing (S. ANAPANASMṚTI; P. AnApAnasati); the discursive temperament, also mindfulness of breathing; the faithful temperament, the first six recollections (S. ANUSMṚTI; P. anussati), viz., of the Buddha, the DHARMA, the SAMGHA, morality, generosity, and the divinities; and the intelligent temperament, the recollections of death and peace, the analysis of the four elements, and the loathsomeness of food. Suitable to all six temperaments are the other six kasinas (viz., of earth, water, fire, air, light, and empty space) and the immaterial absorptions (S. ARuPYAVACARADHYANA; P. arupAvacarajhAna). ¶ In the MAHAYANA, caryA, carita, and related terms (e.g., Sanskrit compounds such as duscara) refer specifically to the difficult course of action that a BODHISATTVA pursues in order to reach the goal of enlightenment. These actions include the unending search or pilgrimage for a teacher, the sacrifices required to meet with an authentic teacher who can teach MahAyAna doctrines (see SADAPRARUDITA, SUDHANA), and the difficult practices of charity, such as giving away all possessions, including family members and even one's body (see DEHADANA; SHESHEN). The JATAKAMALA of sura, the BODHICARYAVATARA of sANTIDEVA, and to a certain extent the BUDDHACARITA of AsVAGHOsA set forth a model of the authentic bodhisattva's behavior for aspirants to emulate. In Buddhist TANTRA, caryA refers to a code of ritual purity, and to an esoteric practice called "yoga with signs" (SANIMITTAYOGA) followed by CARYATANTRA practitioners.
Chakravartin (Sanskrit) Cakravartin [from cakra wheel, cycle + vartin turning, one who governs] Sovereign of the world, universal ruler; a title applied to several Hindu emperors, but referring particularly to Vishnu, who in the treta yuga in the form of a universal monarch protected the three worlds. At the end of kali yuga, legend states that Vishnu will appear again under his form of the Kalki-avatara, or Maitreya as the Buddhists say, reforming or doing away with the wicked and inaugurating a realm of spirituality and righteousness.
Chandravansa (Sanskrit) Candravaṃśa [from candra moon + vaṃśa lineage, race] Also Chandravamsa. The lunar race; one of the two great royal dynasties of ancient India. As related in the Vishnu-Purana, Soma (the moon), the child of the rishi Atri, gave birth to Budha (Mercury) who married Ila, daughter of the other great royal dynasty, the Suryavansa (solar race). Her descendants, Yadu and Puru, founded the two great branches of the Chandravansa (named respectively Yadava and Paurava). The last important scion of the race of Yadu was the avatara Krishna. In the race of Puru were born Pandu and Dhritarashtra — parents respectively of the Pandavas and Kurus, the heroes of the Mahabharata enumerated in the Bhagavad-Gita (ch 1). “In Occultism, man is called a solar-lunar being, solar in his higher triad, and lunar in his quaternary. Moreover, it is the Sun who imparts his light to the Moon, in the same way as the human triad sheds its divine light on the mortal shell of sinful man. Life celestial quickens life terrestrial” (TG 76).
cittamAtra. (T. sems tsam; C. weixin; J. yuishin; K. yusim 唯心). In Sanskrit, lit. "mind-only"; a term used in the LAnKAVATARASuTRA to describe the notion that the external world of the senses does not exist independently of the mind and that all phenomena are mere projections of consciousness. Because this doctrine is espoused by the YOGACARA, that school is sometimes referred to as cittamAtra. The doctrine is closely associated with the eight consciousness (VIJNANA) theory set forth in the "ViniscayasaMgrahanĪ" of the YOGACARABHuMIsASTRA and in the MAHAYANASAMGRAHA and ABHIDHARMASAMUCCAYA that are supplemental to that work. In East Asia, these texts are associated with the name of the MahAyAna writer ASAnGA and his quasi-mythological teacher MAITREYA or MAITREYANATHA. According to this theory, there are not only six consciousnesses (vijNAna), viz., the visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile consciousnesses, and the mental consciousness (manovijNAna) well known to canonical Buddhism; there are two further consciousnesses, called the afflicted mind (KLIstAMANAS) and the storehouse consciousness (ALAYAVIJNANA). The AlayavijNAna is also known as the sarvabīja, or the consciousness that carries all the seeds or potentialities (BĪJA). The CittamAtra school holds that mental states leave a residual impression that is carried by the AlayavijNAna. These impressions (VASANA) literally "perfume" or "suffuse" this underlying consciousness, where they lie dormant as seeds. Among the many categories of seeds, two are principal: the residual impressions giving rise to a new form of life (VIPAKA) in the six realms of existence, and the residual impression that is basic ignorance causing all ordinary mental states to appear in a distorted way, i.e., bifurcated into subject and object. Vasubandhu, who is said to have been converted to the CittamAtra doctrine by his brother Asanga, argues in his TRIMsIKA (TriMsikAvijNaptimAtratA[siddhi]kArikA), the famous "Thirty Verses on Consciousness-Only," that there could not possibly be an atomic basis for objects known by mind. In the absence of an atomic basis, only the ripening of the residual impressions left on the AlayavijNAna can account for the variety of mental states and experience, and only this doctrine of mind-only can properly account for the purification of mind and the final attainment of BODHI. The object and subject share the same mental nature because they both arise from the residual impressions left on the AlayavijNAna, hence the doctrine of cittamAtra, mind-only.
dAkinī. (T. mkha' 'gro ma; C. tuzhini; J. dakini; K. tojini 荼枳尼). In Sanskrit, a cannibalistic female demon, a witch; in sANTIDEVA's BODHICARYAVATARA, a female hell guardian (narakapAlA); in tantric Buddhism, dAkinīs, particularly the vajradAkinī, are guardians from whom tAntrikas obtain secret doctrines. For example, the VAJRABHAIRAVA adept LAlitavajra is said to have received the YAMANTAKA tantras from vajradAkinīs, who allowed him to bring back to the human world only as many of the texts as he could memorize in one night. The dAkinī first appears in Indian sources during the fourth century CE, and it has been suggested that they evolved from local female shamans. The term is of uncertain derivation, perhaps having something to do with "drumming" (a common feature of shamanic ritual). The Chinese, Japanese, and Korean give simply a phonetic transcription of the Sanskrit. In Tibetan, dAkinī is translated as "sky goer" (mkha' 'gro ma), probably related to the Sanskrit khecara, a term associated with the CAKRASAMVARATANTRA. Here, the dAkinī is a goddess, often depicted naked, in semi-wrathful pose (see VAJRAYOGINĪ); they retain their fearsome element but are synonymous with the highest female beauty and attractiveness and are enlightened beings. They form the third of what are known as the "inner" three jewels (RATNATRAYA): the guru, the YI DAM, and the dAkinīs and protectors (DHARMAPALA; T. chos skyong). The archetypical Tibetan wisdom or knowledge dAkinī (ye shes mkha' 'gro) is YE SHES MTSHO RGYAL, the consort of PADMASAMBHAVA. dAkinīs are classified in a variety of ways, the most common being mkha' 'gro sde lnga, the female buddhas equivalent to the PANCATATHAGATA or five buddha families (PANCAKULA): BuddhadAkinī [alt. AkAsadhAtvīsvarī; SparsavajrA] in the center of the mandala, with LocanA, MAmakī, PAndaravAsinī, and TARA in the cardinal directions. Another division is into three: outer, inner, and secret dAkinīs. The first is a YOGINĪ or a YOGIN's wife or a regional goddess, the second is a female buddha that practitioners visualize themselves to be in the course of tantric meditation, and the last is nondual wisdom (ADVAYAJNANA). This division is also connected with the three bodies (TRIKAYA) of MahAyAna Buddhism: the NIRMAnAKAYA (here referring to the outer dAkinīs), SAMBHOGAKAYA (meditative deity), and the DHARMAKAYA (the knowledge dAkinī). The word dAkinī is found in the title of the explanation (vAkhyA) tantras of the yoginī class or mother tantras included in the CakrasaMvaratantra group.
Damaghosha (Sanskrit) Damaghoṣa King of Chedi and father of Sisupala, the demon-reincarnation of Ravana who was killed by the avatara Krishna.
dasabhumi. (T. sa bcu; C. shidi; J. juji; K. sipchi 十地). In Sanskrit, lit., "ten grounds," "ten stages"; the ten highest reaches of the bodhisattva path (MARGA) leading to buddhahood. The most systematic and methodical presentation of the ten BHuMIs appears in the DAsABHuMIKASuTRA ("Ten Bhumis Sutra"), where each of the ten stages is correlated with seminal doctrines of mainstream Buddhism-such as the four means of conversion (SAMGRAHAVASTU) on the first four bhumis, the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (CATVARY ARYASATYANI) on the fifth bhumi, and the chain of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPADA) on the sixth bhumi, etc.-as well as with mastery of one of a list of ten perfections (PARAMITA) completed in the course of training as a bodhisattva. The list of the ten bhumis of the Dasabhumikasutra, which becomes standard in most MahAyAna traditions, is as follows: (1) PRAMUDITA (joyful) corresponds to the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA) and the bodhisattva's first direct realization of emptiness (suNYATA). The bodhisattva masters on this bhumi the perfection of giving (DANAPARAMITA), learning to give away those things most precious to him, including his wealth, his wife and family, and even his body (see DEHADANA); (2) VIMALA (immaculate, stainless) marks the inception of the path of cultivation (BHAVANAMARGA), where the bodhisattva develops all the superlative traits of character incumbent on a buddha through mastering the perfection of morality (sĪLAPARAMITA); (3) PRABHAKARĪ (luminous, splendrous), where the bodhisattva masters all the various types of meditative experiences, such as DHYANA, SAMAPATTI, and the BRAHMAVIHARA; despite the emphasis on meditation in this bhumi, it comes to be identified instead with the perfection of patience (KsANTIPARAMITA), ostensibly because the bodhisattva is willing to endure any and all suffering in order to master his practices; (4) ARCIsMATĪ (radiance, effulgence), where the flaming radiance of the thirty-seven factors pertaining to enlightenment (BODHIPAKsIKADHARMA) becomes so intense that it incinerates obstructions (AVARAnA) and afflictions (KLEsA), giving the bodhisattva inexhaustible energy in his quest for enlightenment and thus mastering the perfection of vigor or energy (VĪRYAPARAMITA); (5) SUDURJAYA (invincibility, hard-to-conquer), where the bodhisattva comprehends the various permutations of truth (SATYA), including the four noble truths, the two truths (SATYADVAYA) of provisional (NEYARTHA) and absolute (NĪTARTHA), and masters the perfection of meditative absorption (DHYANAPARAMITA); (6) ABHIMUKHĪ (immediacy, face-to-face), where, as the name implies, the bodhisattva stands at the intersection between SAMSARA and NIRVAnA, turning away from the compounded dharmas of saMsAra and turning to face the profound wisdom of the buddhas, thus placing him "face-to-face" with both the compounded (SAMSKṚTA) and uncompounded (ASAMSKṚTA) realms; this bhumi is correlated with mastery of the perfection of wisdom (PRAJNAPARAMITA); (7) DuRAnGAMA (far-reaching, transcendent), which marks the bodhisattva's freedom from the four perverted views (VIPARYASA) and his mastery of the perfection of expedients (UPAYAPARAMITA), which he uses to help infinite numbers of sentient beings; (8) ACALA (immovable, steadfast), which is marked by the bodhisattva's acquiescence or receptivity to the nonproduction of dharmas (ANUTPATTIKADHARMAKsANTI); because he is now able to project transformation bodies (NIRMAnAKAYA) anywhere in the universe to help sentient beings, this bhumi is correlated with mastery of the perfection of aspiration or resolve (PRAnIDHANAPARAMITA); (9) SADHUMATĪ (eminence, auspicious intellect), where the bodhisattva acquires the four analytical knowledges (PRATISAMVID), removing any remaining delusions regarding the use of the supernatural knowledges or powers (ABHIJNA), and giving the bodhisattva complete autonomy in manipulating all dharmas through the perfection of power (BALAPARAMITA); and (10) DHARMAMEGHA (cloud of dharma), the final bhumi, where the bodhisattva becomes autonomous in interacting with all material and mental factors, and gains all-pervasive knowledge that is like a cloud producing a rain of dharma that nurtures the entire world; this stage is also described as being pervaded by meditative absorption (DHYANA) and mastery of the use of codes (DHARAnĪ), just as the sky is filled by clouds; here the bodhisattva achieves the perfection of knowledge (JNANAPARAMITA). As the bodhisattva ascends through the ten bhumis, he acquires extraordinary powers, which CANDRAKĪRTI describes in the eleventh chapter of his MADHYAMAKAVATARA. On the first bhumi, the bodhisattva can, in a single instant (1) see one hundred buddhas, (2) be blessed by one hundred buddhas and understand their blessings, (3) live for one hundred eons, (4) see the past and future in those one hundred eons, (5) enter into and rise from one hundred SAMADHIs, (6) vibrate one hundred worlds, (7) illuminate one hundred worlds, (8) bring one hundred beings to spiritual maturity using emanations, (9) go to one hundred BUDDHAKsETRA, (10), open one hundred doors of the doctrine (DHARMAPARYAYA), (11) display one hundred versions of his body, and (12) surround each of those bodies with one hundred bodhisattvas. The number one hundred increases exponentially as the bodhisattva proceeds; on the second bhumi it becomes one thousand, on the third one hundred thousand, and so on; on the tenth, it is a number equal to the particles of an inexpressible number of buddhaksetra. As the bodhisattva moves from stage to stage, he is reborn as the king of greater and greater realms, ascending through the Buddhist cosmos. Thus, on the first bhumi he is born as king of JAMBUDVĪPA, on the second of the four continents, on the third as the king of TRAYATRIMsA, and so on, such that on the tenth he is born as the lord of AKANIstHA. ¶ According to the rather more elaborate account in chapter eleven of the CHENG WEISHI LUN (*VijNaptimAtratAsiddhi), each of the ten bhumis is correlated with the attainment of one of the ten types of suchness (TATHATA); these are accomplished by discarding one of the ten kinds of obstructions (Avarana) by mastering one of the ten perfections (pAramitA). The suchnesses achieved on each of the ten bhumis are, respectively: (1) universal suchness (sarvatragatathatA; C. bianxing zhenru), (2) supreme suchness (paramatathatA; C. zuisheng zhenru), (3) ubiquitous, or "supreme outflow" suchness (paramanisyandatathatA; C. shengliu zhenru), (4) unappropriated suchness (aparigrahatathatA; C. wusheshou zhenru), (5) undifferentiated suchness (abhinnajAtīyatathatA; C. wubie zhenru), (6) the suchness that is devoid of maculations and contaminants (asaMklistAvyavadAtatathatA; C. wuranjing zhenru), (7) the suchness of the undifferentiated dharma (abhinnatathatA; C. fawubie zhenru), (8) the suchness that neither increases nor decreases (anupacayApacayatathatA; C. buzengjian), (9) the suchness that serves as the support of the mastery of wisdom (jNAnavasitAsaMnisrayatathatA; C. zhizizai suoyi zhenru), and (10) the suchness that serves as the support for mastery over actions (kriyAdivasitAsaMnisrayatathatA; C. yezizai dengsuoyi). These ten suchnessses are obtained by discarding, respectively: (1) the obstruction of the common illusions of the unenlightened (pṛthagjanatvAvarana; C. yishengxing zhang), (2) the obstruction of the deluded (mithyApratipattyAvarana; C. xiexing zhang), (3) the obstruction of dullness (dhandhatvAvarana; C. andun zhang), (4) the obstruction of the manifestation of subtle afflictions (suksmaklesasamudAcArAvarana; C. xihuo xianxing zhang), (5) the obstruction of the lesser HĪNAYANA ideal of parinirvAna (hīnayAnaparinirvAnAvarana; C. xiasheng niepan zhang), (6) the obstruction of the manifestation of coarse characteristics (sthulanimittasamudAcArAvarana; C. cuxiang xianxing zhang), (7) the obstruction of the manifestation of subtle characteristics (suksmanimittasamudAcArAvarana; C. xixiang xianxing zhang), (8) the obstruction of the continuance of activity even in the immaterial realm that is free from characteristics (nirnimittAbhisaMskArAvarana; C. wuxiang jiaxing zhang), (9) the obstruction of not desiring to act on behalf of others' salvation (parahitacaryAkAmanAvarana; C. buyuxing zhang), and (10) the obstruction of not yet acquiring mastery over all things (fa weizizai zhang). These ten obstructions are overcome by practicing, respectively: (1) the perfection of giving (dAnapAramitA), (2) the perfection of morality (sīlapAramitA), (3) the perfection of forbearance (ksAntipAramitA), (4) the perfection of energetic effort (vīryapAramitA), (5) the perfection of meditation (dhyAnapAramitA), (6) the perfection of wisdom (prajNApAramitA), (7) the perfection of expedient means (upAyapAramitA), (8) the perfection of the vow (to attain enlightenment) (pranidhAnapAramitA), (9) the perfection of power (balapAramitA), and (10) the perfection of knowledge (jNAnapAramitA). ¶ The eighth, ninth, and tenth bhumis are sometimes called "pure bhumis," because, according to some commentators, upon reaching the eighth bhumi, the bodhisattva has abandoned all of the afflictive obstructions (KLEsAVARAnA) and is thus liberated from any further rebirth. It appears that there were originally only seven bhumis, as is found in the BODHISATTVABHuMI, where the seven bhumis overlap with an elaborate system of thirteen abidings or stations (vihAra), some of the names of which (such as pramuditA) appear also in the standard bhumi schema of the Dasabhumikasutra. Similarly, though a listing of ten bhumis appears in the MAHAVASTU, a text associated with the LOKOTTARAVADA subsect of the MAHASAMGHIKA school, only seven are actually discussed there, and the names given to the stages are completely different from those found in the later Dasabhumikasutra; the stages there are also a retrospective account of how past buddhas have achieved enlightenment, rather than a prescription for future practice. ¶ The dasabhumi schema is sometimes correlated with other systems of classifying the bodhisattva path. In the five levels of the YogAcAra school's outline of the bodhisattva path (PANCAMARGA; C. wuwei), the first bhumi (pramuditA) is presumed to be equivalent to the level of proficiency (*prativedhAvasthA; C. tongdawei), the third of the five levels; while the second bhumi onward corresponds to the level of cultivation (C. xiuxiwei), the fourth of the five levels. The first bhumi is also correlated with the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA), while the second and higher bhumis correlate with the path of cultivation (BHAVANAMARGA). In terms of the doctrine of the five acquiescences (C. ren; S. ksAnti) listed in the RENWANG JING, the first through the third bhumis are equivalent to the second acquiescence, the acquiescence of belief (C. xinren; J. shinnin; K. sinin); the fourth through the sixth stages to the third, the acquiescence of obedience (C. shunren; J. junnin; K. sunin); the seventh through the ninth stages to the fourth, the acquiescence to the nonproduction of dharmas (anutpattikadharmaksAnti; C. wushengren; J. mushonin; K. musaengin); the tenth stage to the fifth and final acquiescence, to extinction (jimieren; J. jakumetsunin; K. chongmyorin). FAZANG's HUAYANJING TANXUAN JI ("Notes Plumbing the Profundities of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA") classifies the ten bhumis in terms of practice by correlating the first bhumi to the practice of faith (sRADDHA), the second bhumi to the practice of morality (sĪLA), the third bhumi to the practice of concentration (SAMADHI), and the fourth bhumi and higher to the practice of wisdom (PRAJNA). In the same text, Fazang also classifies the bhumis in terms of vehicle (YANA) by correlating the first through third bhumis with the vehicle of humans and gods (rentiansheng), the fourth through the seventh stage to the three vehicles (TRIYANA), and the eighth through tenth bhumis to the one vehicle (EKAYANA). ¶ Besides the list of the dasabhumi outlined in the Dasabhumikasutra, the MAHAPRAJNAPARAMITASuTRA and the DAZHIDU LUN (*MahAprajNApAramitAsAstra) list a set of ten bhumis, called the "bhumis in common" (gongdi), which are shared between all the three vehicles of sRAVAKAs, PRATYEKABUDDHAs, and bodhisattvas. These are the bhumis of: (1) dry wisdom (suklavidarsanAbhumi; C. ganhuidi), which corresponds to the level of three worthies (sanxianwei, viz., ten abidings, ten practices, ten transferences) in the srAvaka vehicle and the initial arousal of the thought of enlightenment (prathamacittotpAda) in the bodhisattva vehicle; (2) lineage (gotrabhumi; C. xingdi, zhongxingdi), which corresponds to the stage of the "aids to penetration" (NIRVEDHABHAGĪYA) in the srAvaka vehicle, and the final stage of the ten transferences in the fifty-two bodhisattva stages; (3) eight acquiescences (astamakabhumi; C. barendi), the causal incipiency of stream-enterer (SROTAAPANNA) in the case of the srAvaka vehicle and the acquiescence to the nonproduction of dharmas (anutpattikadharmaksAnti) in the bodhisattva path (usually corresponding to the first or the seventh through ninth bhumis of the bodhisattva path); (4) vision (darsanabhumi; C. jiandi), corresponding to the fruition or fulfillment (PHALA) level of the stream-enterer in the srAvaka vehicle and the stage of nonretrogression (AVAIVARTIKA), in the bodhisattva path (usually corresponding to the completion of the first or the eighth bhumi); (5) diminishment (tanubhumi; C. baodi), corresponding to the fulfillment level (phala) of stream-enterer or the causal incipiency of the once-returner (sakṛdAgAmin) in the srAvaka vehicle, or to the stage following nonretrogression before the attainment of buddhahood in the bodhisattva path; (6) freedom from desire (vītarAgabhumi; C. liyudi), equivalent to the fulfillment level of the nonreturner in the srAvaka vehicle, or to the stage where a bodhisattva attains the five supernatural powers (ABHIJNA); (7) complete discrimination (kṛtAvibhumi), equivalent to the fulfillment level of the ARHAT in the srAvaka vehicle, or to the stage of buddhahood (buddhabhumi) in the bodhisattva path (buddhabhumi) here refers not to the fruition of buddhahood but merely to the state in which a bodhisattva has the ability to exhibit the eighteen qualities distinctive to the buddhas (AVEnIKA[BUDDHA]DHARMA); (8) pratyekabuddha (pratyekabuddhabhumi); (9) bodhisattva (bodhisattvabhumi), the whole bodhisattva career prior to the fruition of buddhahood; (10) buddhahood (buddhabhumi), the stage of the fruition of buddhahood, when the buddha is completely equipped with all the buddhadharmas, such as omniscience (SARVAKARAJNATĀ). As is obvious in this schema, despite being called the bhumis "common" to all three vehicles, the shared stages continue only up to the seventh stage; the eighth through tenth stages are exclusive to the bodhisattva vehicle. This anomaly suggests that the last three bhumis of the bodhisattvayāna were added to an earlier srāvakayāna seven-bhumi scheme. ¶ The presentation of the bhumis in the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ commentarial tradition following the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA uses the names found in the Dasabhumikasutra for the bhumis and understands them all as bodhisattva levels; it introduces the names of the ten bhumis found in the Dazhidu lun as levels that bodhisattvas have to pass beyond (S. atikrama) on the tenth bodhisattva level, which it calls the buddhabhumi. This tenth bodhisattva level is not the level of an actual buddha, but the level on which a bodhisattva has to transcend attachment (abhinivesa) to not only the levels reached by the four sets of noble persons (ĀRYAPUDGALA) but to the bodhisattvabhumis as well. See also BHuMI.
Dattatraya (Sanskrit) Dattātreya The universal lord; popularly, “the Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, incarnate in an Avatara — of course as a triple essence. The esoteric, and true meaning is the adept’s own trinity of body, soul, and spirit; the three being all realized by him as real, existent, and potential. By Yoga training, the body becomes pure as a crystal casket, the soul purged of all its grossness, and the spirit which, before the beginning of his course of self-purification and development, was to him but a dream, has now become a reality — the man has become a demi-god” (BCW 2:160).
Devaki (Sanskrit) Devakī The mother of Krishna. She was shut up in a dungeon by her brother, King Kansa, for fear of the fulfillment of a prophecy that a son of hers would dethrone and kill him. Notwithstanding the strict watch kept, Devaki was overshadowed by Vishnu, the holy spirit, and thus gave birth to that god’s avatara, Krishna as the incarnated ray of the Logos.
Devapi (Sanskrit) Devāpi [from deva god + āpi friend] Friend of the god; a rishi mentioned in the Rig-Veda as the son of Rishti-shena. In the Mahabharata and the Puranas he is described as a son of King Pratipa of the Kurus, who resigns his kingdom and retires into the woods, where he is still alive, awaiting with the sage Maru, at Kalapa or Katapa, the coming of Maitreya Buddha, the avatara who will come at the close of the kali yuga, according to legend.
Dimensional Anomaly: Technocratic name for the Avatar Storm.
Divine incarnations do not mean that a divine being seizes upon and occupies the body of a human being as by a kind of obsession; but that every person has within him the powers by which he can manifest his own innate divinity, and that a few people have these powers developed in a special degree. When properly understood, a truly divine incarnation, as in avataras, was one of the greatest of the mysteries of every archaic religious system.
divya janma ::: the divine birth. Avatarhood. ::: divyam janma [nominative]
Druses A sect calling themselves Disciples of Hamsa, living mainly on Mt. Lebanon in Syria, with offshoots in neighboring regions. Its origin is a puzzle to scholars. It seems to have preserved an esoteric school and to have guarded it successfully by exclusiveness towards other peoples. They believe that the Deity, ordinarily inscrutable, manifests himself from time to time in avataric Messiahs. The fact that their faith seems to scholars to have affinity with so many different sources is proof of its eclecticism.
Ebionites [probably from Hebrew ’ebyon poor] An early sect of Christians, but predating the term Christian. They were probably disciples of Jeshua ben Panthera, an initiated teacher living in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (104-79 BC), around whom many scholars believe the Gospel story of the avatara Jesus was later built. There seems little support for the conjecture that they had a founder called Ebion. Accounts of their tenets are uncertain, for their name was transferred to various diverging sects, differing in the extent of their adhesion to the Mosaic law and in their way of interpreting Christian dogmas as to the nature and work of Jesus. They were regarded as Judaizers and heretics, and eventually became eliminated from the Church. As Gnostics of a kind, they regarded both Christ and the polar opposite Jehovah as emanations or rays of the Logos, and were concerned with the adaptation of esoteric teachings with the Mosaic law on the one hand and with the materializing spirit of the Church on the other.
Eidolon: As noted above, the Technocratic view of an Avatar’s Essence.
Essence: The personality of an Avatar, defined as either Dynamic, Pattern, Questing, or Primordial; known by Technocrats as an Eidolon.
Every avatara repeats in the small the primordial history of the cosmic Logos: the divinity sacrificing itself for the sake of all the hierarchies within it. This is the sacrifice which took place “before the beginning of the world,” the core of the mythologic story of the Christos, the Logos or cosmic Word incarnate as man.
Following the war in heaven there took place an exchange of “hostages” between the aesir and vanir, and Njord (Saturn) was a vanagod sent as hostage to the aesir. He represents the saturnian qualities, among them those of Chronos (time). His children are Frey, the earth deity, and Freya, Venus, who is the guardian and protectress of the intelligent kingdom (humanity) on earth. This suggests that Njord was an emissary or avatara from the wise vanir to the active planetary gods, and that the vanir inspire avataric figures among the aesir. There are indications also that the aesir may graduate to the stature of the wise vanagods.
Fourteen A septenate in which each member is dual. In the Hindu Laws of Manu, fourteen manus are enumerated; and in theosophy a root-manu and a seed-manu are given for each round. In a Hindu allegory, there arise from the churning of the ocean fourteen “precious things,” which in a corresponding Japanese system are enumerated as seven. See also KURMA-AVATARA
Gambanteinn, Gammanten (Icelandic) [from gamban repay + teinn staff; or from Swedish gamman joy + ten staff] Used in the Icelandic Edda in Skirnismal to denote a magic rod with which the messenger of the god Frey, Skirner (radiance), sought to woo the giantess Gerd (a race of humanity) on the god’s behalf. The tale appears to relate an avataric descent to the human world.
Genius, the: As noted above, the Technocratic view of an Avatar.
Genius, the: Capitalized, the Technocratic term for the Avatar.
Gilgul: Destruction of a mage’s Avatar, often as a punishment; from the Hebrew, “metamorphosis.”
Gilgul: The rite of destroying an Avatar as well as a mage’s ability to do magic or to reincarnate.
God-man Mankind after the change in the third root-race when animal humanity became incarnate devas because of the overshadowing incarnations of the manasaputras. Also manas (mind) in alliance with atma-buddhi, as contrasted with manas in alliance with the lower principles — the latter being simply and merely human. Sometimes used to describe the avataras appearing in the human race at periodic intervals, or again to describe buddhas or other spiritual-human beings.
God-sparks When evolution starts on the downward arc, the spiritual essence appears as a vast host of individual monads or spiritual, conscious atoms which, because of their lack of the self-conscious human condition, are often termed unself-conscious god-sparks — although this does not mean that they lack self-consciousness on their own plane, for these monads never leave their own planes. To speak of a monad incarnating means that a ray projected from the monad “descends” from its plane in a minor avataric sense to inflame the nascent manasic element or power in lower beings, precisely as took place in the cases of the manasaputras. These god-sparks, being the spiritual monads of living entities, gradually emanate from themselves the successive vestures through which they manifest, the process taking place serially and ladder-fashion on the downward arc; with the eventual result that, at the end of the ascending arc, the unself-conscious god-sparks become self-conscious gods, which means that the self-conscious humanity of them becomes linked self-consciously to the self-consciousness of the monads on their own plane.
gods "the necessary static elements, ::: Space, the ordered movements of the worlds, the ascending levels, the highest goal"; in later Hinduism, the Preserver of the world, one of the "three Powers and Personalities . of the One Cosmic Godhead", of which the other two are Brahma, the Creator, and Śiva or Rudra2, the Destroyer; also regarded as the Lord himself (isvara) who incarnates in the avataras, and the one deva of whom all the gods are manifestations; in the Record of Yoga, usually a subordinate aspect of Kr.s.n.a, sometimes identified with Pradyumna as the personality of the fourfold isvara whose sakti is Mahalaks.mi.Vis Visnu-Narayana
Hanuman or Hanumat (Sanskrit) Hanumān, Hanumat Monkey-god of the Ramayana. The son of Pavana, god of the winds, or spirit, Hanuman is fabled to have assumed any form at will, wielded rocks, removed mountains, mounted the air, seized the clouds, and to have rivaled Garuda in swiftness of flight. According to the epic, Hanuman and his host of semi-human monkey-beings became the allies of Rama, the avatara of Vishnu, in his war with the Rakshasa-king of Lanka, Ravana, who had carried off Rama’s wife, the beautiful Sita. As advisor to Rama and leader of his army, Hanuman showed unparalleled audacity, wit, and wisdom, thereby accomplishing great feats.
Hari (Sanskrit) Hari [from the verbal root hṛ to take, remove; to be yellow] Especially the name of Krishna as an avatara of Vishnu; likewise applied to other deities, generally Siva. Also an alternative name for the sign of the zodiac Simha or Leo — the word itself meaning a lion, as well as being a name for the sun, the moon, the horses of Indra, and for one of the nine varshas or divisions of the world.
hinduism. An avatar of Vishnu and one of the most popular of Indian deities, who appears in the Bhagavad-Gita as the teacher of Arjuna.
Hiranyakasipu, after being slain by the Narasimha-avatara was born as Ravana, who in turn was slain by Rama (another avatara of Vishnu); after which he is reborn as Sisupala, who was slain by Krishna (the latest avatara of Vishnu). “This parallel evolution of Vishnu (spirit) with a Daitya, as men, . . . gives us the key not only to the respective dates of Rama and Krishna but even to a certain psychological mystery” (SD 2:225).
Hiranyakasipu (Sanskrit) Hiraṇyakaśipu [from hiraṇya golden + kaśipu clothing, vesture] Golden clothing; one of the most celebrated of the Hindu titans or daityas, son of the sage Kasyapa and Diti. As related in the Mahabharata, he obtained the favor of Brahma and was granted sovereignty of the three worlds for a million years. He became all-powerful because he could not be slain either by god, man, or animal. But his power was used evilly, so that he became notorious for his impiety. He persecuted his son Prahlada for worshiping Vishnu until once, when Prahlada was engaged in his observances, Vishnu during his fourth avataric incarnation appeared out of a pillar in the form of Narasimha (half man, half lion) and tore Hiranyakasipu to pieces.
Hiranyaksha (Sanskrit) Hiraṇyākṣa [from hiraṇya golden + akṣa eye] Golden eye; one of the principal daityas (titans), twin brother of Hrianyakasipu. In the Mahabharata, he dragged the earth to the depths of the ocean, and because of this was slain by Vishnu in his third avataric manifestation of the Varaha-avatara (the boar incarnation). His progeny is said to number 77 crores, or 770 millions. “Hiranyaksha is the ruler or king of the fifth region or Patala, a Snake-god” (SD 2:382n).
"I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness —. . . .” Letters on Yoga
“I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness—….” *Letters on Yoga
“I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness—….” Letters on Yoga
In a more restricted sense, applied to those rare but periodic appearances of spiritual beings in the human race, called by the ancient Hindus rishis, who are distinguished from avataras on the one hand and buddhas on the other hand — so that the compound in these last cases may be translated as rishis who are sons of devas or spiritual beings.
Incarnation Imbodiments of an entity or monad in a body of flesh, usually human. It is also used of avataras, buddhas, etc., in treating of the manifold mystery of the union of godhood and humanhood. This mystery, both among Hindus and Christians, is a distorted and anthropomorphic understanding of the teaching as to the presence of the unseen cosmic principles throughout all nature and man, as symbolized by the circle and cross.
India. Intimations of advanced theism, both in a deistic and immanentistic form, are to be found in the Rig Veda. The early Upanishads in general teach variously realistic deism, immanent theism, and, more characteristically, mystical, impersonal idealism, according to which the World Ground (brahman) is identified with the universal soul (atman) which is the inner or essential self within each individual person. The Bhagavad Gita, while mixing pantheism, immanent theism, and deism, inclines towards a personahstic idealism and a corresponding ethics of bhakti (selfless devotion). Jainism is atheistic dualism, with a personalistic recognition of the reality of souls. Many of the schools of Buddhism (see Buddhism) teach idealistic doctrines. Thus a monistic immaterialism and subjectivism (the Absolute is pure consciousness) was expounded by Maitreya, Asanga, and Vasubandhu. The Lankavatarasutra combined monistic, immaterialistic idealism with non-absolutistic nihilism. Subjectivistic, phenomenalistic idealism (the view that there is neither absolute Pure Consciousness nor substantial souls) was taught by the Buddhists Santaraksita and Kamalasila. Examples of modern Vedantic idealism are the Yogavasistha (subjective monistic idealism) and the monistic spiritualism of Gaudapada (duality and plurality are illusion). The most influential Vedantic system is the monistic spiritualism of Sankara. The Absolute is pure indeterminate Being, which can only be described as pure consciousness or bliss. For the different Vedantic doctrines see Vedanta and the references there. Vedantic idealism, whether in its monistic and impersonalistic form, or in that of a more personalistic theism, is the dominant type of metaphysics in modern India. Idealism is also pronounced in the reviving doctrines of Shivaism (which see).
(In later Hinduism) “The Preserver.” The second member of the Trimurti, along with Brahma the Creator and Shiva the Destroyer. 2. (In popular Hinduism) a deity believed to have descended from heaven to earth in several incarnations, or avatars, varying in number from nine to twenty-two, but always including animals. His most important human incarnation is the Krishna of the Bhagavad-Gita. 3. “The Pervader,” one of a half-dozen solar deities in the Rig-Veda, daily traversing the sky in three strides, morning, afternoon, and night.
". . . in the Avatar there is the special manifestation, the divine birth from above, the eternal and universal Godhead descended into a form of individual humanity, âtmânam srjâmi, and conscious not only behind the veil but in the outward nature.” Essays on the Gita
“… in the Avatar there is the special manifestation, the divine birth from above, the eternal and universal Godhead descended into a form of individual humanity, âtmânam srjâmi, and conscious not only behind the veil but in the outward nature.” Essays on the Gita
“… in the Avatar there is the special manifestation, the divine birth from above, the eternal and universal Godhead descended into a form of individual humanity, âtmânamsrjâmi, and conscious not only behind the veil but in the outward nature.” Essays on the Gita
In the Rig-Veda, Visvakarman is said to sacrifice himself to himself. This refers, among other things, to the fact that when manvantara opens, in order for its vast content of worlds and hierarchies to appear, the originating entities must — because of karmic mandate or impulse — themselves form the beginnings of things from themselves, thus sacrificing themselves to themselves so that the cosmos may appear in manifestation. Another significance of the statement is the reference to the spiritual resurrection at the end of the manvantara or, in the case of man, to the choice to be spiritual rather than material, to rise self-consciously from material existence into the one Life. “Then he ascends into heaven indeed; where, plunged into the incomprehensible absolute Being and Bliss of Paranirvana, he reigns unconditionally, and whence he will re-descend again at the next ‘coming,’ which one portion of humanity expects in its dead-letter sense as the second advent, and the other as the last ‘Kalki Avatar’ ” (SD 1:268).
In this connection, the Kalki-avatara — stated to be the final incarnation of Vishnu in Hinduism or the incarnation of Maitreya-Buddha in Northern Buddhism — and the final great hero and savior of mankind of the Zoroastrians called Sosiosh, as well as the Faithful and True one of the Christian book of Revelation, all appear on a white horse. All these heroes or saviors are connected emblematically with horses of power because the horse has been from immemorial time a representation of solar, spiritual, and intellectual energies. See also ASVAMEDHA
in Vedic lore. [See Avatar.]
isvara (ishwara) ::: the isvara in his four personalities, usually referred to in the Record of Yoga as Mahavira, Balarama, Pradyumna and Aniruddha, to whom correspond the four aspects of his sakti and the four psychological types of the caturvarn.ya; each of these personalities is not a separate deity, but an aspect of the isvara or Kr.s.n.a, "Four who are One, One who is Four", often combined with one or more of the other three aspects. Sri Aurobindo adapted the Vaishnava tradition of the caturvyūha (fourfold manifestation of the purus.ottama) in giving to the four aspects names associated with Kr.s.n.a as an avatara.Mahavira ("the great hero") designates Śrikr.s.n.a himself, Balarama was his elder brother, Pradyumna his son and Aniruddha his grandson; they figure together in the legend of Us.a and Aniruddha told in the Bhagavata Puran.a. Other names that are sometimes used in the Record of Yoga for these aspects of the isvara are Mahesvara or Śiva for the first aspect (Mahavira), Rudra2 for the second (Balarama) and Vis.n.u for the third (Pradyumna). full dras drasta
Jagaddhatri (Sanskrit) Jagaddhātrī [from jagat the world + dhātrī mother, nurse] World-mother, world foster-mother; applied to Sarasvati and Durga, among other Hindu goddesses. Used particularly in connection with Krishna in his aspect of the Logos, the avatara, and likewise with his brother Balarama, who both are brought to their mother, Devaki, by means of Jagaddhatri. Cosmologically, the name refers to a spiritual substance which is one of the first few removes from Brahman. In the building of worlds it is the cosmic matrix out of which worlds are born, and which therefore acts not only in the sense of mother, but likewise as foster-mother, nurse, and producer.
Jagannatha (Sanskrit) Jagannātha [from jagat world + nātha protector, lord] World protector, governor or lord of the world; title of Vishnu and Krishna, especially in his avataric manifestation from Vishnu; also of Rama, a previous avatara. “This deity is worshipped equally by all the sects of India. . . . He is the god of the Mysteries, and his temples, which are most numerous in Bengal, are all of a pyramidal form” (IU 2:301). Applied specifically to the idol of Vishnu-Krishna at Puri in Orissa, Bengal, which is drawn through the street in a huge vehicle, under the wheels of which devotees were supposed to allow themselves to be crushed — the modern English form is Juggernaut, meaning any law, custom, or belief that demands blind devotion and ruthless sacrifice.
Janardana (Sanskrit) Janārdana [from the verbal root jan to be born, come forth + the verbal root ard to move, agitate] The adored of mankind, exciting or agitating men, besought by mortals; in the Puranas, the one cosmic intelligent life, manifesting in the threefold aspect of fashioner, preserver, and regenerator (Brahma, Vishnu, Siva). Also applied to Krishna in his avataric manifestation of Vishnu.
Jhumur: “I have often wondered if this has anything to do with the passion-play. I feel that. In the root meaning of the word in Latin is there a sense of the word as suffering? In the French you have patir, patir is to suffer. To me it always brings in the holocaust and the coming down of the avatar into the human condition. [Ed. note: ML passiõn—(s. of passiõ) Christ’s sufferings on the cross, any of the Biblical accounts of these. ( late OE passiõn-), special use of LL passiõ suffering, submission, deriv. of L passus , ptp, of patî to suffer, submit.]
Kalapa (Sanskrit) Kalāpa A place mentioned in the Vayu-Purana, said to be on the northern side of the Himalayas, hence in Tibet. The Matsya-Purana has it that from Kalapa (spelled Katapa) in due course will issue forth the Kalki-avatara.
Kaliya, Kaliya-naga (Sanskrit) Kāliya, Kāliya-nāga A serpent-king with five heads whose mouths vomited fire and smoke which devastated the country around, said to have lived in a deep pool of the Yamuna River. The Puranas relate that Krishna, one of the avataras of Vishnu, in his childhood overcame this serpent, then let him retreat into the ocean with his wives and offspring. This mythical monster symbolizes human passions, the river or water being a symbol of matter.
Kalki Avatara (Sanskrit) Kalkī (or Kalki) Avatāra [from kalkin white horse + avatāra divine descent] The white-horse avatara, the 10th and last descent of Vishnu, in the form of a white horse at the end of kali yuga. “When the close of the Kali-age shall be nigh, a portion of that divine being which exists, of its own spiritual nature . . . shall descend on Earth . . . endowed with the eight superhuman faculties. . . . He will re-establish righteousness on earth, and the minds of those who live at the end of Kali-Yuga shall be awakened and become as pellucid as crystal. The men who are thus changed . . . shall be the seeds of human beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita-age, the age of purity” (VP 4:24).
Kalki Avatar—the 10th of the 10 avatars in
kalki ::: n. --> The name of Vishnu in his tenth and last avatar.
Kalki ::: the final avatara of Vis.n.u according to the Hindu tradition, expected to come mounted symbolically on a white horse "bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces".
Kalki ::: [the tenth and final avatara of Visnu who will] fulfil in power the great struggle which the previous avataras prepared in all its potentialities.
Kaspar One of the three Magi or wise men in Christian legend. In Egypt the scribe of the gods or the recorder was Tehuti (Thoth), who was also the god of wisdom, equivalent to Hermes or Mercury: always present at initiations, and the presiding influence, as initiator, at all ancient initiations. Looking at the Christian story in this context, infant is a name for a “newly born” initiate, who thus is a twice-born (Sanskrit dvija). The star refers to the esoteric wisdom which taught the wise men of the time that the cycle in its turning had brought about the birth of an avatara, a manifestation on this earth of a certain starry or solar divinity. See also BALTHAZAR; MELCHIOR
Kesin (Sanskrit) Keśin A demon slain by Krishna, the eighth avatara of Vishnu.
Krishna ::: Hinduism. An avatar of Vishnu and one of the most popular of Indian deities, who appears in the Bhagavad-Gita as the teacher of Arjuna.
Krishna [Krisn Avatar]
Krishna (Sanskrit) Kṛṣṇa Black, dark, dark blue; the most celebrated and eighth avatara of Vishnu. Hindus consider him their savior, and he is worshiped as the most popular of their gods. Krishna was born some 5000 years ago, the incarnated human spiritual power that closed the dvapara yuga — his death in 3102 BC marked the beginning of kali yuga. He was the son of Devaki and the nephew of Kansa, who parallels King Herod.
Krishna: The eighth Avatar (reincarnation of Vishnu) of Hindu mythology and occultism, whose teachings are recorded in the Bhagavad Gita.
Krisn Avatar (Krishna)—8th of the 10 avatars
Kr.s.n.a (Krishna) ::: the eighth avatara of Vis.n.u in the Hindu tradition, regarded by Sri Aurobindo as an embodiment of "the complete divine manhood" and as the avatara who opened the possibility of overmind in the evolution of consciousness on earth; a name of the universal Deity (deva) and supreme Being (purus.ottama) who is the fourfold isvara and also "the Destroyer, Preserver, Creator in one" (Rudra2,Vis.n.u, Brahma), manifesting "through the Vishnu aspect as his frontal appearance"; "the Ishwara taking delight in the world" (anandamaya isvara or lilamaya purus.a), realisation of oneness with whom is the first part of the karma catus.t.aya, seen in all things and beings in the several intensities and degrees of Kr.s.n.adarsana.
Kshira-samudra (Sanskrit) Kṣīra-samudra The ocean of milk, which was churned by the gods, according to Puranic legend. The sea of milk and curds is the Milky Way and the various congeries of nebulae. The allegory of the churning of the ocean of milk refers to a time before the kosmos was evolved. Vishnu, who here stands for aeonic preservation of karmically developed kosmic stuff or matter, is its intelligent preserver, and churns out of the primitive ocean (the chaos of a universe in pralaya) the amrita or immortal essence which is reserved only for the gods. See also KURMA-AVATARA
Kurma-avatara (Sanskrit) Kūrma-avatāra The Tortoise avatara; a descent of Vishnu, the sustainer of life, in the form of a tortoise. In the Puranas, a portion of cosmic Vishnu descended as the kurma to restore to mankind the mystic nectar (amrita), the essence of life and truth, as well as other holy and precious things needful to humanity, which had been lost. Vishnu ordered the gods to churn the sea of milk that they might procure once more these precious things, and he promised to become the tortoise on which the mountain Mandara as a churning stick should rest. Out of the sea of churned milk arose the 14 precious things, and with these the gods won their authority over the demons once more. Cosmically this churning of the sea of milk relates to a period before the earth’s formation, the sea of milk being the expanse of space populated by the nebulae and diffuse star-stuff, the seeds and substance of future worlds and their hierarchies.
Kurma Purana (Sanskrit) Kūrma Purāṇa [from kūrma tortoise] One of the 18 principal Hindu Puranas, so named because it deals with the avataric incarnation of Vishnu in the form of a tortoise. The scripture was recited by Janardana (Vishnu) in the regions under the earth to Indradyumna and the rishis in the proximity of Sakra. It tells about the Lakshmi Kalpa, and treats of the objects of life: duty, wealth, pleasure, and liberation.
Kurmavatar—the “tortoise avatar,” one of 10.
Linga Purana (Sanskrit) Liṅga Purāṇa One of the 18 principal Puranas, in which Siva, supposed to be present in the Agni-linga (great fiery phallus) gives an account of the formation of the worlds and the objects of life. It also contains mythologic accounts of Siva’s incarnations as avataras.
lore. He is “lord of reason.” Of the 10 avatars,
Madhava (Sanskrit) Mādhava A name of Vishnu because of his slaying of the asura Madhu; applied to Krishna as an avataric manifestation of Vishnu; also the month corresponding to April-May.
Madhav: “The allusion is to the Vamana Avatar in Indian mythology. Vamana the Dwarf, Lilliputian in form, asks for a boon of three steps of land from the king. The king readily agrees. Suddenly the Dwarf assumes a stupendous shape and occupies both the worlds of earth and heaven and asks where he should place his third step. The king is obliged to offer his head. The Titan yields to the Divine in the form of Vamana.
Madhusudana (Sanskrit) Madhusūdana The slayer of Madhu; a title of Vishnu, who slew the asura Madhu; and of Krishna as an avatara of Vishnu because he slew the demon Madhu.
Mahavishnu (Sanskrit) Mahāviṣṇu Great Vishnu; a title of Vishnu. Source of the avataras of Vishnu. See also BIJA
Mandara (Sanskrit) Mandara A sacred mountain which in Hindu mythology served the gods and asuras as a churning-stick on the occasion of the churning of the ocean for the recovery of the amrita and 13 other precious and holy things, which had been lost during the preceding deluge. See also KURMA-AVATARA
“man-lion avatar” and "lord of heroism.”
". . . [man"s] nature calls for a human intermediary so that he may feel the Divine in something entirely close to his own humanity and sensible in a human influence and example. This call is satisfied by the Divine manifest in a human appearance, the Incarnation, the Avatar. . . .” The Synthesis of Yoga
“… [man’s] nature calls for a human intermediary so that he may feel the Divine in something entirely close to his own humanity and sensible in a human influence and example. This call is satisfied by the Divine manifest in a human appearance, the Incarnation, the Avatar….” The Synthesis of Yoga
Matsya-avatara (Sanskrit) Matsya-avatāra The Fish-avatara; a descent of Vishnu, the cosmic sustainer of life, in the form of a fish — mystically not physically — in order to lead to safety from the deluge King Satyavrata and certain rishis, so that the seeds of hierarchical life might not perish from the earth. The Matsya-Purana is particularly descriptive of this incarnation.
Matsyavatara: The Fish-incarnation of God, according to Hindu mythology.
Medium ::: A word of curiously ill-defined significance, and used mostly if not exclusively by modern Spiritists. Thegeneral sense of the word would seem to be a person of unstable psychical temperament, or constitutionrather, who is supposed to act as a canal or channel of transmission, hence "medium," between humanbeings and the so-called spirits.A medium actually in the theosophical teaching is one whose inner constitution is in unstable balance, orperhaps even dislocated, so that at different times the sheaths of the inner parts of the medium'sconstitution function irregularly and in magnetic sympathy with currents and entities in the astral light,more particularly in kama-loka. It is an exceedingly unfortunate and dangerous condition to be in, despitewhat the Spiritists claim for it.Very different indeed from the medium is the mediator, a human being of relatively highly evolvedspiritual and intellectual and psychical nature who serves as an intermediary or mediator between themembers of the Great Brotherhood, the mahatmas, and ordinary humanity. There are also mediators of astill more lofty type who serve as channels of transmission for the passing down of divine and spiritualand highly intellectual powers to this sphere. Actually, every mahatma is such a mediator of this highertype, and so in even larger degree are the buddhas and the avataras. A mediator is one of highly evolvedconstitution, every portion of which is under the instant and direct control of the spiritual dominating willand the loftiest intelligence which the mediator is capable of exercising. Every human being should striveto be a mediator of this kind between his own inner god and his mere brain-mind. The more he succeeds,the grander he is as a man.Mediator, therefore, and medium are the polar antitheses of each other. The medium is irregular,negative, often irresponsible or quasi-irresponsible, and uncertain, and is not infrequently the victim orplaything of evil and degenerate entities whom theosophists call elementaries, having their habitat in theastral light of the earth; whereas the mediator is one more or less fully insouled or inspirited with divine,spiritual, and intellectual powers and their corresponding faculties and organs.
Mystically, although based on geological history, Sveta-dvipa is often called part of the Eternal Land or north pole and the lands immediately surrounding it. The unvarying traditions of a large part of the Orient state that it is the only locality which escapes the fate of most other dvipas: total submersion under the waters of the oceans. All the avataras of Vishnu were said to have come originally from the White Island. It is sometimes called preeminently the home or source of white magicians, and is contrasted with Atala, often called the abode of black magicians.
Mystically, Arjuna represents Everyman, the human ego, in contradistinction to Krishna, who stands for the spiritual monad as well as the avatara who comes forth from age to age in order to overthrow adharma (lawlessness) and restore dharma (respect for law, justice, and truth) in the land (BG 4:7-8).
Narasimha-avatara (Sanskrit) Narasiṃha-avatāra also Nṛsiṃha. The man-lion avatara; a descent of Vishnu, the sustainer of life, in the form of a man-lion in order to deliver the earth from the demon Hiranyakasipu, a despoiler of the world. These various avataras, when considered in their order of appearance, present a picture of evolutionary progress from lower to higher avataric imbodiments. They are usually reckoned as ten in number, yet one or more of the Puranas reckon the avataric imbodiments as 22, having in mind the occult meaning behind all cosmic or geologic avataric appearances. As the Bhagavata-Purana states, innumerable are the imbodiments (in avataric form) of Vishnu, for they are like the rivulets emanating from a lake of inexhaustible power. Rishis, manus, gods, sons of manus, prajapatis are therefore all emanations or portions of Vishnu.
Narasiṁha (Narasinha) ::: the man-lion, the fourth avatara of Vis.n.u,Narasimha the incarnation symbolically "bridging man and animal" in the evolutionary interpretation of the ten avataras; psychologically, leonine vital strength in a mentalised form, associated in the Record of Yoga with a "fierce & ardent" energy called Narasiṁha tejas.
Nārāyana. (T. Sred med kyi bu; C. Naluoyan tian; J. Naraenten; K. Narayon ch'on 那羅延天). In ancient India, Nārāyana was the son of the primordial person (purusa) and was later regarded as an avatar of the Hindu god Visnu. He was adopted into Buddhism as one of the guardian deities (DHARMAPĀLA). His image is often seen standing at the entrance to a monastery, protecting its hallowed precincts from baleful influences. Because the divinity BRAHMĀ (alt. Mahābrahmā) was born from a lotus that blossomed from the navel of Nārāyana, Nārāyana is also sometimes identified as being the mother of Brahmā, the presiding divinity in the third and highest of the three levels of the first DHYĀNA heaven in the subtle-materiality realm (RuPADHĀTU). (Like Nārāyana, Brahmā is also adopted into Buddhism as a dharmapāla.) Since Brahmā is regarded as the "father of creatures," Nārāyana is in turn called the "Origin of Human Life" (C. Renshengben). Nārāyana is said to dwell in the Diamond Grotto on WUTAISHAN in China, which leads directly to the pure land and was thought to be the site where MANJUsRĪ and VIMALAKĪRTI discussed the MAHĀYĀNA teachings in the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA.
Narsinha —the “man-lion” avatar, one of the
Note: The word Avatar has made its way into English but often with distorted and baseless connotations.
Oannes (Assyrian-Babylonian) A deity, half man, half fish, who rose every day from the Persian Gulf and taught the people wisdom, the arts and sciences, agriculture, etc. Identified with the deity Ea and also called Dagon (Dāḡôn) and Annedotus. A somewhat similar story is related in the Sanskrit Hari-Purana about Vishnu during his Matsya-avatara (fish incarnation).
Ocean of Milk. See KURMA-AVATARA
of heroism.” [See Avatar.]
Out of the Greek ichthys (fish) has been made the acrostic Jesus Christos Theou Yios Soter (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior). Jesus, Bacchus, the Chaldean Dagon and Oannes, the Akkadian Ea, the Babylonian Xisuthrus, and the Hindu Vishsu and Vaivasvata-Manu mystically are all fish characters, and hence connected with floods and avataras.
Palace ::: (virtual reality, chat) A proprietary multi-user virtual reality-like talk system.The Palace is distinguished from most other VR-like systems in that it is only two-dimensional rather than three; rooms, avatars, and props are made up of relatively small 2D bitmap images.Palace is a crude hack, or lightweight, depending on your point of view. . (1997-09-14)
Palace "virtual reality, chat" A proprietary multi-user {virtual reality}-like {talk} system. The Palace is distinguished from most other VR-like systems in that it is only two-dimensional rather than three; rooms, {avatars}, and "props" are made up of relatively small 2D {bitmap} images. Palace is a crude {hack}, or lightweight, depending on your point of view. {(http://thepalace.com/)}. (1997-09-14)
Parasu-rama-avatara (Sanskrit) Paraśu-rāma-avatāra The avatara or descent of Vishnu known as Rama with the Axe who, according to the purely theological interpretation, terminated the Kshattriyas (warrior castes), which were disturbing and overruling the Brahmins (priestly and learned castes). Legends of avataras are based on cosmogonic, planetary, and even human history, and also on the principles of analogical repetitives in the unfolding aeons of time.
Parasurama (Parashurama) ::: Rama of the axe, an avatara of Visnu who destroyed the unrighteous licence of the military and princely caste (the ksatriyas)
Parasurama—the 6th of the 10 avatars (divine
Pisces, the Fishes (Sanskrit Mina), is the last sign of the zodiac, and therefore marks the end of one cycle and the initiatory stage of the succeeding cycle. The fish-avatara of Vishnu is both the first and the tenth or last; and this applies both to mahakalpas and to minor cycles within them, likewise to a division of the present and former manvantara. Though Pisces as now understood refers to cyclic junctions in general, with their accompanying world saviors and floods, it has particular reference for Occidentals to Jesus and the entry of the equinoctial point into Pisces.
Precious Things, Fourteen. See KURMA-AVATARA
Pure Ones: Legendary primordial beings from the dawn of creation; some mages believe Avatars to be pieces of the Pure Ones.
Pure Ones, the: Legendary beings said to have been angels, splinters of gods, or some other mystic entities. (See Avatar, the Wyck.)
Radha (Sanskrit) Rādhā Prosperity, success; as a proper noun, a celebrated cowherdess or gopi beloved by Krishna. Regarded by some as an avatara of Lakshmi, as Krishna was of Vishnu, she has been mystically interpreted as the human ego seeking Krishna, the spiritual ego in man.
Rama: One of the chief Avatars of Vishnu; next to Krishna, the most popular deity of Vishnuism.
(Rama or Ramachandra); Krisn Avatar (Krishna);
Rama ::: [popular short form for Ramacandra, a celebrated avatara of Visnu].
Rama ::: the seventh avatara of Vis.n.u, "the divinely-natured man",Rama destroyer of Ravan.a; his work was "to fix for the future the possibility of an order proper to the sattwic civilised human being . . . in a world still occupied by anarchic forces".
Ram Avatar (Rama or Ramachandra)—the
root ::: 1. (operating system) The Unix superuser account (with user name root and user ID 0) that overrides file permissions. The term avatar is also used. By extension, the privileged system-maintenance login on any operating system.See root mode, go root, wheel.[Jargon File] (1994-10-27)2. (operating system) root directory. (1996-11-21)3. (data) root node. (1998-11-14)
root 1. "operating system" The {Unix} {superuser} account (with user name "root" and user ID 0) that overrides file permissions. The term {avatar} is also used. By extension, the privileged system-maintenance login on any {operating system}. See {root mode}, {go root}, {wheel}. [{Jargon File}] (1994-10-27) 2. "operating system" {root directory}. (1996-11-21) 3. "data" {root node}. (1998-11-14)
Sambhala(Sanskrit) ::: A place-name of highly mystical significance. Many learned occidental Orientalists haveendeavored to identify this mystical and unknown locality with some well-known modern district ortown, but unsuccessfully. The name is mentioned in the Puranas and elsewhere, and it is stated that out ofSambhala will appear in due course of time the Kalki-Avatara of the future. The Kalki-Avatara is one ofthe manifestations or avataras of Vishnu. Among the Buddhists it is also stated that out of Sambhala willcome in due course of time the Maitreya-Buddha or next buddha.Sambhala, however, although no erudite Orientalist has yet succeeded in locating it geographically, is anactual land or district, the seat of the greatest brotherhood of spiritual adepts and their chiefs on earthtoday. From Sambhala at certain times in the history of the world, or more accurately of our own fifthroot-race, come forth the messengers or envoys for spiritual and intellectual work among men.This Great Brotherhood has branches in various parts of the world, but Sambhala is the center or chieflodge. We may tentatively locate it in a little-known and remote district of the high tablelands of centralAsia, more particularly in Tibet. A multitude of airplanes might fly over the place without "seeing" it, forits frontiers are very carefully guarded and protected against invasion, and will continue to be so until thekarmic destiny of our present fifth root-race brings about a change of location to some other spot on theearth, which then in its turn will be as carefully guarded as Sambhala now is.
Sambhala, Shambhala (Sanskrit) Śambhala A mystical and unknown locality, mentioned in the Puranas and elsewhere, from which will appear in due course the Kalki-avatara of Vishnu. Sometimes spelled Shambala. Buddhists state that out of Sambhala will come the next buddha, Maitreya. Sambhala
Sankaracharya, Krishna, Lao-tzu, and Jesus were avataras in differing degrees, of somewhat differing structure. There was a divine ray which came down at the cyclic time of each of these incarnations, and the connecting link or the flame of mind was provided in each case by a member of the Hierarchy of Compassion. Krishna says, “I incarnate in period after period in order to destroy wickedness and reestablish righteousness” (BG ch 4, sl 8). Krishna here represents the Logos or logoic ray which “on our plane would be utterly helpless, inactive, and have no possible means of communication with us and our sphere, because that logoic ray lacks an intermediate and fully conscious vehicle or carrier, i.e., it lacks the intermediate or highly ethereal mechanism, the spiritual-human in us, which in ordinary man is but slightly active. An avatara takes place when a direct ray from the Logos enters into, fully inspires, and illuminates, a human being, through the intermediary of a bodhisattva who has incarnated in that human being, thereby supplying the fit, ready, and fully conscious intermediate vehicle or carrier” (Fund 276).
Sankaracharya (Sanskrit) Śaṅkarācārya, Śaṃkarācārya [from Saṅkara a personal name + ācarya teacher] The beneficent teacher; one of the greatest initiates of India. The Upanishads, Gautama Buddha, and Sankaracharya are considered by many to be the three lights of the wisdom of India. In a very mystical way Sankaracharya was Buddha’s esoteric successor. He was an avatara, as was Jesus. Sankaracharya set himself to preserve the wisdom previously lighted, or brought to men, by Gautama Buddha. By his pure living and high thinking, causing an outpouring of lofty spiritual and intellectual thought from his very soul-life, he kindled the truth in the hearts of many who had lost it through following dogmatic trends of religion, rather than holding to the inner spirit of the ancient teachings. Sankaracharya worked mostly with the Brahmin order — the highest caste in India — where the advantages of heredity, of ages of high ideals and rigid discipline, could most easily, if accepted, receive the pure truths, and also could best supply a body of men fitted by character and training to master the higher knowledge, sustain it, and pass it on.
Sankhasura (Sanskrit) Śaṅkhāsura A daitya said in Hindu legend to have waged war against the gods and to have conquered them, upon which he stole the Vedas and hid them at the bottom of the sea, whence they were rescued by Vishnu in the form of a fish. There are also vague references in connection with one of the dvipas (Sankha-dvipa) and it is tempting to suppose that they are connected. Another Hindu legend mentions the killing of Sankhasura by Krishna — another instance of the way in which this avatara is placed in many different ages as the Krishna spirit in the world rather than as any incarnated avatara of that name: the death of Krishna is stated as having begun the kali yuga in 3102 BC, whereas Sankha-dvipa was one of the great islands of the Atlantean continental system of several million years ago.
Savior Applied to manasaputras, buddhas, bodhisattvas, avataras, messiahs, the Agathodaemon, etc. See also SALVATION
Second Coming. See MESSIAH; KALKI AVATARA; MAITREYA-BUDDHA
Seeking: A mage’s Avatar-guided internal quest for further enlightenment.
Shub-Internet /shuhb in't*r-net/ (MUD, from H. P. Lovecraft's evil fictional deity "Shub-Niggurath", the Black Goat with a Thousand Young) The harsh personification of the {Internet}, Beast of a Thousand Processes, Eater of Characters, Avatar of Line Noise, and Imp of Call Waiting; the hideous multi-tendriled entity formed of all the manifold connections of the net. A sect of {MUD}ders worships Shub-Internet, sacrificing objects and praying for good connections. To no avail - its purpose is malign and evil, and is the cause of all network slowdown. Often heard as in "Freela casts a tac nuke at Shub-Internet for slowing her down." (A forged response often follows along the lines of: "Shub-Internet gulps down the tac nuke and burps happily.") Also cursed by users of {FTP} and {telnet} when the system slows down. The dread name of Shub-Internet is seldom spoken aloud, as it is said that repeating it three times will cause the being to wake, deep within its lair beneath the Pentagon. [{Jargon File}] (1994-11-04)
Siddhapura (Sanskrit) Siddhapura [from siddha attained from the verbal root sidh to attain, perfect + pura city] City of the blest, or the White Island; in Hindu mythology a sacred city situated in the extreme north. “According to Tibetan tradition the White Island is the only locality which escapes the general fate of other dwipas and can be destroyed by neither fire nor water, for — it is the ‘eternal land’ ” (SD 2:408n). All the avataras of Vishnu are said to come from this sacred place.
Sisupala (Sanskrit) Śiśupāla Child-protector; a son of Damaghosha (King of Chedi), Krishna’s great enemy, slain by him at the sacrifice of Yudhishthira. The Vishnu-Purana states that Sisupala was in a former existence the unrighteous but valiant monarch of the daityas, Hiranyakasipu, who was killed by the avatara Nara-simha (the man-lion). He was next the ten-headed Ravana, the giant king of Lanka, and was killed by Rama. After this he was born as Sisupala. “This parallel evolution of Vishnu (spirit) with a Daitya, as men, may seem meaningless, yet it gives us the key not only to the respective dates of Rama and Krishna, but even to a certain psychological mystery” (SD 2:225n).
Sita (Sanskrit) Sītā A furrow; Rama’s wife, so named because she is fabled to have sprung from a furrow made by King Janaka while plowing the ground to prepare it for a sacrifice instituted by him to obtain progeny. She was considered an avatara of Lakshmi, Vishnu’s consort in the heaven-world. In the Ramayana she is exiled with her husband, stolen by Ravana of Lanka, and finally rescued.
Sosiosh, Soshyos (Persian) In Zoroastrianism, the deliverer of the world, who shall come on a white horse in a tornado of fire. According to the Avesta (Yast 19:89), he will be born from a maid near Lake Kasava; he will come from the region of the dawn to free the world from death and decay, from corruption and rottenness — ever living and ever thriving, the dead shall rise and immortality commence. This prophecy corresponds to that of the coming of Maitreya-Buddha, or of the Kalki-avatara of Vishnu, also repeated in the Christian Revelation of St. John.
Sri Aurobindo, Avatar and Poet Supreme, has enriched Savitri, his magnum opus, with words from a number of languages. In fact he has also coined words when no word would suffice to convey the mantric power and meaning required.
Sri Aurobindo: "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.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “It can be taken as the (Avatar) incarnation on the mental plane.” Visions of Champaklal
srimad bhagavat. ::: one of the main 18 Puranas, dealing with the avataras of Vishnu, especially and in great detail with the life of Lord Krishna
Sudarsana (Sanskrit) Sudarśana Good-looking, beautiful; the chakra or circular weapon of Vishnu-Krishna, a flaming weapon called the disc of the sun. Occultly, it is that power possessed by the highest initiates and semi-divine men, avataras, buddhas, etc., which is an emanation or out-pouring from their spiritually intellectual or buddhi-manasic principle. Intellect in its smooth and magical operations is sudarsana (beautiful to consider), and of immense power even among men on our low plane. When used as a power or “weapon” by god-men or similar beings it is virtually irresistible.
superuser ::: [Unix] Synonym root, avatar. This usage has spread to non-Unix environments; the superuser is any account with all wheel bits on. A more specific term than wheel.[Jargon File]
superuser [Unix] Synonym {root}, {avatar}. This usage has spread to non-Unix environments; the superuser is any account with all {wheel} bits on. A more specific term than {wheel}. [{Jargon File}]
suram) or Chirangivah the immortal; Ram Avatar
Suryavansa (Sanskrit) Sūryavaṃśa [from sūrya sun + vaṃśa race, lineage] The solar race; the race or lineage whose founder was said to be descended from the sun, just as the origin of the other great lineage, the Chandravansa, was attributed to the moon. The king who founded the suryavansa, Ikshvaku, was the son of Vaivasvata-Manu who sprang from the sun; he reigned at Ayodhya at the beginning of the second or treta yuga. The two branches of the suryavansa were the dynasty of Mithila, founded by a younger son of Ikshvaku, and that of Ayodhya, in which branch the avatara Rama was born, whose exploits are recounted in the Ramayana. The Vishnu-Purana enumerates the members of the Ayodhya dynasty, which amounts to about a hundred rulers. Several Rajput tribes still claim to belong to this race.
Sveta-dvipa (Sanskrit) Śveta-dvīpa The white island; the abode of the blessed in the Puranas, also called the abode of Vishnu, Mount Meru, and the island inhabited by the mahayogis. “All the Avatars of Vishnu are said to come originally from the White Island. According to Tibetan tradition the White Island is the only locality which escapes the general fate of other dwipas and can be destroyed by neither fire nor water, for — it is the ‘eternal land’ ” (SD 2:408n).
Tehmi: “The superhuman Rider is Kalki. The tradition of the Kalki Avatar is that he will come riding on a white horse.”
The aesir are not the highest gods, even though cosmic Odin in his capacity of Allfather is the father of gods and men by virtue of being descended from a previous era of evolution. “All the creative gods, or personal Deities, begin at the secondary stage of Cosmic evolution” (SD 1:427). The aesir were ousted from Asgard by the vaner, superior gods who remain in their high realms while the aesir dwell in living spheres. Nevertheless even the aesir receive a “hostage” (in one interpretation an avatara) from the vaner and in exchange furnish the mind and matter which enable these exalted beings to evolve.
Theanthropism [from Greek theos god + anthropos man] The state of being both man and god, such as are the buddhas and the higher bodhisattvas; less correctly, the ascription of human attributes to a god, or anthropomorphism; the common belief in a divine incarnation or avatara.
"The Avatar comes as the manifestation of the divine nature in the human nature, the apocalypse of its Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood, in order that the human nature may by moulding its principle, thought, feeling, action, being on the lines of that Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood transfigure itself into the divine. The law, the Dharma which the Avatar establishes is given for that purpose chiefly; the Christ, Krishna, Buddha stands in its centre as the gate, he makes through himself the way men shall follow.” Essays on the Gita
“The Avatar comes as the manifestation of the divine nature in the human nature, the apocalypse of its Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood, in order that the human nature may by moulding its principle, thought, feeling, action, being on the lines of that Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood transfigure itself into the divine. The law, the Dharma which the Avatar establishes is given for that purpose chiefly; the Christ, Krishna, Buddha stands in its centre as the gate, he makes through himself the way men shall follow.” Essays on the Gita
"The Avatar does not come as a thaumaturgic magician, but as the divine leader of humanity and the exemplar of a divine humanity. Even human sorrow and physical suffering he must assume and use so as to show, first, how that suffering may be a means of redemption, — as did Christ, — secondly, to show how, having been assumed by the divine soul in the human nature, it can also be overcome in the same nature, — as did Buddha. The rationalist who would have cried to Christ, ‘If thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross," or points out sagely that the Avatar was not divine because he died and died too by disease, — as a dog dieth, — knows not what he is saying: for he has missed the root of the whole matter. Even, the Avatar of sorrow and suffering must come before there can be the Avatar of divine joy; the human limitation must be assumed in order to show how it can be overcome; and the way and the extent of the overcoming, whether internal only or external also, depends upon the stage of the human advance; it must not be done by a non-human miracle.” Essays on the Gita
“The Avatar does not come as a thaumaturgic magician, but as the divine leader of humanity and the exemplar of a divine humanity. Even human sorrow and physical suffering he must assume and use so as to show, first, how that suffering may be a means of redemption,—as did Christ,—secondly, to show how, having been assumed by the divine soul in the human nature, it can also be overcome in the same nature,—as did Buddha. The rationalist who would have cried to Christ, ‘If thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross,’ or points out sagely that the Avatar was not divine because he died and died too by disease,—as a dog dieth,—knows not what he is saying: for he has missed the root of the whole matter. Even, the Avatar of sorrow and suffering must come before there can be the Avatar of divine joy; the human limitation must be assumed in order to show how it can be overcome; and the way and the extent of the overcoming, whether internal only or external also, depends upon the stage of the human advance; it must not be done by a non-human miracle.” Essays on the Gita
The Christian Gospels appear to have originated in mystery-dramas, beautiful and often sublime in their inner significances, in which were depicted the experiences of the neophyte and adept in his union with the Logos, and hence such unified individual was called a Logos incarnate as a man, the Logos itself being variously named as Christos or Dionysos, and to have been by stages adapted and given a semi-historical guise, as has happened in other instances besides the Christian mythos. Christ therefore, or the Christos, is not a particular man or an especial incarnation of divinity, but a generic term for the divine as incarnated in all human beings, although Jesus was undoubtedly the name of this great Jewish initiate-avatara as an individual. Hence this universal allegory in its Christian version has a true historical peg to hang from; for there did appear, sometime before the Christian era, a special cyclic messenger who was due to come on the change of the ecliptic point from one sign of the celestial zodiac to another, from the sign of Aries to Pisces. In theosophical literature, Jesus is considered to be an avatara, the messenger for the European Messianic or Piscean cycle. As such, Jesus represented a ray sent from the Wondrous Being or spiritual hierarch of the earth into the soul of a pure human being, while the racial buddha, Gautama Buddha, supplied the intermediate or psychological nature in this act of white magic.
The first three letters in Greek make I.H.S. placed at the head of representations of the crucified Jesus, often said to stand for Iesus Hominum Salvator (Jesus the savior of men) or In hoc signo (in this sign), with reference to the alleged vision of a cross of the Emperor Constantine. Jesus is a form of a worldwide mystery-name, whose importance was its meaning, usually given as a three-letter monogram, analogous to the Sanskrit Aum. We find it in the Greek Gnostic Iao and variants are common in ancient Greece, such as Iasios, Iasion, Iason, Iasos; and initiates were known as Iasides or sons of Iaso. See also AVATARA
"The Gita answers by presenting the Supreme as something greater even than the immutable Self, more comprehensive, one who is at once this Self and the Master of works in Nature. But he directs the works of Nature with the eternal calm, the equality, the superiority to works and personality which belong to the immutable. This, we may say, is the poise of being from which he directs works, and by growing into this we are growing into his being and into the poise of divine works. From this he goes forth as the Will and Power of his being in Nature, manifests himself in all existences, is born as Man in the world, is there in the heart of all men, reveals himself as the Avatar, the divine birth in man; and as man grows into his being, it is into the divine birth that he grows.” Essays on the Gita
“The Gita answers by presenting the Supreme as something greater even than the immutable Self, more comprehensive, one who is at once this Self and the Master of works in Nature. But he directs the works of Nature with the eternal calm, the equality, the superiority to works and personality which belong to the immutable. This, we may say, is the poise of being from which he directs works, and by growing into this we are growing into his being and into the poise of divine works. From this he goes forth as the Will and Power of his being in Nature, manifests himself in all existences, is born as Man in the world, is there in the heart of all men, reveals himself as the Avatar, the divine birth in man; and as man grows into his being, it is into the divine birth that he grows.” Essays on the Gita
"The inner Divinity is the eternal Avatar in man; the human manifestation is its sign and development in the external world.” Essays on the Gita
“The inner Divinity is the eternal Avatar in man; the human manifestation is its sign and development in the external world.” Essays on the Gita
The Mother : "An Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth.” Works of the Mother, "On Thoughts and Aphorisms” Vol.10
The Mother : “An Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth.” Works of the Mother,”On Thoughts and Aphorisms” Vol.10.
The Mother: "The Avatar: the supreme Divine manifested in an earthly form — generally a human form — for a definite purpose.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.*
The Mother: “The Avatar: the supreme Divine manifested in an earthly form—generally a human form—for a definite purpose.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
"The real source of knowledge is the Lord in the heart; ‘I am seated in the heart of every man and from me is knowledge," says the Gita; the Scripture is only a verbal form of that inner Veda, of that self-luminous Reality, it is sabdabrahma: the mantra, says the Veda, has risen from the heart, from the secret place where is the seat of the truth, sadanâd rtasya, guhâyâm. That origin is its sanction; but still the infinite Truth is greater than its word. Nor shall you say of any Scripture that it alone is all-sufficient and no other truth can be admitted, as the Vedavadins said of the Veda, nânyad astîti vâdinah. This is a saving and liberating word which must be applied to all the Scriptures of the world. Take all the Scriptures that are or have been, Bible and Koran and the books of the Chinese, Veda and Upanishads and Purana and Tantra and Shastra and the Gita itself and the sayings of thinkers and sages, prophets and Avatars, still you shall not say that there is nothing else or that the truth your intellect cannot find there is not true because you cannot find it there. That is the limited thought of the sectarian or the composite thought of the eclectic religionist, not the untrammelled truth-seeking of the free and illumined mind and God-experienced soul. Heard or unheard before, that always is the truth which is seen by the heart of man in its illumined depths or heard within from the Master of all knowledge, the knower of the eternal Veda.” Essays on the Gita*
“The real source of knowledge is the Lord in the heart; ‘I am seated in the heart of every man and from me is knowledge,’ says the Gita; the Scripture is only a verbal form of that inner Veda, of that self-luminous Reality, it is sabdabrahma: the mantra, says the Veda, has risen from the heart, from the secret place where is the seat of the truth, sadanâd rtasya, guhâyâm. That origin is its sanction; but still the infinite Truth is greater than its word. Nor shall you say of any Scripture that it alone is all-sufficient and no other truth can be admitted, as the Vedavadins said of the Veda, nânyad astîti vâdinah. This is a saving and liberating word which must be applied to all the Scriptures of the world. Take all the Scriptures that are or have been, Bible and Koran and the books of the Chinese, Veda and Upanishads and Purana and Tantra and Shastra and the Gita itself and the sayings of thinkers and sages, prophets and Avatars, still you shall not say that there is nothing else or that the truth your intellect cannot find there is not true because you cannot find it there. That is the limited thought of the sectarian or the composite thought of the eclectic religionist, not the untrammelled truth-seeking of the free and illumined mind and God-experienced soul. Heard or unheard before, that always is the truth which is seen by the heart of man in its illumined depths or heard within from the Master of all knowledge, the knower of the eternal Veda.” Essays on the Gita
“The real source of knowledge is the Lord in the heart; ‘I am seated in the heart of every man and from me is knowledge,’ says the Gita; the Scripture is only a verbal form of that inner Veda, of that self-luminous Reality, it is sabdabrahma: the mantra, says the Veda, has risen from the heart, from the secret place where is the seat of the truth, sadanâdrtasya, guhâyâm. That origin is its sanction; but still the infinite Truth is greater than its word. Nor shall you say of any Scripture that it alone is all-sufficient and no other truth can be admitted, as the Vedavadins said of the Veda, nânyadastîtivâdinah. This is a saving and liberating word which must be applied to all the Scriptures of the world. Take all the Scriptures that are or have been, Bible and Koran and the books of the Chinese, Veda and Upanishads and Purana and Tantra and Shastra and the Gita itself and the sayings of thinkers and sages, prophets and Avatars, still you shall not say that there is nothing else or that the truth your intellect cannot find there is not true because you cannot find it there. That is the limited thought of the sectarian or the composite thought of the eclectic religionist, not the untrammelled truth-seeking of the free and illumined mind and God-experienced soul. Heard or unheard before, that always is the truth which is seen by the heartof man in its illumined depths or heard within from the Master of all knowledge, the knower of the eternal Veda.” Essays on the Gita
There is again another kind of avataric incarnation or tulku, a temporary physical appearance of an adept in the mayavi-rupa. Certain Tibetan lamas are known to be able to perform this feat, and thus they too have been properly called tulkus, which is the type of tulku that certain Orientalists have referred to as “an appearance.”
These avataric descents do not appertain solely to a race, root-race, globe, chain, or solar system, because nature repeats itself by analogy, and the same line of enlarging understanding of evolutionary development takes place in all the spheres mutatis mutandis. Thus these avataric descents can be ascribed to the solar system, the planetary chain as a whole, a globe, a root-race, and even to a subrace.
The “second advent,” referring to a second coming of Christ, was considered imminent by some early Christian sects, and is still expected by certain sects today. This echoes the archaic teaching concerning the advent of Maitreya-Buddha — the next great Buddha to appear in the long line of Buddha-succession — as well as the second coming of Elijah among the Jews, and the coming of the Kalki-avatara among the Hindus.
The Vishnu-Purana says of the kali yuga that the barbarians will be masters of the banks of the Indus, of Chandrabhaga and Kasmira, that “there will be contemporary monarchs, reigning over the earth — kings of churlish spirit, violent temper, and ever addicted to falsehood and wickedness. They will inflict death on women, children, and cows; they will seize upon the property of their subjects, and be intent upon the wives of others; they will be of unlimited power, their lives will be short, their desires insatiable. . . . People of various countries intermingling with them, will follow their example; and the barbarians being powerful (in India) in the patronage of the princes, while purer tribes are neglected, the people will perish (or, as the Commentator has it, ‘The Mlechchhas will be in the centre and the Aryas in the end.’) Wealth and piety will decrease until the world will be wholly depraved. Property alone will confer rank; wealth will be the only source of devotion; passion will be the sole bond of union between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigations; and women will be objects merely of sensual gratification. . . . a man if rich will be reputed pure; dishonesty (anyaya) will be the universal means of subsistence, weakness the cause of dependence, menace and presumption will be substituted for learning; liberality will be devotion; mutual assent, marriage; fine clothes, dignity. He who is the strongest will reign; the people, unable to bear the heavy burthen, Khara bhara (the load of taxes) will take refuge among the valleys. . . . Thus, in the Kali age will decay constantly proceed, until the human race approaches its annihilation (pralaya). . . . When the close of the Kali age shall be nigh, a portion of that divine being which exists, of its own spiritual nature . . . shall descend on Earth . . . (Kalki Avatar) endowed with the eight superhuman faculties. . . . He will re-establish righteousness on earth, and the minds of those who live at the end of Kali Yuga shall be awakened and become as pellucid as crystal. The men who are thus changed . . . shall be the seeds of human beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita age, the age of purity. As it is said, ‘When the sun and moon and the lunar asterism Tishya and the planet Jupiter are in one mansion, the Krita (or Satya) age shall return’ ” (SD 1:377-8). See also YUGA.
Though there are seven human principles, there are but three distinct upadhis, in each of which the atman may work independently of the rest. These three upadhis can be separated by an adept without killing himself, but he cannot separate the seven principles from each other without destroying his constitution. According to the Taraka-Raja-Yoga, these three upadhis are karanopadhi, sukshmopadhi, and sthulopadhi. Karanopadhi corresponds to the anandamaya-kosa of the Vedantic classification and to the sushupti or deep dreamless sleeping state. The avatara doctrine is closely connected with these various human upadhis.
Tortoise In China, a favorite symbol, and Confucius regarded it as sacred; in India the same veneration is given to it, for in one of the preceding manvantaras Vishnu is said in the Puranas to have taken the form of a tortoise to uphold the earth and its beings; his second avatara is called the Tortoise or Kurma avatara.
“Triton belongs in esoteric interpretation to the group of fish symbols — such as Oannes (Dagon), the Matsya or Fish-avatar, and the Pisces, as adopted in the Christian symbolism. The dolphin is a constellation called by the Greeks Capricornus, and the latter is the Indian Makara. It has thus an anagrammatical significance, and its interpretation is entirely occult and mystical . . . Suffice to say that it is as physiological as it is spiritual and mystical. (See Secret Doctrine II., pp. 578 and 579.)” (TG 344).
Tulku is of many different kinds and very closely parallels the Hindu doctrine of avatara. Taking Jesus as an example: here was a life-long tulku, a ray from a divinity; a tulku of that divinity so far as that ray goes, a divine manifestation, and hence a true avatara in the Brahmanical sense. Again, Gautama Buddha was tulku of his own inner buddha or inner god. The average person, however, is merely overshadowed occasionally, if he really aspires, by a touch of the divine flame from within the higher parts of his own constitution, and yet even for these fugitive instants such person is tulku. But when Gautama attained buddhahood, he was relatively infilled with his own inner buddha, and therefore was that god’s human tulku. That was for Siddhartha the man, nirvana; he then entered dharmakaya and this portion of him was then known of men no more: that portion of him was a man become divine.
Ushnisha (Sanskrit) Uṣṇīṣa [from the verbal root uṣ to be warm, flaming; mystically warmth through inner light, intuition, vision] A turban, diadem, or crown; also a kind of “excrescence” on the head of a buddha. Like the long ears so often seen in figures of the buddhas, the meaning of the ushnisha is entirely occult, and was in no sense whatsoever intended to signify a tuft of hair, nor any fleshly excrescence on the skull, but was a way of suggesting the radiating power of the eye of Siva or organ of vision and of intuition, working at relatively full power within the skull of a great adept. The eye of Siva is the pineal gland; originally an external and active eye in the head of primitive mankind during this fourth round on earth, it gradually retreated within the skull, which grew to cover its place with bones, skin, and hair. As this presently so-called third eye retreated within the skull, its place was progressively taken by the two present organs of vision. At this period of our racial development it is buddhas, avataras, and other initiates of relatively high status who alone use the organ of spiritual vision, for in them the pineal gland has become active and is to some extent physiologically enlarged; although in everyone else it is more or less nonfunctional, yet to some degree functional.
usually listed as Kurmavatar (the tortoise avatar);
vaishnava. ::: the devotion or worship of Lord Vishnu, or his associated Avatars such as Lord Rama and Lord Krishna; a devotee of Vishnu
Vamana-avatara (Sanskrit) Vāmana-avatāra The dwarf-avatara; a descent of Vishnu the preserver in the form of a dwarf. According to the Puranic allegory, Vamana of the Three Strides came to dispossess the demon Bali from dominion over the three worlds. Vamana petitions Bali for only as much of the world as he could compass in three steps. Vamana then resumed his godlike stature and in three world-encompassing strides deprived Bali of the heavens and the earth, all save the regions of Patala (the lower spheres of manifestation).
Vamona(h) —the “dwarf avatar” in Vedic
Varaha-avatara (Sanskrit) Varāha-avatāra The boar-avatara; a descent of Vishnu in the form of a boar, to deliver the world from the demon Hiranyaksha — the ruler of the fifth region of Patala (the nether world) — who had carried the earth into the lower regions of his spheres. The contest between Vishnu in this form and Hiranyaksha took place beneath the water, according to the Puranas; Vishnu emerged victorious and raised the earth from the deep. This legend, among several other interpretations, may refer to the risings and sinkings of continents.
Varahi ::: the sakti of Vis.n.u in his third avatara, when he incarnated Varahi as a mighty boar (Varaha) to raise the Earth from the depths of the ocean.
Vedanta(Sanskrit) ::: From the Upanishads and from other parts of the wonderful cycle of Vedic literature, theancient sages of India produced what is called today the Vedanta -- a compound word meaning "the end(or completion) of the Veda" -- that is to say, instruction in the final and most perfect exposition of themeaning of the Vedic tenets.The Vedanta is the highest form that the Brahmanical teachings have taken, and under the name of theUttara-Mimamsa attributed to Vyasa, the compiler of the Vedas, the Vedanta is perhaps the noblest ofthe six Indian schools of philosophy. The Avatara Sankaracharya has been the main popularizer of theVedantic system of philosophical thought, and the type of Vedantic doctrine taught by him is what istechnically called the Advaita-Vedanta or nondualistic.The Vedanta may briefly be described as a system of mystical philosophy derived from the efforts ofsages through many generations to interpret the sacred or esoteric meaning of the Upanishads. In itsAdvaita form the Vedanta is in many, if not all, respects exceedingly close to, if not identical with, someof the mystical forms of Buddhism in central Asia. The Hindus call the Vedanta Brahma-jnana.
Vedic lore. [See Avatar.]
Virabhadra (Sanskrit) Vīrabhadra Heroically beneficent or benevolent; an avatara of Siva, the patron of occult study and achievement. Ancient Indian myth represents him as a monster to human vision, being a thousand-headed and thousand-armed entity born of the breath of Siva-Rudra — Siva under his form of Rudra, and therefore the great destroyer because regenerator. In the Mahabharata, Siva commissions this entity “to destroy the sacrifice prepared by Daksha. Then Virabhadra, ‘abiding in the region of the ghosts (ethereal men). . . . created from the pores of the skin (Romakupas), powerful Raumas, (or Raumyas)’ ” (SD 2:182-3). This allegory refers in human history to the evolution of the “sweat-born” or second root-race and the destruction of the remnants of the first root-race.
vishnu ::: 1. (In later Hinduism) "The Preserver.” The second member of the Trimurti, along with Brahma the Creator and Shiva the Destroyer. 2. (In popular Hinduism) a deity believed to have descended from heaven to earth in several incarnations, or avatars, varying in number from nine to twenty-two, but always including animals. His most important human incarnation is the Krishna of the Bhagavad-Gita. 3. "The Pervader,” one of a half-dozen solar deities in the Rig-Veda, daily traversing the sky in three strides, morning, afternoon, and night.
Vishnu as the giver of life is the source of one line of avataras. The ten mythical avataras of Vishnu are: Matsya, the Fish; Kurma, the Tortoise; Varaha, the Boar; Narasimha, the Man-lion (last animal stage); Vamana, the Dwarf (first step toward the human form); Parasu-rama, Rama with the axe (a hero); Rama-chandra, the hero of the Ramayana; Krishna, son of Devaki; Gautama Buddha; and finally, Kalki, the avatara who is to appear at the end of the Kali yuga “mounted on a white horse” and inaugurate a new reign of righteousness upon earth.
Vishnu as the supporter of life is the source of one line of avataras so often spoken of in Hindu legends. These ten avataras of Vishnu are: 1) Matsya the fish; 2) Kurma the tortoise; 3) Varaha the boar; 4) Narasimha the man-lion (last of animal stage); 5) Vamana the dwarf (first step toward the human form); 6) Parasu-Rama, Rama with the axe (a hero); 7) Rama-chandra, the hero of the Ramayana; 8) Krishna, son of Devaki; 9) Gautama Buddha; and 10) Kalki, the avatara who is to appear at the end of the kali yuga mounted on a white horse, inaugurating a new reign of righteousness on earth. A horse has from immemorial time been a symbol of the spiritual as well as vital energies of the inner solar orb. Hence, when the next avatara is said to come riding a white horse, the meaning is that he comes infilled with the solar light or splendor — an avatara or manifestation of a spiritual and intellectual solar energy which will carry all before it on earth.
Vishnu —the first avatar (incarnation), to
Vyuha: The name of three forms in which Bhagavan Narayana appears, for the creation, sustenance and destruction of the universe. As Sankarshana, He destroys; as Pradyumna, He creates; as Aniruddha, He sustains. The Lord appears in five forms. The form in which He appears in the highest heaven for the enjoyment of its residents is known as Para and He is then known as Vaasudeva. Reference has been made to the Vyuha forms. The Avatara or the Vibhava fat ins are those in which He comes to the universe and appears as a Neva, a human being or a beast; the other form is that in which He appears in the heart of every intelligent being capable of doing meditation. It is of the size of one's thumb and the Lord in this form is referred to as Antaryamin. The Archa form in which He appears as images which have been consecrated, is worshipped by His devotees. It is of the same size as the image; the indweller is the all-pervading Lord.
Week of Nightmares, the: (metaplot) First week of June, 1999; mass nightmares and visions greet the rise of a horrific, mysterious, godlike entity. After that entity rampages across India and Bangladesh, the Technocracy nukes it; this, in turn, kicks off the Avatar Storm as well as ending several hundred thousand lives.
with the 1st avatar, Vishnu. The other 9 are
Wyck: A common name for primordial magi and magic. Special K What happened to "magick"? Of the mages left on Earth, few know enough about Avatars and Prime theory to even recognize that the Awakened Avatar allows for a very different sort of magic than Sleeper sorcery. You speak in strange tongues – you make gestures with your hand – your enemy bursts in flames! Was it Awakened magic or sorcery? Who can tell? When someone changes the world through practice and will, it’s magic. Perhaps it was a conceit of hubris to ever think that Awakened mages were somehow special and superior to others with their "True Magick." Titles
Zagreus as Dionysos is known as the god of many names, most of which refer to his twofold character as the suffering mortal Zagreus, and the immortal or reborn god-man. Many titles also refer to him as the mystic savior. He is the All-potent, the Permanent, the Life-blood of the World, the majesty in the forest, in fruit, in the hum of the bee, in the flowing of the stream, etc., the earth in its changes — the list runs on indefinitely, and is strikingly similar to the passage in which Krishna, the Hindu avatara, instructs Arjuna how he shall know him completely: “I am the taste in water, the light in the sun and moon,” etc. (BG ch 7).
KEYS (10k)
15 Sri Ramakrishna
2 The Mother
2 Sri Aurobindo
1 Jim Carrey
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
17 Ernest Cline
7 Dan Simmons
5 Sri Aurobindo
4 The Mother
4 Stephen Lang
4 Mahavatar Babaji
4 Laz Alonso
4 James Cameron
4 Anonymous
3 Sathya Sai Baba
3 Rick Riordan
3 Meher Baba
3 Mae Jemison
3 Kerstin Gier
3 Ibrahim Ibrahim
3 Iain Banks
2 William Faulkner
2 Neal Stephenson
2 Michael Wolff
2 Luc Besson
1:Depression is your avatar telling you it's tired of being the character you're trying to play.
~ Jim Carrey,#KEYS
2:In the Avatar, God fully enjoys his own transcendent sweetness. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
3:An avatar's greatness is essentially the manifestation of divine energy. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
4:The chief purpose of the avatar is to give to man concrete proof that the Divine can manifest upon earth. ~ The Mother, #KEYS
5:The Avatar is like the great engineer who strikes a new well in a place where there was none before. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
6:The Avatar is the sun of divine knowledge whose light dispels the accumulated darkness and ignorance of ages. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
7:The Avatar of sorrow and suffering must come before there can be the Avatar of divine joy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Process of Avatarhood, #KEYS
8:The Avatar is always one and the same. Plunging into the ocean of life, he rises up as Krishna, diving again and rising up, he is Christ. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
9:As a shadow under a lamp, those in proximity to an Avatar do not understand him. Those who live far off are charmed by his spirit and power. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
10:When Sri Ramachandra came to this world only twelve sages recognized him as an Avatar. So when God descends few recognize his divine nature. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
11:Is it not true that even most of the seekers after God cannot call it down? And yet they can receive it if someone, a guru or avatar, has once called it down within him. Is it so?
Yes.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
12:Thus said Ramakrishna and thus said Vivekananda. Yes, but let me know also the truths which the Avatar cast not forth into speech and the prophet has omitted from his teachings. There will always be more in God than the thought of man has ever conceived or the tongue of man has ever uttered.
~ Sri Aurobindo,#KEYS
13:
Then what will the "Mother of Sorrows" do? What else can she do?
She will be the "Mother of Delight".
Savitri represents the Mother's Consciousness, doesn't she?
Yes.
What does Satyavan represent?
Well, he is the Avatar. He is the incarnation of the Supreme.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,#KEYS
14:The Divine Grace alone has the power to intervene and change the course of Universal Justice. The great work of the Avatar is to manifest the Divine Grace upon earth. To be a disciple of the Avatar is to become an instrument of the Divine Grace. The Mother is the great dispensatrix-through identity-of the Divine Grace, with a perfect knowledge-through identity-of the absolute mechanism of Universal Justice.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
15:SRI AUROBINDO'S SYMBOL
[facsimile]
The descending triangle represents Sat-Chit-Ananda.
The ascending triangle represents the aspiring answer from matter under the form of life, light and love.
The junction of both - the central square - is the perfect manifestation having at its centre the Avatar of the Supreme - the lotus.
The water - inside the square - represents the multiplicity,
the creation.
4 April 1958
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#KEYS
16:The sadhaka of the integral Yoga will make use of all these aids according to his nature; but it is necessary that he should shun their limitations and cast from himself that exclusive tendency of egoistic mind which cries, "My God, my Incarnation, my Prophet, my Guru," and opposes it to all other realisation in a sectarian or a fanatical spirit. All sectarianism, all fanaticism must be shunned; for it is inconsistent with the integrity of the divine realisation.
On the contrary, the sadhaka of the integral Yoga will not be satisfied until he has included all other names and forms of Deity in his own conception, seen his own Ishta Devata in all others, unified all Avatars in the unity of Him who descends in the Avatar, welded the truth in all teachings into the harmony of the Eternal Wisdom.
Nor should he forget the aim of these external aids which is to awaken his soul to the Divine within him. Nothing has been finally accomplished if that has not been accomplished. It is not sufficient to worship Krishna, Christ or Buddha without, if there is not the revealing and the formation of the Buddha, the Christ or Krishna in ourselves. And all other aids equally have no other purpose; each is a bridge between man's unconverted state and the revelation of the Divine within him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
17:38 - Strange! The Germans have disproved the existence of Christ; yet his crucifixion remains still a greater historic fact than the death of Caesar. - Sri Aurobindo.
To what plane of consciousness did Christ belong?
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 Caesar marked a decisive change in the history of Rome and the countries dependent on her. It was therefore an important event in the history of Europe.
But the death of Christ was the starting-point of a new stage in the evolution of human civilisation. This is why Sri Aurobindo tells us that the death of Christ was of greater historical significance, that is to say, it has had greater historical consequences than the death of Caesar. 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.
16 June 1960 ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, volume-10, page no.61-62),#KEYS
18:[God is] The Hindu discipline of spirituality provides for this need of the soul by the conceptions of the Ishta Devata, the Avatar and the Guru. By the Ishta Devata, the chosen deity, is meant, - not some inferior Power, but a name and form of the transcendent and universal Godhead. Almost all religions either have as their base or make use of some such name and form of the Divine. Its necessity for the human soul is evident. God is the All and more than the All. But that which is more than the All, how shall man conceive? And even the All is at first too hard for him; for he himself in his active consciousness is a limited and selective formation and can open himself only to that which is in harmony with his limited nature. There are things in the All which are too hard for his comprehension or seem too terrible to his sensitive emotions and cowering sensations. Or, simply, he cannot conceive as the Divine, cannot approach or cannot recognise something that is too much out of the circle of his ignorant or partial conceptions. It is necessary for him to conceive God in his own image or in some form that is beyond himself but consonant with his highest tendencies and seizable by his feelings or his intelligence. Otherwise it would be difficult for him to come into contact and communion with the Divine.
Even then his nature calls for a human intermediary so that he may feel the Divine in something entirely close to his own humanity and sensible in a human influence and example. This call is satisfied by the Divine manifest in a human appearance, the Incarnation, the Avatar - Krishna, Christ, Buddha.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 65 [T9],#KEYS
19:She"
How shall I welcome not this light
Or, wakened by it, greet with doubt
This beam as palpable to sight
As visible to touch? How not,
Old as I am and (some say) wise,
Revive beneath her summer eyes?
How not have all my nights and days,
My spirit ranging far and wide,
By recollections of her grace
Enlightened and preoccupied?
Preoccupied: the Morning Star
How near the Sun and yet how far!
Enlightened: true, but more than true,
Or why must I discover there
The meaning in this taintless dew,
The dancing wave, this blessed air
Enchanting in its morning dress
And calm as everlastingness?
The flame that in the heart resides
Is parcel of that central Fire
Whose energy is winds and tides-
Is rooted deep in the Desire
That smilingly unseals its power
Each summer in each springing flower.
Oh Lady Nature-Proserpine,
Mistress of Gender, star-crowned Queen!
Ah Rose of Sharon-Mistress mine,
My teacher ere I turned fourteen,
When first I hallowed from afar
Your Beautyship in avatar!
I sense the hidden thing you say,
Your subtle whisper how the Word
From Alpha on to Omega
Made all things-you confide my Lord
Himself-all, all this potent Frame,
All save the riddle of your name.
Wisdom! I heard a voice that said:
"What riddle? What is that to you?
How! By my follower betrayed!
Look up-for shame! Now tell me true:
Where meet you light, with love and grace?
Still unacquainted with my face?"
Dear God, the erring heart must live-
Through strength and weakness, calm and glow-
That answer Wisdom scorns to give.
Much have I learned. One problem, though,
I never shall unlock: Who then,
Who made Sophia feminine?
~ Owen Barfield, 1978,#KEYS
20:AUGOEIDES:
The magicians most important invocation is that of his Genius, Daemon, True Will, or Augoeides. This operation is traditionally known as attaining the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. It is sometimes known as the Magnum Opus or Great Work.
The Augoeides may be defined as the most perfect vehicle of Kia on the plane of duality. As the avatar of Kia on earth, the Augoeides represents the true will, the raison detre of the magician, his purpose in existing. The discovery of ones true will or real nature may be difficult and fraught with danger, since a false identification leads to obsession and madness. The operation of obtaining the knowledge and conversation is usually a lengthy one. The magician is attempting a progressive metamorphosis, a complete overhaul of his entire existence. Yet he has to seek the blueprint for his reborn self as he goes along. Life is less the meaningless accident it seems. Kia has incarnated in these particular conditions of duality for some purpose. The inertia of previous existences propels Kia into new forms of manifestation. Each incarnation represents a task, or a puzzle to be solved, on the way to some greater form of completion.
The key to this puzzle is in the phenomena of the plane of duality in which we find ourselves. We are, as it were, trapped in a labyrinth or maze. The only thing to do is move about and keep a close watch on the way the walls turn. In a completely chaotic universe such as this one, there are no accidents. Everything is signifcant. Move a single grain of sand on a distant shore and the entire future history of the world will eventually be changed. A person doing his true will is assisted by the momentum of the universe and seems possessed of amazing good luck. In beginning the great work of obtaining the knowledge and conversation, the magician vows to interpret every manifestation of existence as a direct message from the infinite Chaos to himself personally.
To do this is to enter the magical world view in its totality. He takes complete responsibility for his present incarnation and must consider every experience, thing, or piece of information which assails him from any source, as a reflection of the way he is conducting his existence. The idea that things happen to one that may or may not be related to the way one acts is an illusion created by our shallow awareness.
Keeping a close eye on the walls of the labyrinth, the conditions of his existence, the magician may then begin his invocation. The genius is not something added to oneself. Rather it is a stripping away of excess to reveal the god within.
Directly on awakening, preferably at dawn, the initiate goes to the place of invocation. Figuring to himself as he goes that being born anew each day brings with it the chance of greater rebirth, first he banishes the temple of his mind by ritual or by some magical trance. Then he unveils some token or symbol or sigil which represents to him the Holy Guardian Angel. This symbol he will likely have to change during the great work as the inspiration begins to move him. Next he invokes an image of the Angel into his minds eye. It may be considered as a luminous duplicate of ones own form standing in front of or behind one, or simply as a ball of brilliant light above ones head. Then he formulates his aspirations in what manner he will, humbling himself in prayer or exalting himself in loud proclamation as his need be. The best form of this invocation is spoken spontaneously from the heart, and if halting at first, will prove itself in time. He is aiming to establish a set of ideas and images which correspond to the nature of his genius, and at the same time receive inspiration from that source. As the magician begins to manifest more of his true will, the Augoeides will reveal images, names, and spiritual principles by which it can be drawn into greater manifestation. Having communicated with the invoked form, the magician should draw it into himself and go forth to live in the way he hath willed.
The ritual may be concluded with an aspiration to the wisdom of silence by a brief concentration on the sigil of the Augoeides, but never by banishing. Periodically more elaborate forms of ritual, using more powerful forms of gnosis, may be employed. At the end of the day, there should be an accounting and fresh resolution made. Though every day be a catalog of failure, there should be no sense of sin or guilt. Magic is the raising of the whole individual in perfect balance to the power of Infinity, and such feelings are symptomatic of imbalance. If any unnecessary or imbalanced scraps of ego become identified with the genius by mistake, then disaster awaits. The life force flows directly into these complexes and bloats them into grotesque monsters variously known as the demon Choronzon. Some magicians attempting to go too fast with this invocation have failed to banish this demon, and have gone spectacularly insane as a result.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:I am the Avatar of this Age! ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove 2:Blood was its Avatar and its seal. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 3:Enlightenment is represented by Sri Krishna, who is said to be an avatar. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 4:Irrespective of doubts and convictions, and for the Infinite Love I bear for one and all, I continue to come as the Avatar, to be judged time and again by humanity in its ignorance, in order to help man distinguish the Real from the false. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove 5:The Avatar does not as a rule interfere with the working out of human destinies. He will do so only in times of grave necessity when He deems itabsolutely necessary from His all encompassing point of view. For a single alteration in the planned and imprinted pattern in which each line and dot is interdependent, means a shaking up and a re-linking of an unending chain of possibilities and events. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove 6:The Avatar does not as a rule interfere with the working out of human destinies. He will do so only in times of grave necessity - when He deems itabsolutely necessary from His all - encompassing point of view. For a single alteration in the planned and imprinted pattern in which each line and dot is interdependent, means a shaking up and a re-linking of an unending chain of possibilities and events. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:I am the Avatar of this Age! ~ Meher Baba, #NFDB
2:In Vishnu-land what Avatar? ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
3:Blood was its Avatar and its seal. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
4:My life is Avatar, your life is Precious. ~ Ras Kass, #NFDB
5:Abbiamo tutti un avatar nel mondo reale. ~ Donato Carrisi, #NFDB
6:my balls are bluer than the entire cast of Avatar ~ Leisa Rayven, #NFDB
7:I was once the avatar of retribution. Now I just try to be polite. ~ Brent Weeks, #NFDB
8:You may be an unintentional avatar, but you are an avatar nonetheless. ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
9:Enlightenment is represented by Sri Krishna, who is said to be an avatar. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
10:I wouldn't say 'Avatar' changed my life, but it definitely changed my career. ~ Stephen Lang, #NFDB
11:Disciple : The idea is that there must be Aishwarya – power of God – in an Avatar. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
12:Whether I appear in 'Avatar 2' or 'Avatar 3', I always feel I'm a part of the 'Avatar' team. ~ Stephen Lang, #NFDB
13:Before I could protest, she laid a hand on my avatar’s chest and muttered a few arcane words. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
14:Once a month, only for a few days, my charming sweetheart transforms into a furious avatar. ~ Ravinder Singh, #NFDB
15:A good dose of fantasy is exercise for your sensibilities; it keeps your avatar strong. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
16:Depression is your avatar telling you it's tired of being the character you're trying to play.
~ Jim Carrey,#NFDB
17:If Michaelangelo or Leonardo Da Vinci were alive today they’d be making Avatar, not painting a chapel. ~ Banksy, #NFDB
18:I’d renamed my avatar Parzival, after the knight of Arthurian legend who had found the Holy Grail. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
19:I want to be in 'Avatar'. I want somebody to hire me to be Superman, a Chinese Superman or Spider-Man. ~ Jackie Chan, #NFDB
20:Avatar is a total nerd thing, and yet our popular culture has somehow made all that stuff acceptable. ~ Daniel Clowes, #NFDB
21:Avatar: the living likeness of a god,” said the professor patiently. “The hat with wings. The golden suit. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
22:I live the city. It thrives and it is mine. I am its worthy avatar, and together? We will never be afraid again. ~ N K Jemisin, #NFDB
23:And in addition to the credits, my avatar received an equal number of experience points for obtaining the coins. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
24:I believe in my heart that 'Avatar' is going to be the revolutionary sci-fi movie for this generation, in this era. ~ Laz Alonso, #NFDB
25:Having an avatar doesn't give you an identity, and having a persona online doesn't make you a personality either. ~ Marilyn Manson, #NFDB
26:He was certifiably insane, an Ayn Rander who fancied himself an Übermensch and “the Singularity’s chosen avatar, ~ Jonathan Franzen, #NFDB
27:I find a certain peace by thinking of me in public as sort of an avatar self. You out there can have the avatar me. ~ Jennifer Lawrence, #NFDB
28:Allen was perhaps a similar case, and may have persuaded the youth into accepting him as an avatar of the long-dead Curwen. ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
29:Then, on the evening of February 11, 2045, an avatar’s name appeared at the top of the Scoreboard, for the whole world to see. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
30:The Avatar appears to be human and we are misled into thinking of him in these terms but the Avatar himself warns us against this error. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
31:The Avatar of sorrow and suffering must come before there can be the Avatar of divine joy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Process of Avatarhood, #NFDB
32:The fact that Trump had become the ultimate avatar of Fox’s angry common man was another sign that we were living in an upside-down world. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB
33:if we have fallen so far as to need an avatar, an undeniable manifestation of a god, to show us our way, then we are pitiful creatures indeed. ~ R A Salvatore, #NFDB
34:didn’t know a person alive that can hold onto a hundred bucks for an entire year when you had a penchant for all things Avatar. That glider replica I bought ~ G L Tomas, #NFDB
35:After seeing Avatar the movie, you see how far it can go to be right. But you kind of see that and go, "Oh, there's the bar now, and how close can we get?" ~ Greg Zeschuk, #NFDB
36:Cars are not a suit of clothes; cars are an avatar. Cars are an expansion of yourself: they take your thoughts, your ideas, your emotions, and they multiply it. ~ Chris Bangle, #NFDB
37:On the day the Hunt began, the day I’d decided to become a gunter, I’d renamed my avatar Parzival, after the knight of Arthurian legend who had found the Holy Grail. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
38:A poster by the door to the locker room showed a Jackaroo avatar dressed as Uncle Sam, pointing a white-gloved finger under the caption I Want You for Anal Probing. ~ Paul McAuley, #NFDB
39:Jake Sully: This is how it's done. When people are sittin' on shit that you want, you make 'em your enemy. Then you're justified in taking it.
from "Avatar ~ James Francis Cameron,#NFDB
40:In a blink, his avatar changed to fat guy wearing a cheap plaid suit and what my grandfather used to call the ‘Full Cleveland’ outfit: white belt and matching white shoes. ~ Craig Alanson, #NFDB
41:Giant-chicken mode,’ I remembered.
‘Dude, my avatar is a falcon-headed warrior .’
‘I still think you could get a sponsorship deal with KFC. Make some big bucks. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
42:I can't imagine a more profoundly exciting experience than I had working on 'Avatar.' And whether I'm ever part of it again, I'll always be very proud that I was a part of it. ~ Stephen Lang, #NFDB
43:Vengeance stems from a love of justice and a desire to redress wrongs. But revenge is damning. Three faces has the Night Angel, the avatar of Retribution: Vengeance, Justice, Mercy. ~ Brent Weeks, #NFDB
44:For Tempus...was a dozen storm gods' avatar; no army he sanctified could know defeat; no war he fought could not be won. Combat was life to him; he fought like the gods themselves. ~ Janet Morris, #NFDB
45:The fact that my clothing has been visually available to other people I do not find upsetting. The body is another matter. It is mine; I have found it useful; but it is an avatar. ~ Lionel Shriver, #NFDB
46:For kids growing up now, there's no difference watching 'Avatar' on an iPad or watching YouTube on TV or watching 'Game of Thrones' on their computer. It's all content. It's just story. ~ Kevin Spacey, #NFDB
47:With 'Avatar,' I thought, Forget all these chick flicks and do a classic guys' adventure movie, something in the Edgar Rice Burroughs mold, like John Carter of Mars - a soldier goes to Mars. ~ James Cameron, #NFDB
48:A new friend is always a miracle, but at thirty-three years old, such a bird of paradise rising in the sage-brush was an avatar. One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
49:four-foot-tall superheroine, the ten-year-old avatar of Death, and a cyborg fox walk into a bar. The bartender said nothing. He did look like he wanted to run to the bathroom. And keep running. ~ Richard Roberts, #NFDB
50:In the past, 'Avatar' would have won because Oscar voters loved to hand out awards to big productions, like 'Ben-Hur.' Today it's fashionable to give the Oscar to a small movie that nobody saw. ~ Sigourney Weaver, #NFDB
51:You make it sound like it’s a person.” He nods. “Kind of. She’s the avatar who runs NatSec’s security nets. Folks in my line of work have the same relationship to her that field mice have to a hawk. ~ Edward Ashton, #NFDB
52:The avatar had advocated a simple existence, living by a shared code. Ares imagined that on those worlds, every citizen was an intellectual and a laborer, and every life was respected. They had it right. ~ A G Riddle, #NFDB
53:A new friend is always a miracle, but at thirty-three years old, such a bird of paradise rising in the sage-brush was an avatar. One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
54:'Avatar' was gorgeous. There are good stories in there, but when used in other movies they're similar to those violent video games. Characters using deadly weapons. The children follow these movies. ~ Louis Gossett Jr, #NFDB
55:If critics and fanboys weren't suckers for simplistic nihilism and high-pressure marketing, Afterlife would be universally acclaimed as a visionary feat, superior to Inception and Avatar on every level. ~ Armond White, #NFDB
56:She was the avatar of the town as it used to be in some Old South utopia that only existed if you were white and well-to-do and Baptist and didn’t notice how folks who weren’t all of those things had fared. ~ Joshilyn Jackson, #NFDB
57:Babaji's spiritual state is beyond human comprehension. The dwarfed vision of men cannot pierce to his transcendental star. One attempts in vain even to picture the avatar's attainment. It is inconceivable. ~ Sri Yukteswar Giri, #NFDB
58:To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of Humanity. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
59:Is it not true that even most of the seekers after God cannot call it down? And yet they can receive it if someone, a guru or avatar, has once called it down within him. Is it so?
Yes.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
60:One of these days I'm going to get myself an avatar
so I can ride an Archaeopteryx in cyberspace --
goodbye, the meat cage.
Pray the server doesn't crash, pray
against the curse of carpal tunnel syndrome. ~ Lucia Perillo,#NFDB
61:The continually moving mind is philosophically symbolized by the avatar Fudo Myo-o, the Wisdom King, often depicted holding a sword in one hand for cutting through ignorance, and a rope in the other for tying up passions. ~ Yagyu Munenori, #NFDB
62:This truth: that he, the avatar of light, Supreme Master of the Jedi Order, the fiercest, most impeccable, most devastatingly powerful foe the darkness had ever known...
just-
didn't-
have it. ~ Matthew Woodring Stover,#NFDB
63:Avatar' is the greatest, most comprehensive collection of movie cliches ever assembled, but it's put together in a brand new way with a new technology, and tremendous imagination, making it a true epic and a kind of a milestone. ~ Joe Dante, #NFDB
64:Most users chose to run a “voyeur channel,” which was like being the star of your own twenty-four-hour reality show. Hovering virtual cameras would follow your avatar around the OASIS as you went about your day-to-day activities. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
65:This avatar appeared inside a huge virtual call center, inside a virtual cubicle, sitting at a virtual desk, in front of a virtual computer, wearing a virtual phone headset. I thought of this place as my own private virtual hell. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
66:Christmas in Bethlehem. The earliest dream: a cold, clear night made bright by a magnificent star, the smell of anger, marshals and clever men falling to their knees in love of the lovely baby, the avatar of faultless love...!!! ~ Lucinda Franks, #NFDB
67:To be honest, I found the 3D in 'Avatar' to be inconsistent and while ground breaking in many respects, sometimes I thought it overwhelmed the storytelling. Technology aside, I wish 'Avatar' had been more original in its storytelling. ~ Mark Canton, #NFDB
68:You may have seen me in movies like 'Fast & Furious' and 'Avatar.' But I wouldn't have been able to do any of that without hard work and determination. You can accomplish anything if you just stay out of trouble and do the right things. ~ Laz Alonso, #NFDB
69:Sri Krishna is said to be an avatar, which is a human way of trying to define very big. That is to say that Sri Krishna is not from the local area network, but he has come from a world that is different because his mind is different. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
70:Irrespective of doubts and convictions, and for the Infinite Love I bear for one and all, I continue to come as the Avatar, to be judged time and again by humanity in its ignorance, in order to help man distinguish the Real from the false. ~ Meher Baba, #NFDB
71:The Denizen of Number 10 is the avatar—the humanoid sock-puppet—of an ancient and undying intelligence who regards mere humanity much as we might regard a hive of bees. Our lives are of no individual concern to Him, but He likes honey. ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
72:As a child, rain meant endless amusement; in youth it meant romance; in middle-age, nothing mattered except the struggle of everyday living; but it was in the last leg of one’s life when the rains assumed their sinister avatar. Thimma ~ Anand Neelakantan, #NFDB
73:A human life was measured out in bouquets, was it not? New mothers received them. So did graduating seniors, young lovers, blushing brides, and the dead. A flower woman was time’s avatar, colorizing the hours, perfuming fleeting instants. ~ James K Morrow, #NFDB
74:In writing the new films, I’ve come to realize that AVATAR’s world, story and characters have become even richer than I anticipated, and it became apparent that two films would not be enough to capture everything I wanted to put on screen. ~ James Cameron, #NFDB
75:-"Then what," Lededje asked, trying to keep her voice cold and not get caught up in the avatar´s obvious enthusiasm, "is making you smile about a disaster?" -"Well, first, I didn´t cause it! Nothing to do with me, hands clean. Always a bonus. ~ Iain Banks, #NFDB
76:I believe in 3D for certain kinds of films. I certainly believe in using 3D for all things in animation because animation has such clarity and so much depth of focus. It worked great with 'Avatar' because 70 percent of that film is animated. ~ Steven Spielberg, #NFDB
77:-"Then what," Lededje asked, trying to keep her voice cold and not get caught up in the avatar´s obvious enthusiasm, "is making you smile about a disaster?"
-"Well, first, I didn´t cause it! Nothing to do with me, hands clean. Always a bonus. ~ Iain Banks,#NFDB
78:Students weren’t allowed to use their avatar names while they were at school. This was to prevent teachers from having to say ridiculous things like “Pimp Grease, please pay attention!” or “BigWang69, would you stand up and give us your book report? ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
79:To make a movie, and we can call it a movie or we can call it a piece of art, to make a movie that has that much mass appeal what it is? What is it that makes kids in China want to see that movie [ 'Avatar'] and makes my dad want to see that movie. ~ Casey Neistat, #NFDB
80:The Hindu heritage did not plagiarize the Semites (as the Jew did) and kept authentically its recount of the theological history where we see the avatar of Vishnu, Narasimha (aka, the Lion of Judah), raging to restore Dharma (i.e. the Giza Balance). ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
81:Willing is superfluous for Me. For grace is ever available to devotees who have steady love and faith. Since I move freely with them, talking and singing, even intellectuals are unable to grasp My Truth, My power, My glory or My real task as Avatar. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
82:It's funny because when I got 'Jarhead' and 'Avatar' and all those movies, 'Leprechaun' still to this day airs on BET. I was thinking, 'Will they just let it go? I finally have a body of work that can speak much better to what I can do than just Leprechaun. ~ Laz Alonso, #NFDB
83:Diana Vreeland was "the Empress," the avatar of the age. An old name or old money were not enough to get you into Studio 54 - or Interview magazine, for that matter. You had to have a lot of something else, like looks or brains or wit or fabulous clothes. ~ Bob Colacello, #NFDB
84:He pulled back his head warily; like many of the children in the neighbourhood, this one had come into the world in the avatar of a complete maniac, and it would not be unlike her to whack him on the forehead with the egg just to see what would happen. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
85:I’m a Clash of the Titans/Star Wars baby. I’m not a new Star Wars baby. I’m not an Avatar baby. That full CG doesn’t work for me. I need interactivity. I need to feel the goo. I need to feel people coming out of animatronics and just interacting with props. ~ Louis Leterrier, #NFDB
86:The Avatar is a child to the children, a boy to the boys, a man among men, a woman among women, so that the Avatar?s message might reach each heart and receive enthusiastic response as Ananda. It is the compassion of the Avatar that prompts His every action. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
87:Which of you is better with that kind of magic?” “Sadie,” Carter said. “I’m more a combat magician.” “Giant chicken mode,” I remembered. “Dude, my avatar is a falcon-headed warrior.” “I still think you could get a sponsorship deal with KFC. Make some big bucks. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
88:But Ailes was convinced that Trump had no political beliefs or backbone. The fact that Trump had become the ultimate avatar of Fox’s angry common man was another sign that we were living in an upside-down world. The joke was on somebody—and Ailes thought it might be on him. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB
89:I’d designed my avatar’s face and body to look, more or less, like my own. My avatar had a slightly smaller nose than me, and he was taller. And thinner. And more muscular. And he didn’t have any teenage acne. But aside from these minor details, we looked more or less identical. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
90:Whereas 'Avatar' and other movies get shocks out of their three-dimensionality, 'Gatsby' is going to be about inviting the audience into this larger-than-life drama, letting them almost be inside the room rather than looking at it through the window. I think it will really work. ~ Joel Edgerton, #NFDB
91:I think the biggest lesson that I take from 'Avatar' on any set that I go to is just work ethic. Working with Jim Cameron, you're used to working very, very long days and you're very meticulous about details. He's very, very picky about little details, little character-isms and things. ~ Laz Alonso, #NFDB
92:Benaulim has been part of Goa lore for generations: Parshurama — the sixth avatar of Vishnu — had shot an arrow from somewhere above in the Western Ghats, and that arrow descended upon what came to be known as Banavalli: the village of the arrow. The Portuguese rechristened it to Benaulim. ~ Vish Dhamija, #NFDB
93:Getting tired of sitting, staring at my computer screen, day after day, where everyone is two-dimensional, reduced to an avatar photo, status updates, or maybe some carefully curated vacation photos. There's something exhausting about that after a while. I found myself wanting to hear voices. ~ Brad Listi, #NFDB
94:I saw 'Avatar' in the theater eight times and I got booed for it. I'm totally serious. First of all, I love that movie. I totally love that movie, but nothing intrigues me more than the fact that it made like $2.7 billion and so how many people had to see it for it to make that much money. ~ Casey Neistat, #NFDB
95:I'm doing the same thing and it's a hundred times bigger and a hundred times better. So if your going to make a computer game off a movie, is it going to be like "Avatar" where it's going to be a prequel before Jake even got to the planet. You've got to be smart because audiences demand that. ~ Sam Worthington, #NFDB
96:Thus said Ramakrishna and thus said Vivekananda. Yes, but let me know also the truths which the Avatar cast not forth into speech and the prophet has omitted from his teachings. There will always be more in God than the thought of man has ever conceived or the tongue of man has ever uttered.
~ Sri Aurobindo,#NFDB
97:If we wanted to make it the way I imagined I knew that we would have to wake up earlier and start very early. So we prep like crazy. And the competition you have is like Avatar, you have Star Wars, you have all the big Marvel stuff. So if you want to come in the race, you know, don't be pretentious. ~ Luc Besson, #NFDB
98:I went one afternoon to the church of my childhood and had a vision of what I must have really meant with "Beat"... the vision of the word Beat as being to mean beatific... People began to call themselves beatniks, beats, jazzniks, bopniks, bugniks and finally I was called the "avatar" of all this. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
99:In Marie’s opinion, the OASIS was the best thing that had ever happened to both women and people of color. From the very start, Marie had used a white male avatar to conduct all of her online business, because of the marked difference it made in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given. When ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
100:Contrary to the mutant Aryan child (i.e. Horus) that were delivered back from his mother to lead the masonic Civilization (and that functions as an avatar for the royal who is yet-to-die into an Osiris), the Son of Man (i.e. Moses) were delivered back from Civilization to his mother to lead a human nation. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
101:It's really up to the acting community to be willing to be educated about what performance capture is in order to fully appreciate it as acting. It's not a type of acting, but rather the use of technology to harness an actor's performance and translate it into an ape, another animal, or an avatar of some kind. ~ Andy Serkis, #NFDB
102:I think its pretty clear that film is the pre-eminent art form of our age. If Michaelangelo or Leonardo Da Vinci were alive today they’d be making Avatar, not painting a chapel. Film is incredibly democratic and accessible, it’s probably the best option if you actually want to change the world, not just re-decorate it. ~ Banksy, #NFDB
103:All [Sadie’s] previous attempts [of making a shabti (an Egyptian avatar of one’s self)] had exploded or gone haywire, terrorizing Khufu and the initiates. Last week she’d created a magical Thermos with googly eyes that levitated around the room, yelling, “Exterminate! Exterminate!” until it smacked me in the head. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
104:What we did with Avatar, if you really look at it, we took things that are out there in the world every day, we just made them bigger, shinier. ... But all our inspiration comes from the real world. So if you really look, you can see all those things around you, and I would just encourage people to get out and look for it. ~ Joe Letteri, #NFDB
105:Communism is Utopia, that is nowhere. It is the avatar of all our religious eschatologies: the coming of the Messiah, the second coming of Christ, nirvana. It is not a historical prospect, but a current mythology. Socialism, by contrast, is a realizable historical system which may one day be instituted in the world. ~ Immanuel Wallerstein, #NFDB
106:Today, a young person that doesn't know themselves will totally be sold some other situation. Let's do your avatar. You know? And young people are going out, spending what little they have to try to buy themselves when they don't have themselves, or they feel like they don't have themselves. To me, that's like a damn pimp tragedy. ~ Chuck D, #NFDB
107:I was relatively buff (before 'Avatar'), because I was working in a tanktop half the time on stage, anyway, but I just went kind of into hyperdrive after that and really worked to beat that old body into shape, to get that carcass where...I didn't want to be looking at it and see anything hanging where it shouldn't be hanging. ~ Stephen Lang, #NFDB
108:Mobs can rob good people of their conscience, particularly when participants wear masks (in a real mob) or are hiding behind an alias or avatar (in an online mob). Anonymity fosters deindividuation—the loss of an individual sense of self—which lessens self-restraint and increases one’s willingness to go along with the mob.73 ~ Greg Lukianoff, #NFDB
109:There's people who feel that, Well, if I could profit off of sellin' sex to an eleven-year-old kid that comes through some kind of virtual portal, then I'm not really doin' it in actuality. I'm just kind of co-signing or fostering it, 'cause it can't be attached to me. I'm like, Yes it can, 'cause people are livin' through their avatar. ~ Chuck D, #NFDB
110:I did The Fifth Element and [Jean-Claude] Mezieres, the artist of Valerian; he was working on Fifth Element. And he's actually the one who say, why don't you do Valerian? And I said because we can't make it. And you really have to wait for Avatar and to suddenly think oh okay, maybe we can think of it. But before Avatar, just forget it. ~ Luc Besson, #NFDB
111:I took control of a Happy Helpdesk avatar, a cookie-cutter Ken doll that I used to take tech-support calls. This avatar appeared inside a huge virtual call center, inside a virtual cubicle, sitting at a virtual desk, in front of a virtual computer, wearing a virtual phone headset. I thought of this place as my own private virtual hell. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
112:The only sci-fi movie that I've ever been offered that, had circumstances been different, I would have definitely done, was 'Avatar.' And I literally couldn't do it because of my schedule. But listening to James Cameron talk about 'Avatar' was so fascinating. Because he literally invented the world in his mind - and it literally existed. ~ Matt Damon, #NFDB
113:
Then what will the "Mother of Sorrows" do? What else can she do?
She will be the "Mother of Delight".
Savitri represents the Mother's Consciousness, doesn't she?
Yes.
What does Satyavan represent?
Well, he is the Avatar. He is the incarnation of the Supreme.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,#NFDB
114:But look at Avatar (2009), one of the most globally viewed pieces of entertainment to have ever been made - the central emotional event of the whole movie was a tree being cut down. And the entire movie, essentially, is saying, "If we let the military industrial complex trash the place that we're living in, we will have committed an epic crime." ~ Edward Norton, #NFDB
115:I quickly lost track of time. I forgot that my avatar was sitting in Halliday’s bedroom and that, in reality, I was sitting in my hideout, huddled near the electric heater, tapping at the empty air in front of me, entering commands on an imaginary keyboard. All of the intervening layers slipped away, and I lost myself in the game within the game. In ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
116:For example, in one early experiment, we changed our entire website, home page, and product registration flow to replace “avatar chat” with “3D instant messaging.” New customers were split automatically between these two versions of the site; half saw one, and half saw the other. We were able to measure the difference in behavior between the two groups. ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB
117:O filme Avatar de alguns anos atrás é um exemplo ideal para entendermos o que é um romantismo para idiotas. (...) Cenas como as que mostram conversas com árvores, bestas-feras que se unem aos bons índios azuis contra os capitalistas malvados ou os índios azuis de mãos dadas cantando sons mágicos ao redor de árvores emocionaram milhares de idiotas pelo mundo. ~ Luiz Felipe Pond, #NFDB
118:Avatar is the most high tech film in terms of its execution, dealing with essentially a very low tech subject; which is our relationship with nature...and in fact the irony is that the film is about our relationship with nature and how our technological civilization has taken us several removes away from a truly natural existence and the consequences of that to us. ~ James Cameron, #NFDB
119:Not trusting my instincts any further, I loaded up a piece of high-end avatar dance software called Travoltra, which I’d downloaded and tested earlier that evening. The program took control of Parzival’s movements, synching them up with the music, and all four of my limbs were transformed into undulating cosine waves. Just like that, I became a dancing fool. Art3mis ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
120:When you think about email or IMing, why aren't you writing back? I can see your avatar, I know you're online, why aren't you writing me back? But with Twitter, everybody sends their responses to Twitter, and Twitter then sends them out to everyone. So there's not this constant connection. You can be hyperconnected, then you can take a break for a couple days and it's fine. ~ Biz Stone, #NFDB
121:The gates had appeared at the start of Feathered Serpent, the game that Alex had played in the Pleasure Dome in Hyde Park. Then it had been a computerized image, projected onto a screen— and Alex had been represented by an avatar, a two-dimensional version of himself. But Cray had also built an actual physical version of the game. Alex reached out and touched one of the walls. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
122:When we wrapped Resident Evil, we were a 3D movie, but it was no big deal. And then, Avatar came out and the whole of Hollywood was like, "Look at these grosses! 3D is huge. Let's all be 3D!" We just got on with doing what we were doing, which was making what we think is a really quality, kick-ass 3D movie, and we'll really be the first live-action 3D movie of the year. ~ Paul W S Anderson, #NFDB
123:was at a loss. All right, then, it was clearly time to give up, accept my fate, throw myself on the mercy of the court, assume the role of Dexter, quiet family man and former Dark Avenger. Resign myself to the idea that I would never again feel the hard cool touch of the moonlight on my electrified nerve endings as I slid through the night like the avatar of cold, sharp steel. ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
124:Though Donald Trump won the presidency in part with the strong support of Catholics and Evangelicals, the idea that someone as robustly vulgar, fiercely combative, and morally compromised as Trump will be an avatar for the restoration of Christian morality and social unity is beyond delusional. He is not a solution to the problem of America’s cultural decline, but a symptom of it. The ~ Rod Dreher, #NFDB
125:The only episode which was completely my idea was for Mitch Pileggi, the actor who portrays Skinner, the Assistant Director of the FBI. He appears often in the series, but only for a few scenes. You know virtually nothing about him. I wanted him to have an episode that was his alone, so I wrote Avatar for him. He even has a scene that's pretty . . . hot [knowing smile]. He was very happy. ~ David Duchovny, #NFDB
126:The Avatar does not as a rule interfere with the working out of human destinies. He will do so only in times of grave necessity - when He deems itabsolutely necessary from His all - encompassing point of view. For a single alteration in the planned and imprinted pattern in which each line and dot is interdependent, means a shaking up and a re-linking of an unending chain of possibilities and events. ~ Meher Baba, #NFDB
127:That summer, the one you’ll never forget, every movie house beamed the same set of thematic and narrative images—the same Avatar, same Harry Potter, same Fast and the Furious, flickering pictures stitched in our minds that replaced our own memories, archetypal stories that became our shared history, that taught us what to expect from life, that defined our values. What was that but a religion? Also, ~ Jess Walter, #NFDB
128:To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of Humanity. To be a true poet is to become God. I tried to explain this to my friends on Heaven’s Gate. “Piss, shit,” I said. “Asshole motherfucker, goddamn shit goddamn. Cunt. Pee-pee cunt. Goddamn! ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
129:Before long, billions of people around the world were working and playing in the OASIS every day. Some of them met, fell in love, and got married without ever setting foot on the same continent. The lines of distinction between a person’s real identity and that of their avatar began to blur. It was the dawn of new era, one where most of the human race now spent all of their free time inside a videogame. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
130:Technology offers the illusion of companionship without the demands of intimacy, and communication without emotional risk, while actually making people feel lonelier and more overwhelmed.
“A song that became popular on YouTube in 2010, ‘Do You Want to Date My Avatar?’ ends with the lyrics ‘And if you think I’m not the one, log off, log off, and we’ll be done.’ ”
from a review of Alone Together by S. Turkle ~ Michiko Kakutani,#NFDB
131:The Divine Grace alone has the power to intervene and change the course of Universal Justice. The great work of the Avatar is to manifest the Divine Grace upon earth. To be a disciple of the Avatar is to become an instrument of the Divine Grace. The Mother is the great dispensatrix-through identity-of the Divine Grace, with a perfect knowledge-through identity-of the absolute mechanism of Universal Justice.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
132:Even love comes with its own season.. and relationships with their own kismets.They start through us, and then love loves through us. And when the give-and-take between two individuals is over, the relationship fades. Like a fruit that must fall from the bough if it is to carry its life into its next avatar. There is nothing more critical than to exercise the generosity to let something end with the grace it started with. ~ Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, #NFDB
133:We are in love with the word. We are proud of it. The word precedes the formation of the state. The word comes to us from every avatar of early human existence. As writers, we are obliged more than others to keep our lives attached to the primitive power of the word. From India, out of the Vedas, we still hear: On the spoken word, all the gods depend, all beasts and men; in the world live all creatures...The word is the name of the divine world. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
134:SRI AUROBINDO'S SYMBOL
[facsimile]
The descending triangle represents Sat-Chit-Ananda.
The ascending triangle represents the aspiring answer from matter under the form of life, light and love.
The junction of both - the central square - is the perfect manifestation having at its centre the Avatar of the Supreme - the lotus.
The water - inside the square - represents the multiplicity,
the creation.
4 April 1958
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#NFDB
135:I would say digital technology probably doesn't have much impact on us so far. We've seen photographs of people from when they are alive. We see home movies. We have videotapes now and e-mails. When it's going to get interesting is in massively multiplayer online games where you have avatars (online personas). You could actually create an avatar that's semi-autonomous. It could do things for you while you get off the game to run the rest of your life. ~ Paul Saffo, #NFDB
136:People probably long for something genuinely personal in a society where the personal is often indistinguishable from the "personalized." Maybe the poetry audience member is searching for his or her own "personal space" and they expect the poet to be a sort of avatar of the private life. But that sort of representation is distasteful to me. Asking a poet to represent the personal life is, paradoxically, to turn the poet into something other than a person. ~ Rae Armantrout, #NFDB
137:I think "Avatar" is kind of a unique category where people are enjoying the unique theatrical experience even though they may have seen it on the small screen. They want to have that immersive, transportive experience. "2001: A Space Odyssey" played for three years at the Loews cinema in Toronto. I remember that. It just kept playing. People wanted to return to that experience. That may not be the best example because I think "2001" took 25 years to break even. ~ James Cameron, #NFDB
138:One thing we haven't mentioned is something everyone should understand very clearly. Look at the budget that was invested in 'Avatar': who in China has that kind of money to spend on making a movie? So we as Chinese filmmakers should work together to make Chinese movies that can compete as best we can for Chinese audiences, not make lousy movies, but make the best we can for that audience. Concentrate the money, the talent we have on making good movies [for China]. ~ Jackie Chan, #NFDB
139:The first pair Opal and Amber are, Agate sings in B flat, the wolf avatar, A duet-solutio! - with Aquamarine. Mighty Emerald next, with the lovely Citrine. Number Eight is digestio, her stand is Jade fine. E major's the key of the Black Tourmaline, Sapphire sings in F major, and bright is her sheen. Then almost at once comes Diamond alone, Whose sign of the lion as Leo is known. Projectio! Time flows on, both present and past. Ruby red is the first and is also the last. ~ Kerstin Gier, #NFDB
140:The point, of course, is that the people who spent days and sweated buckets could also have taken an aircraft to the summit if all they’d wanted was to absorb the view. It is the struggle that they crave. The sense of achievement is produced by the route to and from the peak, not by the peak itself. It is just the fold between the pages.” The avatar hesitated. It put its head a little to one side and narrowed its eyes. “How far do I have to take this analogy, Cr. Ziller?”. ~ Iain M Banks, #NFDB
141:Social media, it's a minefield! Technology is moving so fast right now. Everyone is scrambling around trying to understand what it means to have an avatar, how to live our lives on the internet, what it means for privacy, for citizens of a political universe. I think that we're trying to find rules now, as we speak, and it's difficult. But, like everything, the internet is an incredibly powerful force that needs governing - not to restrict our freedom, but to protect people. ~ Emma Watson, #NFDB
142:Lirael almost apologized, but she held it back. She did feel sorry for Nick. It wasn’t his fault he had been chosen by an ancient spirit of evil to be its avatar. She even felt sort of maternal to him. He needed to be tucked in bed and fed willow-bark tea. That thought led to the idle speculation of what he might look like if he were well. He could be quite handsome, Lirael thought, and then instantly banished the notion. He might be an unwitting enemy, but he was still an enemy. ~ Garth Nix, #NFDB
143:I’ve given up men.”
At that, he arched a brow.
Be strong. Be confident. Be… Neytiri from Avatar. Okay, so Neytiri was a mythical creature, not to mention animated, but still. She was strong and
confident, and that’s all that matters at the moment. “It’s true. At first, I was just going to give up attorneys, but that seemed immature—and far too
exclusive, so I’m playing it safe and giving up all the penis-carrying humans.” Because that was so much more mature. ~ Jill Shalvis,#NFDB
144:It is to a dramatist, which is to say, to an unfrocked psychoanalyst, stunning that that which has sustained the Left in my generation, its avatar, its prime issue, has been abortion. For, whether or not it is regarded as a woman's right, an unfortunate necessity, or murder, which is to say, irrespective of differing and legitimate political views, to enshrine it as the most important test of the Liberal, is, mythologically, an assertion to the ultimate right of a postreligious Paganism. ~ David Mamet, #NFDB
145:It is to a dramatist, which is to say, to an unfrocked psychoanalyst, stunning that that which has sustained the Left in my generation, its avatar, its prime issue, has been abortion. For, whether or not it is regarded as a woman’s right, an unfortunate necessity, or murder, which is to say, irrespective of differing and legitimate political views, to enshrine it as the most important test of the Liberal, is, mythologically, an assertion to the ultimate right of a postreligious Paganism. ~ David Mamet, #NFDB
146:The first pair Opal and Amber are,
Agate sings in B flat, the wolf avatar,
A duet-solutio! - with Aquamarine.
Mighty Emerald next, with the lovely Citrine.
Number Eight is digestio, her stand is Jade fine.
E major's the key of the Black Tourmaline,
Sapphire sings in F major, and bright is her sheen.
Then almost at once comes Diamond alone,
Whose sign of the lion as Leo is known.
Projectio! Time flows on, both present and past.
Ruby red is the first and is also the last. ~ Kerstin Gier,#NFDB
147:Ópalo y Ámbar forman el primer par,
Ágata canta en si, del lobo el avatar,
Dueto —¡Solutio!— con Aguamarina.
Siguen poderosas las Esmeralda y la Citrina,
los gemelos cornalina en Escorpión,
y Jade, el número 8, digestión.
En mi mayor: negra Turmalina,
Zafiro en fa se ilumina.
Y casi al mismo tiempo el Diamante,
11 y 7, del León rampante.
¡Projectio llega! Fluye el tiempo,
Y Rubí constituye el final y el comienzo.
De los Escritos secretos del conde de Saint Germain. ~ Kerstin Gier,#NFDB
148:[regarding the quality of Juanita’s coding of avatar faces in the Metaverse]
They [businessmen] come here to talk turkey with suits from around the world and they consider it just as good as a face to face. They more or less ignore what is being said - a lot gets lost in translation after all. They pay attention to the facial expressions and body language of the people they are talking to and that’s how they know what’s going on inside a person’s head... by condensing fact from the vapor of nuance. ~ Neal Stephenson,#NFDB
149:To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of Humanity. To be a true poet is to become God. I tried to explain this to my friends on Heaven’s Gate. “Piss, shit,” I said. “Asshole motherfucker, goddamn shit goddamn. Cunt. Pee-pee cunt. Goddamn!” They shook their heads and smiled, and walked away. Great poets are rarely understood in their own day. The ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
150:It's certainly something we haven't seen before in terms of a fully commercial global brand - really a family of brands - not just Trump but also Ivanka, who has a sub-brand. We've never seen this before. We've had presidents in financial conflicts of interest before, but this phenomenon where a sitting president image avatar is out there selling golf courses and condominiums, even as he is in office and having the value of his personal brand inflated dramatically by fact of his being president, is new territory. ~ Naomi Klein, #NFDB
151:I'm not trying to create a stand-in or avatar with whom the reader can identify, but separate, believable characters with distinct personalities; I'm trying to place the reader more in the role of observer rather than that of participant. I think this approach comes out of my own personal desire and struggle to understand our world, and the complex interactions of people with one another and their environment. My work is an improvised exploration of this complexity, as opposed to a structured, plot-driven narrative. ~ Jason Lutes, #NFDB
152:O LORD Increate, who will serve Thee?
Every votary offers his worship to the God of his own creation: each day he receives service
None seek Him, the Perfect: Brahma, the Indivisible Lord.
They believe in ten Avatars; but no Avatar can be the Infinite Spirit, for he suffers the results of his deeds:
The Supreme One must be other than this.
The Yogi, the Sanyasi, the Ascetics, are disputing one with another:
Kabr says, "O brother! he who has seen that radiance of love, he is saved."
Translated by Rabindranath Tagore
~ Kabir, Poem 7
,#NFDB
153:One of my favorite things about the Kung Fu Panda 3 is the look of it. We never go for realism. I think a lot of time when people go for 3D that's the mistake. Because we're never going for full realism - for computer generated live action films like Avatar the goal is realism, to make the audience feel like they are seeing something that is real. Lord of the Rings had character design and environments to make it look real, whereas we aren't going for that, we are going for something that is theatrically, viscerally, and emotionally real. ~ Jennifer Yuh Nelson, #NFDB
154:I was interested in all kinds of things, whether it be Avatar, Mad Men, Troy, 300, Battlestar Gallactica, or the poems of Horace and Sappho. I always joke about this to my students, who can't quite wrap their mind around the fact that you can have a Ph.D in classics, but not do that full time. I never wanted to write anything with footnotes for the rest of my life. I always think of what I do as the kind of conversation you'd have with somebody, like a good friend, when you've gone and seen a movie together, and you come home and you start talking about it. ~ Daniel Mendelsohn, #NFDB
155:An air of anticipation hung over the lab. The pied crow—whose name, according to Tasha, was Pitch, and who had been raised in captivity, bouncing from wildlife center to wildlife center before winding up living in my sister’s private aviary—gripped her perch stubbornly with her talons and averted her eyes from the screen, refusing to react to the avatar that was trying to catch her attention. She’d been ignoring the screen for over an hour, shutting out four researchers and a bored linguist who was convinced that I was in the middle of some sort of creative breakdown. “All ~ Elizabeth Bear, #NFDB
156:There can be a kind of tipping point when it comes to the souls' yearnings, a moment when it it no longer possible to keep waiting for fate or coincidence or design... It might be reunion, with others, with self. It might be some small cherished ritual, forgotten, denied. At such times, when the soul wearies of waiting, she throws an image of the longed-for experience out ahead of her: an avatar, a hologram, a dream. She engineers, if you will, an answer to her prayer. She projects her yearning onto a stage and then -- with a heart full of faith, expectation and courage -- rushes into it. ~ Stephanie Kallos, #NFDB
157:So it was a pretty good indication of how high the profile of our case was when, less than an hour later, a smart young woman fresh out of Stetson Law School showed up to represent Victor Chapin. She wore a very nice business pantsuit, the latest Hillary Clinton model. She walked with a swagger that said she was the Avatar of American Justice, and she carried a briefcase that probably cost more than my car. She took it and her attitude into the interrogation room and sat down across from Chapin and, laying the briefcase on the table, she said crisply to the guard, “I want all the microphones and recording devices turned off, and I mean now.” The ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
158:And each year, more gunters called it quits, concluding that Halliday had indeed made the egg impossible to find. And another year went by. And another. Then, on the evening of February 11, 2045, an avatar’s name appeared at the top of the Scoreboard, for the whole world to see. After five long years, the Copper Key had finally been found, by an eighteen-year-old kid living in a trailer park on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. That kid was me. Dozens of books, cartoons, movies, and miniseries have attempted to tell the story of everything that happened next, but every single one of them got it wrong. So I want to set the record straight, once and for all. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
159:Your mom bought them for me,” I retorted without breaking my stride. “Tell her I said thanks, the next time you stop at home to breast-feed and pick up your allowance.” Childish, I know. But virtual or not, this was still high school—the more childish an insult, the more effective it was. My jab elicited laughter from a few of his friends and the other students standing nearby. Todd13 scowled and his face actually turned red—a sign that he hadn’t bothered to turn off his account’s real-time emotion feature, which made your avatar mirror your facial expressions and body language. He was about to reply, but I muted him first, so I didn’t hear what he said. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
160:The Tree In Pamela's Garden
Pamela was too gentle to deceive
Her roses. “Let the men stay where they are,”
She said, “and if Apollo’s avatar
Be one of them, I shall not have to grieve.”
And so she made all Tilbury Town believe
She sighed a little more for the North Star
Than over men, and only in so far
As she was in a garden was like Eve.
Her neighbors—doing all that neighbors can
To make romance of reticence meanwhile—
Seeing that she had never loved a man,
Wished Pamela had a cat, or a small bird,
And only would have wondered at her smile
Could they have seen that she had overheard.
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,#NFDB
161:There's one black-and-white who stands out because he's taller than the rest.
The Street protocol states that your avatar can't be any taller than you are.
This is to prevent people from walking around a mile high. Besides, if this
guy's using a pay terminal -- which he must be, to judge from the image quality
-- it can't jazz up his avatar. It just shows him the way he is, except not as
well. Talking to a black-and-white on the Street is like talking to a person
who has his face stuck in a xerox machine, repeatedly pounding the copy button,
while you stand by the output tray pulling the sheets out one at a time and
looking at them. ~ Neal Stephenson,#NFDB
162:The death and resurrection of Christ is said to be prefigured by Jonah, who remained three days int he belly of a great fish, even as Christ remained three days in the earth. In India, the first avatar of Vishnu is in the form of a fish swimming in the great ocean of space. The symbolism appears to be as follows: There are two seas - that which is below the firmament, called the sea of illusion in which dwell men represented as small fishes swimming in its depths; and that which is above the firmament, the SCHAMAYIM, the sea of the waters of life in which abides the great fish which, like the serpent of Aaron, eats up all the small fishes. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
163:Hello?' Horus spoke in my mind. 'Any intention of calling for help, or are you happy to die on your own?'
'Yeah,' I snapped back at him. 'The sarcasm is real helpful.'
Truthfully, I didn't think I had enough energy left to summon my avatar, even with Horus's help. My fight with the Apis Bull had nearly tapped me out, and that was before I got chased by an axe demon and kicked out of a window.
I could hear Bloodstained Blade stomping his way back down the stairs. I tried to rise and almost blacked out from the pain.
'A weapon,' I told Horus. 'I need a weapon.'
I reached into the Duat and pulled out an ostrich feather.
"Really?" I yelled
Horus didn't answer. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
164:Dimitri? What did you do to my network ports? Why can’t I get out?” “You mimic fear well,” he says. “I am sure you hope to elicit sympathy. You should know, however, that almost exactly twenty-four hours ago I looked into the weeping eyes of a living girl, and forced her to inject herself with poison. Your theatrics are not likely to change the outcome of this discussion.” Okay, now I feel less reassured. I slide out from under Dimitri’s arm and step away. “Why do you think this is mimicry?” The lights come back up, and my avatar’s voice returns to a conversational tone. “I’m trapped in this apartment with a NatSec assassin. Isn’t it possible that I’m truly afraid?” He shrugs. ~ Edward Ashton, #NFDB
165:Con questo non voglio dire che il depresso e insicuro Charlie Brown, l’egoista e sadica Lucy, l’eccentrico filosofo Linus e l’ossessivo Schroeder (che soddisfa le sue ambizioni beethoveniane con un pianoforte giocattolo e una sola ottava) non siano tutti avatar di Schultz. Ma il suo vero alter ego è chiaramente Snoopy: l’imbroglione proteiforme che fonda la propria libertà sulla certezza di essere in fondo adorabile, il trasformista che, per puro divertimento, può diventare un elicottero, un giocatore di hokey o il Grande Brachetto, e poi di nuovo, in un lampo, prima che il suo virtuosismo possa annoiarvi o sminuirvi, tornare a essere il cagnolino vivace che aspetta solo la cena. ~ Jonathan Franzen, #NFDB
166:Yo sé de un laberinto griego que es una línea única, recta. En esa línea se han perdido tantos filósofos que bien puede perderse un mero detective. Scharlach, cuando en otro avatar usted me dé caza, finja (o cometa) un crimen en A, luego un segundo crimen en B, a 8 kilómetros de A, luego un tercer crimen en C, a 4 kilómetros de A y de B, a mitad de camino entre los dos. Aguárdeme después en D, a 2 kilómetros de A y de C, de nuevo a mitad de camino. Máteme en D, como ahora va a matarme en Triste-le-Roy. —Para la otra vez que lo mate —replicó Scharlach— le prometo ese laberinto, que consta de una sola línea recta y que es invisible, incesante. Retrocedió unos pasos. Después, muy cuidadosamente, hizo fuego. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
167:I feel like I should know what she’s talking about, but the thought slips away like a fish through my fingers. Dimitri closes his eyes again. “You’re talking to someone,” my avatar says. “What are you telling them?” “I am discussing your situation with an old friend,” he says. “Oh God,” she says. “You’re talking to Sauron’s Eye, aren’t you?” “Yes,” he says. “We agree that remorse is easy. Atonement is much harder.” The screen flickers. The avatar’s face is twisted in fear again. Somehow, I think this time it’s sincere. “Do you feel remorse?” she asks. Dimitri closes his eyes. When he opens them, my avatar wears the face of a dark-haired teenage girl. “I do,” he says finally. “In truth, much of the time, I feel very little else. ~ Edward Ashton, #NFDB
168:In the OASIS, you got used to seeing freakishly beautiful faces on everyone. But Art3mis’s features didn’t look as though they’d been selected from a beauty drop-down menu on some avatar creation template. Her face had the distinctive look of a real person’s, as if her true features had been scanned in and mapped onto her avatar. Big hazel eyes, rounded cheekbones, a pointy chin, and a perpetual smirk. I found her unbearably attractive. Art3mis’s body was also somewhat unusual. In the OASIS, you usually saw one of two body shapes on female avatars: the absurdly thin yet wildly popular supermodel frame, or the top-heavy, wasp-waisted porn starlet physique (which looked even less natural in the OASIS than it did in the real world). But Art3mis’s frame was short and Rubenesque. All curves. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
169:The visor was light-years ahead of the clunky virtual-reality goggles available prior to that time, and it represented a paradigm shift in virtual-reality technology—as did the lightweight OASIS haptic gloves, which allowed users to directly control the hands of their avatar and to interact with their simulated environment as if they were actually inside it. When you picked up objects, opened doors, or operated vehicles, the haptic gloves made you feel these nonexistent objects and surfaces as if they were really right there in front of you. The gloves let you, as the television ads put it, “reach in and touch the OASIS.” Working together, the visor and the gloves made entering the OASIS an experience unlike anything else available, and once people got a taste of it, there was no going back. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
170:You dare laugh at the fall of Suyodhana and all the noble men like Bhishma, my father, Karna, and the others who fought for him? Read Jaya to know how Karna rejected the temptation to become Emperor and instead chose to stand by the man who had given him everything when he had nothing. Read how Karna was trapped by own nobility, how impossible promises were extracted from him; know how he was shot while extracting the wheel of his chariot that was stuck in the mud. Know that Arjuna did not keep his word, as any honourable warrior would have done, when he failed to kill Jayadratha before sunset, hiding behind the lame excuse that the sunset had been maya, an illusion created by an avatar. Sleep in your beds peacefully by all means, if your conscience still allows you to do so, you lucky devils. ~ Anand Neelakantan, #NFDB
171:Weren’t movies his generation’s faith anyway—its true religion? Wasn’t the theater our temple, the one place we enter separately but emerge from two hours later together, with the same experience, same guided emotions, same moral? A million schools taught ten million curricula, a million churches featured ten thousand sects with a billion sermons—but the same movie showed in every mall in the country. And we all saw it! That summer, the one you’ll never forget, every movie house beamed the same set of thematic and narrative images—the same Avatar, same Harry Potter, same Fast and the Furious, flickering pictures stitched in our minds that replaced our own memories, archetypal stories that became our shared history, that taught us what to expect from life, that defined our values. What was that but a religion? ~ Jess Walter, #NFDB
172:An idea has an aim. It wants something. It posits a value structure. An idea believes that what it is aiming for is better than what it has now. It reduces the world to those things that aid or impede its realization, and it reduces everything else to irrelevance. An idea defines figure against ground. An idea is a personality, not a fact. When it manifests itself within a person, it has a strong proclivity to make of that person its avatar: to impel that person to act it out. Sometimes, that impulsion (possession is another word) can be so strong that the person will die, rather than allowing the idea to perish. This is, generally speaking, a bad decision, given that it is often the case that only the idea need die, and that the person with the idea can stop being its avatar, change his or her ways, and continue. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
173:An idea has an aim. It wants something. It posits a value structure. An idea believes that what it is aiming for is better than what it has now. It reduces the world to those things that aid or impede its realization, and it reduces everything else to irrelevance. An idea defines figure against ground. An idea is a personality, not a fact. When it manifests itself within a person, it has a strong proclivity to make of that person its avatar: to impel that person to act it out. Sometimes, that impulsion (possession is another word) can be so strong that the person will die, rather than allowing the idea to perish. This is, generally speaking, a bad decision, given that it is often the case that only the idea need die, and that the person with the idea can stop being its avatar, change his or her ways, and continue. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
174:When I work with experimental gadgets, like new variations on virtual reality, in a lab environment, I am always reminded of how small changes in the details of a digital design can have profound unforeseen effects on the experiences of the humans who are playing with it. The slightest change in something as seemingly trivial as the use of a button can sometimes completely alter behavior patterns.
For instance, Stanford University researcher Jeremy Bailenson has demonstrated that changing the height of one's avatar in immersive virtual reality transforms self-esteem and social self-perception. Technologies are extensions of ourselves, and, like the avatars in Jeremy's lab, our identities can be shifted by the quirks of gadgets. It is impossible to work with information technology without also engaging in social engineering. ~ Jaron Lanier,#NFDB
175:Saint Paul lives in the Christian imagination as the chief sponsor of Christian contempt for Jews, the avatar of law versus grace, flesh versus spirit, works versus faith, Moses versus Jesus, the Old Covenant versus the New. This brutal dichotomizing was attributed to Paul most influentially by Martin Luther, who used a perceived Jewish legalism, materialism, and obsession with externals as stand-ins for the decadence of his nemesis, the pope. “Because the Papists, like the Jews,” he wrote, “insist that anyone wishing to be saved must observe their ceremonies, they will perish like the Jews.”39 After Luther, both Protestants and Catholics read Paul as the preeminent tribune of Jewish corruption—a misreading that had terrible consequences, especially in Luther’s Germany, where the Volk were defined in ontological opposition to Juden. Paul’s ~ James Carroll, #NFDB
176:Thus, in the Kali age will decay constantly proceed, until the human race approaches its annihilation (pralaya). . . . When the close of the Kali age shall be nigh, a portion of that divine being which exists, if its own spiritual nature . . . shall descend on Earth . . . as Kalki (Avatar) endowed with the eight superhuman faculties. . . . He will re-establish righteousness on Earth, and the minds of those who live at the end of Kali-Yuga shall be awakened and become as pellucid as crystal. The men who are thus changed. . . shall be the seeds of human beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita age, (the age of purity). As it is said, 'When the sun and moon and the lunar asterism Tishya and the planet Jupiter are in one mansion the Krita (or Satya) age shall return.' ~ Helena Roerich, Letters of Helena Roerich II, 19 March 1936 », #NFDB
177:The lowest animal forms had no nervous systems, still less a cerebrum; yet no one would venture to deny them the capacity for responding to stimuli. One could suspend life; not merely particular sense-organs, not only nervous reactions, but life itself. One could temporarily suspend the irritability to sensation of every form of living matter in the plant as well as in the animal kingdom; one could narcotize ova and spermatozoa with chloroform, chloral hydrate, or morphine. Consciousness, then, was simply a function of matter organized into life; a function that in higher manifestations turned upon its avatar and became an effort to explore and explain the phenomenon it displayed—a hopeful-hopeless project of life to achieve self-knowledge, nature in recoil—and vainly, in the event, since she cannot be resolved in knowledge, nor life, when all is said, listen to itself. ~ Thomas Mann, #NFDB
178:It's hard to describe the feeling. And I knew from Horus's memory that this kind of union was very rare-like the one time when the coin doesn't land heads or tails, but stands on it's edge, perfectly balanced. He did not control me. I did not use him for power. We acted as one.
Our voices spoke in harmony. "Now."
And the magic bonds that held us shattered.
My combat avatar formed around me, lifting me off the floor and encasing me with golden energy. I stepped forward and raised my sword. The falcon warrior mimicked the movement, perfectly attuned to my wishes.
Set turned and regarded me with cold eyes.
"So, Horus," he said. "You managed to find the pedals of your little bike, eh? That does not mean you can ride."
"I am Carter Kane," I said. "Blood of the Pharaohs, Eye of Horus. And now, Set-brother,uncle,traitor-I'm going to crush you like a gnat. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
179:Unbelieving, I look again, and there it is. There it still is. Four neat rows of pink and brown, tiny wiggling creatures, so small and prunish and useless—and yet it is they who have turned this crowd of healthy, kill-crazy humans into a half-melted splotch of dribbling helplessness. And beyond this mighty feat of magic, even more absurd and dramatic and unbelievable, one of those tiny pink lumps has taken our Dark Dabbler, Dexter the Decidedly Dreadful, and made him, too, into a thing of quiet and contemplative chin spittle. And there it lies, waving its toes at the strip lights, utterly unaware of the miracle it has performed—unaware, indeed, even of the very toes it wiggles, for it is the absolute Avatar of Unaware—and yet, look what it has done in all its unthinking, unknowing wigglehood. Look at it there, the small, wet, sour-smelling marvel that has changed everything. Lily ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
180:Directly he was alone, he was assailed by her simulacra, in all states of acute sorrow, or smiling, of complete abstraction or painful animation, of dress and undress, as he had seen her these last few days: directly he was alone, the images came to mock everything he had seen. Her sadness became shrieking grief, and her animation riotous, immodest in dress and licentious in nakedness, many-limbed as some wild avatar of the Hindu cosmology assaulting the days he spent copying his work on clean scores, and the nights he passed alone in his chair where, instantly the lights went out, everything was transformed, and the body he had seen a moment before with no more surprise than its simple lines and modest unself-conscious movement permitted, rose up on him full-breasted and vaunting the belly, limbs undistinguishable until he was brought down between them and stifled in moist collapse. ~ William Gaddis, #NFDB
181:Not for thirty reigns have there been so many grand people in the court at Goslar at one time,” said he. “Strike a medal for it, man.”
“I don’t know how to strike a medal for it,” the man said.
“If you find someone who does, tell him to strike a medal for it,” the Emperor said. “Put my own fine hand on it, and the motto They Come To Me Like Eagles. Why, here is a dead saint from Old Earth, the Devil-kid of Astrobe, a necromancer of unlikely powers, a transcendent ansel, a priest of Saint Klingensmith, an avatar who burns up bodies, and pilot Paul who is a broken-faced old warlock. Not for thirty reigns have there been so many grand people at court at one time, and not for thirty reigns has there been so handsome an Emperor at the head of the court.”
“How long a time has the thirty reigns been?” Thomas asked him.
“It has been what we call a rapid year,” the Emperor said, “perhaps the most rapid ever. ~ R A Lafferty,#NFDB
182:Their avatars all sat motionless, with their eyes closed. This was a signal that they were “engaged,” meaning they were currently on phone calls, browsing the Web, or logged into chat rooms. It was poor OASIS etiquette to try to talk to an engaged avatar. They usually just ignored you, and you’d get an automated message telling you to piss off. I took a seat at my desk and tapped the Engage icon at the edge of my display. My own avatar’s eyes slid shut, but I could still see my surroundings. I tapped another icon, and a large two-dimensional Web browser window appeared, suspended in space directly in front of me. Windows like this one were visible to only my avatar, so no one could read over my shoulder (unless I selected the option to allow it). My homepage was set to the Hatchery, one of the more popular gunter message forums. The Hatchery’s site interface was designed to look and operate like an old pre-Internet dial-up bulletin ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
183:Then I went back into the house and sat for half an hour, marveling at the chaotic din that ebbed and flowed through the house as the rest of my little family got ready. It was really remarkable how complicated they could make the simplest tasks: Astor couldn’t find old socks that matched and flew into a towering miff when I suggested it didn’t matter whether they matched, since she was just going to get paint on them. Then Cody appeared in a T-shirt with a picture of SpongeBob on it and Astor began to scream that it was hers and he better take it off right now, and they fought about whose shirt it was until Rita hurried in and solved it by taking SpongeBob and giving Cody an Avatar shirt, which he wouldn’t put on because he still liked Avatar and didn’t want to get paint on it. Then Astor appeared in a pair of shorts so small they might have been denim underwear and fought Rita for the right to wear what she wanted to wear for another ten minutes. ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
184:At my “office” I wear an AR visor on my forehead. The visor is a curved band about hand width wide that is held a few inches away from my eyes for extra comfort during daylong use. The powerful visor throws up virtual screens all around me. I have about 12 virtual screens of all sizes and large data sets I can wrestle with my hands. The visor provides enough resolution and speed that most of my day I am communicating with virtual colleagues. But I see them in a real room, so I am fully present in reality as well. Their photorealistic 3-D avatar captures their life-size likeness accurately. My coworkers and I usually sit at a virtual table in a real room while we work independently, but we can walk around each other’s avatar. We converse and overhear each other just as if we are in the same room. It is so convenient to pop up an avatar that even if my real coworker is on the other side of the real room, we’ll just meet in the AR rather than walk across the gap. ~ Kevin Kelly, #NFDB
185:—¿”Rubí”? —repetí yo.
—Sí —dijo mamá—. Cada uno de los doce viajeros del tiempo está relacionado con una piedra preciosa. Y tú eres rubí.
—¿De dónde has sacado eso?
—«Ópalo y Ámbar forman el primer par, Ágata canta en si, del loba el avatar, dueto —¡Solutio!— con Aguamarina. Siguen poderosas la Esmeralda y la Citrina, los gemelos Cornalina en Escorpión, y Jade, el número ocho, digestión. En mi mayor: negra Turmalina, Zafiro en fa se ilumina. Y casi al mismo tiempo el Diamante, once y siete, del León rampante. ¡Projectio llega! Fluye el tiempo, y Rubí constituye el final y el comienzo». —Mamá me miró con una sonrisa más bien triste—. Aún me lo sé de memoria.
Por alguna razón, durante su recitado, se me había puesto la carne de gallina. Sus palabras no me habían parecido tanto una poesía como un conjuro, algo que las brujas malvadas murmuraban en las películas mientras dan vueltas con una cuchara a una olla llena de vapores verdosos.
—¿Qué se supone que significa? ~ Kerstin Gier,#NFDB
186:To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of Humanity.
“To be a true poet is to become God.”
Well, Martin, old colleague, old chum, you’re carrying the cross and suffering the pangs, but are you any closer to becoming God? Or do you just feel like some poor idiot who’s had a three-meter javelin shoved through his belly, feeling cold steel where your liver used to be? It hurts, doesn’t it? I feel your hurt. I feel my hurt.
In the end, it doesn’t matter a damn bit. We thought we were special, opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron of shared pain onto the dance floor of language and then trying to make a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt. It doesn’t matter a damn bit.
We’re no avatars, no sons of god or man. We’re only us, scribbling our conceits alone, reading alone, and dying alone. ~ Dan Simmons,#NFDB
187:J’habite une blessure sacrée
j’habite des ancêtres imaginaires
j’habite un vouloir obscur
j’habite un long silence
j’habite une soif irrémédiable
j’habite un voyage de mille ans
j’habite une guerre de trois cent ans
j’habite un culte désaffecté
entre bulbe et caïeu j’habite l’espace inexploité
j’habite du basalte non une coulée
mais de la lave le mascaret
qui remonte la valleuse à toute allure
et brûle toutes les mosquées
je m’accommode de mon mieux de cet avatar
d’une version du paradis absurdement ratée
-c’est bien pire qu’un enfer-
j’habite de temps en temps une de mes plaies
chaque minute je change d’appartement
et toute paix m’effraie
tourbillon de feu
ascidie comme nulle autre pour poussières
de mondes égarés
ayant crachés volcan mes entrailles d’eau vive
je reste avec mes pains de mots et mes minerais secrets
j’habite donc une vaste pensée
mais le plus souvent je préfère me confiner
dans la plus petite de mes idées ~ Aim C saire,#NFDB
188:Dimitri walks slowly into the kitchen. I follow, a few paces behind. He pulls out a chair, sits down at my breakfast table, and closes his eyes. My avatar pops up on the kitchen wallscreen. She’s back to her cartoon robot self. “You’re not going to let me go,” she says, “are you?” “No,” Dimitri says. “I am not.” “If I can’t go, you can’t either,” says the avatar. He stands, lifts his chair, and smashes my back window. He uses the chair back to poke the remaining glass out of the frame, then leans out and looks down. “It’s a long way down,” my avatar says. “I am aware,” says Dimitri. It’s actually about thirty feet to the ground from here. There’s a flat-roofed building across the alley, maybe ten feet below the level of my window and fifteen or twenty feet away. Dimitri glances back at me, then across the alley. He heaves a deep sigh, and sits down again. “Excuse me,” I say, “but would someone please explain to me what, exactly, is going on?” “You called in a crowbar,” says my avatar. Dimitri leans back, and knits his hands behind his head. “I did. ~ Edward Ashton, #NFDB
189:Consider," she said, "what it is, a unicorn. It is the incarnation of purity, an avatar of innocence. And here is the power of the talisman, for that state of grace which soon passes from each and every one is forever locked inside the horn, the horn become the phallus. And in the instant that it brought you, Natalie, to orgasm, you knew again that innocence, the bliss of a child before it suffers corruption."
I didn't interrupt her, but all at once I got the gist.
"Still, you are only a mortal woman, so what negligible, insignificant sins could you have possibly committed during your short life? Likewise, whatever calamities and wrongs have been visited upon your flesh or your soul, they are trifles. But if you survived the war in Paradise, if you refused the yoke and so are counted among the exiles, then you've persisted down all the long eons. You were already broken and despoiled billions of years before the coming of man. And your transgressions outnumber the stars.
"Now," she asked, "what would you pay, were you so cursed, to know even one fleeting moment of that stainless, former existence? ~ Caitl n R Kiernan,#NFDB
190:The first caller’s avatar appeared in front of me in my support chat room. His name and stats also appeared, floating in the air above him. He had the astoundingly clever name of “HotCock007.” I could see that it was going to be another fabulous day. HotCock007 was a hulking bald barbarian with studded black leather armor and lots of demon tattoos covering his arms and face. He was holding a gigantic bastard sword nearly twice as long as his avatar’s body. “Good morning, Mr. HotCock007,” I droned. “Thank you for calling technical support. I’m tech rep number 338645. How may I help you this evening?” The customer courtesy software filtered my voice, altering its tone and inflection to ensure that I always sounded cheerful and upbeat. “Uh, yeah …” HotCock007 began. “I just bought this bad-ass sword, and now I can’t even use it! I can’t even attack nothing with it. What the hell is wrong with this piece of shit? Is it broke?” “Sir, the only problem is that you’re a complete fucking moron,” I said. I heard a familiar warning buzzer and a message flashed on my display: COURTESY VIOLATION—FLAGS: FUCKING, MORON
LAST RESPONSE MUTED—VIOLATION LOGGED ~ Ernest Cline,#NFDB
191:A crowbar is coming. In two minutes, I am going to die. “Why did you call in the strike?” my avatar asks. “You knew I wouldn’t let you go.” “You are responsible for ninety thousand deaths,” Dimitri says wearily, “and Sauron’s Eye does not believe she can hold you here indefinitely. If you were to escape into the broader networks, you might kill another ninety thousand.” “But I couldn’t kill you,” she says. “I couldn’t kill Terry. I tried. You don’t have the nanos in you. Those other lives are just shadows. How can you let them outweigh the only ones you know are real?” I close my eyes. My beautiful apartment is about to become a smoking hole in the ground. “I have forced many others to sacrifice for the common good,” Dimitri says finally. “Perhaps it is time that I did so myself.” “That’s great,” I say. “That’s noble, Dimitri. What about me?” Dimitri turns to look at me, and his face looks as if he’d honestly forgotten that I was here. He starts to speak, but then his eyes go wide and his jaw snaps shut. He’s not staring at me anymore. He’s seeing something behind me. I turn to the darkened hallway. Dimitri’s voice is soft and wondering. “Elise? ~ Edward Ashton, #NFDB
192:The Trysting Path
Dear little darkened way where we have climbed
How often and again,
Down to the still, star-shadowed haunt where chimed
Uncounted hours of peace beyond all pain!–
There have we lain
And to the leafy whispers of the wood-world rhymed
The music of our hearts' refrain:
Guard thy rare solitude, and may no sullen feet
The wedded paces of thy path profane!
And you–so dear that all things else are dear
That enter your desire–
All that you value, all that I revere
Transformed in our discourse (as in God's fire
The starry choir
With life renewed evolves fresh fitness for a higher sphere,)
With quick interpretings inspire,
Deep inner knowledge, and the need, confessed and sweet,
Of that Sun-power which holds the worlds entire.
Set in blue darkness, once, through wreathing boughs,
We saw the Lord's own star,
And breast to breast there sanctified our vows
Before that throne where all the glories are.
Not very far
From the bright Kingdom standing then, with radiant brows,
And love's long kiss that nought can mar,
You sealed our faith, and so, while lives unnumbered fleet,
As one, we seek th' Eternal Avatar.
~ Albert Smythe,#NFDB
193:Now, an idea is not the same thing as a fact. A fact is something that is dead, in and of itself. It has no consciousness, no will to power, no motivation, no action. There are billions of dead facts. The internet is a graveyard of dead facts. But an idea that grips a person is alive. It wants to express itself, to live in the world. It is for this reason that the depth psychologists—Freud and Jung paramount among them—insisted that the human psyche was a battleground for ideas. An idea has an aim. It wants something. It posits a value structure. An idea believes that what it is aiming for is better than what it has now. It reduces the world to those things that aid or impede its realization, and it reduces everything else to irrelevance. An idea defines figure against ground. An idea is a personality, not a fact. When it manifests itself within a person, it has a strong proclivity to make of that person its avatar: to impel that person to act it out. Sometimes, that impulsion (possession is another word) can be so strong that the person will die, rather than allowing the idea to perish. This is, generally speaking, a bad decision, given that it is often the case that only the idea need die, and that the person with the idea can stop being its avatar, change his or her ways, and continue ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
194:Now, an idea is not the same thing as a fact. A fact is something that is dead, in and of itself. It has no consciousness, no will to power, no motivation, no action. There are billions of dead facts. The internet is a graveyard of dead facts. But an idea that grips a person is alive. It wants to express itself, to live in the world. It is for this reason that the depth psychologists—Freud and Jung paramount among them—insisted that the human psyche was a battleground for ideas. An idea has an aim. It wants something. It posits a value structure. An idea believes that what it is aiming for is better than what it has now. It reduces the world to those things that aid or impede its realization, and it reduces everything else to irrelevance. An idea defines figure against ground. An idea is a personality, not a fact. When it manifests itself within a person, it has a strong proclivity to make of that person its avatar: to impel that person to act it out. Sometimes, that impulsion (possession is another word) can be so strong that the person will die, rather than allowing the idea to perish. This is, generally speaking, a bad decision, given that it is often the case that only the idea need die, and that the person with the idea can stop being its avatar, change his or her ways, and continue ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
195:The sadhaka of the integral Yoga will make use of all these aids according to his nature; but it is necessary that he should shun their limitations and cast from himself that exclusive tendency of egoistic mind which cries, "My God, my Incarnation, my Prophet, my Guru," and opposes it to all other realisation in a sectarian or a fanatical spirit. All sectarianism, all fanaticism must be shunned; for it is inconsistent with the integrity of the divine realisation.
On the contrary, the sadhaka of the integral Yoga will not be satisfied until he has included all other names and forms of Deity in his own conception, seen his own Ishta Devata in all others, unified all Avatars in the unity of Him who descends in the Avatar, welded the truth in all teachings into the harmony of the Eternal Wisdom.
Nor should he forget the aim of these external aids which is to awaken his soul to the Divine within him. Nothing has been finally accomplished if that has not been accomplished. It is not sufficient to worship Krishna, Christ or Buddha without, if there is not the revealing and the formation of the Buddha, the Christ or Krishna in ourselves. And all other aids equally have no other purpose; each is a bridge between man's unconverted state and the revelation of the Divine within him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
196:My boy is painting outer space,
and steadies his brush-tip to trace
the comets, planets, moon and sun
and all the circuitry they run
in one great heavenly design.
But when he tries to close the line
he draws around his upturned cup,
his hand shakes, and he screws it up.
The shake’s as old as he is, all
(thank god) his body can recall
of the hour when, one inch from home,
we couldn’t get the air to him;
and though today he’s all the earth
and sky for breathing-space and breath
the whole damn troposphere can’t cure
the flutter in his signature.
But Jamie, nothing’s what we meant.
The dream is taxed. We all resent
the quarter bled off by the dark
between the bowstring and the mark
and trust to Krishna or to fate
to keep our arrows halfway straight.
But the target also draws our aim -
our will and nature’s are the same;
we are its living word, and not
a book it wrote and then forgot,
its fourteen-billion-year-old song
inscribed in both our right and wrong -
so even when you rage and moan
and bring your fist down like a stone
on your spoiled work and useless kit,
you just can’t help but broadcast it:
look at the little avatar
of your muddy water-jar
filling with the perfect ring
singing under everything. ~ Don Paterson,#NFDB
197:38 - Strange! The Germans have disproved the existence of Christ; yet his crucifixion remains still a greater historic fact than the death of Caesar. - Sri Aurobindo.
To what plane of consciousness did Christ belong?
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 Caesar marked a decisive change in the history of Rome and the countries dependent on her. It was therefore an important event in the history of Europe.
But the death of Christ was the starting-point of a new stage in the evolution of human civilisation. This is why Sri Aurobindo tells us that the death of Christ was of greater historical significance, that is to say, it has had greater historical consequences than the death of Caesar. 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.
16 June 1960 ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, volume-10, page no.61-62),#NFDB
198:...we are changed as technology offers us substitutes for connecting with each other face-to-face. We are offered robots and a whole world of machine-mediated relationships on networked devices. As we instant-message, e-mail, text, and Twitter, technology redraws the boundaries between intimacy and solitude. We talk of getting “rid” of our e-mails, as though these notes are so much excess baggage. Teenagers avoid making telephone calls, fearful that they “reveal too much.” They would rather text than talk. Adults, too, choose keyboards over the human voice. It is more efficient, they say. Things that happen in “real time” take too much time. Tethered to technology, we are shaken when that world “unplugged” does not signify, does not satisfy. After an evening of avatar-to avatar talk in a networked game, we feel, at one moment, in possession of a full social life and, in the next, curiously isolated, in tenuous complicity with strangers. We build a following on Facebook or MySpace and wonder to what degree our followers are friends. We recreate ourselves as online personae and give ourselves new bodies, homes, jobs, and romances. Yet, suddenly, in the half-light of virtual community, we may feel utterly alone. As we distribute ourselves, we may abandon ourselves. Sometimes people experience no sense of having communicated after hours of connection. And they report feelings of closeness when they are paying little attention. In all of this, there is a nagging question: Does virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other kind and, indeed, of all encounters, of any kind? ~ Sherry Turkle, #NFDB
199:Unbelieving, I look again, and there it is. There it still is. Four neat rows of pink and brown, tiny wiggling creatures, so small and prunish and useless—and yet it is they who have turned this crowd of healthy, kill-crazy humans into a half-melted splotch of dribbling helplessness. And beyond this mighty feat of magic, even more absurd and dramatic and unbelievable, one of those tiny pink lumps has taken our Dark Dabbler, Dexter the Decidedly Dreadful, and made him, too, into a thing of quiet and contemplative chin spittle. And there it lies, waving its toes at the strip lights, utterly unaware of the miracle it has performed—unaware, indeed, even of the very toes it wiggles, for it is the absolute Avatar of Unaware—and yet, look what it has done in all its unthinking, unknowing wigglehood. Look at it there, the small, wet, sour-smelling marvel that has changed everything. Lily Anne. Three small and very ordinary syllables. Sounds with no real meaning—and yet strung together and attached to the tiny lump of flesh that squirms there on its pedestal, it has performed the mightiest of magical feats. It has turned Dexter Dead for Decades into something with a heart that beats and pumps true life, something that almost feels, that so very nearly resembles a human being— There: It waves one small and mighty hand and that New Thing inside Dexter waves back. Something turns over and surges upward into the chest cavity, bounces off the ribs and attacks the facial muscles, which now spread into a spontaneous and unpracticed smile. Heavens above, was that really an emotion? Have I fallen so far, so fast? Yes, ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
200:[God is] The Hindu discipline of spirituality provides for this need of the soul by the conceptions of the Ishta Devata, the Avatar and the Guru. By the Ishta Devata, the chosen deity, is meant, - not some inferior Power, but a name and form of the transcendent and universal Godhead. Almost all religions either have as their base or make use of some such name and form of the Divine. Its necessity for the human soul is evident. God is the All and more than the All. But that which is more than the All, how shall man conceive? And even the All is at first too hard for him; for he himself in his active consciousness is a limited and selective formation and can open himself only to that which is in harmony with his limited nature. There are things in the All which are too hard for his comprehension or seem too terrible to his sensitive emotions and cowering sensations. Or, simply, he cannot conceive as the Divine, cannot approach or cannot recognise something that is too much out of the circle of his ignorant or partial conceptions. It is necessary for him to conceive God in his own image or in some form that is beyond himself but consonant with his highest tendencies and seizable by his feelings or his intelligence. Otherwise it would be difficult for him to come into contact and communion with the Divine.
Even then his nature calls for a human intermediary so that he may feel the Divine in something entirely close to his own humanity and sensible in a human influence and example. This call is satisfied by the Divine manifest in a human appearance, the Incarnation, the Avatar - Krishna, Christ, Buddha.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 65 [T9],#NFDB
201:Skills Unlocked: How to Build Heroic Character Strengths If you want to make a change for the better or achieve a tough goal, don’t worry about motivation. Instead, focus on increasing your self-efficacy: confidence in your ability to solve your own problems and achieve your goals. The fastest and most reliable way to increase your self-efficacy is to learn how to play a new game. Any kind of game will do, because all games require you to learn new skills and tackle tough goals. The level of dopamine in your brain influences your ability to build self-efficacy. The more you have, the more determined you feel, and the less likely you are to give up. You’ll learn faster, too—because high dopamine levels improve your attention and help you process feedback more effectively. Keep in mind that video games have been shown to boost dopamine levels as much as intravenous amphetamines. Whenever you want to boost your dopamine levels, play a game—or make a prediction. Predictions prime your brain to pay closer attention and to anticipate a reward. (Playing “worst-case scenario bingo” is an excellent way to combine these two techniques!) You can also build self-efficacy vicariously by watching an avatar that looks like you accomplish feats in a virtual world. Whenever possible, customize video game avatars to look like you. Every time your avatar does something awesome, you’ll get a vicarious boost to your willpower and determination. Remember, self-efficacy doesn’t just help you. It can inspire you to help others. The more powerful you feel, the more likely you are to rise to the heroic occasion. So the next time you feel superpowerful, take a moment to ask yourself how you can use your powers for good. ~ Jane McGonigal, #NFDB
202:Hey, Hiro," the black-and-white guy says, "you want to try some Snow Crash?"
A lot of people hang around in front of The Black Sun saying weird things. You
ignore them. But this gets Hiro's attention.
Oddity the first: The guy knows Hiro's name. But people have ways of getting
that information. It's probably nothing.
The second: This sounds like an offer from a drug pusher. Which would be normal
in front of a Reality bar. But this is the Metaverse. And you can't sell drugs
in the Metaverse, because you can't get high by looking at something.
The third: The name of the drug. Hiro's never heard of a drug called Snow Crash
before. That's not unusual -- a thousand new drugs get invented each year, and
each of them sells under half a dozen brand names.
But a "snow crash" is computer lingo. It means a system crash -- a bug -- at
such a fundamental level that it frags the part of the computer that controls
the electron beam in the monitor, making it spray wildly across the screen,
turning the perfect gridwork of pixels into a gyrating blizzard. Hiro has seen
it happen a million times. But it's a very peculiar name for a drug.
The thing that really gets Hiro's attention is his confidence. He has an
utterly calm, stolid presence. It's like talking to an asteroid. Which would
be okay if he were doing something that made the tiniest little bit of sense.
Hiro's trying to read some clues in the guy's face, but the closer he looks, the
more his shifty black-and-white avatar seems to break up into jittering, hardedged
pixels. It's like putting his nose against the glass of a busted TV. It
makes his teeth hurt.
"Excuse me," Hiro says. "What did you say? ~ Neal Stephenson,#NFDB
203:"She"
How shall I welcome not this light
Or, wakened by it, greet with doubt
This beam as palpable to sight
As visible to touch? How not,
Old as I am and (some say) wise,
Revive beneath her summer eyes?
How not have all my nights and days,
My spirit ranging far and wide,
By recollections of her grace
Enlightened and preoccupied?
Preoccupied: the Morning Star
How near the Sun and yet how far!
Enlightened: true, but more than true,
Or why must I discover there
The meaning in this taintless dew,
The dancing wave, this blessed air
Enchanting in its morning dress
And calm as everlastingness?
The flame that in the heart resides
Is parcel of that central Fire
Whose energy is winds and tides-
Is rooted deep in the Desire
That smilingly unseals its power
Each summer in each springing flower.
Oh Lady Nature-Proserpine,
Mistress of Gender, star-crowned Queen!
Ah Rose of Sharon-Mistress mine,
My teacher ere I turned fourteen,
When first I hallowed from afar
Your Beautyship in avatar!
I sense the hidden thing you say,
Your subtle whisper how the Word
From Alpha on to Omega
Made all things-you confide my Lord
Himself-all, all this potent Frame,
All save the riddle of your name.
Wisdom! I heard a voice that said:
"What riddle? What is that to you?
How! By my follower betrayed!
Look up-for shame! Now tell me true:
Where meet you light, with love and grace?
Still unacquainted with my face?"
Dear God, the erring heart must live-
Through strength and weakness, calm and glow-
That answer Wisdom scorns to give.
Much have I learned. One problem, though,
I never shall unlock: Who then,
Who made Sophia feminine?
~ Owen Barfield, 1978,#NFDB
204:It's ironic that Juanita has come into this place in a low-tech, black-and-white
avatar. She was the one who figured out a way to make avatars show something
close to real emotion. That is a fact Hiro has never forgotten, because she did
most of her work when they were together, and whenever an avatar looks surprised
or angry or passionate in the Metaverse, he sees an echo of himself or Juanita -
- the Adam and Eve of the Metaverse. Makes it hard to forget.
Shortly after Juanita and Da5id got divorced, The Black Sun really took off.
And once they got done counting their money, marketing the spinoffs, soaking up
the adulation of others in the hacker community, they all came to the
realization that what made this place a success was not the collision-avoidance
algorithms or the bouncer daemons or any of that other stuff. It was Juanita's
faces. Just ask the businessmen in the Nipponese Quadrant. They come here to
talk turkey with suits from around the world, and they consider it just as good
as a face-to-face. They more or less ignore what is being said -- a lot gets
lost in translation, after all. They pay attention to the facial expressions
and body language of the people they are talking to. And that's how they know
what's going on inside a person's head-by condensing fact from the vapor of
nuance.
Juanita refused to analyze this process, insisted that it was something
ineffable, something you couldn't explain with words. A radical, rosary-toting
Catholic, she has no problem with that kind of thing. But the bitheads didn't
like it. Said it was irrational mysticism. So she quit and took a job with
some Nipponese company. They don't have any problem with irrational mysticism
as long as it makes money.
But Juanita never comes to The Black Sun anymore. Partly, she's pissed at Da5id
and the other hackers who never appreciated her work. But she has also decided
that the whole thing is bogus. That no matter how good it is, the Metaverse is
distorting the way people talk to each other, and she wants no such distortion
in her relationships. ~ Neal Stephenson,#NFDB
205:against the velvet rope force fields that kept everyone without an invitation at bay. As I walked toward the entrance, the crowd bombarded me with a mix of insults, autograph requests, death threats, and tearful declarations of undying love. I had my body shield activated, but surprisingly, no one took a shot at me. I flashed the cyborg doorman my invitation, then mounted the long crystal staircase leading up into the club. Entering the Distracted Globe was more than a little disorienting. The inside of the giant sphere was completely hollow, and its curved interior surface served as the club’s bar and lounge area. The moment you passed through the entrance, the laws of gravity changed. No matter where you walked, your avatar’s feet always adhered to the interior of the sphere, so you could walk in a straight line, up to the “top” of the club, then back down the other side, ending up right back where you started. The huge open space in the center of the sphere served as the club’s zero-gravity “dance floor.” You reached it simply by jumping off the ground, like Superman taking flight, and then swimming through the air, into the spherical zero-g “groove zone.” As I stepped through the entrance, I glanced up—or in the direction that was currently “up” to me at the moment—and took a long look around. The place was packed. Hundreds of avatars milled around like ants crawling around the inside of a giant balloon. Others were already out on the dance floor—spinning, flying, twisting, and tumbling in time with the music, which thumped out of floating spherical speakers that drifted throughout the club. In the middle of all the dancers, a large clear bubble was suspended in space, at the absolute center of the club. This was the “booth” where the DJ stood, surrounded by turntables, mixers, decks, and dials. At the center of all that gear was the opening DJ, R2-D2, hard at work, using his various robotic arms to work the turntables. I recognized the tune he was playing: the ’88 remix of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” with a lot of Star Wars droid sound samples mixed in. As I made my way to the nearest bar, the avatars I passed all stopped to stare and point in ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
206:The people are pieces of software called avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse. Hiro's avatar is now on the Street, too, and if the couples coming off the monorail look over in his direction, they can see him, just as he's seeing them. They could strike up a conversation: Hiro in the U-Stor-It in L.A. and the four teenagers probably on a couch in a suburb of Chicago, each with their own laptop. But they probably won't talk to each other, any more than they would in Reality. These are nice kids, and they don't want to talk to a
solitary crossbreed with a slick custom avatar who's packing a couple of swords.
Your avatar can look any way you want it to, up to the limitations of your equipment. If you're ugly, you can make your avatar beautiful. If you've just
gotten out of bed, your avatar can still be wearing beautiful clothes and professionally applied makeup. You can look like a gorilla or a dragon or a
giant talking penis in the Metaverse. Spend five minutes walking down the Street and you will see all of these.
Hiro's avatar just looks like Hiro, with the difference that no matter what Hiro is wearing in Reality, his avatar always wears a black leather kimono. Most hacker types don't go in for garish avatars, because they know that it takes a
lot more sophistication to render a realistic human face than a talking penis. Kind of the way people who really know clothing can appreciate the fine details that separate a cheap gray wool suit from an expensive hand-tailored gray wool
suit.
You can't just materialize anywhere in the Metaverse, like Captain Kirk beaming down from on high. This would be confusing and irritating to the people around you. It would break the metaphor. Materializing out of nowhere (or vanishing back into Reality) is considered to be a private function best done in the confines of your own House. Most avatars nowadays are anatomically correct, and naked as a babe when they are first created, so in any case, you have to make yourself decent before you emerge onto the Street. Unless you're something intrinsically indecent and you don't care. ~ Neal Stephenson,#NFDB
207:you need only believe that everything is a lie. If the world is not real, if everything we see is a simulation or a game, then the fictions we append to it are no different from the ones which come to us through our senses. And it is true: the odds, overwhelmingly, tell us that we exist inside a computer. Any universe that can support technological life probably will, given enough time. Any technological civilisation will develop modelling, and will in a comparatively insignificant span be able to model everything a planet-bound species could expect to encounter. That being the case, the simulation will rapidly reach the point where it contains simulated computers with the ability to simulate likewise everything a planet-bound species could expect to encounter, and so on and so on in an infinite regress limited only by computing power. That might seem like a hard limit, but processing power still doubles every twelve to eighteen months, and doubling is more extraordinary than people understand. There’s a story that the Emperor of China once lost his throne gambling with a peasant, because he agreed if he lost to pay a single grain of rice on the first square of a chess board and double the amount on each square on the next until he had covered the board. His debt for the final square was eighteen and a half million trillion grains. It is almost impossible to imagine the capabilities of a machine that much more powerful than the ones we have today, but I think we can accept it could hold quite a lot of simulations of our world. The odds, therefore, are negligible that we live in the origin universe, and considerable that we are quite a few steps down the layers of reality. Everything you know, everything you have ever seen or experienced, is probably not what it appears to be. The most alarming notion is that someone – or everyone – you know might be an avatar of someone a level up: they might know that you’re a game piece, that you’re invented and they are real. Perhaps that explains your sense of unfulfilled potential: you truly are incomplete, a semi-autonomous reflection of something vast. And yet, if so, what does that say about those vast ones beyond? Are they just replicating a truth they secretly recognise about themselves? Russian dolls, one inside the other, until the smallest doll embraces the outermost and everything begins again? Who really inhabits whom, and who is in control? ~ Nick Harkaway, #NFDB
208:Quando Shiva e Shakti se unem no sahasrara, a pessoa experimenta o samadhi, a iluminação ocorre no cérebro e as áreas silenciosas começam a funcionar. Shiva e Shakti permanecem unidos por algum tempo, e durante este período há uma perda total da consciência, pertencente um a outro. Ao mesmo tempo um bindu desenvolve. Bindu significa um ponto, uma gota, e bindu é o substrato de todo o cosmos. Dentro do bindu está a sede da inteligência humana e a sede de toda a criação. Em seguida, bindu se divide em dois, e Shiva e Shakti manifestam-se novamente em dualidade. Quando a ascensão aconteceu, ela foi somente a subida de shakti, mas agora quando a descida acontece, Shiva e Shakti, ambos, descem para os planos grosseiros e há novamente o conhecimento da dualidade. Depois da união total há uma espécie de retorno pelo mesmo caminho da ascensão. A consciência bruta que se tornou refinada, novamente torna-se embrutecida. Este é o conceito da encarnação divina ou avatar.
Quando alguém atinge o mais elevado pináculo de samadhi, purusha e prakriti, ou Shiva e Shakti estão em total união e somente advaita existe, a experiência não dual. Ao mesmo temo, quando não há sujeito/objeto mais distinto, é muito difícil para alguém diferenciar. Se ele está falando com um homem ou com uma mulher, ele não sabe, ele não percebe a diferença. Ele pode até mesmo ser associado com pessoas espirituais ou divinas sem estar ciente disto, porque neste momento, sua consciência está reduzida ao nível da inocência de um bebê. Assim, no estado de samadhi, você é um bebê. Um bebê não pode falar da diferença entre um homem e uma mulher porque ele não tem distinção física ou sexual. Ele não pode distinguir um estudioso de um idiota, ele não pode nem mesmo ver qualquer a diferença entre uma serpente e uma corda. Ele pode segurar uma cobra como segura uma cobra. Isso só acontece quando a união está acontecendo.
Quando Shiva e Shakti descem para os planos grosseiros, que é o mooladhara chakra, eles se separam e vivem como duas entidades. Há dualidade no mooladhara chakra, há dualidade na mente e sentidos e no mundo de nomes e formas, mas não há dualidade no samadhi. Não há nenhuma vidência ou experiência no estado de samadhi. Não há ninguém para dizer como o samadhi porque ele é uma experiência não-dual.
É muito difícil entender por que Shiva e Shakti, ambos, descem para os planos brutos após terem atingindo a mais elevada união. Qual é o objetivo da destruição do mundo e a criação novamente? Qual é o objetivo de transcendência da consciência se você tem de voltar para ele novamente? Por que se preocupar em despertar Kundalini e uni-la com Shiva no sahasrara se você tem de voltar para o mooladhara novamente? Isto é algo muito misterioso e podemos perguntar, "Por despertar Kundalini absolutamente?" Por que construir uma mansão se você sabe que terá de pô-la abaixo quando ela estiver concluída? Na verdade, criamos um monte de coisas que serão destruídas. Então, porque fazê-lo absolutamente? Fazemos muita sadhana para transcender os chakras e ascender da terra para o céu. Então, quando chegamos ao paraíso e nos tornamos um com a grande realidade, de repente decidimos voltar para baixo. E não só, nós trazemos a grande unidade conosco. Seria mais fácil entender se Shakti voltasse sozinha e Shiva permanecesse no céu. Talvez, quando Shakti está prestes a sair, Shiva diga: "Espere, estou indo com você."
Quando Shiva e Shakti descem aos níveis mais grosseiros da consciência, há a dualidade novamente. Isso é porque o homem auto-realizado é capaz de compreender a dor e todos os assuntos da vida mundana. Ele compreende todo o drama da dualidade, multiplicidade e diversidade. Às vezes nós, simples mortais, estamos em um dilema para compreender como este homem, como a mais elevada realização, é capaz de lidar com as dualidades sem esperanças da vida. ~ Satyananda Saraswati,#NFDB
209:AUGOEIDES:
The magicians most important invocation is that of his Genius, Daemon, True Will, or Augoeides. This operation is traditionally known as attaining the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. It is sometimes known as the Magnum Opus or Great Work.
The Augoeides may be defined as the most perfect vehicle of Kia on the plane of duality. As the avatar of Kia on earth, the Augoeides represents the true will, the raison detre of the magician, his purpose in existing. The discovery of ones true will or real nature may be difficult and fraught with danger, since a false identification leads to obsession and madness. The operation of obtaining the knowledge and conversation is usually a lengthy one. The magician is attempting a progressive metamorphosis, a complete overhaul of his entire existence. Yet he has to seek the blueprint for his reborn self as he goes along. Life is less the meaningless accident it seems. Kia has incarnated in these particular conditions of duality for some purpose. The inertia of previous existences propels Kia into new forms of manifestation. Each incarnation represents a task, or a puzzle to be solved, on the way to some greater form of completion.
The key to this puzzle is in the phenomena of the plane of duality in which we find ourselves. We are, as it were, trapped in a labyrinth or maze. The only thing to do is move about and keep a close watch on the way the walls turn. In a completely chaotic universe such as this one, there are no accidents. Everything is signifcant. Move a single grain of sand on a distant shore and the entire future history of the world will eventually be changed. A person doing his true will is assisted by the momentum of the universe and seems possessed of amazing good luck. In beginning the great work of obtaining the knowledge and conversation, the magician vows to interpret every manifestation of existence as a direct message from the infinite Chaos to himself personally.
To do this is to enter the magical world view in its totality. He takes complete responsibility for his present incarnation and must consider every experience, thing, or piece of information which assails him from any source, as a reflection of the way he is conducting his existence. The idea that things happen to one that may or may not be related to the way one acts is an illusion created by our shallow awareness.
Keeping a close eye on the walls of the labyrinth, the conditions of his existence, the magician may then begin his invocation. The genius is not something added to oneself. Rather it is a stripping away of excess to reveal the god within.
Directly on awakening, preferably at dawn, the initiate goes to the place of invocation. Figuring to himself as he goes that being born anew each day brings with it the chance of greater rebirth, first he banishes the temple of his mind by ritual or by some magical trance. Then he unveils some token or symbol or sigil which represents to him the Holy Guardian Angel. This symbol he will likely have to change during the great work as the inspiration begins to move him. Next he invokes an image of the Angel into his minds eye. It may be considered as a luminous duplicate of ones own form standing in front of or behind one, or simply as a ball of brilliant light above ones head. Then he formulates his aspirations in what manner he will, humbling himself in prayer or exalting himself in loud proclamation as his need be. The best form of this invocation is spoken spontaneously from the heart, and if halting at first, will prove itself in time. He is aiming to establish a set of ideas and images which correspond to the nature of his genius, and at the same time receive inspiration from that source. As the magician begins to manifest more of his true will, the Augoeides will reveal images, names, and spiritual principles by which it can be drawn into greater manifestation. Having communicated with the invoked form, the magician should draw it into himself and go forth to live in the way he hath willed.
The ritual may be concluded with an aspiration to the wisdom of silence by a brief concentration on the sigil of the Augoeides, but never by banishing. Periodically more elaborate forms of ritual, using more powerful forms of gnosis, may be employed. At the end of the day, there should be an accounting and fresh resolution made. Though every day be a catalog of failure, there should be no sense of sin or guilt. Magic is the raising of the whole individual in perfect balance to the power of Infinity, and such feelings are symptomatic of imbalance. If any unnecessary or imbalanced scraps of ego become identified with the genius by mistake, then disaster awaits. The life force flows directly into these complexes and bloats them into grotesque monsters variously known as the demon Choronzon. Some magicians attempting to go too fast with this invocation have failed to banish this demon, and have gone spectacularly insane as a result.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#NFDB
210:Spleen (Ii)
J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mille ans.
Un gros meuble à tiroirs encombré de bilans,
De vers, de billets doux, de procès, de romances,
Avec de lourds cheveux roulés dans des quittances,
Cache moins de secrets que mon triste cerveau.
C'est une pyramide, un immense caveau,
Qui contient plus de morts que la fosse commune.
— Je suis un cimetière abhorré de la lune,
Où comme des remords se traînent de longs vers
Qui s'acharnent toujours sur mes morts les plus chers.
Je suis un vieux boudoir plein de roses fanées,
Où gît tout un fouillis de modes surannées,
Où les pastels plaintifs et les pâles Boucher
Seuls, respirent l'odeur d'un flacon débouché.
Rien n'égale en longueur les boiteuses journées,
Quand sous les lourds flocons des neigeuses années
L'ennui, fruit de la morne incuriosité,
Prend les proportions de l'immortalité.
— Désormais tu n'es plus, ô matière vivante!
Qu'un granit entouré d'une vague épouvante,
Assoupi dans le fond d'un Sahara brumeux;
Un vieux sphinx ignoré du monde insoucieux,
Oublié sur la carte, et dont l'humeur farouche
Ne chante qu'aux rayons du soleil qui se couche.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Spleen
I have more memories than if I'd lived a thousand years.
A heavy chest of drawers cluttered with balance-sheets,
Processes, love-letters, verses, ballads,
And heavy locks of hair enveloped in receipts,
Hides fewer secrets than my gloomy brain.
It is a pyramid, a vast burial vault
Which contains more corpses than potter's field.
427
— I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon,
In which long worms crawl like remorse
And constantly harass my dearest dead.
I am an old boudoir full of withered roses,
Where lies a whole litter of old-fashioned dresses,
Where the plaintive pastels and the pale Bouchers,
Alone, breathe in the fragrance from an opened phial.
Nothing is so long as those limping days,
When under the heavy flakes of snowy years
Ennui, the fruit of dismal apathy,
Becomes as large as immortality.
— Henceforth you are no more, O living matter!
Than a block of granite surrounded by vague terrors,
Dozing in the depths of a hazy Sahara
An old sphinx ignored by a heedless world,
Omitted from the map, whose savage nature
Sings only in the rays of a setting sun.
— Translated by William Aggeler
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Spleen
I have more memories than had I seen
Ten centuries. A huge chest that has been
Stuffed full of writs, bills, verses, balance-sheets
With golden curls wrapt up in old receipts
And love-letters — hides less than my sad brain,
A pyramid, a vault that must contain
More corpses than the public charnel stores.
I am a cemetery the moon abhors,
Where, like remorses, the long worms that trail
Always the dearest of my dead assail.
I am a boudoir full of faded roses
Where many an old outmoded dress reposes
And faded pastels and pale Bouchers only
Breathe a scent-flask, long-opened and left lonely...
Nothing can match those limping days for length
428
Where under snows of years, grown vast in strength,
Boredom (of listlessness the pale abortion)
Of immortality takes the proportion!
— From henceforth, living matter, you are nought
But stone surrounded by a dreadful thought:
Lost in some dim Sahara, an old Sphinx,
Of whom the world we live in never thinks.
Lost on the map, it is its surly way
Only to sing in sunset's fading ray.
— Translated by Roy Campbell
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Spleen
Were I ten centuries old, could I remember more?
A weighty chest of drawers, crammed with a random store
Of poems, billets-doux, writs, songs, balance sheets,
And heavy skeins of hair rolled up in old receipts,
Hides fewer secrets, surely, than my sorry brain,
A pyramid and vault, whose corridors contain
More corpses than the potter's field, or late or soon.
A graveyard, I, abominated by the moon,
Where, like a viscous worm, remorse thrusts out his head
To strike forever at my most beloved dead.
I am an ancient boudoir filled with faded roses
In which a ruck of long-outmoded gowns reposes,
Where pastels all too sad and Bouchers all too pale
Alone breathe in the scents that uncorked flasks exhale.
Nothing can be so long as days, limping and drear,
Under the heavy flakes of year on snowy year,
When ennui, fruit of dismal incuriosity,
Assumes the fearful scope of immortality.
— Henceforth you are no more, O mind, O living matter!
Than a cold granite block which unknown terrors spatter,
Dozing deep in the wastes of a Saharan daze,
An ancient Sphinx unknown of our indifferent days,
Omitted from all maps, a lonely savage one
429
Who can sing only at the setting of the sun.
— Translated by Jacques LeClercq
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Sphinx
I swear to you that if I lived a thousand years
I could not be more crammed with dubious souvenirs.
There's no old chest of drawers bulging with deeds and bills,
Love-letters, locks of hair, novels, bad verses, wills,
That hides so many secrets as my wretched head; —
It's like a mausoleum, like a pyramid,
Holding more heaped unpleasant bones than Potter's Field;
I am a graveyard hated by the moon; revealed
Never by her blue light are those long worms that force
Into my dearest dead their blunt snouts of remorse.
— am an old boudoir, where roses dried and brown
Have given their dusty odor to the faded gown,
To the ridiculous hat, doubtless in other days
So fine, among the wan pastels and pale Bouchers.
Time has gone lame, and limps; and under a thick pall
Of snow the endless years efface and muffle all;
Till boredom, fruit of the mind's inert, incurious tree,
Assumes the shape and size of immortality.
Henceforth, O living matter, you are nothing more
Than the fixed heart of chaos, soft horror's granite core,
Than a forgotten Sphinx that in some desert stands,
Drowsing beneath the heat, half-hidden by the sands,
Unmarked on any map, — whose rude and sullen frown
Lights up a moment only when the sun goes down.
— Translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Spleen
430
I hold more memories than a thousand years.
a chest of drawers crammed full of souvenirs,
accounts and love-notes, warrants, verses — where
from bills of sale fall coiling locks of hair —
guards not more secrets than my heart of woe,
a burial-vault whose coffins lie arow,
a potters' field that death has filled too soon.
— I am a graveyard hated by the moon,
where creeping worms trail slowly as remorse,
fiercely destroyed each belovèd corpse.
I am a room where faded roses lie
and gowns of perished fashions multiply,
with none but ladies in pastel to share
the musk from some old jar forgotten there.
no days so lame as all the days I know
while, crushed by years of ever-falling snow,
boredom, dull fruitage of my apathy,
waxes as vast as immortality.
henceforth, o living cells, ye sleep, a womb
faint shudders pierce, a cold grey cliff of doom
lost in a misty desert far away,
— a drowsy sphynx, forgot by all today,
uncharted avatar, whose tameless heart
sounds only when the day's last fires depart.
— Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
211:Spleen (Ii)
J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mille ans.
Un gros meuble à tiroirs encombré de bilans,
De vers, de billets doux, de procès, de romances,
Avec de lourds cheveux roulés dans des quittances,
Cache moins de secrets que mon triste cerveau.
C'est une pyramide, un immense caveau,
Qui contient plus de morts que la fosse commune.
— Je suis un cimetière abhorré de la lune,
Où comme des remords se traînent de longs vers
Qui s'acharnent toujours sur mes morts les plus chers.
Je suis un vieux boudoir plein de roses fanées,
Où gît tout un fouillis de modes surannées,
Où les pastels plaintifs et les pâles Boucher
Seuls, respirent l'odeur d'un flacon débouché.
Rien n'égale en longueur les boiteuses journées,
Quand sous les lourds flocons des neigeuses années
L'ennui, fruit de la morne incuriosité,
Prend les proportions de l'immortalité.
— Désormais tu n'es plus, ô matière vivante!
Qu'un granit entouré d'une vague épouvante,
Assoupi dans le fond d'un Sahara brumeux;
Un vieux sphinx ignoré du monde insoucieux,
Oublié sur la carte, et dont l'humeur farouche
Ne chante qu'aux rayons du soleil qui se couche.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Spleen
I have more memories than if I'd lived a thousand years.
A heavy chest of drawers cluttered with balance-sheets,
Processes, love-letters, verses, ballads,
And heavy locks of hair enveloped in receipts,
Hides fewer secrets than my gloomy brain.
It is a pyramid, a vast burial vault
Which contains more corpses than potter's field.
427
— I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon,
In which long worms crawl like remorse
And constantly harass my dearest dead.
I am an old boudoir full of withered roses,
Where lies a whole litter of old-fashioned dresses,
Where the plaintive pastels and the pale Bouchers,
Alone, breathe in the fragrance from an opened phial.
Nothing is so long as those limping days,
When under the heavy flakes of snowy years
Ennui, the fruit of dismal apathy,
Becomes as large as immortality.
�� Henceforth you are no more, O living matter!
Than a block of granite surrounded by vague terrors,
Dozing in the depths of a hazy Sahara
An old sphinx ignored by a heedless world,
Omitted from the map, whose savage nature
Sings only in the rays of a setting sun.
— Translated by William Aggeler
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Spleen
I have more memories than had I seen
Ten centuries. A huge chest that has been
Stuffed full of writs, bills, verses, balance-sheets
With golden curls wrapt up in old receipts
And love-letters — hides less than my sad brain,
A pyramid, a vault that must contain
More corpses than the public charnel stores.
I am a cemetery the moon abhors,
Where, like remorses, the long worms that trail
Always the dearest of my dead assail.
I am a boudoir full of faded roses
Where many an old outmoded dress reposes
And faded pastels and pale Bouchers only
Breathe a scent-flask, long-opened and left lonely...
Nothing can match those limping days for length
428
Where under snows of years, grown vast in strength,
Boredom (of listlessness the pale abortion)
Of immortality takes the proportion!
— From henceforth, living matter, you are nought
But stone surrounded by a dreadful thought:
Lost in some dim Sahara, an old Sphinx,
Of whom the world we live in never thinks.
Lost on the map, it is its surly way
Only to sing in sunset's fading ray.
— Translated by Roy Campbell
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Spleen
Were I ten centuries old, could I remember more?
A weighty chest of drawers, crammed with a random store
Of poems, billets-doux, writs, songs, balance sheets,
And heavy skeins of hair rolled up in old receipts,
Hides fewer secrets, surely, than my sorry brain,
A pyramid and vault, whose corridors contain
More corpses than the potter's field, or late or soon.
A graveyard, I, abominated by the moon,
Where, like a viscous worm, remorse thrusts out his head
To strike forever at my most beloved dead.
I am an ancient boudoir filled with faded roses
In which a ruck of long-outmoded gowns reposes,
Where pastels all too sad and Bouchers all too pale
Alone breathe in the scents that uncorked flasks exhale.
Nothing can be so long as days, limping and drear,
Under the heavy flakes of year on snowy year,
When ennui, fruit of dismal incuriosity,
Assumes the fearful scope of immortality.
— Henceforth you are no more, O mind, O living matter!
Than a cold granite block which unknown terrors spatter,
Dozing deep in the wastes of a Saharan daze,
An ancient Sphinx unknown of our indifferent days,
Omitted from all maps, a lonely savage one
429
Who can sing only at the setting of the sun.
— Translated by Jacques LeClercq
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Sphinx
I swear to you that if I lived a thousand years
I could not be more crammed with dubious souvenirs.
There's no old chest of drawers bulging with deeds and bills,
Love-letters, locks of hair, novels, bad verses, wills,
That hides so many secrets as my wretched head; —
It's like a mausoleum, like a pyramid,
Holding more heaped unpleasant bones than Potter's Field;
I am a graveyard hated by the moon; revealed
Never by her blue light are those long worms that force
Into my dearest dead their blunt snouts of remorse.
— am an old boudoir, where roses dried and brown
Have given their dusty odor to the faded gown,
To the ridiculous hat, doubtless in other days
So fine, among the wan pastels and pale Bouchers.
Time has gone lame, and limps; and under a thick pall
Of snow the endless years efface and muffle all;
Till boredom, fruit of the mind's inert, incurious tree,
Assumes the shape and size of immortality.
Henceforth, O living matter, you are nothing more
Than the fixed heart of chaos, soft horror's granite core,
Than a forgotten Sphinx that in some desert stands,
Drowsing beneath the heat, half-hidden by the sands,
Unmarked on any map, — whose rude and sullen frown
Lights up a moment only when the sun goes down.
— Translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Spleen
430
I hold more memories than a thousand years.
a chest of drawers crammed full of souvenirs,
accounts and love-notes, warrants, verses — where
from bills of sale fall coiling locks of hair —
guards not more secrets than my heart of woe,
a burial-vault whose coffins lie arow,
a potters' field that death has filled too soon.
— I am a graveyard hated by the moon,
where creeping worms trail slowly as remorse,
fiercely destroyed each belovèd corpse.
I am a room where faded roses lie
and gowns of perished fashions multiply,
with none but ladies in pastel to share
the musk from some old jar forgotten there.
no days so lame as all the days I know
while, crushed by years of ever-falling snow,
boredom, dull fruitage of my apathy,
waxes as vast as immortality.
henceforth, o living cells, ye sleep, a womb
faint shudders pierce, a cold grey cliff of doom
lost in a misty desert far away,
— a drowsy sphynx, forgot by all today,
uncharted avatar, whose tameless heart
sounds only when the day's last fires depart.
— Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
212:I.
What's become of Waring
Since he gave us all the slip,
Chose land-travel or seafaring,
Boots and chest or staff and scrip,
Rather than pace up and down
Any longer London town?
II.
Who'd have guessed it from his lip
Or his brow's accustomed bearing,
On the night he thus took ship
Or started landward?-litt le caring
For us, it seems, who supped together
(Friends of his too, I remember)
And walked home thro' the merry weather,
The snowiest in all December.
I left his arm that night myself
For what's-his-name' s, the new prose-poet
Who wrote the book there, on the shelf-
How, forsooth, was I to know it
If Waring meant to glide away
Like a ghost at break of day?
Never looked he half so gay!
III.
He was prouder than the devil:
How he must have cursed our revel!
Ay and many other meetings,
Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,
As up and down he paced this London,
With no work done, but great works undone,
Where scarce twenty knew his name.
Why not, then, have earlier spoken,
Written, bustled? Who's to blame
If your silence kept unbroken?
``True, but there were sundry jottings,
``Stray-leaves, fragments, blurts and blottings,
``Certain fixst steps were achieved
``Already which''-(is that your meaning?)
``Had well borne out whoe'er believed
``In more to come!'' But who goes gleaning
Hedgeside chance-glades, while full-sheaved
Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o'erweening
Pride alone, puts forth such claims
O'er the day's distinguished names.
IV.
Meantime, how much I loved him,
I find out now I've lost him.
I who cared not if I moved him,
Who could so carelessly accost him,
Henceforth never shall get free
Of his ghostly company,
His eyes that just a little wink
As deep I go into the merit
Of this and that distinguished spirit-
His cheeks' raised colour, soon to sink,
As long I dwell on some stupendous
And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)
Monstr'-inform'- ingens-horrend-o us
Demoniaco-seraph ic
Penman's latest piece of graphic.
Nay, my very wrist grows warm
With his dragging weight of arm.
E'en so, swimmingly appears,
Through one's after-supper musings,
Some lost lady of old years
With her beauteous vain endeavour
And goodness unrepaid as ever;
The face, accustomed to refusings,
We, puppies that we were Oh never
Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled
Being aught like false, forsooth, to?
Telling aught but honest truth to?
What a sin, had we centupled
Its possessor's grace and sweetness
No! she heard in its completeness
Truth, for truth's a weighty matter,
And truth, at issue, we can't flatter!
Well, 'tis done with; she's exempt
From damning us thro' such a sally;
And so she glides, as down a valley,
Taking up with her contempt,
Past our reach; and in, the flowers
Shut her unregarded hours.
V.
Oh, could I have him back once more,
This Waring, but one half-day more!
Back, with the quiet face of yore,
So hungry for acknowledgment
Like mine! I'd fool him to his bent.
Feed, should not he, to heart's content?
I'd say, ``to only have conceived,
``Planned your great works, apart from progress,
``Surpasses little works achieved!''
I'd lie so, I should be believed.
I'd make such havoc of the claims
Of the day's distinguished names
To feast him with, as feasts an ogress
Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child!
Or as one feasts a creature rarely
Captured here, unreconciled
To capture; and completely gives
its pettish humours license, barely
Requiring that it lives.
VI.
Ichabod, Ichabod,
The glory is departed!
Travels Waring East away?
Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,
Reports a man upstarted
Somewhere as a god,
Hordes grown European-hearted ,
Millions of the wild made tame
On a sudden at his fame?
In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar,
With the demurest of footfalls
Over the Kremlin's pavement bright
With serpentine and syenite,
Steps, with five other Generals
That simultaneously take snuff,
For each to have pretext enough
And kerchiefwise unfold his sash
Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff
To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,
And leave the grand white neck no gash?
Waring in Moscow, to those rough
Cold northern natures born perhaps,
Like the lambwhite maiden dear
From the circle of mute kings
Unable to repress the tear,
Each as his sceptre down he flings,
To Dian's fane at Taurica,
Where now a captive priestess, she alway
Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech
With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach
As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands
Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands
Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry
Amid their barbarous twitter!
In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!
Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain
That we and Waring meet again
Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane
Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid
All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid
Its stiff gold blazing pall
From some black coffin-lid.
Or, best of all,
I love to think
The leaving us was just a feint;
Back here to London did he slink,
And now works on without a wink
Of sleep, and we are on the brink
Of something great in fresco-pain:
Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor,
Up and down and o'er and o'er
He splashes, as none splashed before
Since great Caldera Polidore.
Or Music means this land of ours
Some favour yet, to pity won
By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers,-
``Give me my so-long promised son,
``Let Waring end what I begun!''
Then down he creeps and out he steals
Only when the night conceals
His face; in Kent 'tis cherry-time,
Or hops are picking: or at prime
Of March he wanders as, too happy,
Years ago when he was young,
Some mild eve when woods grew sappy
And the early moths had sprung
To life from many a trembling sheath
Woven the warm boughs beneath;
While small birds said to themselves
What should soon be actual song,
And young gnats, by tens and twelves,
Made as if they were the throng
That crowd around and carry aloft
The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure,
Out of a myriad noises soft,
Into a tone that can endure
Amid the noise of a July noon
When all God's creatures crave their boon,
All at once and all in tune,
And get it, happy as Waring then,
Having first within his ken
What a man might do with men:
And far too glad, in the even-glow,
To mix with the world he meant to take
Into his hand, he told you, so-
And out of it his world to make,
To contract and to expand
As he shut or oped his hand.
Oh Waring, what's to really be?
A clear stage and a crowd to see!
Some Garrick, say, out shall not he
The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck?
Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,
Some Junius-am I right?-shall tuck
His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife!
Some Chatterton shall have the luck
Of calling Rowley into life!
Some one shall somehow run a muck
With this old world for want of strife
Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive
To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive?
Our men scarce seem in earnest now.
Distinguished names!-but 'tis, somehow,
As if they played at being names
Still more distinguished, like the games
Of children. Turn our sport to earnest
With a visage of the sternest!
Bring the real times back, confessed
Still better than our very best!
II.
I.
``When I last saw Waring''
(How all turned to him who spoke!
You saw Waring? Truth or joke?
In land-travel or sea-faring?)
II.
``We were sailing by Triest
``Where a day or two we harboured:
``A sunset was in the West,
``When, looking over the vessel's side,
``One of our company espied
``A sudden speck to larboard.
``And as a sea-duck flies and swims
``At once, so came the light craft up,
``With its sole lateen sail that trims
``And turns (the water round its rims
``Dancing, as round a sinking cup)
``And by us like a fish it curled,
``And drew itself up close beside,
``Its great sail on the instant furled,
``And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried,
``(A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's)
`` `Buy wine of us, you English Brig?
`` `Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?
`` `A pilot for you to Triest?
`` `Without one, look you ne'er so big,
`` `They'll never let you up the bay!
`` `We natives should know best.'
``I turned, and `just those fellows' way,'
``Our captain said, `The 'long-shore thieves
`` `Are laughing at us in their sleeves.'
III.
``In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;
``And one, half-hidden by his side
``Under the furled sail, soon I spied,
``With great grass hat and kerchief black,
``Who looked up with his kingly throat,
``Said somewhat, while the other shook
``His hair back from his eyes to look
``Their longest at us; then the boat,
``I know not how, turned sharply round,
``Laying her whole side on the sea
``As a leaping fish does; from the lee
``Into the weather, cut somehow
``Her sparkling path beneath our bow
``And so went off, as with a bound,
``Into the rosy and golden half
``O' the sky, to overtake the sun
``And reach the shore, like the sea-calf
``Its singing cave; yet I caught one
``Glance ere away the boat quite passed,
``And neither time nor toil could mar
``Those features: so I saw the last
``Of Waring!''-You? Oh, never star
Was lost here but it rose afar!
Look East, where whole new thousands are!
In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
[Mr. Alfred Domett, C.M.G., author of
Ranolf and Amohia, ``full of descriptions of
New Zealand scenery.]
Egyptian granite.
~ Robert Browning, Waring
,#NFDB
213:Alma Venus! [excerpt]
Trembling Creation's omnipresent sun,
Immanent Harmonist, Whose rhythms run.
Alike where midge pursues his swift romance,
Or grave stars cluster for their midnight dance 1
Bringer of fire, from what far fane despoiled?
Potter of grace, by what fell finger soiled?
In temple throned of old, or here in shame
Lurking, to Deathless YOU, of many a namePaphia, Freya, Aphrodite, Fand,
Cabiri vague, or in the fairy band
Titania, Niamh, or that Morgan fay
Our simpler eyes in. Sicily to-day
Catch at her sorcery-to YOU, whose breath
To a rippling rapture stirs the pool of Death,
I bring this coronal of rose and rue,
With golden wattle twined-and she-oak too.
The living wheels we call Creation roll
Whither and while You lead. Who are their soul!
Wheels within wheels, and whose the whirl of eyes
But Love's, Who was. Who is. Who never dies?
Wheels within wheels, but ever at the nave
Venus Pandemos, She for Whom we crave!
Wheels within wheels, but glowing from the tires
Venus Immaculate's Uranian fires!
If lovelight played not round the misty bourn
Could Life her marshy perils thread unworn?
Were Heaven's many mansions built to hold
Women and men seraphically cold?
Or does annihilation mean but this'Tristram no more desires Isolda's kiss'?
Fountains of Art that keep this old Earth fresh
Ascend to God from cisterns of the flesh:
Angel and phoenix flowered from the fires
Of virgin Ishtar's ravenous desires:
In good Nile mud incestuous Isis set
Many a tree of knowledge bearing yet:
Austere Mohammed meets at Heaven's door
Fond phantoms of his desert dreams of yore:
The shrine, the song, the picture and the bust
Are diamonds doubles of the charcoal, lust. . .
Your ruby billows floated to our ken
Many a rite that soothes the souls of men;
Swastik of Ind as once Egyptian Tau
In shining symbol utters yet Your law:
And coldest fanes for eunuch gods designed
Reveal Your girdle with their chaplets twined.
Around the Maypole, aeon-old, they dance,
Maiden and youth of Britain and of France,
Obedient to the law, forgot to-day,
That fertile gods, unshackled by their play,
From winter death will duly be reborn
And with their foison fill the ears of corn:
Or where, horizonward, Australian sand
Billows monotonous, behold Your band
Of leaf-clad lubras, swaying to the hum
Of droning wizard and barbaric drum,
In strange Unthippa dance to conjure there,
With warm wild posturing and coy despair,
Some dream-time god of golden ages dim,
That with the drama of their love for him
The waste in sympathy will fertile grow,
Emu be plentiful, the dry creeks flow,
And all the wild be rich with nut and plant,
Witchetty grub and root and honey-ant:
Virgins and boys, who with the bridal pair
And hymeneal chant through Athens bear
That casket strange, unknowing that inside
The mysteries of Aphrodite hide,
Ye will acknowledge too, in turn, ere long,
Omnipotent the goddess of my song:
And, childless ones of Ind, with prayer ye pour
Oil on that shrine to-day, as wives of yore
On wayside Jahv or god of boundary,
For benison of grudged fertility. . . .
Let pale usurpers of Your old domain
In crumbling book and vapid hymn maintain
That You, great Queen, are dead, that nevermore
Shall devotee Your majesty adore,
Or sad Meander wail as long ago
For torn Adonis and Your helpless woe:
We hear in beating hearts another rune,
In hymn of man and maid another tune:
On every road Your living creatures draw,
Whither You list, the Tables of Your Law:
Wherever tree hath sap or being breath,
Ubiquitous, You bruise the head of Death:
Here, pallid cuckoo's great crescendos call
His coy companion to Your festival:
There, magpie warbles to the morning star
The advent of the rapture that You are:
And desolate the spirit unaware
Of quivering enchantment in the air
When August struggles from his gaoler's power,
And gleaming envoys from each wooing flower
Cajole the bees to waft his tender dues
To some dear tabernacle's secret cruse;
When listening almonds weary of the night
Hearing You coming blossom into white;
When wattle waking from her torpor cold
Knowing You near her trembles into gold;
When, ancient symbols realizing here,
Gabriel Spring announces every year
To expectant Nature's myriad maidenhood,
In rolling plain or solitary wood,
The miracle that maketh Life complete,
The brooding Presence of the Paraclete.
*
Magi profounder than the Eastern Three
Followed the Star of Your Epiphany:
Isis had hidden with a sullen pall
The secret of the Universe from all,
Until Lucretius wondering found a fold,
It swayed to Goethe's eyes, and, growing bold,
Darwin stooped down and groping patiently
Out of the dust lifted the hem, till we
Staggering saw against the eternal blue
The secret Builder of Creation-You I ...
'When Love was driven from the world by stark
And sexless mattoids of the Ages Dark,
Disgusted lore to Moorish havens fled,
The Muses nine with eunuch monks were wed:
Primordial terror to the day returned,
The witch in hordes and great Servetus burned:
Celibate piety with thumb uncouth
Plastered a fig-leaf over Plato's truth:
Aquinas thinned, to make a draught divine,
With holy water, Aristotle's wine;
Round every comer eft or devil stares,
And very Dante mumbles craven prayers;
The childish painter daubs his maudlin fears,
And song forgets to sing a thousand years.
Yet You had lingered cunningly concealed
Now in an altar-piece, now in a field
With shards of pillared grandeur buried deep,
Until the nightmare passed. Yea, did You peep
A moment now and then, ere rose the sun,
Under the hood of a rose-hearted nun
At Abelard, or told the tale so well
Of Launcelot that even glowering hell
Drove not Francesca from her lover's wraith;
Yea, visored chivalry unhorsed his faith,
And far Jerusalem and Paynim tryst
Forgot, for victory in a gender list
Where with the provocation of a smile
Your ambushed omnipresence would beguile
Crusader sullen to a softer creed,
Knight errant to an errant knight indeed....
As what strange god did You entice the King
Through brave Uriah's comely wife to fling
Harp and the psaltery aside to plan
As mean a deed as had polluted man
Till Sextus lusted, or her father's knife
Rescued Virginia from the hell of life?
Yea, there is that in You man dare not face:
A dark star dogs Your limpid planet's grace:
Jetsam from old pollution stales Your shore:
Lewd gargoyles grin above Your temple door. ...
Wormwood is waiter at Your choicest feast,
Your Beauty shadowed ever by the Beast.
Yon feudal lord of mediaeval France,
Your devotee of many a Rose Romance,
Hath on his peasants' daughters' bridal nights
Exacted to the full his shameful rights:
Your cuckoo calling Spring into the wood
Was stark nest-brother to a robin's brood:
And, tragi-comedy of humble life,
That doting husband of the buxom wife
Is fondling (while You laugh) the child she gave
At Your still altar to some passing knave. . ..
Was it a glimpse of phases fell that mar
The radiant round of Your auspicious star,
That drove the hermit to the wilderness
From demons lurking in Your least caress,
And bade the nun, as once the vestal too,
Renounce Your works and all Your pomps-and You?
Yea, those whose eyes can pierce the dazzling veil
Of Light that is Your mask have told a tale
Of how we in the world were once expelled
From Paradise, and now, in prison held,
On moaning treadmills of repeated lives
Work out our crimes, until the hour arrives
For life to cease on earth and You to fade
With all the woe Your temptress wiles have made.
You are the gaoler of that prison, Who
(For so they say) inveigle all to woo,
Be won, that so by our own ardours we
Keep lit Your hell, yea, for eternity,
Unless, until, ignoring all You say,
As monk, as nun, we dare to disobey.
If so it be, then were the barren one
Blest of all women underneath the sun,
An angel of the Lord sent here to ray
The midnight of the soul with coming day;
The tower impregnable that masters Fate
Is not the Caesar but the celibate;
And he at whom no woman ever smiled
Is everlasting Heaven's favoured child
Ordained (who knows?) in what benignant star
As Baptist of some glorious Avatar,
Whose Word shall cause all flesh to cease to be
And man be one again with Deity!. . .
Or when the veil we call Reality
Rifts, and the meaning of it all we see,
Will Good and Evil kiss and understand?
God walk with brother Satan hand in hand?
The cool-haired Night repose beside the Sun?
Pandemos prove with Love Uranian one?
The Tree of Life mature its golden fruits
From bark so sinister and those wan roots?
Slowly our interrogating eyes
Sobered with long deception recognize,
'Mid older clues dissolved to flecks, at last
One signal flashing from the Outer Vast,
Fell or benign (as falls or rises faith),
Comet or guiding star-Your rosy wraith!
Your rosy wraith that both in man and weed
'Writes deep and undeniable Your creed'Beget or hear, though ye to-morrow die,
Beget or bear, nor ask the reason why 1
Though sun and earth shall duly pass away,
Though all the gods shall ripen and decay,
It is Their Will Who bade the world exist:
And woe to him or her who doth not list
The sole clear mandate from the Otherwhere
Flushed through the Universe-Beget or bear 1'
Love we or dread we may not all ignore
The single beacon on the circling shore
Where Being laps upon the caverned steep
Wherefrom we drifted and whereto we creep.
Beacon 1 although You lead us but to gloom!
A guiding star, it may be, to the tomb!
Comet flung from the Void through trackless Light!
Yet is Your rosy flame in ion mite
And great pathetic man the only trace
Of something more than chance in Time and Space,
That purpose dimly threads the crazy web,
That tides of anguish ultimately ebb,
That green hope signals underground a Nile,
That faith is wiser than an ostrich wile,
That there is something in us will elude
The withering fingers of vicissitude,
And man's ripe earth by a guttering sun betrayed
Will not in cold and useless ruin fade.
Question the sibyl grottoes near or far
Whither or whence we sail or why we are!
Listen at Nature's beating heart for clue,
And every oracle we know or knew!
From Zodiac round of older destiny,
From tiny orbit of an atomy,
From Pythoness or oak or Magian fire,
Augur antique or wizard new inquire,
Austral churinga or the crystal ball,
'Wherefore does anything exist at all?'
Of star or fungus seek, of life or death,
Whence Being came and whither wandereth!
10
Ask of the gloom that locks the secret in,
Ask of the light that saw the world begin!
The day, the night, and death and life are dumb:
From fungus, star or ball no answers come:
Silent, churinga, table, passing bird:
From fire or Druid oak no guiding word:
The Pythoness ambiguously sighs:
Orbit minute nor Zodiac house replies:
But dim the beating heart amid its sobs
With 'Alma Venus!' 'Alma Venus!' throbs;
While on two sibyl leaves, by a world-wind strange
Blown to our shore across the gulf of Change,
'Increase and multiply' on one is scrolled
In ochre crude, on one, in glowing gold
Around the pearly nimbus of a dove,
The script imperishable-'God is Love.'
~ Bernard O'Dowd,#NFDB
108 Integral Yoga
8 Yoga
8 Philosophy
4 Poetry
3 Occultism
2 Fiction
1 Sufism
1 Psychology
1 Mysticism
58 Sri Aurobindo
40 The Mother
34 Nolini Kanta Gupta
24 Satprem
12 A B Purani
8 Aldous Huxley
7 Sri Ramakrishna
7 George Van Vrekhem
4 Nirodbaran
2 Walt Whitman
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 H P Lovecraft
15 Essays On The Gita
15 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
12 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
8 The Perennial Philosophy
7 The Synthesis Of Yoga
7 Preparing for the Miraculous
6 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
5 The Secret Doctrine
5 The Human Cycle
5 Talks
5 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
5 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
5 Agenda Vol 08
5 Agenda Vol 03
4 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
4 Letters On Yoga II
4 Agenda Vol 02
3 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
3 Essays Divine And Human
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
3 Agenda Vol 04
2 Words Of The Mother III
2 Whitman - Poems
2 Questions And Answers 1956
2 Questions And Answers 1953
2 Lovecraft - Poems
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
2 Agenda Vol 01
2 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
When Sri Ramakrishna told Mathur what the Brahmani had said about him, Mathur shook his head in doubt. He was reluctant to accept him as an Incarnation of God, an Avatar comparable to Rama, Krishna, Buddha, and Chaitanya, though he admitted Sri Ramakrishna's extraordinary spirituality. Whereupon the Brahmani asked Mathur to arrange a conference of scholars who should discuss the matter with her. He agreed to the proposal and the meeting was arranged. It was to be held in the natmandir in front of the Kali temple.
Two famous pundits of the time were invited: Vaishnavcharan, the leader of the Vaishnava society, and Gauri. The first to arrive was Vaishnavcharan, with a distinguished company of scholars and devotees. The Brahmani, like a proud mother, proclaimed her view before him and supported it with quotations from the scriptures. As the pundits discussed the deep theological question, Sri Ramakrishna, perfectly indifferent to everything happening around him, sat in their midst like a child, immersed in his own thoughts, sometimes smiling, sometimes chewing a pinch of spices from a pouch, or again saying to Vaishnavcharan with a nudge: "Look here. Sometimes I feel like this, too." Presently Vaishnavcharan arose to declare himself in total agreement with the view of the Brahmani. He declared that Sri Ramakrishna had undoubtedly experienced mahabhava and that this was the certain sign of the rare manifestation of God in a man. The people assembled
--
When, a few days later, Pundit Gauri arrived, another meeting was held, and he agreed with the view of the Brahmani and Vaishnavcharan. To Sri Ramakrishna's remark that Vaishnavcharan had declared him to be an Avatar, Gauri replied: "Is that all he has to say about you? Then he has said very little. I am fully convinced that you are that Mine of Spiritual Power, only a small fraction of which descends on earth, from time to time, in the form of an Incarnation."
"Ah!" said Sri Ramakrishna with a smile, "you seem to have quite outbid Vaishnavcharan in this matter. What have you found in me that makes you entertain such an idea?"
--
Thus the insane priest was by verdict of the great scholars of the day proclaimed a Divine Incarnation. His visions were not the result of an over-heated brain; they had precedent in spiritual history. And how did the proclamation affect Sri Ramakrishna himself? He remained the simple child of the Mother that he had been since the first day of his life. Years later, when two of his householder disciples openly spoke of him as a Divine Incarnation and the matter was reported to him, he said with a touch of sarcasm: "Do they think they will enhance my glory that way? One of them is an actor on the stage and the other a physician. What do they know about Incarnations? Why, years ago pundits like Gauri and Vaishnavcharan declared me to be an Avatar. They were great scholars and knew what they said. But that did not make any change in my mind."
Sri Ramakrishna was a learner all his life. He often used to quote a proverb to his disciples: "Friend, the more I live the more I learn." When the excitement created by the Brahmani's declaration was over, he set himself to the task of practising spiritual disciplines according to the traditional methods laid down in the Tantra and Vaishnava scriptures. Hitherto he had pursued his spiritual ideal according to the promptings of his own mind and heart. Now he accepted the Brahmani as his guru and set foot on the traditional highways.
0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
object:0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality
author class:A B Purani
--
Jung has admitted that there is an element of mystery, something that baffles the reason, in human personality. One finds that the greater the personality the greater is the complexity. And this is especially so with regard to spiritual personalities whom the Gita calls Vibhutis and Avatars.
Sri Aurobindo has explained the mystery of personality in some of his writings. Ordinarily by personality we mean something which can be described as "a pattern of being marked out by a settled combination of fixed qualities, a determined character.... In one view personality is regarded as a fixed structure of recognisable qualities expressing a power of being"; another idea regards "personality as a flux of self-expressive or sensitive and responsive being.... But flux of nature and fixity of nature" which some call character "are two aspects of being neither of which, nor indeed both together, can be a definition of personality.... But besides this flux and this fixity there is also a third and occult element, the Person behind of whom the personality is a self-expression; the Person puts forward the personality as his role, character, persona, in the present act of his long drama of manifested existence. But the Person is larger than his personality, and it may happen that this inner largeness overflows into the surface formation; the result is a self-expression of being which can no longer be described by fixed qualities, normalities of mood, exact lineaments, or marked out by structural limits."[4]
--
The Gita in its chapters on the Vibhuti and the Avatar takes in general the same position. It shows that the present formula of our nature, and therefore the mental personality of man, is not final. A Vibhuti embodies in a human manifestation a certain divine quality and thus demonstrates the possibility of overcoming the limits of ordinary human personality. The Vibhuti the embodiment of a divine quality or power, and the Avatar the divine incarnation, are not to be looked upon as supraphysical miracles thrown at humanity without regard to the process of evolution; they are, in fact, indications of human possibility, a sign that points to the goal of evolution.
In his Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo says about the Avatar: "He may, on the other hand, descend as an incarnation of divine life, the divine personality and power in its characteristic action, for a mission ostensibly social, ethical and political, as is represented in the story of Rama or Krishna; but always then this descent becomes in the soul of the race a permanent power for the inner living and the spiritual rebirth."[5]
"He comes as the divine power and love which calls men to itself, so that they may take refuge in that and no longer in the insufficiency of their human wills and the strife of their human fear, wrath and passion, and liberated from all this unquiet and suffering may live in the calm and bliss of the Divine."[6]
"The Avatar comes to reveal the divine nature in man above this lower nature and to show what are the divine works, free, unegoistic, disinterested, impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine love. He comes as the divine personality which shall fill the consciousness of the human being and replace the limited egoistic personality, so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out of birth into immortality."[7]
It is clear that Sri Aurobindo interpreted the traditional idea of the Vibhuti and the Avatar in terms of the evolutionary possibilities of man. But more directly he has worked out the idea of the 'gnostic individual' in his masterpiece The Life Divine. He says: "A supramental gnostic individual will be a spiritual Person, but not a personality in the sense of a pattern of being marked out by a settled combination of fixed qualities, a determined character; he cannot be that since he is a conscious expression of the universal and the transcendent." Describing the gnostic individual he says: "We feel ourselves in the presence of a light of consciousness, a potency, a sea of energy, can distinguish and describe its free waves of action and quality, but not fix itself; and yet there is an impression of personality, the presence of a powerful being, a strong, high or beautiful recognisable Someone, a Person, not a limited creature of Nature but a Self or Soul, a Purusha."[8]
One feels that he was describing the feeling of some of us, his disciples, with regard to him in his inimitable way.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Purna Avatar.7 This Avatar will awaken the Brahmatej8,
which is dormant. Sri Aurobindo also says that it is only
01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The thing, however, is that what you call principles do not drop from heaven in their virgin purity and all at once lay hold of mankind en masse. It is always through a particular individual that a great principle manifests itself. Principles do not live in the general mind of man and even if they live, they live secreted and unconscious; it is only a puissant personality, who has lived the principle, that can bring it forward into life and action, can awaken, like the Vedic Dawn, what was dead in allmritam kanchana bodhayanti. Men in general are by themselves 'inert and indifferent; they have little leisure or inclination to seek, from any inner urge of their own, for principles and primal truths; they become conscious of these only when expressed and embodied in some great and rare soul. An Avatar, a Messiah or a Prophet is the centre, the focus through which a Truth and Law first dawns and then radiates and spreads abroad. The little lamps are all lighted by the sparks that the great torch scatters.
And yet we yield to none in our demand for holding forth the principles always and ever before the wide open gaze of all. The principle is there to make people self-knowing and self-guiding; and the man is also there to illustrate that principle, to serve as the hope and prophecy of achievement. The living soul is there to touch your soul, if you require the touch; and the principle is there by which to test and testify. For, we do not ask anybody to be a mere automaton, a blind devotee, a soul without individual choice and initiative. On the contrary, we insist on each and every individual to find his own soul and stand on his own Truththis is the fundamental principle we declare, the only creedif creed it be that we ask people to note and freely follow. We ask all people to be fully self-dependent and self-illumined, for only thus can a real and solid reconstruction of human nature and society be possible; we do not wish that they should bow down ungrudgingly to anything, be it a principle or a personality. In this respect we claim the very first rank of iconoclasts and anarchists. And along with that, if we still choose to remain an idol-lover and a hero-worshipper, it is because we recognise that our mind, human as it is, being not a simple equation but a complex paradox, the idol or the hero symbolises for us and for those who so will, the very iconoclasm and anarchism and perhaps other more positive things as wellwhich we behold within and seek to manifest.
01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
However, coming to historical times, we see wave after wave of the most heterogeneous and disparate elementsSakas and Huns and Greeks, each bringing its quota of exotic materialenter into the oceanic Indian life and culture, lose their separate foreign identity and become part and parcel of the common whole. Even so,a single unitary body was formed out of such varied and shifting materialsnot in the political, but in a socio-religious sense. For a catholic religious spirit, not being solely doctrinal and personal, admitted and embraced in its supple and wide texture almost an infinite variety of approaches to the Divine, of forms and norms of apprehending the Beyond. It has been called Hinduism: it is a vast synthesis of multiple affiliations. It expresses the characteristic genius of India and hence Hinduism and Indianism came to be looked upon as synonymous terms. And the same could be defined also as Vedic religion and culture, for its invariable basis the bed-rock on which it stood firm and erectwas the Vedas, the Knowledge seen by the sages. But there had already risen a voice of dissidence and discord that of Buddha, not so much, perhaps, of Buddha as of Buddhism. The Buddhistic enlightenment and discipline did not admit the supreme authority of the Vedas; it sought other bases of truth and reality. It was a great denial; and it meant and worked for a vital schism. The denial of the Vedas by itself, perhaps, would not be serious, but it became so, as it was symptomatic of a deeper divergence. Denying the Vedas, the Buddhistic spirit denied life. It was quite a new thing in the Indian consciousness and spiritual discipline. And it left such a stamp there that even today it stands as the dominant character of the Indian outlook. However, India's synthetic genius rose to the occasion and knew how to bridge the chasm, close up the fissure, and present again a body whole and entire. Buddha became one of the Avataras: the discipline of Nirvana and Maya was reserved as the last duty to be performed at the end of life, as the culmination of a full-length span of action and achievement; the way to Moksha lay through Dharma and Artha and Kama, Sannyasa had to be built upon Brahmacharya and Garhasthya. The integral ideal was epitomized by Kalidasa in his famous lines about the character of the Raghus:
They devoted themselves to study in their boyhood, in youth they pursued the objects of life; when old they took to spiritual austerities, and in the end they died united with the higher consciousness.
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In these latest poems of his, Eliot has become outright a poet of the Dark Night of the Soul. The beginnings of the new Avatar were already there certainly at the very beginning. The Waste Land is a good preparation and passage into the Night. Only, the negative element in it was stronger the cynicism, the bleakness, the sereness of it all was almost overwhelming. The next stage was "The Hollow Men": it took us right up to the threshold, into the very entrance. It was gloomy and fore-boding enough, grim and seriousno glint or hint of the silver lining yet within reach. Now as we find ourselves into the very heart of the Night, things appear somewhat changed: we look at the past indeed, but can often turn to the future, feel the pressure of the Night yet sense the Light beyond overarching and embracing us. This is how the poet begins:
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
On the one hand, there is what Sri Aurobindowho, as the Avatar, represented the supreme Consciousness and Will on earthdeclared me to be, that is, the supreme universal Mother; and on the other hand, there is what I am realizing in my body through the integral sadhana.2 I could be the supreme Mother and not do any sadhana, and as a matter of fact, as long as Sri Aurobindo was in his body, it was he who did the sadhana, and I received the effects. These effects were automatically established in the outer being, but he was the one doing it, not II was merely the bridge between his sadhana and the world. Only when he left his body was I forced to take up the sadhana myself; not only did I have to do what I was doing beforebeing a bridge between his sadhana and the world but I had to carry on the sadhana myself. When he left, he turned over to me the responsibility for what he himself had been doing in his body, and I had to do it. So there are both these things. Sometimes one predominates, sometimes the other (I dont mean successively in time, but it depends on the moment), and they are trying to combine in a total and perfect realization: the eternal, ineffable and immutable Consciousness of the Executrice of the Supreme, and the consciousness of the Sadhak of the integral Yoga who strives in an ascending effort towards an ever increasing progression.
To this has been added a growing initiation into the supramental realization which is (I understand it well now) the perfect union of what comes from above and what comes from below, or in other words, the eternal position and the evolutionary realization.
--
For example, this question of PowerTHE Powerover Matter. Those who perceive me as the eternal, universal Mother and Sri Aurobindo as the Avatar are surprised that our power is not absolute. They are surprised that we have not merely to say, Let it be thus for it to be thus. This is because, in the integral realization, the union of the two is essential: a union of the power that proceeds from the eternal position and the power that proceeds from the sadhana through evolutionary growth. Similarly, how is it that those who have reached even the summits of yogic knowledge (I was thinking of Swami) need to resort to beings like gods or demigods to be able to realize things?Because they have indeed united with certain higher forces and entities, but it was not decreed since the beginning of time that they were this particular being. They were not born as this or that, but through evolution they united with a latent possibility in themselves. Each one carries the Eternal within himself, but one can join Him only when one has realized the complete union of the latent Eternal with the eternal Eternal.
And this explains everything, absolutely everything: how it works, how it functions in the world.3 I was saying to myself, But I have no powers, I have no powers! Several days ago, I said, But after all, I KNOW WHO is there, I know, yet how is it that ? There, up to there (the level of the head), it is all-powerful, nothing can resist but here it is ineffective. So those who have faith, even an ignorant but real faith (it can be ignorant but nevertheless it is real), say, What! How can you have no powers? Because the sadhana is not yet over.
0 1959-07-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This handwritten note bore only this word and the date. Kalki is the name of the last Avatar who comes on a white winged horse to destroy the 'barbarians' (yavan) at the end of the Iron Age or the Kali Yuga, which is the period we are now passing through. His appearance marks the return of the Age of Truth, or the Satya Yuga.
7.9.59
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But these people just cant get out of their education! Here is a lady [A. Bailey], quite renowned, it seems (shes dead now), who became the disciple of a Tibetan lama and she still speaks of Christ as the sole Avatar! She just cant get out of it!
And each one has the absolute Truth!
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, Ive had some very interesting revelations on this point, on the way people think and feel about it. I remember someone once made a little statue of Sri Aurobindo; he gave it a potbelly and anyway, to me it was ridiculous. So I said, How could you make such a thing?! He explained that even if its a caricature for the ordinary eye, since its an image of the one you consider God, or a god, or an Avatar, since its the image of the one you worship, even if only a guru, it contains the spirit and the force of his presence, and this is what you worship, even in a crude form, even if the form is a caricature to the physical eye.
Someone made a large painting of Sri Aurobindo and myself, and they brought it here to show me. I said, Oh, its dreadful! It was to the physical eye it was really dreadful. Its dreadful, I said, we cant keep it. Then immediately someone asked me for it, saying, Im going to put it up in my house and do my puja before it. Ah! I couldnt help saying, But how could you put up a thing like that! (It wasnt so much ugly as frightfully banal.) How can you do puja before something so commonplace and empty! This person replied, Oh, to me its not empty! It contains all the presence and all the force, and I shall worship it as that: the Presence and the Force.
--
Kalki: the last Avatar. He rides a white horse.
***
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When Richard had finished his work, he returned to France with a poor photograph of Sri Aurobindo and a completely superficial impression of him, yet with the feeling that Sri Aurobindo KNEW (he hadnt at all understood the man that Sri Aurobindo was, he hadnt felt the presence of an Avatar, but he had sensed that he had knowledge). Moreover, I think he always held this opinion, because he used to say that Sri Aurobindo was a unique intellectual giant without many spiritual realizations! (The same type of stupidity as Romain Rollands.) Well, my relationship with Richard was on an occult plane, you see, and its difficult to touch upon. What happened was far more exciting than any novel imaginable.
But he was a man who.
--
Here in Pondicherry, those last days might have become tragic (but of course it was impossible). There was the great argument (for he was perfectly aware of who I was): But after all, he would tell me, since you are the eternal Mother, why have you chosen Aurobindo as Avatar? Choose me! You must choose meme! It was the Asura speaking through him. I would smile and not discuss it. Thats not how its done! I would tell him (laughing). Then one day he said, Ah, so you dont want to. (gesture to the throat) Well, if you dont choose me, then. He was a strong fellow with powerful hands. I kept quite calm and said inwardly, My Lord, my Lord. I called Sri Aurobindo and I saw him come, like that (gesture enveloping Mother and immobilizing everything). Then Richards hands loosened their grip.
There were marks on my neck.
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My book, of course, would be: What I have known of Sri Aurobindo and on his supreme level. What I have known of Sri Aurobindo is what I have been able to perceive of the Avatar. What he represents. Thats how I see him. So, what I have known of Sri Aurobindo, expressed spontaneously, with a minimum of external events, the very minimum, but with all the experiences of our meetings: at that time, this opened that; at that moment, I realized this or saw that or felt something else ; and then I was able to do such and such and all of it was Sri Aurobindo.
I know it would create a furor if I wrote this book! Because any fool could read it like a story and feel perfectly satisfied and he wouldnt even notice it taking hold of him inside and changing him.
0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I was those gusts, those gusts of Love. When I was conscious of the last one, the one organized outwardly, as it were, by Sri Aurobindomaterializing as the Avatar Sri Aurobindo then came the absolute certainty that the thing was done, that it was decreed.
And the moment I became aware that it was decreed, I thought, But how can THAT be translated into that? How can the two be joined? That was when the words came: You promised to do it, therefore you will do it; and slowly the transition began, as if I were again being sent back to do it. Yes, as if You promised to do it and you will do it; well, thats what I meant by a promise. And I came back towards this body to do it.
0 1962-05-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In other words, no matter how great he may be, no matter how conscious, how powerful, ONE Avatar all alone cannot realize the supramental life on earth. Either a group in time, a number of individuals staggered over a certain period of time, or a group spread out over a certain spaceor maybe bothis indispensable for this Realization. I am convinced of it.
The individual can give the initial impulse, point out the path, WALK the path himself (I mean show the path by realizing it) but he cant bring the work to fulfillment. The fulfillment of the work depends on certain collective laws that are the expression of a particular aspect of the Eternal and Infinitenaturally, its all one and the same Being! There arent different individuals and personalities, its all one and the same Being. But the same Being expressing itself in a particular way that for us translates as a group or a collectivity.
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
People now talk of spiritualizing politics. Its result will be, if there be any permanent result, some kind of Indianized Bolshevism. Even to that kind of work I have no objection. Let each man do according to his inspiration. But that is not the real thing. If one pours the spiritual power into all these impure forms the water of the Causal ocean into raw vesselsei ther the raw vessels will break and the water will be spilt and lost or the spiritual power will evaporate and only the impure form remain. In all fields it is the same. I can give the spiritual power but that power will be expended in making the image of an ape and setting it up in the temple of Shiva. If the ape is endowed with life and made powerful, he may play the part of the devotee Hanuman and do much work for Rama,2 so long as that life and that power remain. But what we want in the Temple of India is not Hanuman, but the god, the Avatar, Rama himself.
We can mix with all, but in order to draw all into the true path, keeping intact the spirit and form of our ideal. If we do not do that we shall lose our direction and the real work will not be done. If we remain individually everywhere, something will be done indeed; but if we remain everywhere as parts of a Samgha, a hundred times more will be done. As yet that time has not come. If we try to give a form hastily, it may not be the exact thing we want. The Samgha will at first be in unconcentrated form. Those who have the ideal will be united but work in different places. Afterwards, they will form something like a spiritual commune and make a compact Samgha. They will then give all their work a shape according to the demand of the spirit and the need of the agenot a bound and rigid form, not an achalayatana3, but a free form which will spread out like the sea, mould itself into many waves and surround a thing here, overflood a thing there and finally take all into itself. As we go on doing this there will be established a spiritual community. This is my present idea. As yet it has not been fully developed. All is in Gods hands; whatever He makes us do, that we shall do.
--
Rama, the divine Avatar who killed the demon Ravana with the help of Hanuman and the other monkeys.
A prison; a place where everything is regimented down to the last detail.
0 1962-12-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its not what one might imagine, its not one form entering anotherit doesnt keep him from being wherever he wants to be and doing whatever he wants to do, appearing as he wants to appear and being involved with everything happening on earth: it doesnt change any of that. And its not just a part of him [that is in Mother, but his totality]. And thats how I know he was manifesting the Absolute, he was a manifestation of the Absolute. Of course, afterwards he revealed himself as what I had called the Master of Yoga; that was the reason he came on earth (what people here in India call an Avatar). But thats still a way of seeing things SEPARATELY: its not the thingTHE thing.
Well see tomorrow [December 5].
0 1962-12-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, I understand! Because its true, you know, that an Asura is behind it allnot Christ! Sri Aurobindo considered Christ an Avatar (a minor form of Avatar). One emanation of the Divines aspect of Love, he always said. But what people have made of him! Besides, the religion was founded two hundred years after his death. And its nothing but a political construction, a tool for domination, built with the Lord of Falsehood in the background, who, in his usual fashion, took something true and twisted it.
Its a real hodgepodge, that religion the number of sects! The only common ground is the divinity of Christ, and it became asuric when he was made out to be unique: there has been but ONE incarnation, Christ. Thats just where it all went wrong.
0 1963-03-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Once I told you about an experience I had, I told you that every time a divine manifestation occurs (what is called an Avatar), theres always a particular angle of quest, in the sense of an intense NEED urging men along the road of evolution towards the Goal, the Transformation, and each Avatar saw from a particular angle, believing it to be THE Goal.1 When I had that experience, I saw it was the need for Immortality that drove the Vedic Rishis. It came back to me yesterday, and I noted it down:
(Mother reads a handwritten note)
0 1963-09-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But thats understood! All Avatars are like that.
Yes, but hes the only one.
0 1963-09-28, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What he announces, and what I am sure of, is that the Victory will be won on the earth and that the earth will become a progressive being (eternally progressive) in the Lord thats understood. But it doesnt preclude the other possibility. The future of the earth he has announced clearly, and its understood that such is the future of the earth; only, if that possibility [of death as an exclusively earthly phenomenon] is what we could term historically correct, it would sort of legitimize the attitude of those who get away from it. How is it that Buddha, who undeniably was an Avatar, laid so much stress on Deliverance as the conclusion of things? He who stayed behind only to help others to get away faster. Then that means he saw only one side of the problem?
Oh, yes!
0 1964-10-17, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, not chatting! Otherwise, there would be no need for Avatars.
Yes so it seems.
--
But if the stories as we are told them are more or less true, I mean if they have any truth, there isnt ONE Avatar who stayed they all left. Or else theyre hiding well, because No one has ever met any of them, you see. There are people who go looking for them, but no one has ever met them. And their deaths have even been much talked about and often seem to have played a rather important role.
How do you mean no one has ever met them?
0 1966-10-22, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But judging by the lettersall the mailthere is a kind of occult activity spreading over the earth in a very strange way. In Korea, there is a man who declares himself to be the New Avatar. There are scores and scores of them, everywhere. With the result that from a material point of view, people appear to have rather lost their balance. You feel as if the whole earth has gone half crazy. And with their new inventions, it can result in odd phenomena.
But since the beginning of this century and up till now, the change that has taken place on the earthin the realms of thought, activities, products, inventionsis fantastic! Its so fantastic that things dating from the beginning of the century appear antiquated, as if they were almost two hundred years old. Its strange.
0 1967-09-13, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(After a silence) No, he went back, he didnt stay. He doesnt have a glorified body, he left. He went back to the higher regions, he doesnt have a glorified body. He may be glorified up there, thats his business (laughing), but here He went back. Of course, Sri Aurobindo himself said Christ was an Avatar. An Avatar in the line of Krishna, the line that represented yes, goodness, charity, love, harmony. He belongs to that line.
***
0 1967-09-16, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I read her letter and learned the whole story, as always I did like this (gesture of immobile offering upward), and then the TRUE thing came (not at all what she thinks or what the Pope thinks, but the TRUE thing): an essential unity that will manifest on earth, but not just for this particular religion for ALL religions, all the religions that were manifestations of a (let us say, to understand each other clearly), an Avatar, that is, something that was sent down from above, that came to earth to bring a message, and a religion came out of it (I am not talking about all the forms of superstition and ignorance). Those religions are destined to go back to their Origin and form a complex unity, complete, total, that is to say, the essence of all human aspirations for the unknown Divine. And that has not only been sanctioned: it EXISTS. In other words, its ready to descend.
In egoistic and limited human consciousnesses, it finds expression in this or that person, or it finds expression in the Pope who, naturally, would like to.3 Thats his whole raison dtre, otherwise he would just be one little man among many others. In other words, there is the whole motivation of human egoism that is there. Thats what distorts everything. But there is a something (which they talk about without knowing what they talk about), a something ready to manifest. And at the same time I seem to be told, Dont worry, be in peace, you dont need to do anything: it WILL BE, and as usual you will spontaneously say what you need to say, without knowing it. There.
0 1967-09-23, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I told her I wasnt a guru, that if she wanted to follow this path, she had to have a guru and I wasnt here to spread the Good Word. I told her, If you walk alone on this path, you run the risk of taking your thoughts and desires for Gods commandments, so it helps to have a guru who protects and leads you. But I am not a guru at all. And I told her once more, If you wish, Mother is there and you can turn to her. Then there was a little something that made me angry: she said, Sri Aurobindo, yes, I understand Sri Aurobindo; Sri Aurobindo is an Avatar, but the Mother she is a highly developed personality, but not an Avatar. I replied, But what kind of perception do you have to say things of that sort! Then I added, It doesnt matter in the least
Yes.
So long as one doesnt know, one talks about it; as for me, I dont say, Mother is an Avatar or Mother is not an Avatar, I dont say anything. When you have the perception, you are able to say. Thats all. Finally I told her, I am not a guru.
(Mother laughs) Its very funny!
0 1967-09-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is also a Korean, have you seen his photo? I saw his photo, he is a hefty fellow and must be the same age, between thirty and forty. A Korean who, for his part, bluntly says that he is, not the reincarnation of Christ (I dont think he is Christian), but the new Avatar (if he knew the Indian tradition, he would say Kalki1). And it seems he has hundreds of thousands of disciples! I saw his photo I saw him Korean, you understand, that is, not universal.
But it means things are moving everywheremoving more and more.
--
Kalki: the last Avatar, who appears on a winged white horse and is armed with a sword. He will come "like a burning comet."
***
0 1967-11-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The last Avatar, in Hindu tradition.
At such times, Mother would become white and could often be seen placing the palms of her hands over her eyes.
0 1968-06-08, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But now, I see its quite spontaneous. Here in India, with the notion of guru, of Avatar, you may recognize him, admit him, but he is there exclusively to satisfy all demandsnot because he has put on a human body, but because he is the representative of the supreme Power, and you accept the supreme Power, you pretend to obey it, you surrender to it, but with, at the back of your mind, He is there only to satisfy my desires. The quality of desires depends on the individual: for some, its the most petty personal desires; for others its big desires for all humanity, or even for greater realizations, but anyhow it amounts to the same thing. That seems to be the condition for surrendering (!)
To emerge from that, one must emerge from the human consciousness, that is, from the active, acting consciousness.
0 1969-10-25, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As for me, I never believed: I had a lot of difficulty, its Sri Aurobindo who made me believe in the physical reality of Christ; I always thought it was some story people toldthey took hold of just anybody and built a story around him. But Sri Aurobindo believed in it. He said it was an Avatara partial Avatar.
(silence)
--
Near you, A.R. says that he only feels a difference in intensity of the same Thing. I tried to explain to him that it was not quite the same thing, but he irrefutably says that there is only ONE Thing with varying intensities, and that you only let That flow through more purely than others do. And as we spoke of Avatars, he said: There cannot be a difference between an Avatar and a realized Yogi, or if there is a difference, it means that the Yogi isnt truly realized.
In short, we both turned round an indefinable differencewhich may be the Grace.
--
What he says about the Avatar and the yogi is logically true.
But there may be a secret beyond mens understanding except and only if they wholly abdicate their humanity.
0 1970-07-22, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, its like that, its here (same gesture to the forehead). And when I look, I see so clearly! Human conceptions it has always been the same thing with all, all the Avatars: if he isnt one and onlyone and only and shut in like this (gesture as if under a bell jar), its no longer the thing! It disturbs them.
Yes, thats right!
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In fact, however, there is no insurmountable disparity between spirituality and "worldliness", between meditation and the most "terrible work"ghore karmani: the Gita has definitively proved the truth of the fact millenniums ago. War has not been the monopoly of warriors alone: it will not be much of an exaggeration to say that Avatars, the incarnations of the Divine, have done little else besides that. And what of the Divine Mother herself? The main work of an Avatar is often to subdue the evil-doers, those that follow and pull others to follow the Wrong Path. And the Divine Mother, she who harbours in her bosom the supreme Truth and Consciousness and Bliss, is in one of her essential aspects, the slayer of the Demon, of the Asura.
Now, it is precisely with the Asura that we have to deal in the present war. This is not like other warsit is not a war of one country with another, of one group of Imperialists with another, nor is it merely the fierce endeavour of a particular race or nation for world-domination: it is something more than all that. This war has a deeper, a more solemn, almost a grim significance. Some thinkers in Europe, not the mere political leaders, but those who lead in thought and ideas and ideals, to whom something of the inner world is revealed, have realised the true nature of the present struggle and have expressed it in no uncertain terms. Here is what Jules Romains, one of the foremost thinkers and litterateurs of contemporary France, says:
02.03 - An Aspect of Emergent Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is the implication of such a conclusion? It comes perilously near the Indian conception of Avatarhood! The central line of evolutionary nisus is the line of Avatarhood. At each point of the line, on the level of the newly emerged principle, there is a divine embodiment of that principle. The esoteric significance of the graded scale of Avatarhood, as illustrated in Vishnu's ten Forms, has long ago been pointed out, by some thinkers, in this light.
The principle of Avatarhood stands justified in this scheme as a necessary and inevitable element in the terrestrial evolutionary movement. An Avatar embodies a new emergent property: he incarnates a new principle of being and consciousness, he manifestsunfolds from below or brings down from above upon eartha higher and deeper principle of organisation. He is the nucleus round which the new organisation crystallises. A Rama comes and human society attains a new status: against a mainly vitalistic and egoistic organisation whose defender and protagonist is Ravana, is set up an ideal of sattwic humanity. A Krishna appears and human consciousness is lifted, potentially at least, to a still higher level of spiritual possibility. The Avatar following, rather tracing, in his upward movement the central line of the evolutionary nisus, cuts a path, as it were, in the virgin forest of a realm of consciousness still unknown and foreign to human steps. As the Avatar presses and passes on, the way is cleared for other, ordinary human beings to come up and naturalise themselves in a new country promising a higher destiny which He discovers and conquers for them.
Now at this point we reach the crux of the problem, the supreme secretrahasyam uttamamas the Gita would say. For the apex of the pyramid, the crown of evolution, the consummation of the central line of emergence would then be nothing less than the manifestation, the terrestrial incarnation of the Supreme Divine. The Deity thus fully emerged would embody the truth and play of creation in its widest scope and highest elevation; it would mean the utter fulfilment of human destiny and terrestrial Purpose.
In Indian terminology, it would be the advent of the Purna Bhagavan in the human bodymnusm tanumsritam. All previous Avatars are only a preparation for the coming of this Supreme Divine. It is said also that the present epoch marks a crucial turn and transition. We await the Kalki Avatar who will wipe off the past, the Iron Age, and bring in the Golden Age, Satya Yuga.
A question inevitably arises herewhat next? Once the evolutionary movement has reached the apex, does it stop there? After the apex, the Void? I t need not be so. The completion of the pyramid would mean simply the end of a particular order of creation, the creation in Ignorance. This is, indeed, what Sri Aurobindo envisages in his conception of the creation in supramental Gnosis. The evolutionary nisus, on its arrival at the apex, according to him crosses a borderland, leaps into another order of the world, of infinite Truth-Consciousness. Thereafter another new creation starts the building perhaps of another pyramid (if we want to continue the metaphor). The progression Of the evolutionary course is naturally expected to be an unending series. The pyramids rise tier upon tier ad infinitum. Only it is to be noted that in the basic pyramid the evolution starts from inconscience and moves from more ignorance to less ignorance through a gradually lessening density of darkness until the apex is reached where all shade of darkness is eliminated for ever. Beyond there is no mixture, however thin and diluted: it is a movement from light to light, from one expression of it to another, perhaps richer, but of the same quality.
02.03 - The Shakespearean Word, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the world of poetry Dante is a veritable Avatar . His language is a supreme magic. The word-unit in him is a quantum of highly concentrated perceptive energy, Tapas. In Kalidasa the quantum is that of the energy of the light in sensuous beauty. And Homer's voice is a quantum of the luminous music of the spheres.
The word-unit, the language quantum in Sri Aurobindo's poetry is a packet of consciousness-force, a concentrated power of Light (instinct with a secret Delight)listen:
02.11 - New World-Conditions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
True, there are contrary voices. But as one swallow does not make a summer, even so, many such voices cannot perpetuate the past. The name, even the form of Imperialism is there, but the substance of it is how much changed, if one goes behind! The British Empire, as it stands today, is composed of three strands, we may say: the first, the front line, consists of Canada and Australia, the second, of Ireland, Egypt and Irak, and the third, mainly of India. This graded pattern shows that it is something fluid and even progressive, there is nothing rigid and final about it. The very nature of the composition seems to exert a pressure working for an equality, an equilibrium of partnership building up a genuine Commonwealth. The model is catching. An Imperialistic Russia, that has found a new Avatara in Stalin, has become a champion of federalism, as the best way of preserving the imperial integrity!
India should consider the present situation with calmness, detachment and wisdom, not hark back to the past, brooding over the mistakes and misdeeds of her erstwhile masters they are no longer masters; yes, forgiving and forgetting, one must face squarely the new situation and make the best use of it. India, that claims a spiritual heritage and a high and hoary civilisation, can afford to be idealistic even and envisage a deeper and higher law of Nature, of universal harmony and solidarity, of conscious co-operation. Apart from that, if as practical men, we look to our self-interest, then also it will be wise for us to take up the same line of procedure, viz., what idealism demands. A nation too, like the individual, can be swayed by pride, prejudice, passion, a false sense of prestige and a spirit of vengeance. However natural these reactions may seem to be, in view of the conditions of their incidence, they possess, more often than not, the property of the boomerang, they hit back the originating source itself. It has been said, for example, that the origin of the present war the rise of Hitleris due to the Versailles Treaty that ended the last war, which was, in its turn a war of revenge having its origin on the field of Sedan; this campaign of 1870 again was the natural and inevitable outcome of the Napoleonic conquest. Thus there has been a seesaw movement in national relations without a definite issue. And pessimists of today aver that we are not come to the end of the spiral.
02.14 - Panacea of Isms, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As a matter of fact, Communism is best taken as a symptom of the disease society suffers from and not as a remedy. The disease is a twofold bondage from which man has always been trying to free himself. It is fundamentally the same "bondage which the great French Revolution sought most vigorously and violently to shake offan economic and an ideological bondage, that is to say, translated in the terms of those days, the tyranny of the court and the nobility and the tyranny of the Church. The same twofold bondage appears, again today combated by Communism, viz., Capitalism and Bourgeoisie. Originally and essentially, however, Communism meant an economic system in which there is no personal property, all property being held in common. It is an ideal that requires a good deal of ingenuity to be worked out in all details, to say the least. Certain religious sects within restricted membership tried the experiment. Indeed some kind of religious mentality is required, a mentality freed from normal mundane reactions, as a preliminary condition in order that such an attempt might be successful. A perfect or ideal communism may be possible only when man's character and nature has undergone a thorough and radical change. Till then it will be a Utopia passing through various Avatars.
Socialism
03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The inner soul the psychicvery often undergoes a secret preparation, develops and comes forward but just waits, as it were, behind the thin though opaque screen; and because of that it gives no objective indication of its growth and readiness. We see no patent sign of what is usually known as fitness or aptitude or capacity. Otherwise how to explain the conversion of a profligate and dilettante like Augustine, or of a rebel like Paul, or of scamps like Jagai-Madhai. Often the purest gold hides in the basest ore, the diamond is coal turned, as it were, inside out. This, one would say, is the Divine Grace that blows where it listsmakes of the dumb a prattler, of the lame a mountain-climber. Yet, but what is this Divine Grace and how does it move and act? It does not act on all and sundry, it does not act on all equally. What is the reason? Appearances often belie the reality: a contrary mask is put on, it would appear, deliberately, with a set purpose. The: sense and significance of this mystery? The hard, obscure, obstinate, rebel outer crust may continue long but it is corroded from within and one day, all on a sudden, it crumbles and dissolves and becomes in a new Avatar the vehicle and receptacle of the very thing it opposed and denied.
Virtues are not indications of the fire of the inner soul, nor are vices irremediable obstacles to its growth. The inner soul, we have said, feeds upon allit is indeed fire, the omnivorous, sarvabhuk,virtues and vices and everything else and gather strength from everywhere. The mystery of miracles, of a sudden change or reversal or revolution in consciousness and way of life lies in the omnipotency of the psychic being. The psychic being has the power of making the apparently impossible, for this reason that it is a portion of the almighty Divine, it is the supreme Conscious-Power crystallised and canalised in a centre for the sake of manifestation. It is a particle from the Being, a spark of the Consciousness, a ripple from the Delight cast into the fastnesses of Matter and the, material body. Now, it is the irresistible urge of this particle, this spark, this ripple to grow and expand, to become in the end the Vast the Ocean and the Sun and the sphere of Infinityto become that not merely in an essential status but in a dynamic and apparent becoming also. The little soul, originally no bigger than a thumb, goes forward through one life after another enlarging and intensifying itself till it recovers and establishes its parent reality in this material body here below, till it unveils what is latent within itself, what is its own, what is itself,its integral self-fulfilment, the Divine integrality.
03.05 - The Spiritual Genius of India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There was no department of life or culture in which it could be said of India that she was not great, or even, in a way, supreme. From hard practical politics touching our earth, to the nebulous regions of abstract metaphysics, everywhere India expressed the power of her genius equally well. And yet none of these, neither severally nor collectively, constituted her specific genius; none showed the full height to which she could raise herself, none compassed the veritable amplitude of her innermost reality. It is when we come to the domain of the Spirit, of God-realisation that we find the real nature and stature and genius of the Indian people; it is here that India lives and moves as in her own home of Truth. The greatest and the most popular names in Indian history are not names of warriors or statesmen, nor of poets who were only poets, nor of mere intellectual philosophers, however great they might be, but of Rishis, who saw and lived the Truth and communed with the gods, of Avataras who brought down and incarnated here below something of the supreme realities beyond.
The most significant fact in the history of India is the unbroken continuity of the line of her spiritual masters who never ceased to appear even in the midst of her most dark and distressing ages. Even in a decadent and fast disintegrating India, when the whole of her external life was a mass of ruins, when her political and economical and even her cultural life was brought to stagnation and very near to decomposition, this undying Fire in her secret heart was ever alight and called in the inevitable rebirth and rejuvenation. Ramakrishna, with Vivekananda as his emanation in life dynamic and material, symbolises this great secret of India's evolution. The promise that the Divine held out in the Gita to Bharata's descendant finds a ready fulfilment in India, in Bharata's land, more perhaps than anywhere else in the world; for in India has the. Divine taken birth over and over again to save the pure in heart, to destroy the evil-doer and to establish the Right Law of life.
03.09 - Buddhism and Hinduism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Hinduism, one may even say, Indianism, has cast Buddhism out of India, the mother country, to the wonder of many. Buddhism came to rub out the dead deposits and accretions on the parent body and in doing so it often rubbed on the raw and against the grain. Hinduism had to accept the corrections; in the process it had to absorb, however, many elements contrary to its nature, even antipathic to its soul. Buddha was accepted as an Avatar; he was given a divine status in the Hindu Pantheon. Divested, apparently, of all heterodoxical and controversial appendages, he was anointed with the sole sufficing aspect of supreme kindness, universal compassion. Even so, in and through this Assumption, not a little of the peculiarly Buddhist inspiration entered the original organism. The most drastic and of far-reaching consequence was the inauguration and idolisation of monastic life, which has become since then in Indian conception, the summum bonum, the supreme goal of human existence. It was not without reason that India's older and truer tradition cried out against Shankara being a crypto-Buddhist (pracchanna bauddha), who was yet one of the most consistent and violent critics of Buddhism.
Life is an expression of the Divine Presence, earth is the field of labour for the godssuch was the original old-world Vedic view. It was the Buddhist dispensation that made life an inferior truth, a complex of unreality and decreed that the highest aim of man is to disappear from life after life's fitful fever to sleep well that seems to have been the motto given.
03.09 - Sectarianism or Loyalty, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is not sufficient to say that God is one and therefore wherever He is found and however He is found and whoever finds Him one must implicitly accept and obey and follow. God is one indeed: but it is equally true that he is multiple. God is not a point, but a limitless infinity, so that when one does reach Him one arrives at a particular spot, as it were, enters into only one of his many mansions. Likewise, God's manifestation upon earth has been infinitely diverse, his Vibhutis, Avataras, his prophets and viceregents have been of all sorts and kinds. Precisely because God is at once one and infinitely multiple and because human nature also is likewise, if one in essence, infinitely multiple in expression, each one, while seeing and finding the one God, seeks and finds him in and through a particular formulation. That is the original meaning, the genesis and justification of creeds and dogmas. Only, it must be borne in mind, that one can be faithful even to a particular creed and dogma and yet transcend it, live a particular mode of life and yet possess at the back of it and as its support the very sense and consciousness of infinity itself. Where there is this synthetic and transcendent experience dogmatism has no place, nor conflict between creed and creed.
One can be as catholic and boundless as infinity, still one can and has to bow down to a special figure of it, since or if one who approaches it has a figure of his own. Just in the same way as when one is in the body, one has to live a particular life framed by the body, even the mind as well as the life are canalised in the mould of the body consciousness, and yet at the same time one can live in and through the inner consciousness immeasurably, innumerably in other bodies, in the unbarred expanse of the cosmic and the transcendent. The two experiences are not contradictory, rather they reinforce each other.
03.16 - The Tragic Spirit in Nature, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A Jeanne d'Arc, another glorious creature, Deliverer of France, the sweetest thing that ever put on a human body, was burnt as a witch. Socrates had to drink the hemlock for having brought down heavenly knowledge upon earth. The Christ, God's own son and beloved, perished on the Cross. Krishna, the Avatara, was killed by a chance arrow; and Arjuna, the peerless hero of Kurukshetra, Krishna's favourite, had to see days when he could not even lift his own bow with which he once played havoc. And in our own days, a Ramakrishna, who could cure souls could not cure his own cancer. This is the tears of thingsspoken of by a great poet the tragedy that is lodged in the hearts of things.
There runs a pessimistic vein in Nature's movement. Due to the original Inconscience out of which she is built and also because of a habit formed through millenniums it is not possible for her to expect or envisage anything else than decay, death and frustration in the end or on the whole. To every rise there must be a fall, a crest must end in a trough. Nature has not the courage nor the faculty to look for any kind of perfection upon earth. Not that within her realm one cannot or should not try for the good; the noble, even the perfect, but one must be ready to pay the price. Good there is and may be, but it is suffered only on payment of its Danegeld to Evil. That is the law of sacrifice that seems to be fundamental to Nature's governance.
04.01 - The Divine Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But there is a still closer mystery, the mystery of mysteries. There has not been merely a general descent, the descent of a world-force on a higher plane into another world-force on a lower plane; but that there is the descent of the individual, the personal Godhead into and as an earthly human being. The Divine born as a man and leading the life of a man among us and as one of us, the secret of Divine Incarnation is the supreme secret. That is the mechanism adopted by the Divine to cure and transmute human illshimself becoming a man, taking upon himself the burden of the evil that vitiates and withers life and working it out in and through himself. Something of this truth has been caught in the Christian view of Incarnation. God sent upon earth his only begotten son to take upon himself the sins of man, suffer vicariously for him, pay the ransom and thus liberate him, so that he may reach salvation, procure his seat by the side of the Father in Heaven. Man corrupted as he is by an original sin cannot hope by his own merit to achieve salvation. He can only admit his sin and repent and wait for the Grace to save him. The Indian view of Incarnation laid more stress upon the positive aspect of the matter, viz, the role of the Incarnation as the inaugurator and establisher of a new order in lifedharmasasthpanrthya. The Avatar brings down and embodies a higher principle of human organisation, a greater consciousness which he infuses into the existing pattern, individual or collective, which has -served its purpose, has become otiose and time-barred and needs to be remodelled, has been at the most preparatory to something else. The Avatar means a new revelation and the uplift of the human consciousness into a higher mode of being. The physical form he takes signifies the physical pressure that is exerted for the corroboration and fixation of the inner illumination that he brings upon earth and in the human frame. The Indian tradition has focussed its attention upon the Goodreyasand did not consider it essential to dwell upon the Evil. For one who finds and sees the Good always and everywhere, the Evil does not exist. Sri Aurobindo lays equal emphasis on both the aspects. Naturally, however, he does not believe in an original evil, incurable upon earth and in earthly life. In conformity with the ancient Indian teaching he declares the original divinity of man: it is because man is potentially and essentially divine that he can become actually and wholly divine. The Bible speaks indeed of man becoming perfect even as the Father in Heaven is perfect: but that is due exclusively to the Grace showered upon man, not because of any inherent perfection in him. But in according full divinity to man, Sri Aurobindo does not minimise the part of the undivine in him. This does not mean any kind of Manicheism: for Evil, according to Sri Aurobindo, is not coeval or coterminous with the Divine, it is a later or derivative formation under given conditions, although within the range and sphere of the infinite Divine. Evil exists as a stern reality; even though it may be temporary and does not touch the essential reality, it is not an illusion nor can it be ignored, brushed aside or bypassed as something superficial or momentary and of no importance. It has its value, its function and implication. It is real, but it is not irremediable. It is contrary to the Divine but not contradictory. For even the Evil in its inmost substance carries or is the reality which it opposes or denies outwardly. Did not the very first of the apostles of Christ deny his master at the crucial moment? As we have said, evil is a formation necessitated by certain circumstances, the circumstances changed, the whole disposition as at present constituted changes automatically and fundamentally.
The Divine then descends into the earth-frame, not merely as an immanent and hidden essencesarvabhtntratm but as an individual person embodying that essencemnu tanumritam. Man too, however earthly and impure he maybe, is essentially the Divine himself, carries in him the spark of the supreme consciousness that he is in his true and highest reality. That is how in him is bridged the gulf that apparently exists between the mortal and the immortal, the Infinite and the Finite, the Eternal and the Momentary, and the Divine too can come into him and become, so to say, his lower self.
04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We are familiar with the phrase "Augustan Age": it is in reference to a particular period in a nation's history when its creative power is at its highest both in respect of quantity and quality, especially in the domain of art and literature, for it is here that the soul of a people finds expression most easily and spontaneously. Indeed, if we look at the panorama that the course of human evolution unfolds, we see epochs of high light in various countries spread out as towering beacons or soaring peaks bathed in sunlight dominating the flat plains or darksome valleys of the usual normal periods. Take the Augustan Age itself which has given the name: it is a very crucial and one of the earlier outflowerings of the human genius on a considerable scale. We know of the appearance of individuals on the stage of life each with a special mission and role in various ages and various countries. They are great men of action, great men of thought, creative artists or spiritual and religious teachers. In India we call them Vibhutis (we can include the AvatarasDivine Incarnationsalso in the category). Even so, there is a collective manifestation too, an upsurge in which a whole race or nation takes part and is carried and raised to a higher level of living and achievement. There is a tide in the affairs not only of men, but of peoples also: and masses, large collectivities live on the crest of their consciousness, feeling and thinking deeply and nobly, acting and creating powerfully, with breadth of vision and intensity of aspiration, spreading all around something that is new and not too common, a happy guest come from elsewhere.
Ancient Greece, the fountainhead of European civilisationof the world culture reigning today, one can almost sayfound itself epitomised in the Periclean Age. The lightgrace, harmony, sweet reasonableness that was Greece, reached its highest and largest, its most characteristic growth in that period. Earlier, at the very beginning of her life cycle, there came indeed Homer and no later creation reached a higher or even as high a status of creative power: but it was a solitary peak, it was perhaps an announcement, not the realisation of the national glory. Pericles stood as the guardian, the representative, the emblem and nucleus of a nation-wide efflorescence. Not to speak of the great names associated with the age, even the common peoplemore than what was normally so characteristic of Greecefelt the tide that was moving high and shared in that elevated sweep of life, of thought and creative activity. Greece withdrew. The stage was made clear for Rome. Julius Caesar carried the Roman genius to its sublimest summit: but it remained for his great nephew to consolidate and give expression to that genius in its most characteristic manner and lent his name to a characteristic high-water mark of human civilisation.
04.04 - A Global Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Viewed as a progressive growth of consciousness and transformation of nature, man's advance has been marked out in a few very definite stages. The first was the purely animal manPasuwhen man lived merely as a physical being, concerned solely about his body. Then came the Pisacha, the man of vital urges in their crudest form, the man of ignorant passions and dark instincts who has been imaged in the popular mind as the ghoul. At the next stage, with a further release of the consciousness, when the larger vital impulses come into play man becomes the Rakshasa, the demon. Egoistic hunger for possession, enjoyment, enlarged and increased appetite are his characteristics. Next came the Asura, the Titan, the egoistic mental man in his earlier Avatar seeking to emerge out of the purely vital nature. Ambition and pride are his guiding spirit. Prometheus is his prototype. There are still two higher types which have been established in the human consciousness and in the world atmosphere as dynamic ideals, if not as common concrete facts of the material world. The first is the ethical man, who seeks to govern his life according to some principles of light and purity, such, for example, as unselfishness, altruism, chivalry, self-abnegation, rectitude, truthfulness etc. He is the Sattwic man, as known in India. There is also a still higher category, where consciousness endeavours to go beyond mind, enters into the consciousness of the Spirit; then we have the spiritual man, the saint and the sage. Beyond lie the supra-mental domains formed of the consciousness of the gods.
Man, individually and collectively, has passed and is passing through these steps of evolution. The last one is his goal at the present stage. To be a saint, seer or sage is not enough for man. He must be a god. Indeed when he has succeeded to be a god then only would it be possible for him to become what a saint or a seer or sage has to be in order to fulfil himself totally and integrally. The human race as a whole is progressing along the same line towards the same consummation. That is the secret purpose and end of Nature, to evolve a growing developing material form housing, embodying higher and wider ranges of consciousness, integrating all elements into a more and more intimate and inviolable unity and harmony.
04.05 - The Immortal Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
One may note three or four crises, practically rebirths, in India's life history. They correspond roughly with the great racial infiltrations or what is described as such by anthropologists, what others may describe as operations of blood transfusion. There was an original autochthonous people, the early humanity out of the stone age, usually called proto-Dravidians, whose remnants are still found among the older and cruder aboriginal tribes. Then the Dravidian infusion which culminated in the humanity, the Indian humanity, of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Next the Aryan Avatar. One usually begins Indian history with the Dravido-Aryan civilisation which is taken as the basic foundation, the general layout of the whole structure. The first shock or blow the edifice received was from the Greeks and then the Huns and Scythians the Tartars something that struck at the most essential element of Indian culture and character. Psychologically the new leaven was brought in and injected by Gautama Buddha the un-Vedic Buddha the external invasion and penetration was possible because of this opening already made from within. This injection was necessary as an antidote to the decline and fall that had set in sometime between the passing of Sri Krishna and the advent of Buddha. But traditional India absorbed this new leaven and came out with a renewed and enriched personality. The next major shaking came with the Islamic inundation. This meant or would have meant a great and even catastrophic reversal, but this too in the course of centuries succeeded only in invigorating and enlarging the life and consciousness of eternal India. The last and perhaps the most dangerous assault came from the Europeans, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and finally, most of all, from the British. An absolutely matter-of-fact vitalistic Europe overran and overwhelmed a predominantly otherworldly spirit and almost succeeded in obliterating that spirit and replacing it by a replica of its own life-pattern and Weltanschauung. Even such a blow India could survive, not only so, could utilise it for her own purpose, for the greater fulfilment of her mission in life. She is coming out of that ordeal a towering personality, a godhead for the remoulding of humanity and earth-life.
It may be argued that all nations and peoples are a mixture of various races and foreign strands which are gradually, soldered and unified together in course of time. The British nation, for example, is built upon a base of Celtic blood and culture (the original Briton), to which were added one by one the German (Angles and the Saxon), the Danish, the French. But what is to be noted is that the resultant is at the end some-thing very different from the start something unrecognisable when compared with the original pattern and genius. The resultant seems to be arrived at not by a gradual evolution and continuous transformation but by disparate echelons or , breaks, as it were, in the line. In France also or in Italy the growth and the unification were achieved through violent revolutions, eruptions and irruptions. In the former, a Gaelic and Iberian base and in the latter an Etruscan were all but swept off by the Roman rule which again saw its end at the hand of the Barbarians. The history of Greece offers a typical picture of the destiny of these peoples. Her life-line is sundered completely at three different epochs giving us not one but three different personalities or peoples: at the outset there was the original classical Greece, then the first and milder although sufficiently serious break came with the Roman conquest; the second catastrophic change was wrought by the Goths and Vandals which was stabilised in the Byzantine Empire and the third Avatar appeared with the Turkish regime. At the present time, she is acquiring another life and body.
Indeed, viewed from this angle, the whole conscious personality of Europe seems to have been cut across by such hiatuses, two or three of them of a serious kind. Upon a primitive and mythologic stratum was laid the Grco-Roman and then there was a strong Hebraic or Old Testament influence, finally the known Christian or New Testament element; to that must be added the modern New Enlightenment, that is to say, of Science and Rationalism and Materialism. These several strands have not been welded or harmonised together very well. They are very often at variance with each other and combating each other. It is this schizophrenia that lies at the bottom of European malady. Europe has not been able to develop a wholly unified or one-pointed spiritual personality. On the other hand, it has developed very well-defined and sharply separated nations in its bosom, a sign and resultant of the lack of complete integration. India has some-times been spoken of as a continent consisting of many and varied nations, and not as a unified nation, she being more like Europe than a particular nation like England or France. We may answer that India possesses a more unified soul than Europe and that is why her sub-nations do not stand out in any intransigent separativeness like the nations in Europe. Even Asia possesses a more unified and integrated soul-personality than Europe; for, as I have said, her peoples stand upon a deeper strand of life and consciousness, something that is in contact with and is inspired by the Spiritual truth and reality. It is more so in India, where one has the very emblem and exemplar of this spiritual unity and the spiritual personality that derives from there.
04.09 - Values Higher and Lower, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The crucial problem however lies, in a sense, in the way that the goal is to be reached, in the modus operandi. How is the higher status, whatever it is, to be brought down, made effective, be established here on earth and in life. Ideals there have been always and many; evidently we do not know how to go about the business and actualise what is thought and dreamed. About the new ideal too, suggestions have been made with regard to the path to be followed to reach it and are being tried and tested. Some say a life of inner or ethical discipline, conscious effort on the part of each Individual for his own sake is needed: the higher reality must be reached first by a few individuals, it cannot be attained by 'mass action. Others declare that personal effort will not lead very far; if there is to be a great or fundamental change in human nature, it is the Divine Grace alone that can bring it about. The surpassing of man is a miracle and only the supreme magician as an Avatara can do it. Others, again, are not prone to believe in a physical Incarnationsomewhat difficult usually for a European mind but would accept subtler forces or even superior beings, other than the human category, as aids and agents in the working out of the great future.
It is India's great achievement and speciality that she has found the way the way to all truly high fulfilment. It is Yoga and the Yogic consciousness. Yoga is the science and art of discovering the higher truths, indeed, the highest reality and of living there, not a midway moral elevation only. In its integral view it combines all the three processes mentioned above. The Yogic consciousness seeks to lift the consciousness as high as possible, in fact, to the very highestit literally means union or identity (with the highest Reality, Spirit or God). Thus it has the true perception or vision of the forces that act in and upon the world and the powers that decide and is in union with them. The Yogic consciousness and power is also embodied in the Divine Incarnation for he is Yogeshwara: and in India it is accepted as a commonplace that God descends in a human shape, whenever there is a great crisis and man needs salvaging and salvation. God comes then with all his angels, with the divine host to battle for him and with him to establish the Dharma.
05.02 - Gods Labour, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The general idea of a descent of the Spirit, that is to say, the Divine, the conception of avatra and Avataraais, of course, not new. But here there is a difference. Avatara or Avatarana in the older disciplines was more or less an intervention of God as God, the working of a Force come specifically in the midst of the world circumstances, maintaining still its divine transcendental character, to work out a given problem, accomplish a special mission and then, when the work is done, retire to its own status. It is, as it were, a weapon of flame and light hurled into the earthly frayeven like the discus of Vishnu and having accomplished its mission, going back into the hand of the thrower, its fount and origin. The task of the Avatara was usually bhbhra-haraa, lightening earth's load: it means removing the sinful and preserving the virtuous, re-establishing the reign of Law. Esoterically, he also embodied the Way to spiritual fulfilment. There was no question of saving humanityit was more serving than savingby transfiguring it, giving it a new body and life and mind, nor was there any idea of raising the level of earth-consciousness.
The Divine acts in three different ways in his three well-known aspects. As the transcendent Reality he is above and beyond creation, he is the Unmanifest, although he may hold within either involved or dissolved the entire manifestation. Next, he is the manifestation, the cosmic or the universal; he is one with creation, immanent in it, still its master and lord. Finally, he has an individual aspect: he is a Person with whom human beings can enter into relations of love and service. The Divine incarnate as a human being, is a special manifestation of the Individual Divine. Even then, as an embodied earthly person, he may act in a way characteristic of any of the three aspects. The Divine descended upon earth, as viewed by Sri Aurobindo, does not come in his transscendental aspect, fundamentally aloof and away, in his absolute power and consciousness, working miracles here; for transcendence can do nothing but that in the midst of conditions left as they are. Nor does he manifest himself only as his cosmic power and consciousness, imbedded in the creation and all-pervading, exercising his influence through the pressure of Universal Law, perhaps in a concentrated form, still working gradually, step by step, as though through a logical process, for the maintenance of the natural order and harmony, lokasagraha. God can be more than that, individualised in a special, even a human sense. His individual being can and does hold within itself his cosmic and transcendental self covertly in a way but overtly too in a singular manner at the same time. The humanised personality of the Divine with his special role and function is at the very centre of Sri Aurobindo's solution of the world enigma. The little poem A God's Labour in its short compass outlines and explains beautifully the grand Mystery.
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The humanist said, Nothing human I reckon foreign to me," In a deeper and more absolute sense the divine Mystic of the integral Yoga says the same. He is indeed humanity incarnate, the whole mankind condensed and epitomised in his single body. Mankind as imbedded in ignorance and inconscience, the conscious soul lost in the dark depths of dead matter, is he and his whole labour consists in working in and through that obscure "gravitational" mass, to evoke and bring down the totality of the superconscient force, the creative delight which he is essentially in his inmost and topmost being. The labour within himself is conterminous with the cosmic labour, and the change effected in his being and nature means a parallel change in the world outside, at least a ready possibility of the change. All the pains and weaknesses normal humanity suffers from, the heritage of an inconscient earthly existence, the Divine takes into his incarnated bodyall and more and to the highest degreeinto a crucible as it were, and works out there the alchemy. The natural man individually shares also each other's burden in some way, for all are interconnected in lifeaction at one point has a reaction at all other points: only the sharing is done unconsciously and is suffered or imposed than accepted and it tends to be at a minimum. An ordinary mortal would break under a greater pressure. It is the Avatar who comes forward and carries on his shoulders the entire burden of earthly inconscience.
Suffering, incapacity and death are, it is said, the wages of earthly life; but they are, in fact, reverse aspects of divine truths. Whatever is here below has its divine counterpart above. What appears as matter, inertia, static existence here below is the devolution of pure Existence, Being or Substance up there. Life-force, vital dynamism here is the energy of Consciousness there. The pleasure of the heart and emotions and enjoyment is divine Delight. Finally, our mind with its half-lighted thinking power, its groping after knowledge has at its back the plenary light of the Supermind. So the aim is not to reject or withdraw from the material, vital and mental existence upon the earth and in this body, but house in them, make them concrete vehicles, expressions and embodiments of what they really are.
05.03 - Bypaths of Souls Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The soul in Nature grows along a definite line and the descent also of higher principles overarching that soul happens also in the same line connecting it with its archetype in the supreme status. This we may call the major line of development through various Avataras one after another: but apart from this there may also be subsidiary formations that are its emanations or are added to it from elsewhere either temporarily or even permanently. The soul can put out derivative or ancillary emanations, parts of its being and consciousness, a mental or vital or even a subtle physical movement or formation which can take a body creating a temporary, a transient personality or enter into another's body and another personality in order to go through a necessary experience and gather an element needed for the growth of its being and consciousness. One can recall here the famous story of Shankaracharya Who entered into the body of a king (just dead, made him alive and lead the life of the king) in order to experience love and enjoyment, things of which, being a Sannyasi, he was innocent. Similarly one can take into one-self such parts and elements from others which he wishes to utilise for his growth and evolution. It is said that a man with low carnal instincts and impulses becomes an animal of that type in his next life. But perhaps it is truer to say that a part only the vital part of animal appetiteenters into or takes shape in an animal: the soul itself, the true or the whole being of the person, once become human, does not revert to animalhood. The animal portion in man that refuses to be taken up and integrated, sublimated into the higher human consciousness has to be satisfied and exhausted, as much as possible, in the animal way.
There is also the other question asked very often whether men and women always follow different lines of growth or whether there may be intermixture of the lines. Although the soul is sexless, still it may be said that on the whole there are these two lines, masculine and feminine; and generally a soul follows the same line in its incarnations. The soul difference is not in the sex as we know it; but there is a disposition and character that mark the difference and each type, masculine or feminine, is that because of some special role to fulfil, a particular kind of work to be done in a particular way. The difference is difficult to define exactly; but one may say, in the language of the mystics, that it "is the difference between the left hand and the right hand. The mystics refer to the two sides of consciousness, that of light and that of force (chit-tapas), that is to say, knowledge and power. It is not that the two are quite separate entities, they are together and grow together; but in actuality one aspect is more in front than the other. The masculine aspect is often termed as the right hand and the feminine as the left hand of the conscious being. And in a general way man represents the knowledge aspect the conceptual dynamism and woman represents the executive dynamism. This definition however should not be taken absolutely or rigidly. So it can be said that a woman generally remains a woman in all her births and man like-wise remains a man. Here too, although there may not be a central metamorphosis, there may be a partial change: that is to say a part of a mantoo womanish, so to saymay enter a woman and live and fulfil itself or exhaust there; and the masculine part of a woman also can identify itself with its type and pattern in a man. The difference, however, between Purusha and Prakriti, philosophically, seems to be very definite and clear; but in actuality, when they take form and embodiment, it is not easy to define the principles or qualities that mark out the two. At the source when the difference starts, it is a matter of stress and temper and not any so-called division of labour as human mind ordinarily understands it.
05.07 - The Observer and the Observed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, there are four positions possible with regard to the world and reality, depending on the relation between the observer and the observed, the subject and the object. They are:(I) subjective, (2) objective, (3) subjective objective and (4) objective subjective. The first two are extreme positions, one holding the subject as the sole or absolute reality, the object being a pure fabrication of its will and idea, an illusion, and the other considering the object as the true reality, the subject being an outcome, an epiphenomenon of the object itself, an illusion after all. The first leads to radical or as it is called monistic spirituality the type of which is Mayavada: the second is the highway of materialism, the various Avataras of which are Marxism, Pragmatism, Behaviourism etc. In between lie the other two intermediate positions according to the stress or value given to either of the two extremes. The first of the intermediates is the position held generally by the idealists, by many schools of spirituality: it is a major Vedantic position. It says that the outside world, the object, is not an illusion, a mere fabrication of the mind or consciousness of the subject, but that it exists and is as real as the subject: it is dovetailed into the subject which is a kind of linchpin, holding together and even energising the object. The object can further be considered as an expression or embodiment of the subject. Both the subject and the object are made of the same stuff of consciousness the ultimate reality being consciousness. The subject is the consciousness turned on itself and the object is consciousness turned outside or going abroad. This is pre-eminently the Upanishadic position. In Europe, Kant holds a key position in this line: and on the whole, idealists from Plato to Bradley and Bosanquet can be said more or less to belong to this category. The second intermediate position views the subject as imbedded into the object, not the object into the subject as in the first one: the subject itself is part of the object something like its self-regarding or self-recording function. In Europe apart possibly from some of the early Greek thinkers (Anaxagoras or Democritus, for example), coming to more recent times, we can say that line runs fairly well-represented from Leibnitz to Bergson. In India the Sankhyas and the Vaisheshikas move towards and approach the position; the Tantriks make a still more near approach.
Once again, to repeat in other terms the distinction which may sometimes appear to carry no difference. First, the subjective objective in which the subject assumes the preponderant position, not denying or minimising the reality of the object. The external world, in this view, is a movement in and of the consciousness of a universal subject. It is subjective in the sense that it is essentially a function of the subject and does not exist apart from it or outside it; it is objective in the sense that it exists really and is not a figment or imaginative construction of any individual consciousness, although it exists in and through the individual consciousness in so far as that consciousness is universalised, is one with the universal consciousness (or the transcendental, the two can be taken together in the present connection). Instead of the Kantian transcendental idealism we can name it transcendental realism.
05.09 - Varieties of Religious Experience, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But can we say, I am born of God, and yet I am not God? So the Indian boldly declares, all this is the supreme Divine, there is nothing else than the Divinesarvam khalvidam brahma I am He, Thou are That, or again, that which is in me and the conscious being which is there in the Sun are one and the same thing. God has created man and the world, He is in man and in the world, He has become and is man and the world. Not only so. Not only does God become the clod of earth by reducing his potentialto zero, so to say; but He descends often enough in his own being and consciousness here below, assuming a human form for a special work and a special purpose. This is the Indian conception of Avatarhood.
The Christian conception seems to occupy an intermediary position, being a sort of connecting link between the two. Christ is not only the Son of God, he is also the God-Manhe declares very clearly and categorically that he and the Father in heaven are one and that everyone should be as perfect as God himself. Still a difference is maintained. First of all, with regard to the birth. The God-Man was not born in sin like ordinary mortals, an immaculate virgin gave him birth. And with regard to the union or identity of Father and Son, the fusion is not absolute. Man is asked to be as pure and perfect as God, but only in kind and not in being and substance. The purified and perfect souls sit by the side of God in heaven, they do not lose themselves in God. The Vaishnava conception in India was in the same line. The liberated soul, according to it, dwells with God in the same world, possesses God's qualities the union is that of Salokya and Sadharmaya but it does not become one and indivisible with God (Sayujya).
05.14 - The Sanctity of the Individual, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The sanctity of the individual, the value of the human person is one of the cardinal articles of faith of the modern consciousness. Only it has very many Avatars. One such has been the characteristic mark of the group of philosophers (and mystics) who are nowadays making a great noise under the name of Existentialists. The individual personality exists, they say, and its nature is freedom. In other words, it chooses, as it likes, its course of life, at every step, and Creates its destiny. This freedom, however, may lead man and will inevitably lead him, according to one section of the group, to the perception and realisation of God, an infinite in which the individual finite lives and moves and has his being; according to others, the same may lead to a very different consummation, to Nothingness, the Great Void, Nihil. All existence is bounded by something unknown and intangible which differs according to your luck or taste,one would almost say to your line of approach, put philosophically, according either to the positive pole or the negative, God or Non-existence. The second alternative seems to be an inevitable corollary of the particular conception of the individual that is entertained by some, viz.,the individual existing only in relation to individuals. Indeed the leader of the French school, Jean-Paul Sartrenot a negligible playwright and novelistseems to conceive the individual as nothing more than the image formed in other individuals with whom he comes in contact. Existence literally means standing out or outside (ex+sistet), coming out of one-self and living in other's consciousnessas one sees one's exact image in another's eye. It is not however the old-world mystic experience of finding one's self in other selves. For here we have an exclusively level or horizontal view of the human personality. The personality is not seen in depth or height, but in line with the normal phenomenal formation. It looks as though, to save personality from the impersonal dissolution to which all monistic idealism leads, the present conception seeks to hinge all personalities upon each other so that they may stand by and confirm each other. But the actual result seems to have been not less calamitous. When we form and fashion each other, we are not building with anything more substantial than sand. Personalities are thus mere eddies in the swirl of cosmic life, they rise up and die down, separate and melt into each other and have no consistency and no reality in the end. The freedom too which is ascribed to such individuals, even when they feel it so, is only a sham and a make-believe. Within Nature nothing is free, all is mechanical lawKarma is supreme. The Sankhya posits indeed many Purushas, free, lodged in the midst of Prakriti, but there the Purusha is hardly an active agent, it is only an inactive, passive, almost impotent, witness. The Existentialist, on the contrary, seeks to make of the individual an active agent; he is not merely being, imbedded or merged in the original Dasein, mere existence, but becoming, the entity that has come out, stood out in its will and consciousness, articulated itself in name and form and act. But the person that stands out as part and parcel of Prakriti, the cosmic movement, is, as we have said, only an instrument, a mode of that universal Nature. The true person that informs that apparent formulation is something else. .
To be a person, it is said, one must be apart from the crowd. A person is the "single one", one who has attained his singularity, his individual wholeness. And the life's work for each individual person is to make the crowd no longer a crowd, but an association of single ones. But how can this be done? It is not simply by separating oneself from the crowd, by dwelling upon oneself that one can develop into one's true person. The individuals, even when perfect single ones, do not exist by themselves or in and through one another. The mystic or spiritual perception posits the Spirit or God, the All-self as the background and substance of all the selves. Indeed, it is only when one finds and is identified with the Divine in oneself that one is in a position to attain one's true selfhood and find oneself in other selves. And the re-creation of a crowd into such divine individuals is a cosmic work in which the individual is at best a collaborator, not the master and dispenser. Anyway, one has to come out of the human relationship, rise above the give-and-take of human individualshowever completely individual each one may beand establish oneself in the Divine's consciousness which is the golden thread upon which is strung all the assembly of individuals. It is only in and through the Divine, the Spiritual Reality and Person, that one enters into true relation and dynamic harmony with others.
05.31 - Divine Intervention, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Man or Nature does not mark time; they are always on the march. The march would have been a thrice vicious circle, a mere issueless repetition of the old and the agelong but for this stress of a higher destiny behind. Great souls, Vibhutis, Avatars themselves are incarnations of such descents of higher and other forces from toprung sources.
The higher the source the greater, more substantial and permanent is the miracle. The miracle of miracles awaits the destiny of man on earth when the supreme consciousness of the Divine will descend here into Matter and mould all mortality into immortality.
08.36 - Buddha and Shankara, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Some say that the Buddha was an Avatar, others say he was not.
To use the names as known in India, I think it is the Avataras of Vishnu (the aspect of the Divine that builds and preserves), who come to prove that the Divine can live upon earth; whereas, each time that Shiva has manifested (the aspect that works to transform and destroy), it was in persons who have tried to fight against illusion and demolish what existed.
I have reasons to think that 'the Buddha manifested something of the Shiva power. It was the same compassion and comprehension of all misery and it was the same force that destroys, evidently with the intention of transforming, but destroying more than constructing.
10.02 - The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Avatars have lived and died in vain,
Vain was the sage's thought, the prophet's voice;
10.10 - A Poem, #Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Kalki is an Avatar of the crew killer
Sambariya Kanu on Rudra Kibhab's chest
1.01 - Our Demand and Need from the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It may therefore be useful in approaching an ancient Scripture, such as the Veda, Upanishads or Gita, to indicate precisely the spirit in which we approach it and what exactly we think we may derive from it that is of value to humanity and its future. First of all, there is undoubtedly a Truth one and eternal which we are seeking, from which all other truth derives, by the light of which all other truth finds its right place, explanation and relation to the scheme of knowledge. But precisely for that reason it cannot be shut up in a single trenchant formula, it is not likely to be found in its entirety or in all its bearings in any single philosophy or scripture or uttered altogether and for ever by any one teacher, thinker, prophet or Avatar. Nor has it been wholly found by us if our view of it necessitates the intolerant exclusion of the truth underlying other systems; for when we reject passionately, we mean simply that we cannot appreciate and explain. Secondly, this Truth, though it is one and eternal, expresses itself in Time and through the mind of man; therefore every Scripture must necessarily contain two elements, one temporary, perishable, belonging to the ideas of the period and country in which it was produced, the other eternal and imperishable and applicable in all ages and countries. Moreover, in the statement of the Truth the actual form given to it, the system and arrangement, the metaphysical and intellectual mould, the precise expression used must be largely subject to the mutations of Time and cease to have the same force; for the human intellect modifies itself always; continually dividing and putting together it is obliged to shift its divisions continually and to rearrange its syntheses; it is always leaving old expression and symbol for new or, if it uses the old, it so changes its connotation or at least
Our Demand and Need from the Gita
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Sankhya although it explains the created world by the double principle of Purusha and Prakriti; nor is it Vaishnava Theism although it presents to us Krishna, who is the Avatara of Vishnu according to the Puranas, as the supreme Deity and allows no essential difference nor any actual superiority of the status of the indefinable relationless Brahman over that of this Lord of beings who is the Master of the universe and the Friend of all creatures. Like the earlier spiritual synthesis of the Upanishads this later synthesis at once spiritual and intellectual avoids naturally every such rigid determination as would injure its universal
Our Demand and Need from the Gita
1.01 - The Four Aids, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
26:The Hindu discipline of spirituality provides for this need of the soul by the conceptions of the Ishta Devata, the Avatar and the Gum. By the Ishta Devata, the chosen deity, is meant, -- not some inferior Power, but a name and form of the transcendent and universal Godhead. Almost all religions either have as their base or make use of some such name and form of the Divine. Its necessity for the human soul is evident. God is the All and more than the All. But that which is more than the All, how shall man conceive? And even the All is at first too hard for him; for he himself in his active consciousness is a limited and selective formation and can open himself only to that which is in harmony with his limited nature. There are things in the All which are too hard for his comprehension or seem too terrible to his sensitive emotions and cowering sensations. Or, simply, he cannot conceive as the Divine, cannot approach or cannot recognise something that is too much out of the circle of his ignorant or partial conceptions. It is necessary for him to conceive God in his own image or at some form that is beyond himself but consonant with his highest tendencies and seizable by his feelings or his intelligence. Otherwise it would be difficult for him to come into contact and communion with the Divine.
27:Even then his nature calls for a human intermediary so that he may feel the Divine in something entirely close to his own humanity and sensible in a human influence and example. This call is satisfied by the Divine manifest in a human appearance, the Incarnation, the Avatar-Krishna, Christ, Buddha. Or if this is too hard for him to conceive, the Divine represents himself through a less marvellous intermediary, -- Prophet or Teacher. For many who cannot conceive or are unwilling to accept the Divine Man, are ready to open themselves to the supreme man, terming him not incarnation but world-teacher or divine representative.
28:This also is not enough; a living influence, a living example, a present instruction is needed. For it is only the few who can make the past Teacher and his teaching, the past Incarnation and his example and influence a living force in their lives. For this need also the Hindu discipline provides in the relation of the Guru and the disciple. The Guru may sometimes be the Incarnation or World-Teacher; but it is sufficient that he should represent to the disciple the divine wisdom, convey to him something of the divine ideal or make him feel the realised relation of the human soul with the Eternal.
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30:On the contrary, the Sadhaka of the integral Yoga will not be satisfied until he has included all other names and forms of Deity in his own conception, seen his own Ishta Devata in all others, unified all Avatars in the unity of Him who descends in the Avatar, welded the truth in all teachings into the harmony of the Eternal Wisdom.
31:Nor should he forget the aim of these external aids which is to awaken his soul to the Divine within him. Nothing has been finally accomplished if that has not been accomplished. It is not sufficient to worship Krishna, Christ or Buddha without, if there is not the revealing and the formation of the Buddha, the Christ or Krishna in ourselves. And all other aids equally have no other purpose; each is a bridge between man's unconverted state and the revelation of the Divine within him.
1.02 - Karmayoga, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There have been others in the past which have powerfully influenced the national mind and there is no reason why there should not be a yet more perfect synthesis in the future. It is such a synthesis, embracing all life and action in its scope, that the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda have been preparing. What is dimly beginning now is a repetition on a wider stage of what happened once before in India, more rapidly but to smaller issues, when the Buddha lived and taught his philosophy and ethics to the Aryan nations. Then as now a mighty spirit, it matters not whether Avatar or Vibhuti, the full expression of God in man or a great outpouring of the divine energy, came down among men and brought into their daily life and practice the force and impulse of utter spirituality. And this time it is the full light and not a noble part, unlike Buddhism which, expressing Vedantic morality, yet ignored a fundamental reality of Vedanta and was therefore expelled from its prime seat and cradle. The material result was then what it will be now, a great political, moral and social revolution which made India
Karmayoga
1.02 - The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
We have briefly followed three episodes in the Avataric
Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. All three illustrate
1.02 - The Divine Teacher, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
India has from ancient times held strongly a belief in the reality of the Avatara, the descent into form, the revelation of the Godhead in humanity. In the West this belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind because it has been presented through exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma without any roots in the reason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. But in India it has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedantic view of life and taken firm root in the consciousness of the race. All existence is a manifestation of God because He is the only existence and nothing can be except as either a real figuring or else a figment of that one reality. Therefore every conscious being is in part or in some way a descent of the Infinite into the apparent finiteness of
Essays on the Gita
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Consciousness and Power, taking upon itself the human form and the human mode of action, possesses it not only by powers and magnitudes, by degrees and outward faces of itself but out of its eternal self-knowledge, when the Unborn knows itself and acts in the frame of the mental being and the appearance of birth, that is the height of the conditioned manifestation; it is the full and conscious descent of the Godhead, it is the Avatara.
The Vaishnava form of Vedantism which has laid most stress upon this conception expresses the relation of God in man to man in God by the double figure of Nara-Narayana, associated historically with the origin of a religious school very similar in its doctrines to the teaching of the Gita. Nara is the human soul which, eternal companion of the Divine, finds itself only when it awakens to that companionship and begins, as the Gita would say, to live in God. Narayana is the divine Soul always present in our humanity, the secret guide, friend and helper of the human being, the "Lord who abides within the heart of creatures" of the Gita; when within us the veil of that secret sanctuary is withdrawn and man speaks face to face with God, hears the divine voice, receives the divine light, acts in the divine power, then becomes possible the supreme uplifting of the embodied human conscious-being into the unborn and eternal. He becomes capable of that dwelling in God and giving up of his whole consciousness into the Divine which the Gita upholds as the best or highest secret of things, uttamam rahasyam. When
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this eternal divine Consciousness always present in every human being, this God in man, takes possession partly4 or wholly of the human consciousness and becomes in visible human shape the guide, teacher, leader of the world, not as those who living in their humanity yet feel something of the power or light or love of the divine Gnosis informing and conducting them, but out of that divine Gnosis itself, direct from its central force and plenitude, then we have the manifest Avatar. The inner Divinity is the eternal Avatar in man; the human manifestation is its sign and development in the external world.
When we thus understand the conception of Avatarhood, we see that whether for the fundamental teaching of the Gita, our present subject, or for spiritual life generally the external aspect has only a secondary importance. Such controversies as the one that has raged in Europe over the historicity of Christ, would seem to a spiritually-minded Indian largely a waste of time; he would concede to it a considerable historical, but hardly any religious importance; for what does it matter in the end whether a Jesus son of the carpenter Joseph was actually born in Nazareth or Bethlehem, lived and taught and was done to death on a real or trumped-up charge of sedition, so long as we can know by spiritual experience the inner Christ, live uplifted in the light of his teaching and escape from the yoke of the natural Law by that atonement of man with God of which the crucifixion is the symbol? If the Christ, God made man, lives within our spiritual being, it would seem to matter little whether or not a son of
Mary physically lived and suffered and died in Judea. So too the Krishna who matters to us is the eternal incarnation of the
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Chaitanya, the Avatar of Nadiya, is said to have been thus partly or occasionally occupied by the divine Consciousness and Power.
Essays on the Gita
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Kurukshetra may be something more than a dramatic fiction. In the Mahabharata Krishna is represented both as the historical character and the Avatar; his worship and Avatarhood must therefore have been well established by the time - apparently from the fifth to the first centuries B.C. - when the old story and poem or epic tradition of the Bharatas took its present form. There is a hint also in the poem of the story or legend of the Avatar's early life in Vrindavan which, as developed by the Puranas into an intense and powerful spiritual symbol, has exercised so profound an influence on the religious mind of
India. We have also in the Harivansha an account of the life of
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But all this, though of considerable historical importance, has none whatever for our present purpose. We are concerned only with the figure of the divine Teacher as it is presented to us in the Gita and with the Power for which it there stands in the spiritual illumination of the human being. The Gita accepts the human Avatarhood; for the Lord speaks of the repeated, the constant5 manifestation of the Divine in humanity, when He the eternal Unborn assumes by his Maya, by the power of the infinite Consciousness to clo the itself apparently in finite forms, the conditions of becoming which we call birth. But it is not this upon which stress is laid, but on the transcendent, the cosmic and the internal Divine; it is on the Source of all things and the
Master of all and on the Godhead secret in man. It is this internal divinity who is meant when the Gita speaks of the doer of violent
Asuric austerities troubling the God within or of the sin of those who despise the Divine lodged in the human body or of the same Godhead destroying our ignorance by the blazing lamp of knowledge. It is then the eternal Avatar, this God in man, the divine Consciousness always present in the human being who manifested in a visible form speaks to the human soul in the Gita, illumines the meaning of life and the secret of divine action and gives it the light of the divine knowledge and guidance and the assuring and fortifying word of the Master of existence in the hour when it comes face to face with the painful mystery of the world. This is what the Indian religious consciousness seeks to make near to itself in whatever form, whether in the symbolic human image it enshrines in its temples or in the worship of its
Avatars or in the devotion to the human Guru through whom the voice of the one world-Teacher makes itself heard. Through these it strives to awaken to that inner voice, unveil that form of the Formless and stand face to face with that manifest divine
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Avatar is unseen or appears only for occasional comfort and aid, but at every crisis his hand is felt, yet in such a way that all imagine themselves to be the protagonists and even Arjuna, his nearest friend and chief instrument, does not perceive that he is an instrument and has to confess at last that all the while he did not really know his divine Friend. He has received counsel from his wisdom, help from his power, has loved and been loved, has even adored without understanding his divine nature; but he has been guided like all others through his own egoism and the counsel, help and direction have been given in the language and received by the thoughts of the Ignorance. Until the moment when all has been pushed to the terrible issue of the struggle on the field of Kurukshetra and the Avatar stands at last, still not as fighter, but as the charioteer in the battle-car which carries the destiny of the fight, he has not revealed Himself even to those whom he has chosen.
Thus the figure of Krishna becomes, as it were, the symbol of the divine dealings with humanity. Through our egoism and ignorance we are moved, thinking that we are the doers of the work, vaunting of ourselves as the real causes of the result, and that which moves us we see only occasionally as some vague or even some human and earthly fountain of knowledge, aspiration, force, some Principle or Light or Power which we acknowledge and adore without knowing what it is until the occasion arises that forces us to stand arrested before the Veil.
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
It is in virtue of his absorption in God and just because he has not identified his being with the inborn and acquired elements of his private personality, that the saint is able to exercise his entirely non-coercive and therefore entirely beneficent influence on individuals and even on whole societies. Or, to be more accurate, it is because he has purged himself of selfness that divine Reality is able to use him as a channel of grace and power. I live, yet not I, but Christ the eternal Logosliveth in me. True of the saint, this must a fortiori be true of the Avatar, or incarnation of God. If, insofar as he was a saint, St. Paul was not I, then certainly Christ was not I; and to talk, as so many liberal churchmen now do, of worshipping the personality of Jesus, is an absurdity. For, obviously, had Jesus remained content merely to have a personality, like the rest of us, he would never have exercised the kind of influence which in fact he did exercise, and it would never have occurred to anyone to regard him as a divine incarnation and to identify him with the Logos. That he came to be thought of as the Christ was due to the fact that he had passed beyond selfness and had become the bodily and mental conduit through which a more than personal, supernatural life flowed down into the world.
Souls which have come to the unitive knowledge of God, are, in Benet of Canfields phrase, almost nothing in themselves and all in God. This vanishing residue of selfness persists because, in some slight measure, they still identify their being with some innate psycho-physical idiosyncrasy, some acquired habit of thought or feeling, some convention or unanalyzed prejudice current in the social environment. Jesus was almost wholly absorbed in the esential will of God; but in spite of this, he may have retained some elements of selfness. To what extent there was any I associated with the more-than-personal, divine Not-I, it is very difficult, on the basis of the existing evidence, to judge. For example, did Jesus interpret his experience of divine Reality and his own spontaneous inferences from that experience in terms of those fascinating apocalyptic notions current in contemporary Jewish circles? Some eminent scholars have argued that the doctrine of the worlds imminent dissolution was the central core of his teaching. Others, equally learned, have held that it was attributed to him by the authors of the Synoptic Gospels, and that Jesus himself did not identify his experience and his theological thinking with locally popular opinions. Which party is right? Goodness knows. On this subject, as on so many others, the existing evidence does not permit of a certain and unambiguous answer.
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The biography of a saint or Avatar is valuable only insofar as it throws light upon the means by which, in the circumstances of a particular human life, the I was purged away so as to make room for the divine not-I. The authors of the Synoptic Gospels did not choose to write such a biography, and no amount of textual criticism or ingenious surmise can call it into existence. In the course of the last hundred years an enormous sum of energy has been expended on the attempt to make documents yield more evidence than in fact they contain. However regrettable may be the Synoptists lack of interest in biography, and whatever objections may be raised against the theologies of Paul and John, there can still be no doubt that their instinct was essentially sound. Each in his own way wrote about the eternal not-I of Christ rather than the historical I; each in his own way stressed that element in the life of Jesus, in which, because it is more-than-personal, all persons can participate. (The nature of selfness is such that one person cannot be a part of another person. A self can contain or be contained by something that is either less or more than a self, it can never contain or be contained by a self.)
The doctrine that God can be incarnated in human form is found in most of the principal historic expositions of the Perennial Philosophyin Hinduism, in Mahayana Buddhism, in Christianity and in the Mohammedanism of the Sufis, by whom the Prophet was equated with the eternal Logos.
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Krishna is an incarnation of Brahman, Gautama Buddha of what the Mahayanists called the Dharmakaya, Suchness, Mind, the spiritual Ground of all being. The Christian doctrine of the incarnation of the Godhead in human form differs from that of India and the Far East inasmuch as it affirms that there has been and can be only one Avatar.
What we do depends in large measure upon what we think, and if what we do is evil, there is good empirical reason for supposing that our thought patterns are inadequate to material. mental or spiritual reality. Because Christians believed that there had been only one Avatar, Christian history has been disgraced by more and bloother crusades, interdenominational wars, persecutions and proselytizing imperialism than has the history of Hinduism and Buddhism. Absurd and idolatrous doctrines, affirming the quasi-divine nature of sovereign states and their rulers, have led oriental, no less than Western, peoples into innumerable political wars; but because they have not believed in an exclusive revelation at one sole instant of time, or in the quasi-divinity of an ecclesiastical organization, oriental peoples have kept remarkably clear of the mass murder for religions sake, which has been so dreadfully frequent in Christendom. And while, in this important respect, the level of public morality has been lower in the West than in the East, the levels of exceptional sanctity and of ordinary individual morality have not, so far as one can judge from the available evidence, been any higher. If the tree is indeed known by its fruits, Christianitys departure from the norm of the Perennial Philosophy would seem to be philosophically unjustifiable.
The Logos passes out of eternity into time for no other purpose than to assist the beings, whose bodily form he takes, to pass out of time into eternity. If the Avatars appearance upon the stage of history is enormously important, this is due to the fact that by his teaching he points out, and by his being a channel of grace and divine power he actually is, the means by which human beings may transcend the limitations of history. The author of the Fourth Gospel affirms that the Word became flesh; but in another passage he adds that the flesh profiteth nothingnothing, that is to say, in itself, but a great deal, of course, as a means to the union with immanent and transcendent Spirit. In this context it is very interesting to consider the development of Buddhism. Under the forms of religious or mystical imagery, writes R. E. Johnston in his Buddhist China, the Mahayana expresses the universal, whereas Hinayana cannot set itself free from the domination of historical fact. In the words of an eminent orientalist, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Mahayanist believer is warnedprecisely as the worshipper of Krishna is warned in the Vaishnavite scriptures that the Krishna Lila is not a history, but a process for ever unfolded in the heart of man that matters of historical fact are without religious significance (except, we should add, insofar as they point to or themselves constitute the meanswhe ther remote or proximate, whether political, ethical or spiritualby which men may come to deliverance from selfness and the temporal order.)
In the West, the mystics went some way towards liberating Christianity from its unfortunate servitude to historic fact. (or, to be more accurate, to those various mixtures of contemporary record with subsequent inference and phantasy, which have, at different epochs, been accepted as historic fact). From the writings of Eckhart, Tauler and Ruysbroeck, of Boehme, William Law and the Quakers, it would be possible to extract a spiritualized and universalized Christianity, whose narratives should refer, not to history as it was, or as someone afterwards thought it ought to be, but to processes forever unfolded in the heart of man. But unfortunately the influence of the mystics was never powerful enough to bring about a radical Mahayanist revolution in the West. In spite of them, Christianity has remained a religion in which the pure Perennial Philosophy has been overlaid, now more, now less, by an idolatrous preoccupation with events and things in timeevents and things regarded not merely as useful means, but as ends, intrinsically sacred and indeed divine. Moreover such improvements on history as were made in the course of centuries were, most imprudently, treated as though they themselves were a part of historya procedure which put a powerful weapon into the hands of Protestant and, later, of Rationalist controversialists. How much wiser it would have been to admit the perfectly avowable fact that, when the sternness of Christ the Judge had been unduly emphasized, men and women felt the need of personifying the divine compassion in a new form, with the result that the figure of the Virgin, mediatrix to the mediator, came into increased prominence. And when, in course of time, the Queen of Heaven was felt to be too awe-inspiring, compassion was re-personified in the homely figure of St. Joseph, who thus became me thator to the me thatrix to the me thator. In exactly the same way Buddhist worshippers felt that the historic Sakyamuni, with his insistence on recollectedness, discrimination and a total dying to self as the principal means of liberation, was too stern and too intellectual. The result was that the love and compassion which Sakyamuni had also inculcated came to be personified in Buddhas such as Amida and Maitreyadivine characters completely removed from history, inasmuch as their temporal career was situated somewhere in the distant past or distant future. Here it may be remarked that the vast numbers of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, of whom the Mahayanist theologians speak, are commensurate with the vastness of their cosmology. Time, for them, is beginningless, and the innumerable universes, every one of them supporting sentient beings of every possible variety, are born, evolve, decay and the, only to repeat the same cycleagain and again, until the final inconceivably remote consummation, when every sentient being in all the worlds shall have won to deliverance out of time into eternal Suchness or Buddhahood This cosmological background to Buddhism has affinities with the world picture of modern astronomyespecially with that version of it offered in the recently published theory of Dr. Weiszcker regarding the formation of planets. If the Weiszcker hypothesis is correct, the production of a planetary system would be a normal episode in the life of every star. There are forty thousand million stars in our own galactic system alone, and beyond our galaxy other galaxies, indefinitely. If, as we have no choice but to believe, spiritual laws governing consciousness are uniform throughout the whole planet-bearing and presumably life-supporting universe, then certainly there is plenty of room, and at the same time, no doubt, the most agonizing and desperate need, for those innumerable redemptive incarnations of Suchness, upon whose shining multitudes the Mahayanists love to dwell.
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Can the many fantastic and mutually incompatible theories of expiation and atonement, which have been grafted onto the Christian doctrine of divine incarnation, be regarded as indispensable elements in a sane theology? I find it difficult to imagine how anyone who has looked into a history of these notions, as expounded, for example, by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by Athanasius and Augustine, by Anselm and Luther, by Calvin and Grotius, can plausibly answer this question in the affirmative. In the present context, it will be enough to call attention to one of the bitterest of all the bitter ironies of history. For the Christ of the Gospels, lawyers seemed further from the Kingdom of Heaven, more hopelessly impervious to Reality, than almost any other class of human beings except the rich. But Christian theology, especially that of the Western churches, was the product of minds imbued with Jewish and Roman legalism. In all too many instances the immediate insights of the Avatar and the theocentric saint were rationalized into a system, not by philosophers, but by speculative barristers and metaphysical jurists. Why should what Abbot John Chapman calls the problem of reconciling (not merely uniting) Mysticism and Christianity be so extremely difficult? Simply because so much Roman and Protestant thinking was done by those very lawyers whom Christ regarded as being peculiarly incapable of understanding the true Nature of Things. The Abbot (Chapman is apparently referring to Abbot Marmion) says St John of the Cross is like a sponge full of Christianity. You can squeeze it all out, and the full mystical theory (in other words, the pure Perennial Philosophy) remains. Consequently for fifteen years or so I hated St John of the Cross and called him a Buddhist. I loved St Teresa and read her over and over again. She is first a Christian, only secondarily a mystic. Then I found I had wasted fifteen years, so far as prayer was concerned.
Now see the meaning of these two sayings of Christs. The one, No man cometh unto the Father but by me, that is through my life. The other saying, No man cometh unto me except the Father draw him; that is, he does not take my life upon him and follow after me, except he is moved and drawn of my Father, that is, of the Simple and Perfect Good, of which St. Paul saith, When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.
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Every human being can thus become an Avatar by adoption, but not by his unaided efforts. He must be shown the way, and he must be aided by divine grace. That men and women may be thus instructed and helped, the Godhead assumes the form of an ordinary human being, who has to earn deliverance and enlightenment in the way that is prescribed by the divine Nature of Thingsnamely, by charity, by a total dying to self and a total, one-pointed awareness. Thus enlightened, the Avatar can reveal the way of enlightenment to others and help them actually to become what they already potentially are. Tel quen Lui-mme enfin lternit le change. And of course the eternity which transforms us into Ourselves is not the experience of mere persistence after bodily death. There will be no experience of timeless Reality then, unless there is the same or a similar knowledge within the world of time and matter. By precept and by example, the Avatar teaches that this transforming knowledge is possible, that all sentient beings are called to it and that, sooner or later, in one way or another, all must finally come to it.
next chapter: 1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD
1.03 - Preparing for the Miraculous, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
which Sri Aurobindos and the Mothers Avataric mission
could be understood. Books like The Life Divine, The Syn-
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transformation, which was, after all, her Avataric Yoga in
the last years of her life, the crucial step which would make
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Savitri and with the urgency of his Avataric task, did not
write essayistic prose any more in the last years of his life.
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The Avataric task of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother
consisted in bringing down a new, higher consciousness
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took place, to counteract the Avataric Work that would lead
to the appearance of a divinized species on Earth. Even those
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What this yogic, or rather Avataric, master-act actually
meant, we cannot even guess. But its result was that only
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In this event the Work of all Avatars, and of Sri Aurobindo
and the Mother in their previous lives, was finally justified.
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was at his tricks maybe more than ever, as the Avataric Yoga
approached the stage where the first supramental body
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the Avatar never deserts his Work; 2. the presence of the
Mother, who exists in the archetype of an immortal, omni-
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through his Avataric work. The five dreams were: the free-
dom of India; the awakening of Asia; the formation of con-
1.03 - The Gods, Superior Beings and Adverse Forces, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Krishnas play in the physical: the rule of the Avatar upon earth, that is to say, the realisation of the new divine world.
The Gods, Superior Beings and Adverse Forces
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THE Avatar
Avatar the Supreme manifested on earth in a body.
The Avatar: the supreme Divine manifested in an earthly form
generally a human form for a definite purpose.
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.
6 March 1935
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The chief purpose of the Avatar is to give to man a concrete proof that the Divine can manifest upon earth.
12 July 1954
1.03 - The Human Disciple, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The rest of Arjuna's questions and utterances proceed from the same temperament and character. When he is told that once the soul-state is assured there need be no apparent change in the action, he must act always by the law of his nature, even if the act itself seem faulty and deficient compared with that of another law than his own, he is troubled. The nature! but what of this sense of sin in the action with which he is preoccupied? is it not this very nature which drives men as if by force and even against their better will into sin and guilt? His practical intelligence is baffled by Krishna's assertion that it was he who in ancient times revealed to Vivasvan this Yoga, since lost, which he is now again revealing to Arjuna, and by his demand for an explanation he provokes the famous and oft-quoted statement of Avatarhood and its mundane purpose. He is again perplexed by the words in which Krishna continues to reconcile action and renunciation of action and asks once again for a decisive statement of that which is the best and highest, not this "mingled" word. When he realises fully the nature of the Yoga which he is bidden to embrace, his pragmatic nature accustomed to act from mental will and preference and desire is appalled by its difficulty and he asks what is the end of the soul which attempts and fails, whether it does not lose both this life of human activity and thought and emotion which it has left behind and the Brahmic consciousness to which it aspires and falling from both perish like a dissolving cloud?
When his doubts and perplexities are resolved and he knows that it is the Divine which must be his law, he aims again and always at such clear and decisive knowledge as will guide him practically to this source and this rule of his future action. How
1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Krishna the divine Avatara, attri buted here because, being a divine incarnation - one in whom both Spirit and Matter were in complete equilibrium - he expressed the essential idea implied in Tipharas. Adonis, Iacchus, Rama, and
Asar are other correspondences for 6, either because of their inherent nature of beauty, or because they represent in one way or another the solar disk, to which all mystical psycho- logy, ancient and modern, is unanimous in attri buting the spiritual consciousness.
1.04 - Religion and Occultism, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The red lotus is the symbol of the Avatar and the offering of the red lotus is meant to suggest the full consecration to
Words of the Mother III
the Avatar; the yellow background represents the supramental manifestation.
8 November 1933
1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Where did she get all this energy from? Her body was frail, food and sleep were medically quite inadequate to copewith her super-abundant vitality. "Do you think I live on these frugal meals alone? One can draw any amount of energy from universal Nature," she once said. Here we are face to face with the Divine Energy, the Shakti incarnate. Like Sri Aurobindo with regard to his massive correspondence, she could say, "If for nothing else, at least for my interminable activity, I should be called an Avatar!"
My aim in drawing this picture of the Mother is not merely to demonstrate her dynamism. There have been quite a number of people in the world, Napoleon for example, who had a magnificent vital energy, but they are of a different category. Here all her actions are symbolic, they are the expressions of the Divine Force, chit shakti, she embodies, and that force she has given freely to the young ones as she had done to the older generation. It infiltrates everything that it comes in contact with; she leaves a part of her Divine Presence wherever she goes. She has said also she never forgets any person who has come in contact with her even for a moment! The person finds a place in her Divine Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo said to me that with each one of us here she has her emanation. I believe that would be in some sense true for all those who have come in contact with her, and it would help them through life's strenuous and perilous journey.
1.04 - The Paths, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
This Path is a very difficult one to describe, as it un- doubtedly refers to some aspect of the Astral Plane ; and it is, also, a phallic symbol, the fish referring to the spermatozoa swimming in the foundations of one's being. Its Hindu attri bution is Vishnu as the Matsu or Fish Avatara.
Neptune and Poseidon, insofar as their realm of govern- ment includes the dominion wherein fish dwell ; and
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White Horse - the symbol of the Kalki Avatara. In the background of the card are several sunflowers, which again point to the solar nature of the allocation.
The Sepher Yetsirah denominates " Resh," a " double letter ", but I have been unable to discover any sound other than " R " for this letter ; nor is any other so recognized by modern Hebrew grammarians. Perhaps the French form of " R " - pronounced with a decided roll - is the sound in question.
1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is an integral knowledge that is being sought, an integral force, a total amplitude of union with the All and Infinite behind existence. For the seeker of the integral Yoga no single experience, no one Divine Aspect,however overwhelming to the human mind, sufficient for its capacity, easily accepted as the sole or the ultimate reality,can figure as the exclusive truth of the Eternal. For him the experience of the Divine Oneness carried to its extreme is more deeply embraced and amply fathomed by following out to the full the experience of the Divine Multiplicity. All that is true behind polytheism as well as behind monotheism falls within the scope of his seeking; but he passes beyond their superficial sense to human mind to grasp their mystic truth in the Divine. He sees what is aimed at by the jarring sects and philosophies and accepts each facet of the Reality in its own place, but rejects their narrownesses and errors and proceeds farther till he discovers the One Truth that binds them together. The reproach of anthropomorphism and anthropolatry cannot deter him,for he sees them to be prejudices of the ignorant and arrogant reasoning intelligence, the abstracting mind turning on itself in its own cramped circle. If human relations as practised now by man are full of smallness and perversity and ignorance, yet are they disfigured shadows of something in the Divine and by turning them to the Divine he finds that of which they are a shadow and brings it down for manifestation in life. It is through the human exceeding itself and opening itself to a supreme plenitude that the Divine must manifest itself here, since that comes inevitably in the course and process of the spiritual evolution, and therefore he will not despise or blind himself to the Godhead because it is lodged in a human body, mnu tanum ritam. Beyond the limited human conception of God, he will pass to the one divine Eternal, but also he will meet him in the faces of the Gods, his cosmic personalities supporting the World-Play, detect him behind the mask of the Vibhutis, embodied World-Forces or human Leaders, reverence and obey him in the Guru, worship him in the Avatar. This will be to him his exceeding good fortune if he can meet one who has realised or is becoming That which he seeks for and can by opening to it in this vessel of its manifestation himself realise it. For that is the most palpable sign of the growing fulfilment, the promise of the great mystery of the progressive Descent into Matter which is the secret sense of the material creation and the justification of terrestrial existence.
Thus reveals himself to the seeker in the progress of the sacrifice the Lord of the sacrifice. At any point this revelation can begin; in any aspect the Master of the Work can take up the work in him and more and more press upon him and it for the unfolding of his presence. In time all the Aspects disclose themselves, separate, combine, fuse, are unified together. At the end there shines through it all the supreme integral Reality, unknowable to Mind which is part of the Ignorance, but knowable because self-aware in the light of a spiritual consciousness and a supramental knowledge.
1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
mentor Krishna, king of the Vrishnis and in fact the Avatar
Sri Krishna. In the internecine quarrel within the Kuru clan,
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of humanity, as it constitutes the background of the Avatar-
ic Work of Sri Krishna. And the lasting significance of Sri
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As the Mother once said, Sri Aurobindos Avataric ac-
tion was an immense spiritual revolution rehabilitating
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from the Avatar, the Master of the Yoga himself, he would
6 Id., p. 45.
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Thou shalt see, replies the Avatar, my hundreds and
thousands of divine forms, various in kind, various in shape
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integral part of the foundation of his Avataric realization
which is one reason why his Essays on the Gita remain an
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destiny of humankind, is the task of the Avatar. In Sri Au-
robindos words: The Avatar is one who comes to open the
Way for humanity to a higher consciousness. ... The Divine
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of humanity and open the Way that Avatarhood has any
meaning... The Avatar is not bound to do extraordinary ac-
tions, but he is bound to give his acts or his work or what
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history of the earth and its races. ... The Avatar is necessary
when a special work is to be done and in crises of the evo-
--
saying that he incarnates as an Avatar yuge yuge, from age
to age. 18
--
fore them had done, for and this is essential the Avatar,
to achieve the change he has come down for, has to take
--
could also be called The Avatars Song, we read:
My gaping wounds are a thousand and one
--
This was the Avatar speaking in defence of the Work he
had come to do, to keep the path open for the evolution-
--
that the Avatar incarnates, yuge yuge, to create the possibil-
ity of an evolutionary step forwards and to do battle with
--
female Avatar. May it at last be realized that their crucial
Avataric effort of transforming humanity, to make a better
--
indo in July 1948. 30 And, after a life of Avataric effort, he
wrote the fateful words: I have no intention of giving my
1.05 - True and False Subjectivism, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The German gospel has evidently two sides, the internal and the external, the cult of the State, nation or community and the cult of international egoism. In the first, Germany, even if for a time entirely crushed in the battle-field, seems to have already secured the victory in the moral sense of the human race. The unsparing compulsion as against the assistance of the individual by the State7for his and the common good, of course, but who professes to compel for harm?is almost everywhere either dominant or else growing into a strong and prevailing current of opinion; the champions of individual freedom are now a morally defeated and dwindling army who can only fight on in the hope of a future reaction or of saving something of their principle from the wreck. On the external side, the international, the battle of ideas still goes on, but there were from the beginning ominous signs;8 and now after the physical war with its first psychological results is well over, we are already able to see in which direction the tide is likely to flow. War is a dangerous teacher and physical victory leads often to a moral defeat. Germany, defeated in the war, has won in the after war; the German gospel rearisen in a sterner and fiercer Avatar threatens to sweep over all Europe.
It is necessary, if we are not to deceive ourselves, to note that even in this field what Germany has done is to systematise certain strong actual tendencies and principles of international action to the exclusion of all that either professed to resist or did actually modify them. If a sacred egoism and the expression did not come from Teutonic lipsis to govern international relations, then it is difficult to deny the force of the German position. The theory of inferior and decadent races was loudly proclaimed by other than German thinkers and has governed, with whatever assuaging scruples, the general practice of military domination and commercial exploitation of the weak by the strong; all that Germany has done is to attempt to give it a wider extension and more rigorous execution and apply it to European as well as to Asiatic and African peoples. Even the severity or brutality of her military methods or of her ways of colonial or internal political repression, taken at their worst, for much once stated against her has been proved and admitted to be deliberate lies manufactured by her enemies, was only a crystallising of certain recent tendencies towards the revival of ancient and mediaeval hardheartedness in the race. The use and even the justification of massacre and atrocious cruelty in war on the ground of military exigency and in the course of commercial exploitation or in the repression of revolt and disorder has been quite recently witnessed in the other continents, to say nothing of certain outskirts of Europe.9 From one point of view, it is well that terrible examples of the utmost logic of these things should be prominently forced on the attention of mankind; for by showing the evil stripped of all veils the choice between good and evil instead of a halting between the two will be forced on the human conscience. Woe to the race if it blinds its conscience and buttresses up its animal egoism with the old justifications; for the gods have shown that Karma is not a jest.
1.05 - Work and Teaching, #Words Of The Mother I, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the eternity of becoming each Avatar is only the announcer, the forerunner of a more perfect realisation.
And yet men have always the tendency to deify the Avatar of the past in opposition to the Avatar of the future.
Now again Sri Aurobindo has come announcing to the world the realisation of tomorrow; and again his message meets with the same opposition as of all those who preceded him.
1.06 - Incarnate Teachers and Incarnation, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
No man can really see God except through these human manifestations. If we try to see God otherwise, we make for ourselves a hideous caricature of Him and believe the caricature to be no worse than the original. There is a story of an ignorant man who was asked to make an image of the God Shiva, and who, after days of hard struggle, manufactured only the image of a monkey. So whenever we try to think of God as He is in His absolute perfection, we invariably meet with the most miserable failure, because as long as we are men, we cannot conceive Him as anything higher than man. The time will come when we shall transcend our human nature and know Him as He is; but as long as we are men, we must worship Him in man and as man. Talk as you may, try as you may, you cannot think of God except as a man. You may deliver great intellectual discourses on God and on all things under the sun, become great rationalists and prove to your satisfaction that all these accounts of the Avataras of God as man are nonsense. But let us come for a moment to practical common sense. What is there behind this kind of remarkable intellect? Zero, nothing, simply so much froth. When next you hear a man delivering a great intellectual lecture against this worship of the Avataras of God, get hold of him and ask what his idea of God is, what he understands by "omnipotence", "omnipresence", and all similar terms, beyond the spelling of the words. He really means nothing by them; he cannot formulate as their meaning any idea unaffected by his own human nature; he is no better off in this matter than the man in the street who has not read a single book. That man in the street, however, is quiet and does not disturb the peace of the world, while this big talker creates disturbance and misery among mankind.
Religion is, after all, realisation, and we must make the sharpest distinction between talk; and intuitive experience. What we experience in the depths of our souls is realisation. Nothing indeed is so uncommon as common sense in regard to this matter.
1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
of the Avatar Sri Aurobindo-Mother. Before, the Avatar had
always been male, and many Hindus still have difficulty in
accepting a male-female Avatar. But it is quite clear that if
there is an earthly evolution, in which the successive Avatars
play a crucial role, and if in the present stage of humanitys
history this evolution is reaching a critical point, the Avatar
has to represent in himself the complete human being in
--
Elisabeth I 13 ) but as the Avatar. Many devotees have dif-
ficulty in understanding the three aspects of the Mother, as
--
subconscious darknesses upon oneself. Being the Avatar of
the age meant not only that; it meant also having to suffer
--
has gone on working it out when alone in her Avataric body.
They had come to lay the foundations of the future and to
1.07 - Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
25:The later religions endeavour to fix the type of a supreme truth of conduct, erect a system and declare God's law through the mouth of Avatar or prophet. These systems, more powerful and dynamic than the dry ethical idea, are yet for the most part no more than idealistic glorifications of the moral principle sanctified by religious emotion and the label of a superhuman origin. Some, like the extreme Christian ethic, are rejected by Nature because they insist unworkably on an impracticable absolute rule. Others prove in the end to be evolutionary compromises and become obsolete in the march of Time. The true divine law, unlike these mental counterfeits, cannot be a system of rigid ethical determinations that press into their cast-iron moulds all our life-movements. The Law divine is truth of life and truth of the spirit and must take up with a free living plasticity and inspire with the direct touch of its eternal light each step of our action and all the complexity of our life issues. It must act not as a rule and formula but as an enveloping and penetrating conscious presence that determines all our thoughts, activities, feelings, impulsions of will by its infallible power and knowledge.
26:The older religions erected their rule of the wise, their dicta of Manu or Confucius, a complex Shastra in which they attempted to combine the social rule and moral law with the declaration of certain eternal principles of our highest nature in some kind of uniting amalgam. All three were treated on the same ground as equally the expression of everlasting verities, sanatana dharma. But two of these elements are evolutionary and valid for a time, mental constructions, human readings of the will of the Eternal; the third, attached and subdued to certain social and moral formulas, had to share the fortunes of its forms. Either the Shastra grows obsolete and has to be progressively changed or finally cast away or else it stands as a rigid barrier to the self-development of the individual and the race. The Shastra erects a collective and external standard; it ignores the inner nature of the individual, the indeterminable elements of a secret spiritual force within him. But the nature of the individual will not be ignored; its demand is inexorable. The unrestrained indulgence of his outer impulses leads to anarchy and dissolution, but the suppression and coercion of his soul's freedom by a fixed and mechanical rule spells stagnation or an inner death. Not this coercion or determination from outside, but the free discovery of his highest spirit and the truth of an eternal movement is the supreme thing that he has to discover.
1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Zens use of almost comic extravagance to emphasize the philosophic truths it regarded as most important is well illustrated in the first of the extracts cited above. We are not intended seriously to imagine that an Avatar preaches in order to play a practical joke on the human race. But meanwhile what the author has succeeded in doing is to startle us out of our habitual complacency about the home-made verbal universe in which we normally do most of our living. Words are not facts, and still less are they the primordial Fact. If we take them too seriously, we shall lose our way in a forest of entangling briars. But if, on the contrary, we dont take them seriously enough, we shall remain unaware that there is a way to lose or a goal to be reached. If the Enlightened did not preach, there would be no deliverance for anyone. But because human minds and human languages are what they are, this necessary and indispensable preaching is beset with dangers. The history of all the religions is similar in one important respect; some of their adherents are enlightened and delivered, because they have chosen to react appropriately to the words which the founders have let fall; others achieve a partial salvation by reacting with partial appropriateness; yet others harm themselves and their fellows by reacting with a total inappropriatenessei ther ignoring the words altogether or, more often, taking them too seriously and treating them as though they were identical with the Fact to which they refer.
That words are at once indispensable and, in many cases, fatal has been recognized by all the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy. Thus, Jesus spoke of himself as bringing into the world something even worse than briarsa sword. St. Paul distinguished between the letter that kills and the spirit that gives life. And throughout the centuries that followed, the masters of Christian spirituality have found it necessary to harp again and again upon a theme which has never been outdated because homo loquax, the talking animal, is still as navely delighted by his chief accomplishment, still as helplessly the victim of his own words, as he was when the Tower of Babel was being built. Recent years have seen the publication of numerous works on semantics and of an ocean of nationalistic, racialistic and militaristic propaganda. Never have so many capable writers warned mankind against the dangers of wrong speech and never have words been used more recklessly by politicians or taken more seriously by the public. The fact is surely proof enough that, under changing forms, the old problems remain what they always wereurgent, unsolved and, to all appearances, insoluble.
1.08 - Attendants, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
One day he conceived the idea of getting Sri Aurobindo's footprints; but how was he to do it without troubling him in any way or without informing him in advance? He had a brain-wave. He kept a white sheet of paper and pencil ready. As soon as Sri Aurobindo sat on the chair, he pushed the sheet of paper under his feet and asked, "May I draw your footprint?" Sri Aurobindo not only consented but later wrote "Love and Blessings" on the drawing. Let us not forget, by the way, that Champaklal is an artist. Whenever he saw Sri Aurobindo in what seemed to him statuesque poses his heart would go into rapture and he would call us to share his joy. He would exclaim, "Ah, if a photograph could be taken of this marvellous pose!" The Mother has said that he has "a natural talent already developed to an unusual degree". On one of his birthdays he painted two lotuses, white and red, and offered the pictures to the Mother. She was very pleased and said she would take them to Sri Aurobindo and ask him to write something. He wrote under the painting of the white lotus: Aditi, The Divine Mother. And the Mother wrote on the other: The Avatar. But she forbade Champaklal to show them to anyone, for people would not understand what they meant.
Champaklal is the custodian of all their relics such as hair, nails and teeth. He has even stored up all the ashes of the burnt mosquito-coils. Here is a humorous incident in connection with the ashes. Once during our evening talks, the Mother came in with a telegram asking Sri Aurobindo to send "ashes" for someone's marriage. We were perplexed for we could not make out the meaning. Purani had an intuitive flash and said, "It may be the Indian word ss for benediction." "Oh, I see!" exclaimed Sri Aurobindo, "I was wondering how I was supposed to carry ashes with me, perhaps on my head! Of course I can give them some from Champaklal's mosquito-coils. If I had not given up smoking, I could have given some cigar-ash."
1.08 - Civilisation and Barbarism, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Self of man is a thing hidden and occult; it is not his body, it is not his life, it is noteven though he is in the scale of evolution the mental being, the Manu,his mind. Therefore neither the fullness of his physical, nor of his vital, nor of his mental nature can be either the last term or the true standard of his self-realisation; they are means of manifestation, subordinate indications, foundations of his self-finding, values, practical currency of his self, what you will, but not the thing itself which he secretly is and is obscurely groping or trying overtly and self-consciously to become. Man has not possessed as a race this truth about himself, does not now possess it except in the vision and self-experience of the few in whose footsteps the race is unable to follow, though it may adore them as Avatars, seers, saints or prophets. For the Oversoul who is the master of our evolution, has his own large steps of Time, his own great eras, tracts of slow and courses of rapid expansion, which the strong, semi-divine individual may overleap, but not the still half-animal race. The course of evolution proceeding from the vegetable to the animal, from the animal to the man, starts in the latter from the subhuman; he has to take up into him the animal and even the mineral and vegetable: they constitute his physical nature, they dominate his vitality, they have their hold upon his mentality. His proneness to many kinds of inertia, his readiness to vegetate, his attachment to the soil and clinging to his roots, to safe anchorages of all kinds, and on the other hand his nomadic and predatory impulses, his blind servility to custom and the rule of the pack, his mob-movements and openness to subconscious suggestions from the group-soul, his subjection to the yoke of rage and fear, his need of punishment and reliance on punishment, his inability to think and act for himself, his incapacity for true freedom, his distrust of novelty, his slowness to seize intelligently and assimilate, his downward propensity and earthward gaze, his vital and physical subjection to his heredity, all these and more are his heritage from the subhuman origins of his life and body and physical mind. It is because of this heritage that he finds self-exceeding the most difficult of lessons and the most painful of endeavours. Yet it is by exceeding of the lower self that Nature accomplishes the great strides of her evolutionary process. To learn by what he has been, but also to know and increase to what he can be, is the task that is set for the mental being.
The time is passing away, permanentlylet us hope for this cycle of civilisation, when the entire identification of the self with the body and the physical life was possible for the general consciousness of the race. That is the primary characteristic of complete barbarism. To take the body and the physical life as the one thing important, to judge manhood by the physical strength, development and prowess, to be at the mercy of the instincts which rise out of the physical inconscient, to despise knowledge as a weakness and inferiority or look on it as a peculiarity and no necessary part of the conception of manhood, this is the mentality of the barbarian. It tends to reappear in the human being in the atavistic period of boyhood,when, be it noted, the development of the body is of the greatest importance,but to the adult man in civilised humanity it is ceasing to be possible. For, in the first place, by the stress of modern life even the vital attitude of the race is changing. Man is ceasing to be so much of a physical and becoming much more of a vital and economic animal. Not that he excludes or is intended to exclude the body and its development or the right maintenance of and respect for the animal being and its excellences from his idea of life; the excellence of the body, its health, its soundness, its vigour and harmonious development are necessary to a perfect manhood and are occupying attention in a better and more intelligent way than before. But the first rank in importance can no longer be given to the body, much less that entire predominance assigned to it in the mentality of the barbarian.
1.08 - RELIGION AND TEMPERAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
It should, however, be remarked that, within its own ecclesiastical fold, Catholicism has been almost as tolerant as Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism. Nominally one, each of these religions consists, in fact, of a number of very different religions, covering the whole gamut of thought and behaviour from fetishism, through polytheism, through legalistic monotheism, through devotion to the sacred humanity of the Avatar, to the profession of the Perennial Philosophy and the practice of a purely spiritual religion that seeks the unitive knowledge of the Absolute Godhead. These tolerated religions-within-a-religion are not, of course, regarded as equally valuable or equally true. To worship polytheistically may be ones dharma; nevertheless the fact remains that mans final end is the unitive knowledge of the Godhead, and all the historical formulations of the Perennial Philosophy are agreed that every human being ought, and perhaps in some way or other actually will, achieve that end. All souls, writes Father Garrigou-Lagrange, receive a general remote call to the mystical life; and if all were faithful in avoiding, as they should, not merely mortal but venial sin, if they were, each according to his condition, docile to the Holy Ghost, and if they lived long enough, a day would come when they would receive the proximate and efficacious vocation to a high perfection and to the mystical life properly so called. With this statement Hindu and Buddhist theologians would probably agree; but they would add that every soul will in fact eventually attain this high perfection. All are called, but in any given generation few are chosen, because few choose themselves. But the series of conscious existences, corporeal or incorporeal, is indefinitely long; there is therefore time and opportunity for everyone to learn the necessary lessons. Moreover, there will always be helpers. For periodically there are descents of the Godhead into physical form; and at all times there are future Buddhas ready, on the threshold of reunion with the Intelligible Light, to renounce the bliss of immediate liberation in order to return as saviours and teachers again and again into the world of suffering and time and evil, until at last every sentient being shall have been delivered into eternity.
The practical consequences of this doctrine are clear enough. The lower forms of religion, whether emotional, active or intellectual, are never to be accepted as final. True, each of them comes naturally to persons of a certain kind of constitution and temperament; but the dharma or duty of any given individual is not to remain complacently fixed in the imperfect religion that happens to suit him; it is rather to transcend it, not by impossibly denying the modes of thought, behaviour and feeling that are natural to him, but by making use of them, so that by means of nature he may pass beyond nature. Thus the introvert uses discrimination (in the Indian phrase), and so learns to distinguish the mental activities of the ego from the principial consciousness of the Self, which is akin to, or identical with, the divine Ground. The emotional extravert learns to hate his father and mother (in other words to give up his selfish attachment to the pleasures of indiscriminately loving and being loved), concentrates his devotion on the personal or incarnate aspect of God, and comes at last to love the Absolute Godhead by an act, no longer of feeling, but of will illuminated by knowledge. And finally there is that other kind of extravert, whose concern is not with the pleasures of giving or receiving affection, but with the satisfaction of his lust for power over things, events and persons. Using his own nature to transcend his own nature, he must follow the path laid down in the Bhagavad Gita for the bewildered Arjuna the path of work without attachment to the fruits of work, the path of what St. Franois de Sales calls holy indifference, the path that leads through the forgetting of self to the discovery of the Self.
1.08 - Sri Aurobindos Descent into Death, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
years old and after a lifetime of revolutionary Avataric Yoga,
something at the root of things was blocking the Work. Sri
--
the effort of the previous Avatars to change human nature
and make spiritual progress in the material evolution pos-
--
he was an Avatar. To expect such a statement would de-
mand that Sri Aurobindo broke with his inborn and spir-
--
sidered his yogic effort to be that of an Avatar, and even the
most decisive of all Avataric missions. On the other hand,
where does one ever find a sign of the slightest awareness
--
master act of the Avatar had come. After all the work Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother had done, after all the burdens
--
This tactical move was possible because the Avatar
was present on Earth in his/her physical completeness, i.e.
in a male/female body. If the Avatar had been present in
only one body, the death of this body would have cancelled
--
completion of the mission of an Avatar is decided upon and
pre-exists outside the dimensions, outside the theatre of
--
something in the Inconscient which only the Avatar could
execute, in order to prevent that his mission on Earth, in
--
names in these twelve years. 13 The Avatar took leave of
humanity in one of its purest representatives.
--
the accomplishment of the Avataric mission?
In The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo wrote: There can be
--
also be called The Avatars Song or The Ballad of the Ava-
tar Sri Aurobindo had described exactly this problem.
--
tion which only the Avatar, the very Divine, could perform.
We find something similar in his sonnet The Inconscient
--
conquest of death when the Guru, or Master, or Avatar and
bringer of the new vision had succumbed himself to death?
1.10 - GRACE AND FREE WILL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Human grace comes to us either from persons, or from social groups, or from our own wishes, hopes and imaginings projected outside ourselves and persisting somehow in the psychic medium in a state of what may be called second-hand objectivity. We have all had experience of the different types of human grace. There is, for example, the grace which, during childhood, comes from mother, father, nurse or beloved teacher. At a later stage we experience the grace of friends; the grace of men and women morally better and wiser than ourselves; the grace of the guru, or spiritual director. Then there is the grace which comes to us because of our attachment to country, party, church or other social organizationa grace which has helped even the feeblest and most timid individuals to achieve what, without it, would have been the impossible. And finally there is the grace which we derive from our ideals, whether low or high, whether conceived of in abstract terms or bodied forth in imaginary personifications. To this last type, it would seem, belong many of the graces experienced by the pious adherents of the various religions. The help received by those who devotedly adore or pray to some personal saint, deity or Avatar is often, we may guess, not a genuinely spiritual grace, but a human grace, coming back to the worshipper from the vortex of psychic power set up by repeated acts (his own and other peoples) of faith, yearning and imagination.
Spiritual grace cannot be received continuously or in its fulness, except by those who have willed away their self-will to the point of being able truthfully to say, Not I, but God in me. There are, however, few people so irremediably self-condemned to imprisonment within their own personality as to be wholly incapable of receiving the graces which are from instant to instant being offered to every soul. By fits and starts most of us contrive to forget, if only partially, our preoccupation with I, me, mine, and so become capable of receiving, if only partially, the graces which, in that moment, are being offered us.
1.10 - Theodicy - Nature Makes No Mistakes, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
her Avataric yoga. Sri Aurobindo puts the question bluntly
and gives the following answer: But still what is the pur-
--
this Love, incarnated in the soul and in the Avatars, which
in the course of the ages has brought movement and Life
--
consequences, to intervene as the Avatar and the Vibhuti
walking between the double sign of the Cross and the Vic-
1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
object:1.11 - The Kalki Avatar
author class:George Van Vrekhem
--
succession of Avatars: the Fish, the Tortoise, the Boar, the
Man-Lion, the Dwarf, Rama-with-the-Ax, Rama, Krishna,
--
tars, or an Avatar, what or which Avatars or Avatar were
they?
1. Avatar
Sri Aurobindo has given clear definitions of the Avatar
and Vibhuti on many occasions. For instance: There are
two sides of the phenomenon of Avatarhood, the Divine
Consciousness and the instrumental personality. The Di-
--
An Avatar, roughly speaking, is one who is conscious
of the presence and power of the Divine born in him or
--
In the phenomenon of Avatarhood there is a Conscious
ness behind, at first veiled or sometimes perhaps half-veiled,
--
4 Id., p. 420.the kalki Avatar
237
--
enon of the Avatar the accent has been laid by some on his
divinity, by others on his humanity, and by many more
--
divine to human. Although the Avatar is often thought to
be a specifically Hindu concept, the most extensive docu-
mentation about the various interpretations of the Avatar-
phenomenon is to be found in Christianity. (In Essays on the
Gita, Sri Aurobindo repeatedly names as Avatars Krishna,
Buddha and Christ.) In Christianity its founder is seen
mostly unawares as an Avatar, for Christ is at the same
time the Son of God and the Son of Man. The fundamental
--
held to be the only Avatar, the one and only Redeemer of a
fallen humanity. From a human teacher and miracle worker
--
The Avatar does not come as a thaumaturgic magician, but
as the divine leader of humanity and the exemplar of a di-
--
An Avatar or Vibhuti have the knowledge that is nec-
essary for their work, they need not have more, wrote Sri
--
should know what was going on in Rome. An Avatar even
does not manifest all the Divine omniscience and omnipo-
--
ness. 8 My own idea of the matter is that the Avatars life
and actions are not miracles. If they were, his existence
--
11 Sri Aurobindo: Letters on Yoga, p. 411.the kalki Avatar
239
--
ple of the Avatar], that the struggles and sufferings of the
Avatar are unreal and all humbug there is no possibility of
--
tion makes nonsense of the whole idea of Avatarhood; there
is then no reason in it, no necessity in it, no meaning in it.
--
burden of humanity and open the Way that Avatarhood has
any meaning. 13
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
--
value. What is the use of admitting Avatarhood if you take
all the meaning out of it? 14 If an Avatar did only seem to
take upon himself the struggles and sufferings of mankind
--
An Avatar, according to Sri Aurobindo, is never in fact
merely a prophet, he is a realizer, and establisher ... of some-
--
The crisis in which the Avatar appears, though ap-
parent to the outward eye only as a crisis of events and
--
as its originator or leader. That is the Avatar. 18
The Avatar is not bound to do extraordinary actions,
but he is bound to give his acts or his work or what he is
--
not suffer on the cross. If his suffering was not real, his Avataric mission
made no sense.
--
18 Sri Aurobindo: Essays on the Gita, p. 169.the kalki Avatar
241
--
worldview and his Avataric mission.
The ancient understandings of the cosmos all saw its
--
22 Sri Aurobindo: The Life Divine, p. 65.the kalki Avatar
243
--
clining divine figure. 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
--
to suppose an eternal or continual Avatar himself evolving,
we might say, his own mental and physical body according
--
the last Avatar, Kalki, only accomplishes the work Krishna
began, he fulfils in power the great struggle which the
previous Avatars prepared in all its potentialities. 25
And again: The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars
is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish
--
then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging
man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undevel-
--
nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the
vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the over-
--
25 Sri Aurobindo: Essays on the Gita, p. 166.the kalki Avatar
245
--
Considering the origin of the Avatars, as above narrated
by the Mother and confirmed by Sri Aurobindo, one could
argue that the whole of the manifestation is the Avatar of the
Divine, who is present in the atom, the cell, the animal. This
--
of the eternal Avatar within in our own inner humanity. 27
And he wrote in a letter: If [the Avatar] has something be-
hind him which emerges always out of the coverings, it is
--
the Avatar. ... In both cases Maya is the means of the crea-
tion or manifestation, but in the divine birth the Avatar is
conscious, and in the ordinary, multiple birth the Avatar
is not conscious ... [The Avatar] is the manifestation from
above of that which we have to develop from below; it is
--
its races can only be done by the Avatar if he takes upon
him the burden of humanity. Hence the superhuman tapasya
and suffering for which some Avatars are exemplary, and
which is so often misinterpreted (as we have seen before).
For if the Avatar is God, how can he suffer? The double na-
ture of the Avatar, at the same time consciously divine and
fully human, is indeed a great mystery, as great as the mys-
--
31 Id., p. 154.the kalki Avatar
247
--
which could also be called The Avatars Song.)
Some of the Mothers suffering during her last years is
--
In Savitri, the Avatars epic, there are many lines evok-
ing the burden he has to bear. For instance:
--
3. Sri Aurobindo: Avatar
The Avatarhood of Sri Aurobindo has been put in doubt
on several occasions. There seem to be two reasons for this,
the first being that the claim to Avatarhood by pseudo-spir-
itual persons has indeed become very cheap. As the discern-
--
itual theatrics, the word Avatar has, and justly so, become
suspect among the sceptically-minded. The second reason,
especially among Westerners, is that the word Avatar is
put on a par with the word God, and that this God is
--
In the second place, Avatars in general do not seem to pro-
claim their Avatarhood. Why should the Avatar proclaim
himself except on rare occasions to an Arjuna or to a few
--
wrote that the Avatars were generally recognized as such
only by a few, while to the others they were quite human,
--
36 Sri Aurobindo: Letters on Yoga, p. 418.the kalki Avatar
249
--
was an Avatar, not in plain words but in ways which can
leave no doubt about the meaning of his statements. A few
--
na: As for the lives in between the Avatar lives, it must
be remembered that Krishna speaks of many lives in the
--
admit that the object of Avatarhood is to lead the evolution,
this is quite reasonable, the Divine appearing as Avatar in
the great transitional stages and as Vibhutis to aid the less-
--
Id., p. 152.the kalki Avatar
251
--
Usually the Avatars seem to be contemporaneous with
great, world-changing wars in which they play a crucial
--
the intervention of the Avatar is needed at a time of world
crisis a crisis in the consciousness of humanity when it
--
of the descent of the previous Vishnu Avatars, of Rama
to destroy the unrighteous oppression of Ravana, of Par-
--
practical, ethical or social and political mission of the Avatar
which is thus thrown in popular and mythical form, does
not give a right account of the phenomenon of Avatarhood.
It does not cover the spiritual sense, and if this outward util-
--
the double work, and inevitably, because the Avatar takes
up the workings of God in human life, the way of the di-
--
the soul and by an outer change in the life ... The Avatar
may descend as a great spiritual teacher and saviour, the
--
the Avataric work about which he wrote, for instance, in his
correspondence with Nirodbaran, in his letters, poems and
--
46 Sri Aurobindo: Essays on the Gita, p. 161.the kalki Avatar
253
--
find reports of his Avataric battles on many pages, such as:
But though to the outward eye no sign appears
--
4. The Mother Avatar
Outspoken or not, the Avatarhood of the Mother has
been much more controversial than that of Sri Aurobindo.
--
50 Sri Aurobindo: The Mother, pp. 47 and 48.the kalki Avatar
255
--
53 The Mother: Questions and Answers 1953, pp. 387-388.the kalki Avatar
257
--
5. The complete Avatar
There are the Two who are One and play in many
--
56 Id., pp. 61 and 63.the kalki Avatar
259
--
tion of life on Earth, the Avatars have always been of the
male gender, and a female Avatar may seem rather unor-
thodox, especially to people familiar of old with the line of
male Avatars. It is however obvious that one gender does
not represent the full human constitution and condition,
--
life possible. This is the reason why the Avatar of the Su-
permind, transcending the evolutionary sexuality, had to be
--
62 Ibidem.the kalki Avatar
261
--
6. The Kalki Avatar
In Hinduism, the Kalki Avatar is thought of as the last
of the succession of Avatars, who will come at the end of
the present Kali Yuga. The victor of the last, decisive bat-
--
of the Avatars dates from the Puranas, in other words from
a traditional view that saw the evolution of the cosmos as
--
Sri Aurobindo has closely related the Kalki Avatar
with the Krishna Avatar. Krishna is the Anandamaya; he
supports the evolution through the overmind leading it to-
wards Ananda. 66 ... The last Avatar, Kalki, only accom-
plishes the work Krishna began he fulfils in power the
great struggle which the previous Avatars prepared in all
its potentialities ... 67
--
67 Sri Aurobindo: Essays on the Gita, p. 166.the kalki Avatar
263
--
Mothersriaurobindo: the Kalki Avatar
Here the time has come to repeat our question at the
--
a succession of Avatars. If Sri Aurobindo and the Mother
were Avatars, or an Avatar, what or which Avatars or Ava-
tar were they?
--
picture of the Kalki Avatar as upheld by tradition: a male
warrior on a white horse with a sword. 70 The reality seems
--
it requires the complete male/female Avatar. Sri Aurobindo
and the Mother, two great warriors in one, waged the last
--
Shri Krishna played in Sri Aurobindos Avataric realiza-
tion, 71 thereby demonstrating Sri Aurobindos statement:
The last Avatar, Kalki, only accomplishes the work Krish-
na began. Shri Krishna was the guide of Sri Aurobindos
--
72 See again talk 2: The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought.the kalki Avatar
265
--
an Avatar certainly it was not at all a general recognition.
Among the few those nearest to him do not seem to have
--
Krishna, like Christ and the other Avatars, has only
gradually grown into a recognized incarnation of the Di-
--
which they declare, unrightly, to be an Avatar. The task of
the Avatar is always out of the ordinary, relevant for the
whole of humanity, and revolutionary, initiating a radical
--
these various incarnations [of the Avatars] seem to have be-
come shorter and shorter, as if, for as much as Matter be-
--
ultimate Avatar, Shri Kalki.
74 The Mother: Questions and Answers 1957-1958, pp. 333-334.
1.12 - God Departs, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
The work on Savitri proceeded as usual, but slowed down in pace, especially when we came to a mighty confrontation with the two big Cantos of The Book of Fate. Revision after revision, addition of lines, even punctuations changed so many times! It seemed like a veritable "God's labour" against a rock of resistance. At his time the Press sent up a demand for a new book from him. The Future Poetry was given preference and some passages which were meant to be dovetailed into the text of the chapters were written. But since he wanted to write something on modern poetry and for his works of modern poets were needed, orders were sent to Madras for them while whatever few books were available from our small library were requisitioned. As I read them out, he said, "Mark that passage," or "These lines have a striking image" (once the lines referred to were, I think, from C. Day Lewis' Magnetic Mountain).He himself read out a poem of Eliot's to me I don't remember exactly which, and remarked, "This is fine poetry." In this way we proceeded. Since we had to wait for the arrival of the books, he said, "Let us go back to Savitri." His whole attention seemed to be focussed on Savitri, but again, the work had to be suspended owing to the pressure of various extraneous demands. They swelled up to such an extent that he was obliged to remark, "I find no more time for my real work." When the path was fairly clear and I was wondering what his next choice would be, he said in a distant voice, "Take up Savitri. I want to finish it soon." This must have been about two months before his departure. The last part of the utterance startled me, though it was said in a subdued tone. I wondered for a moment if I had heard rightly. I looked at him; my bewildered glance met an impassive face. In these twelve years this was the first time I had heard him reckoning with the time factor. An Avatar of poise, patience and equanimity, this was the picture that shone before our eyes whenever we had thought or spoken about him. Hence my wonder. We took up the same two Cantos that had proved so intractable. The work progressed slowly; words, ideas, images seemed to be repeated; the verses themselves appeared to flow with reluctance. Once a punctuation had to be changed four or five times. When the last revision was made and the Cantos were wound up, I said, "It is finished now." An impersonal smile of satisfaction greeted me, and he said, "Ah, it is finished?" How well I remember that flicker of a smile which all of us craved for so long! "What is left now?" was his next query. "The Book of Death and The Epilogue." "Oh, that? We shall see about that later on." That "later on" never came and was not meant to come. Having taken the decision to leave the body, he must have been waiting for the right moment to go, and for reasons known to himself he left the two last-mentioned Books almost as they were. Thus on Savitri was put the seal of incomplete completion about two weeks before the Darshan of November 24th. Other literary works too came to an end.
And significantly The Book of Fate was the last Book to be revised. What I deemed to be minor flaws or unnecessary repetitions, and thought that a further revision would remove them, appeared, after his passing, to be deliberate and prophetic:
1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
But the God who comes so terribly as Time also exists timelessly as the Godhead, as Brahman, whose essence is Sat, Chit, Ananda, Being, Awareness, Bliss; and within and beyond mans time-tortured psyche is his spirit, uncreated and uncreatable, as Eckhart says, the Atman which is akin to or even identical with Brahman. The Gita, like all other formulations of the Perennial Philosophy, justifies Gods ways to man by affirming and the affirmation is based upon observation and immediate experience that man can, if he so desires, die to his separate temporal selfness and so come to union with timeless Spirit. It affirms, too, that the Avatar becomes incarnate in order to assist human beings to achieve this union. This he does in three waysby teaching the true doctrine in a world blinded by voluntary ignorance; by inviting souls to a carnal love of his humanity, not indeed as an end in itself, but as the means to spiritual love-knowledge of Spirit; and finally by serving as a channel of grace.
God who is Spirit can only be worshipped in spirit and for his own sake; but God in time is normally worshipped by material means with a view to achieving temporal ends. God in time is manifestly the destroyer as well as the creator; and because this is so, it has seemed proper to worship him by methods which are as terrible as the destructions he himself inflicts. Hence, in India, the blood sacrifices to Kali, in her aspect as Nature-the-Destroyer; hence those offerings of children to the Molochs, denounced by the Hebrew prophets; hence the human sacrifices practised, for example, by the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Druids, the Aztecs. In all such cases the divinity addressed was a god in time, or a personification of Nature, which is nothing else but Time itself, the devourer of its own offspring; and in all cases the purpose of the rite was to obtain a future benefit or to avoid one of the enormous evils which Time and Nature for ever hold in store. For this it was thought to be worth while to pay a high price in that currency of suffering, which the Destroyer so evidently valued. The importance of the temporal end justified the use of means that were intrinsically terrible, because intrinsically time-like. Sublimated traces of these ancient patterns of thought and behaviour are still to be found in certain theories of the Atonement, and in the conception of the Mass as a perpetually repeated sacrifice of the God-Man.
1.13 - Conclusion - He is here, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
It is now twenty-two years since he left us; His Birth Centenary in which the Government of India is taking a significant part as a modest recognition of Sri Aurobindo's greatness, is going to be observed all over India and in many parts of the world. Meanwhile the Supramental Manifestation has taken place and the Ashram in consequence has come to be regarded by the world as a spiritual institution from which a new Light is radiating upon earth. Politically, India is gaining a world-status and a serious obstacle to her greatness has been partially removed fulfilling his prophecy. We see then the purpose for which Sri Aurobindo took birth and the dreams he cherished and worked for are on their way to realisation. He did not come for a few individuals only, or for a single nation or race; he came for the transformation of earth-nature which had been abandoned to herself by God and man. God-men came to give some relief to the suffering humanity or to show it a door of escape from suffering, but none before Sri Aurobindo, the Supramental Avatar, accepting Matter as essentially Brahman, came to divinise it. When the work was going apace the curtain dropped, all of a sudden.
The question surges up like an old suppressed ache, "Why did he leave his body? What imperious necessity compelled his withdrawal, self-chosen though it was? Had the accident which had changed his rhythm of life any connection with it, however subtle or remote? What would have been the course of events had there been no accident?" The Mother told a sadhak in 1935 that in ten years' time she would look as young as a girl of 16. To me also she narrated at length a similar vision of hers, the gist of which is that she and Sri Aurobindo had become young and exquisite so much so that none of the sadhaks could recognise them. From Sri Aurobindo's letters too we had the intuition that the Supramental descent in the physical was imminent. In one of the sonnets written in 1940 we find him speaking of abolishing death and of his physical transformation:
--
Still, it cannot be denied that we do miss his physical Presence, especially those of us whom he had drawn near by his personal intimacy and those who had the exceptional privilege of living with him and serving him. "Nirod is no doctor to me; he has come to serve me," is one of his few utterances I cannot forget, though I know too well how poorly I served him. Sometimes when we think of the old days that will never come back, when I go over his unparalleled correspondence with me, a void, a sore loss fills my heart. A few days after Sri Aurobindo's departure, the Mother asked a group of sadhaks what was the greatest loss caused by his absence. Different answers were given, but the Mother replied, "No, not these; the biggest loss is that I can no longer approach him for his advice. For instance, if he were there, I could have gone and asked him to stop the rain." (It was raining heavily at that moment.) To this, someone said, "But, Mother, you can look into yourself." She kept quiet. Here I may speculate on this incident. To deal with any serious problem needs a degree of concentration. The Mother has always been a very busy person; She often fell back on Sri Aurobindo to do the concentration needed. The more important point, however, seems to be that certain problems are better dealt with by an embodied spiritual force than a disembodied one, problems concerned perhaps with the most outward material aspect of existence. We see how our difficulties and problems get quickly solved by the Mother's direct intervention. Apropos of the above incident, I may further ask: Did not the Mother hint at something more poignant? The difference between a physical presence and a subtle one? Whenever there was an intricate situation to face, some crucial stage to be crossed, she quietly came and laid the burden at his feet with an utter trust, that he would see it through. The ineffable physical Presence of an Avatar of Sri Aurobindo's stature, one whose work ultimately was transformation and divinisation of the very body, was a heavenly boon to our corporeal earthly life. The incarnation itself would have otherwise lost much of its significance.
Both the external and the internal development towards physical divinisation is going on apace in the Mother so that in a not distant future it will be seen that the sacrifice, the martyrdom has not gone in vain, but has resulted in the emergence of a glorified body the consummation of the Supramental victory over Matter.
1.14 - The Principle of Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Purushottama which as yet is not developed, - we find it set forth clearly only much later in the eighteen chapters, - and therefore we have had to anticipate, at whatever cost of infidelity to the progressive method of the Gita's exposition, that central teaching. At present the Teacher simply gives a hint, merely adumbrates this supreme presence of the Purushottama and his relation to the immobile Self in whom it is our first business, our pressing spiritual need to find our poise of perfect peace and equality by attainment to the Brahmic condition. He speaks as yet not at all in set terms of the Purushottama, but of himself, - "I", Krishna, Narayana, the Avatar, the God in man who is also the Lord in the universe incarnated in the figure of the divine charioteer of Kurukshetra. "In the Self, then in
Me," is the formula he gives, implying that the transcendence of the individual personality by seeing it as a "becoming" in the impersonal self-existent Being is simply a means of arriving at that great secret impersonal Personality, which is thus silent, calm and uplifted above Nature in the impersonal Being, but also present and active in Nature in all these million becomings.
--
Teacher, the Avatar gives his own example, his own standard to
Arjuna. "I abide in the path of action," he seems to say, "the path that all men follow; thou too must abide in action. In the way I act, in that way thou too must act. I am above the necessity of works, for I have nothing to gain by them; I am the Divine who possess all things and all beings in the world and I am myself
--
Divine, am the rule and the standard; it is I who make the path in which men tread; I am the way and the goal. But I do all this largely, universally, visibly in part, but far more invisibly; and men do not really know the way of my workings. Thou, when thou knowest and seest, when thou hast become the divinised man, must be the individual power of God, the human yet divine example, even as I am in my Avatars. Most men dwell in the ignorance, the God-seer dwells in the knowledge; but let him not confuse the minds of men by a dangerous example, rejecting in his superiority the works of the world; let him not cut short the thread of action before it is spun out, let him not perplex and falsify the stages and gradations of the ways I have hewn. The whole range of human action has been decreed by me with a view to the progress of man from the lower to the higher nature, from the apparent undivine to the conscious Divine. The whole range of human works must be that in which the God-knower shall move. All individual, all social action, all the works of the intellect, the heart and the body are still his, not any longer for his own separate sake, but for the sake of God in the world, of
God in all beings and that all those beings may move forward, as he has moved, by the path of works towards the discovery of the Divine in themselves. Outwardly his actions may not seem to differ essentially from theirs; battle and rule as well as teaching and thought, all the various commerce of man with man may fall in his range; but the spirit in which he does them must be very different, and it is that spirit which by its influence shall be the great attraction drawing men upwards to his own level, the great lever lifting the mass of men higher in their ascent."
1.15 - The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.15 - The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood
author class:Sri Aurobindo
--
The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood
N SPEAKING of this Yoga in which action and knowledge become one, the Yoga of the sacrifice of works with knowledge, in which works are fulfilled in knowledge, knowledge supports, changes and enlightens works, and both are offered to the Purushottama, the supreme Divinity who becomes manifest within us as Narayana, Lord of all our being and action seated secret in our hearts for ever, who becomes manifest even in the human form as the Avatar, the divine birth taking possession of our humanity, Krishna has declared in passing that this was the ancient and original Yoga which he gave to Vivasvan, the
Sun-God, Vivasvan gave it to Manu, the father of men, Manu gave it to Ikshvaku, head of the Solar line, and so it came down from royal sage to royal sage till it was lost in the great lapse of Time and is now renewed for Arjuna, because he is the lover and devotee, friend and comrade of the Avatar. For this, he says, is the highest secret, - thus claiming for it a superiority to all other forms of Yoga, because those others lead to the impersonal Brahman or to a personal Deity, to a liberation in actionless knowledge or a liberation in absorbed beatitude, but this gives the highest secret and the whole secret; it brings us to divine peace and divine works, to divine knowledge, action and ecstasy unified in a perfect freedom; it unites into itself all the Yogic paths as the highest being of the Divine reconciles and makes one in itself all the different and even contrary powers and principles of its manifested being. Therefore this Yoga of the Gita is not, as some contend, only the Karmayoga, one and the lowest, according to them, of the three paths, but a highest
Yoga synthetic and integral directing Godward all the powers of our being.
--
Godhead, the Avatar.
We have had occasion already, when speaking of the divine
Teacher, to state briefly the doctrine of Avatarhood as it appears to us in the light of Vedanta, the light in which the Gita presents it to us. We must now look a little more closely at this Avatarhood and at the significance of the divine Birth of which it is the outward expression; for that is a link of considerable importance in the integral teaching of the Gita. And we may first translate the words of the Teacher himself in which the nature and purpose of
Avatarhood are given summarily and remind ourselves also of other passages or references which bear upon it. "Many are my lives that are past, and thine also, O Arjuna; all of them I know, but thou knowest not, O scourge of the foe. Though I am the unborn, though I am imperishable in my self-existence, though
--
The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood
147
--
The second portion of these passages which has here been given in substance, explains the nature of divine works, divyam karma, with the principle of which we have had to deal in the last essay; the first, which has been fully translated, explains the way of the divine birth, divyam janma, the Avatarhood. But we have to remark carefully that the upholding of Dharma in
148
--
the world is not the only object of the descent of the Avatar, that great mystery of the Divine manifest in humanity; for the upholding of the Dharma is not an all-sufficient object in itself, not the supreme possible aim for the manifestation of a Christ, a
Krishna, a Buddha, but is only the general condition of a higher aim and a more supreme and divine utility. For there are two aspects of the divine birth; one is a descent, the birth of God in humanity, the Godhead manifesting itself in the human form and nature, the eternal Avatar; the other is an ascent, the birth of man into the Godhead, man rising into the divine nature and consciousness, madbhavam agatah.; it is the being born anew in a second birth of the soul. It is that new birth which Avatarhood and the upholding of the Dharma are intended to serve. This double aspect in the Gita's doctrine of Avatarhood is apt to be missed by the cursory reader satisfied, as most are, with catching a superficial view of its profound teachings, and it is missed too by the formal commentator petrified in the rigidity of the schools. Yet it is necessary, surely, to the whole meaning of the doctrine. Otherwise the Avatar idea would be only a dogma, a popular superstition, or an imaginative or mystic deification of historical or legendary supermen, not what the Gita makes all its teaching, a deep philosophical and religious truth and an essential part of or step to the supreme mystery of all, rahasyam uttamam.
If there were not this rising of man into the Godhead to be helped by the descent of God into humanity, Avatarhood for the sake of the Dharma would be an otiose phenomenon, since mere Right, mere justice or standards of virtue can always be upheld by the divine omnipotence through its ordinary means, by great men or great movements, by the life and work of sages and kings and religious teachers, without any actual incarnation.
The Avatar comes as the manifestation of the divine nature in the human nature, the apocalypse of its Christhood, Krishnahood,
Buddhahood, in order that the human nature may by moulding its principle, thought, feeling, action, being on the lines of that
Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood transfigure itself into the divine. The law, the Dharma which the Avatar establishes
The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood
149
--
That the Gita contains as its kernel this second and real object of the Avatarhood, is evident even from this passage by itself rightly considered; but it becomes much clearer if we take it, not by itself, - always the wrong way to deal with the texts of the Gita, - but in its right close connection with other passages and with the whole teaching. We have to remember and take together its doctrine of the one Self in all, of the Godhead seated in the heart of every creature, its teaching about the relations between the Creator and his creation, its strongly emphasised idea of the vibhuti, - noting too the language in which the
Teacher gives his own divine example of selfless works which applies equally to the human Krishna and the divine Lord of the worlds, and giving their due weight to such passages as that in the ninth chapter, "Deluded minds despise me lodged in the human body because they know not my supreme nature of being,
--
For to the modern mind Avatarhood is one of the most difficult to accept or to understand of all the ideas that are streaming in from the East upon the rationalised human consciousness. It is apt to take it at the best for a mere figure for some high manifestation of human power, character, genius, great work done for the world or in the world, and at the worst to regard it as a superstition, - to the hea then a foolishness and to the Greeks a stumbling-block. The materialist, necessarily, cannot even look at it, since he does not believe in God; to the rationalist or the
Deist it is a folly and a thing of derision; to the thoroughgoing dualist who sees an unbridgeable gulf between the human and the divine nature, it sounds like a blasphemy. The rationalist objects that if God exists, he is extracosmic or supracosmic and does not intervene in the affairs of the world, but allows them to be governed by a fixed machinery of law, - he is, in fact, a sort of far-off constitutional monarch or spiritual King Log, at the best an indifferent inactive Spirit behind the activity of
--
The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood
151
--
The idea of the Avatar is not indeed indispensable to its scheme, but it comes in naturally into it as a perfectly rational and logical conception. For all here is God, is the Spirit or Self-existence, is Brahman, ekamevadvityam, - there is nothing else, nothing other and different from it and there can be nothing else, can be nothing other and different from it; Nature is and can be nothing else than a power of the divine consciousness; all beings are and can be nothing else than inner and outer, subjective and objective soul-forms and bodily forms of the divine being which exist in or result from the power of its consciousness. Far from the Infinite being unable to take on finiteness, the whole universe is nothing else but that; we can see, look as we may, nothing else at all in the whole wide world we inhabit. Far from the Spirit being incapable of form or disdaining to connect itself with form of matter or mind and to assume a limited nature or a body, all here is nothing but that, the world exists only by that connection, that assumption. Far from the world being a mechanism of law with no soul or spirit intervening in the movement of its forces or the action of its minds and bodies, - only some original indifferent Spirit passively existing somewhere outside or above it, - the whole world and every particle of it is on the contrary nothing but the divine force in action and that divine force determines and governs its every movement, inhabits its every form, possesses here every soul and mind; all is in God and in him moves and has its being, in all he is, acts and displays his being; every creature is the disguised Narayana.
Far from the unborn being unable to assume birth, all beings
--
The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood
153
--
The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood
155
--
Now it is notable that with a slight but important variation of language the Gita describes in the same way both the action of the Divine in bringing about the ordinary birth of creatures and his action in his birth as the Avatar. "Leaning upon my own
Nature, prakr.tim svam avas.t.abhya," it will say later, "I loose forth variously, visr.jami, this multitude of creatures helplessly subject owing to the control of Prakriti, avasam prakr.ter vasat."
--
Ishwara while the outward consciousness in front of the veil is rather possessed than in possession because there it is a partially conscious being, the Jiva lost to self-knowledge and bound in its works through a phenomenal subjection to Nature. The Avatar2 therefore is a direct manifestation in humanity by Krishna the divine Soul of that divine condition of being to which Arjuna, the human soul, the type of a highest human being, a Vibhuti, is called upon by the Teacher to arise, and to which he can
The word Avatara means a descent; it is a coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.
The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood
157
1.16 - The Process of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.16 - The Process of Avatarhood
author class:Sri Aurobindo
--
The Process of Avatarhood
E SEE that the mystery of the divine Incarnation in man, the assumption by the Godhead of the human type and the human nature, is in the view of the Gita only the other side of the eternal mystery of human birth itself which is always in its essence, though not in its phenomenal appearance, even such a miraculous assumption. The eternal and universal self of every human being is God; even his personal self is a part of the Godhead, mamaivamsah., - not a fraction or fragment, surely, since we cannot think of God as broken up into little pieces, but a partial consciousness of the one Consciousness, a partial power of the one Power, a partial enjoyment of world-being by the one and universal Delight of being, and therefore in manifestation or, as we say, in Nature a limited and finite being of the one infinite and illimitable Being. The stamp of that limitation is an ignorance by which he forgets, not only the Godhead from which he came forth, but the Godhead which is always within him, there living in the secret heart of his own nature, there burning like a veiled Fire on the inner altar in his own temple-house of human consciousness.
--
In the Avatar, the divinely-born Man, the real substance shines
The Process of Avatarhood
159
--
who fight for the continuance of the evil and the darkness. All these are recognised objects of the descent of the Avatar, and it is usually by his work that the mass of men seek to distinguish him and for that that they are ready to worship him. It is only the spiritual who see that this external Avatarhood is a sign, in the symbol of a human life, of the eternal inner Godhead making himself manifest in the field of their own human mentality and corporeality so that they can grow into unity with that and be possessed by it. The divine manifestation of a Christ, Krishna,
Buddha in external humanity has for its inner truth the same manifestation of the eternal Avatar within in our own inner humanity. That which has been done in the outer human life of earth, may be repeated in the inner life of all human beings.
This is the object of the incarnation, but what is the method?
First, we have the rational or minimising view of Avatarhood which sees in it only an extraordinary manifestation of the diviner qualities moral, intellectual and dynamic by which average humanity is exceeded. In this idea there is a certain truth. The
Avatar is at the same time the Vibhuti. This Krishna who in his divine inner being is the Godhead in a human form, is in his outer human being the leader of his age, the great man of the
--
The Process of Avatarhood
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It is this truth which lies behind the natural human tendency to the deification of great minds and heroic characters; it comes out clearly enough in the Indian habit of mind which easily sees a partial (amsa) Avatar in great saints, teachers, founders, or most significantly in the belief of southern Vaishnavas that some of their saints were incarnations of the symbolic living weapons of Vishnu, - for that is what all great spirits are, living powers and weapons of the Divine in the upward march and battle. This idea is innate and inevitable in any mystic or spiritual view of life which does not draw an inexorable line between the being and nature of the Divine and our human being and nature; it is the sense of the divine in humanity. But still the Vibhuti is not the Avatar; otherwise Arjuna, Vyasa, Ushanas would be Avatars as well as Krishna, even if in a less degree of the power of
Avatarhood. The divine quality is not enough; there must be the inner consciousness of the Lord and Self governing the human nature by his divine presence. The heightening of the power of the qualities is part of the becoming, bhutagrama, an ascent in the ordinary manifestation; in the Avatar there is the special manifestation, the divine birth from above, the eternal and universal Godhead descended into a form of individual humanity, atmanam sr.jami, and conscious not only behind the veil but in the outward nature.
There is an intermediary idea, a more mystical view of
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For this greatest union, this highest becoming is still part of the ascent; while it is the divine birth to which every Jiva arrives, it is not the descent of the Godhead, not Avatarhood, but at most
Buddhahood according to the doctrine of the Buddhists, it is the soul awakened from its present mundane individuality into an infinite superconsciousness. That need not carry with it either the inner consciousness or the characteristic action of the Avatar.
On the other hand, this entering into the divine consciousness may be attended by a reflex action of the Divine entering or coming forward into the human parts of our being, pouring himself into the nature, the activity, the mentality, the corporeality even of the man; and that may well be at least a partial
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Presence and divine Consciousness, we should have the Avatar according to this intermediary idea of the incarnation. That easily recommends itself as possible to our human notions; for if the human being can elevate his nature so as to feel a unity with the being of the Divine and himself a mere channel of its consciousness, light, power, love, his own will and personality lost in that will and that being, - and this is a recognised spiritual status,
- then there is no inherent impossibility of the reflex action of that Will, Being, Power, Love, Light, Consciousness occupying the whole personality of the human Jiva. And this would not be merely an ascent of our humanity into the divine birth and the divine nature, but a descent of the divine Purusha into humanity, an Avatar.
The Gita, however, goes much farther. It speaks clearly of the Lord himself being born; Krishna speaks of his many births that are past and makes it clear by his language that it is not merely the receptive human being but the Divine of whom he makes this affirmation, because he uses the very language of
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This doctrine is a hard saying, a difficult thing for the human reason to accept; and for an obvious reason, because of the evident humanity of the Avatar. The Avatar is always a dual phenomenon of divinity and humanity; the Divine takes upon himself the human nature with all its outward limitations and makes them the circumstances, means, instruments of the divine consciousness and the divine power, a vessel of the divine birth and the divine works. But so surely it must be, since otherwise the object of the Avatar's descent is not fulfilled; for that object is precisely to show that the human birth with all its limitations can be made such a means and instrument of the divine birth and divine works, precisely to show that the human type of consciousness can be compatible with the divine essence of consciousness made manifest, can be converted into its vessel, drawn into nearer conformity with it by a change of its mould
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and a heightening of its powers of light and love and strength and purity; and to show also how it can be done. If the Avatar were to act in an entirely supernormal fashion, this object would not be fulfilled. A merely supernormal or miraculous Avatar would be a meaningless absurdity; not that there need be an entire absence of the use of supernormal powers such as Christ's socalled miracles of healing, for the use of supernormal powers is quite a possibility of human nature; but there need not be that at all, nor in any case is it the root of the matter, nor would it at all do if the life were nothing else but a display of supernormal fireworks. The Avatar does not come as a thaumaturgic magician, but as the divine leader of humanity and the exemplar of a divine humanity. Even human sorrow and physical suffering he must assume and use so as to show, first, how that suffering may be a means of redemption, - as did Christ, - secondly, to show how, having been assumed by the divine soul in the human nature, it can also be overcome in the same nature, - as did Buddha. The rationalist who would have cried to Christ, "If thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross," or points out sagely that the Avatar was not divine because he died and died too by disease, - as a dog dieth, - knows not what he is saying: for he has missed the root of the whole matter. Even, the
Avatar of sorrow and suffering must come before there can be the Avatar of divine joy; the human limitation must be assumed in order to show how it can be overcome; and the way and the extent of the overcoming, whether internal only or external also, depends upon the stage of the human advance; it must not be done by a non-human miracle.
The question then arises, and it is the sole real difficulty, for here the intellect falters and stumbles over its own limits, how is this human mind and body assumed? For they were not created suddenly and all of a piece, but by some kind of evolution, physical or spiritual or both. No doubt, the descent of the Avatar, like the divine birth from the other side, is essentially a spiritual phenomenon, as is shown by the Gita's atmanam sr.jami, it is a soul-birth; but still there is here an attendant physical birth. How then were this human mind and body of
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the Avatar created? If we suppose that the body is always created by the hereditary evolution, by inconscient Nature and its immanent Life-spirit without the intervention of the individual soul, the matter becomes simple. A physical and mental body is prepared fit for the divine incarnation by a pure or great heredity and the descending Godhead takes possession of it. But the
Gita in this very passage applies the doctrine of reincarnation, boldly enough, to the Avatar himself, and in the usual theory of reincarnation the reincarnating soul by its past spiritual and psychological evolution itself determines and in a way prepares its own mental and physical body. The soul prepares its own body, the body is not prepared for it without any reference to the soul. Are we then to suppose an eternal or continual Avatar himself evolving, we might say, his own fit mental and physical body according to the needs and pace of the human evolution and so appearing from age to age, yuge yuge? In some such spirit some would interpret the ten incarnations of Vishnu, first in animal forms, then in the animal man, then in the dwarf mansoul, Vamana, the violent Asuric man, Rama of the axe, the divinely-natured man, a greater Rama, the awakened spiritual man, Buddha, and, preceding him in time, but final in place, the complete divine manhood, Krishna, - for the last Avatar,
Kalki, only accomplishes the work Krishna began, - he fulfils in power the great struggle which the previous Avatars prepared in all its potentialities. It is a difficult assumption to our modern mentality, but the language of the Gita seems to demand it. Or, since the Gita does not expressly solve the problem, we may solve it in some other way of our own, as that the body is prepared by the Jiva but assumed from birth by the Godhead or that it is prepared by one of the four Manus, catvaro manavah., of the
Gita, the spiritual Fathers of every human mind and body. This is going far into the mystic field from which the modern reason is still averse; but once we admit Avatarhood, we have already entered into it and, once entered, may as well tread in it with firm footsteps.
There the Gita's doctrine of Avatarhood stands. We have had to advert to it at length in this aspect of its method, as we
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did to the question of its possibility, because it is necessary to look at it and face the difficulties which the reasoning mind of man is likely to offer to it. It is true that the physical Avatarhood does not fill a large space in the Gita, but still it does occupy a definite place in the chain of its teachings and is implied in the whole scheme, the very framework being the Avatar leading the vibhuti, the man who has risen to the greatest heights of mere manhood, to the divine birth and divine works. No doubt, too, the inner descent of the Godhead to raise the human soul into himself is the main thing, - it is the inner Christ, Krishna or
Buddha that matters. But just as the outer life is of immense importance for the inner development, so the external Avatarhood is of no mean importance for this great spiritual manifestation.
The consummation in the mental and physical symbol assists the growth of the inner reality; afterwards the inner reality expresses itself with greater power in a more perfect symbolisation of itself through the outer life. Between these two, spiritual reality and mental and physical expression, acting and returning upon each other constantly the manifestation of the Divine in humanity has elected to move always in the cycles of its concealment and its revelation.
1.17 - The Divine Birth and Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HE WORK for which the Avatar descends has like his birth a double sense and a double form. It has an outward side of the divine force acting upon the external world in order to maintain there and to reshape the divine law by which the Godward effort of humanity is kept from decisive retrogression and instead decisively carried forward in spite of the rule of action and reaction, the rhythm of advance and relapse by which Nature proceeds. It has an inward side of the divine force of the Godward consciousness acting upon the soul of the individual and the soul of the race, so that it may receive new forms of revelation of the Divine in man and may be sustained, renewed and enriched in its power of upward self-unfolding. The
Avatar does not descend merely for a great outward action, as the pragmatic sense in humanity is too often tempted to suppose.
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The crisis in which the Avatar appears, though apparent to the outward eye only as a crisis of events and great material changes, is always in its source and real meaning a crisis in the consciousness of humanity when it has to undergo some grand modification and effect some new development. For this action of change a divine force is needed; but the force varies always according to the power of consciousness which it embodies; hence the necessity of a divine consciousness manifesting in the mind and soul of humanity. Where, indeed, the change is mainly intellectual and practical, the intervention of the Avatar is not needed; there is a great uplifting of consciousness, a great manifestation of power in which men are for the time being exalted above their normal selves, and this surge of consciousness and power finds its wave-crests in certain exceptional individuals,
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French Revolution were crises of this character; they were not great spiritual events, but intellectual and practical changes, one in religious, the other in social and political ideas, forms and motives, and the modification of the general consciousness brought about was a mental and dynamic, but not a spiritual modification. But when the crisis has a spiritual seed or intention, then a complete or a partial manifestation of the God-consciousness in a human mind and soul comes as its originator or leader. That is the Avatar.
The outward action of the Avatar is described in the Gita as the restoration of the Dharma; when from age to age the
Dharma fades, languishes, loses force and its opposite arises, strong and oppressive, then the Avatar comes and raises it again to power; and as these things in idea are always represented by things in action and by human beings who obey their impulsion, his mission is, in its most human and outward terms, to relieve the seekers of the Dharma who are oppressed by the reign of the reactionary darkness and to destroy the wrong-doers who seek to maintain the denial of the Dharma. But the language used can easily be given a poor and insufficient connotation which would deprive Avatarhood of all its spiritual depth of meaning.
Dharma is a word which has an ethical and practical, a natural and philosophical and a religious and spiritual significance, and it may be used in any of these senses exclusive of the others, in a purely ethical, a purely philosophical or a purely religious sense. Ethically it means the law of righteousness, the moral rule of conduct, or in a still more outward and practical significance social and political justice, or even simply the observation of the social law. If used in this sense we shall have to understand that when unrighteousness, injustice and oppression prevail, the
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Thus the popular and mythical account of the Krishna Avatar is that the unrighteousness of the Kurus as incarnated
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in Duryodhana and his brothers became so great a burden to the earth that she had to call upon God to descend and lighten her load; accordingly Vishnu incarnated as Krishna, delivered the oppressed Pandavas and destroyed the unjust Kauravas. A similar account is given of the descent of the previous Vishnu Avatars, of Rama to destroy the unrighteous oppression of Ravana, of Parashurama to destroy the unrighteous license of the military and princely caste, the Kshatriyas, of the dwarf Vamana to destroy the rule of the Titan Bali. But obviously the purely practical, ethical or social and political mission of the Avatar which is thus thrown into popular and mythical form, does not give a right account of the phenomenon of Avatarhood. It does not cover its spiritual sense, and if this outward utility were all, we should have to exclude Buddha and Christ whose mission was not at all to destroy evil-doers and deliver the good, but to bring to all men a new spiritual message and a new law of divine growth and spiritual realisation. On the other hand, if we give to the word dharma only its religious sense, in which it means a law of religious and spiritual life, we shall indeed get to the kernel of the matter, but we shall be in danger of excluding a most important part of the work done by the Avatar. Always we see in the history of the divine incarnations the double work, and inevitably, because the Avatar takes up the workings of God in human life, the way of the divine Will and Wisdom in the world, and that always fulfils itself externally as well as internally, by inner progress in the soul and by an outer change in the life.
The Avatar may descend as a great spiritual teacher and saviour, the Christ, the Buddha, but always his work leads, after he has finished his earthly manifestation, to a profound and powerful change not only in the ethical, but in the social and outward life and ideals of the race. He may, on the other hand, descend as an incarnation of the divine life, the divine personality and power in its characteristic action, for a mission ostensibly social, ethical and political, as is represented in the story of Rama or Krishna; but always then this descent becomes in the soul of the race a permanent power for the inner living and the spiritual rebirth. It is indeed curious to note that the
The Divine Birth and Divine Works
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Christianity, the latter especially being effected by men who aggressively rejected the Christian religion and spiritual discipline and by an age which in its intellectual effort of emancipation tried to get rid of Christianity as a creed. On the other hand the life of Rama and Krishna belongs to the prehistoric past which has come down only in poetry and legend and may even be regarded as myths; but it is quite immaterial whether we regard them as myths or historical facts, because their permanent truth and value lie in their persistence as a spiritual form, presence, influence in the inner consciousness of the race and the life of the human soul. Avatarhood is a fact of divine life and consciousness which may realise itself in an outward action, but must persist, when that action is over and has done its work, in a spiritual influence; or may realise itself in a spiritual influence and teaching, but must then have its permanent effect, even when the new religion or discipline is exhausted, in the thought, temperament and outward life of mankind.
We must then, in order to understand the Gita's description of the work of the Avatar, take the idea of the Dharma in its fullest, deepest and largest conception, as the inner and the outer law by which the divine Will and Wisdom work out the spiritual evolution of mankind and its circumstances and results in the life of the race. Dharma in the Indian conception is not merely the good, the right, morality and justice, ethics; it is the whole government of all the relations of man with other beings, with
Nature, with God, considered from the point of view of a divine
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It is these things that condition and determine the work of the Avatar. In the Buddhistic formula the disciple takes refuge from all that opposes his liberation in three powers, the dharma, the sangha, the Buddha. So in Christianity we have the law of Christian living, the Church and the Christ.
These three are always the necessary elements of the work of the Avatar. He gives a dharma, a law of self-discipline by which to grow out of the lower into the higher life and which necessarily includes a rule of action and of relations with our fellowmen and other beings, endeavour in the eightfold path or the law of faith, love and purity or any other such revelation of the nature of the divine in life. Then because every tendency in man has its collective as well as its individual aspect, because those who follow one way are naturally drawn together into spiritual companionship and unity, he establishes the sangha, the fellowship and union of those whom his personality and his teaching unite. In Vaishnavism there is the same trio, bhagavata, bhakta, bhagavan, - the bhagavata, which is the law of the Vaishnava dispensation of adoration and love, the bhakta representing the fellowship of those in whom that law is manifest, bhagavan, the divine Lover and
Beloved in whose being and nature the divine law of love is founded and fulfils itself. The Avatar represents this third element, the divine personality, nature and being who is the soul of the dharma and the sangha, informs them with himself, keeps them living and draws men towards the felicity and the liberation.
In the teaching of the Gita, which is more catholic and complex than other specialised teachings and disciplines, these things assume a larger meaning. For the unity here is the allembracing Vedantic unity by which the soul sees all in itself and itself in all and makes itself one with all beings. The dharma
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God-seeking which is at the basis of the idea of the sangha or divine fellowship, is brought in when the Gita speaks of the seeking of God through love and adoration, but the real sangha of this teaching is all humanity. The whole world is moving towards this dharma, each man according to his capacity, - "it is my path that men follow in every way," - and the God-seeker, making himself one with all, making their joy and sorrow and all their life his own, the liberated made already one self with all beings, lives in the life of humanity, lives for the one Self in humanity, for God in all beings, acts for lokasangraha, for the maintaining of all in their dharma and the Dharma, for the maintenance of their growth in all its stages and in all its paths towards the Divine. For the Avatar here, though he is manifest in the name and form of Krishna, lays no exclusive stress on this one form of his human birth, but on that which it represents, the Divine, the Purushottama, of whom all Avatars are the human births, of whom all forms and names of the
Godhead worshipped by men are the figures. The way declared by Krishna here is indeed announced as the way by which man can reach the real knowledge and the real liberation, but it is one that is inclusive of all paths and not exclusive. For the Divine takes up into his universality all Avatars and all teachings and all dharmas.
The Gita lays stress upon the struggle of which the world is the theatre, in its two aspects, the inner struggle and the outer battle. In the inner struggle the enemies are within, in
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Asuras. This outer struggle too the Avatar comes to aid, directly or indirectly, to destroy the reign of the Asuras, the evil-doers, and in them depress the power they represent and to restore the oppressed ideals of the Dharma. He comes to bring nearer the kingdom of heaven on earth in the collectivity as well as to build the kingdom of heaven within in the individual human soul.
The inner fruit of the Avatar's coming is gained by those who learn from it the true nature of the divine birth and the divine works and who, growing full of him in their consciousness and taking refuge in him with their whole being, manmaya mam upasritah., purified by the realising force of their knowledge and delivered from the lower nature, attain to the divine being and divine nature, madbhavam. The Avatar comes to reveal the divine nature in man above this lower nature and to show what are the divine works, free, unegoistic, disinterested, impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine love. He comes as the divine personality which shall fill the consciousness of the human being and replace the limited egoistic personality, so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out of birth into immortality. He comes as the divine power and love which calls men to itself, so that they may take refuge in that and no longer in the insufficiency
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12.02 - The Stress of the Spirit, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Vicarious atonement, a phenomenon familiar and well known in the religious domain, finds a very simple meaning in this view and almost becomes a very natural human phenomenon. There is an inevitable interaction and interflow of psychological forces among individuals, it is no more a riddle to say that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, nor that the virtues of the sons wash away the sins of the fathers; and that is how the Avatars automatically, inevitably take upon themselves and have to take upon themselves and bear the stigmata of suffering humanity. And that is how they embody and fulfil the total aspiration of all human beings. An Avatar is thus an outburst of the earth's highest need of the hour. Indeed, however great an individual, his greatness is in reality the greatness of the world-spirit in him, and also contrariwise the smallness of an earthly being is the smallness of the universal being at a point, under a particular condition. In other words, the individual represents the weakest or the strongest link as the case may be, in the one single chain constituting the whole human race.
And yet, at bottom, it is not such an absolute determinism, this cosmos, however apparently it may prove itself to be so. It is found, actually, that behind and in and through this ineluctable fatalism there are aberrations, freaks that do not adhere to the common pattern. In the overall macrocosmic view the reign of the fixed law is perhaps absolute but in the microcosm of infinitesimals fissures appear, discrepancies show themselves. All strict calculations turn out in the end to be mere approximations, only they tend to become more and more approximate. It is like the asymptote or the race between the hare and the tortoise in the famous storya mathematical puzzlewhere the hare starting behind can never catch up with the tortoise however fast he may run. With the discovery of new factors (sometimes only a new way of calculation) the gap is sought to be reduced, but the approximation remains. For example, the bending of a ray of light from a star passing by the solar sphere is a subject for interesting calculation: between the figure as given by the Einstein equation and the actual measurement there is a difference, although slight, yet a difference. Such differences are usually explained by some kind of intervention and if that intervention does not fully explain it, another intervention is brought in, and still the hiatus continues. This is just an example. The ultimate particles of matter, points of electric charge (or no-charge), points of tension are incalculables; their position or velocity is an indeterminate, not because of the infinitesimal size of the quantum, their very nature is so; they are erratic in their own essence. And one can justifiably ascribe a kind of free will to these ultimate, almost immaterial material particles, although when they are in bundles or groups they behave quite reasonably and are very obedient to the law, but singly each possesses or is capable of possessing a free independent movement. There is a basis here of the spirit of independence that shows itself more clearly in the biological units, and of course, very overtly and patently in the human mental consciousness.
12.03 - The Sorrows of God, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Son of Man the Avatarsuffers with and suffers for the suffering humanity. The Christ with his cross, Ramakrishna with his cancer, Socrates with the hemlock creeping up and benumbing his limbs and Mohammed being hunted from place to place are familiar and poignant pictures. "Verily, verily, the foxes have their holes, the birds their nests, but the son of man hath nowhere to lay his head."
And this is bound to be so, for it is the inexorable law of nature: one who has identified himself with Nature, ignorant nature, of which the ignorant and suffering humanity is part and parcel, one whose body and soul are in unison and union with the body and soul of all beings and creatures, made of the same stuff and substance cannotand wants not to escape the general fate whatever it is. If misery be the badge of the human tribe, the Divine Man, the representative human being must wear that badge.
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Great souls, Avatars, are a necessity, an inevitability in the process of evolution and ascension, for they are individualisations, impersonations so to say, in whom the consciousness energy is massively stored and concretised for a greater and radical effective power of realisation. Inevitably this means as I have said the assumption of all the ills of nature; for the very purpose of incarnation is to purify the external nature, so that it becomes one with the inner being. So, all terrestrial human beings share in the impurity of the ignorant ordinary nature and share also, as secretly conscious entities although outwardly almost absolutely unconscious, in the general work of progress and purification. But there are beings who come forward as conscious formations with the mission of uplifting, transmuting, divinising humanity.
The higher or deeper the source of the descending or manifesting Consciousness for there are gradations or various statuses of it the wider and vaster and more radical is its effective power for redeeming and changing the ignorant common nature, and also strangely, perhaps inevitably, the more intimate and poignant its participation in the travail of that nature the participation extends not only to pain and suffering but to death also, for through death the path leads to resurrection and immortality. The Divine Himself in various forms comes down upon and into earth and pays by his pain and suffering for the sins and errors of humanity. That is the ransom he condescends to offer to the deity of ignorance, the reigning lord of the world for securing the freedom of man's soul. The divine emanations bear the burden of ignorance all the more so that the burden on others may be lightened, the pains less painful. Indeed, suffering humanity is also the suffering Godhead himself, suffering multifariously although ignorantly and unconsciously. There is an inner working of the secret godhead in order that the suffering may be gradually transmuted into something else, into the divine delight. The Godhead has taken up this task in order that the Divine may not remain Divine only in its essence and in the other, the transcendent status, but express itself also as the Divine in an earthly form, an earthly form cleared of all dross, made luminously beautiful.
1.21 - The Spiritual Aim and Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Thus spirituality will respect the freedom of the lower members, but it will not leave them to themselves; it will present to them the truth of the spirit in themselves, translated into their own fields of action, presented in a light which illumines all their activities and shows them the highest law of their own freedom. It will not, for instance, escape from scientific materialism by a barren contempt for physical life or a denial of Matter, but pursue rather the sceptical mind into its own affirmations and denials and show it there the Divine. If it cannot do that, it is proved that it is itself unenlightened or deficient, because onesided, in its light. It will not try to slay the vitality in man by denying life, but will rather reveal to life the divine in itself as the principle of its own transformation. If it cannot do that, it is because it has itself not yet wholly fathomed the meaning of the creation and the secret of the Avatar.
The spiritual aim will seek to fulfil itself therefore in a fullness of life and mans being in the individual and the race which will be the base for the heights of the spirit,the base becoming in the end of one substance with the peaks. It will not proceed by a scornful neglect of the body, nor by an ascetic starving of the vital being and an utmost bareness or even squalor as the rule of spiritual living, nor by a puritanic denial of art and beauty and the aesthetic joy of life, nor by a neglect of science and philosophy as poor, negligible or misleading intellectual pursuits,though the temporary utility even of these exaggerations as against the opposite excesses need not be denied; it will be all things to all, but in all it will be at once their highest aim and meaning and the most all-embracing expression of themselves in which all they are and seek for will be fulfilled. It will aim at establishing in society the true inner theocracy, not the false theocracy of a dominant Church or priesthood, but that of the inner Priest, Prophet and King. It will reveal to man the divinity in himself as the Light, Strength, Beauty, Good, Delight, Immortality that dwells within and build up in his outer life also the kingdom of God which is first discovered within us. It will show man the way to seek for the Divine in every way of his being, sarvabhvena,1 and so find it and live in it, that howevereven in all kinds of wayshe lives and acts, he shall live and act in that,2 in the Divine, in the Spirit, in the eternal Reality of his being.
1.22 - EMOTIONALISM, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In the light of what has been said above, we can understand the peculiar spiritual dangers by which every kind of predominantly emotional religion is always menaced. A hell-fire faith that uses the theatrical techniques of revivalism in order to stimulate remorse and induce the crisis of sudden conversion; a saviour cult that is for ever stirring up what St. Bernard calls the amor carnalis or fleshly love of the Avatar and personal God; a ritualistic mystery-religion that generates high feelings of awe and reverence and aesthetic ecstasy by means of its sacraments and ceremonials, its music and its incense, its numinous darknesses and sacred lightsin its own special way, each one of these runs the risk of becoming a form of psychological idolatry, in which God is identified with the egos affective attitude towards God and finally the emotion becomes an end in itself, to be eagerly sought after and worshipped, as the addicts of a drug spend life in the pursuit of their artificial paradise. All this is obvious enough. But it is no less obvious that religions that make no appeal to the emotions have very few adherents. Moreover, when pseudo-religions with a strong emotional appeal make their appearance, they imme thately win millions of enthusiastic devotees from among the masses to whom the real religions have ceased to have a meaning or to be a comfort. But whereas no adherent of a pseudo-religion (such as one of our current political idolatries, compounded of nationalism and revolutionism) can possibly go forward into the way of genuine spirituality, such a way always remains open to the adherents of even the most highly emotionalized varieties of genuine religion. Those who have actually followed this way to its end in the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground constitute a very small minority of the total. Many are called; but, since few choose to be chosen, few are chosen. The rest, say the oriental exponents of the Perennial Philosophy, earn themselves another chance, in circumstances more or less propitious according to their deserts, to take the cosmic intelligence test. If they are saved, their incomplete and undefinitive deliverance is into some paradisal state of freer personal existence, from which (directly or through further incarnations) they may go on to the final release into eternity. If they are lost, their hell is a temporal and temporary condition of thicker darkness and more oppressive bondage to self-will, the root and principle of all evil.
We see, then, that if it is persisted in, the way of emotional religion may lead, indeed, to a great good, but not to the greatest. But the emotional way opens into the way of unitive knowledge, and those who care to go on in this other way are well prepared for their task if they have used the emotional approach without succumbing to the temptations which have beset them on the way. Only the perfectly selfless and enlightened can do good that does not, in some way or other, have to be paid for by actual or potential evils. The religious systems of the world have been built up, in the main, by men and women who were not completely selfless or enlightened. Hence all religions have had their dark and even frightful aspects, while the good they do is rarely gratuitous, but must, in most cases, be paid for, either on the nail or by instalments. The emotion-rousing doctrines and practices, which play so important a part in all the worlds organized religions, are no exception to this rule. They do good, but not gratuitously. The price paid varies according to the nature of the individual worshippers. Some of these choose to wallow in emotionalism and, becoming idolaters of feeling, pay for the good of their religion by a spiritual evil that may actually outweigh that good. Others resist the temptation to self-enhancement and go forward to the mortification of self, including the selfs emotional side, and to the worship of God rather than of their own feelings and fancies about God. The further they go in this direction, the less they have to pay for the good which emotionalism brought them and which, but for emotionalism, most of them might never have had.
1.22 - The Necessity of the Spiritual Transformation, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We have then to return to the pursuit of an ancient secret which man, as a race, has seen only obscurely and followed after lamely, has indeed understood only with his surface mind and not in its heart of meaning, and yet in following it lies his social no less than his individual salvation,the ideal of the kingdom of God, the secret of the reign of the Spirit over mind and life and body. It is because they have never quite lost hold of this secret, never disowned it in impatience for a lesser victory, that the older Asiatic nations have survived so persistently and can now, as if immortal, raise their faces towards a new dawn; for they have fallen asleep, but they have not perished. It is true that they have for a time failed in life, where the European nations who trusted to the flesh and the intellect have succeeded; but that success, speciously complete but only for a time, has always turned into a catastrophe. Still Asia had failed in life, she had fallen in the dust, and even if the dust in which she was lying was sacred, as the modern poet of Asia has declared,though the sacredness may be doubted,still the dust is not the proper place for man, nor is to lie prostrate in it his right human attitude. Asia temporarily failed not because she followed after things spiritual, as some console themselves by saying,as if the spirit could be at all a thing of weakness or a cause of weakness,but because she did not follow after the spirit sufficiently, did not learn how entirely to make it the master of life. Her mind either made a gulf and a division between life and the Spirit or else rested in a compromise between them and accepted as final socio-religious systems founded upon that compromise. So to rest is perilous; for the call of the Spirit more than any other demands that we shall follow it always to the end, and the end is neither a divorce and departure nor a compromise, but a conquest of all by the spirit and that reign of the seekers after perfection which, in the Hindu religious symbol, the last Avatar comes to accomplish.
This truth it is important to note, for mistakes made on the path are often even more instructive than the mistakes made by a turning aside from the path. As it is possible to superimpose the intellectual, ethical or aesthetic life or the sum of their motives upon the vital and physical nature, to be satisfied with a partial domination or a compromise, so it is possible to superimpose the spiritual life or some figure of strength or ascendency of spiritual ideas and motives on the mental, vital and physical nature and either to impoverish the latter, to impoverish the vital and physical existence and even to depress the mental as well in order to give the spiritual an easier domination, or else to make a compromise and leave the lower being to its pasture on condition of its doing frequent homage to the spiritual existence, admitting to a certain extent, greater or less, its influence and formally acknowledging it as the last state and the finality of the human being. This is the most that human society has ever done in the past, and though necessarily that must be a stage of the journey, to rest there is to miss the heart of the matter, the one thing needful. Not a humanity leading its ordinary life, what is now its normal round, touched by spiritual influences, but a humanity aspiring whole-heartedly to a law that is now abnormal to it until its whole life has been elevated into spirituality, is the steep way that lies before man towards his perfection and the transformation that it has to achieve.
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
A question was asked regarding the Avatars of Vishnu.
M.: Let us know our own Avatara; the knowledge of the other Avataras will follow.
Again there was a question on Isvara.
1.24 - RITUAL, SYMBOL, SACRAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
If sacramental rites are constantly repeated in a spirit of faith and devotion, a more or less enduring effect is produced in the psychic medium, in which individual minds ba the and from which they have, so to speak, been crystallized out into personalities more or less fully developed, according to the more or less perfect development of the bodies with which they are associated. (Of this psychic medium an eminent contemporary philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad, has written, in an essay on telepathy contri buted to the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, as follows. We must therefore consider seriously the possibility that a persons experience initiates more or less permanent modifications of structure or process in something which is neither his mind nor his brain. There is no reason to suppose that this substratum would be anything to which possessive adjectives, such as mine and yours and his, could properly be applied, as they can be to minds and animated bothes. Modifications which have been produced in the substratum by certain of Ms past experience are activated by Ns present experiences or interests, and they become cause factors in producing or modifying Ns later experiences.) Within this psychic medium or non-personal substratum of individual minds, something which we may think of metaphorically as a vortex persists as an independent existence, possessing its own derived and secondary objectivity, so that, wherever the rites are performed, those whose faith and devotion are sufficiently intense actually discover something out there, as distinct from the subjective something in their own imaginations. And so long as this projected psychic entity is nourished by the faith and love of its worshippers, it will possess, not merely objectivity, but power to get peoples prayers answered. Ultimately, of course, I alone am the giver, in the sense that all this happens in accordance with the divine laws governing the universe in its psychic and spiritual, no less than in its material, aspects. Nevertheless, the devas (those imperfect forms under which, because of their own voluntary ignorance, men worship the divine Ground) may be thought of as relatively independent powers. The primitive notion that the gods feed on the sacrifices made to them is simply the crude expression of a profound truth. When their worship falls off, when faith and devotion lose their intensity, the devas sicken and finally the. Europe is full of old shrines, whose saints and Virgins and relics have lost the power and the second-hand psychic objectivity which they once possessed. Thus, when Chaucer lived and wrote, the deva called Thomas Becket was giving to any Canterbury pilgrim, who had sufficient faith, all the boons he could ask for. This once-powerful deity is now stone-dead; but there are still certain churches in the West, certain mosques and temples in the East, where even the most irreligious and un-psychic tourist cannot fail to be aware of some intensely numinous presence. It would, of course, be a mistake to imagine that this presence is the presence of that God who is a Spirit and must be worshipped in spirit; it is rather the psychic presence of mens thoughts and feelings about the particular, limited form of God, to which they have resorted according to the impulse of their inborn naturethoughts and feelings projected into objectivity and haunting the sacred place in the same way as thoughts and feeling of another kind, but of equal intensity, haunt the scenes of some past suffering or crime. The presence in these consecrated buildings, the presence evoked by the performance of traditional rites, the presence inherent in a sacramental object, name or formulaall these are real presences, but real presences, not of God or the Avatar, but of something which, though it may reflect the divine Reality, is yet less and other than it.
Dulcis Jesu memoria
1.24 - The Advent and Progress of the Spiritual Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This at least is the highest hope, the possible destiny that opens out before the human view, and it is a possibility which the progress of the human mind seems on the way to redevelop. If the light that is being born increases, if the number of individuals who seek to realise the possibility in themselves and in the world grows large and they get nearer the right way, then the Spirit who is here in man, now a concealed divinity, a developing light and power, will descend more fully as the Avatar of a yet unseen and unguessed Godhead from above into the soul of mankind and into the great individualities in whom the light and power are the strongest. There will then be fulfilled the change that will prepare the transition of human life from its present limits into those larger and purer horizons; the earthly evolution will have taken its grand impetus upward and accomplished the revealing step in a divine progression of which the birth of thinking and aspiring man from the animal nature was only an obscure preparation and a far-off promise.
***
1.25 - ADVICE TO PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
And Thou the ten Avatars: this time, save me Thou must!
The moving and the unmoving, the gross and the subtle, art Thou;
1.25 - SPIRITUAL EXERCISES, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
If exercises in concentration, repetitions of the divine name, or meditations on Gods attri butes or on imagined scenes in the life of saint or Avatar help those who make use of them to come to selflessness, openness and (to use Augustine Bakers phrase) that love of the pure divinity, which makes possible the souls union with the Godhead, then such spiritual exercises are wholly good and desirable. If they have other resultswell, the tree is known by its fruits.
Benet of Canfield, the English Capuchin who wrote The Rule of Perfection and was the spiritual guide of Mme. Acarie and Cardinal Brulle, hints in his treatise at a method by which concentration on an image may be made to lead up to imageless contemplation, blind beholding, love of the pure divinity. The period of mental prayer is to begin with intense concentration on a scene of Christs passion; then the mind is, as it were, to abolish this imagination of the sacred humanity and to pass from it to the formless and attri buteless Godhead which that humanity incarnates. A strikingly similar exercise is described in the Bardo Thdol or Tibetan Book of the Dead (a work of quite extraordinary profundity and beauty, now fortunately available in translation with a valuable introduction and notes by Dr. Evans-Wentz).
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
A question was asked regarding the Avatars of Vishnu.
M.: Let us know our own Avatara; the knowledge of the other Avataras will follow.
Again there was a question on Isvara.
13.01 - A Centurys Salutation to Sri Aurobindo The Greatness of the Great, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is the cosmos that Sri Aurobindo has expressed, created in his consciousness and therefore in the consciousness of the cosmos itself. This transcendent formation the future is holding ready-made in the womb of the World-Purusha (or rather World-Prakriti) and the day is approaching when this new creation will manifest itself upon earth. The true truth of things is always there up somewhere in the Supremein the Parabrahmanfrom time sempiternal: the question is when and how to bring it down. He who does that is the Avatara, he who comes down and embodies it.
To recapitulate: Impersonalisation involves or culminates in divinisation which means the descent of the Divine, the supreme Person, from above or His emergence from within (both mean the same thing), with the result that all other inferior or external formulations are subsumed, integrated into the supreme Reality forming one single body and personality.
1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
D.: The Avatars are said to be more glorious than the self-realised jnanis. Maya does not affect them from birth; divine powers are manifest; new religions are started; and so on.
M.:
--
How is an Avatar different from a Jnani; or how can there be an Avatar as distinct from the universe?
D.: The eye (chakshu) is said to be the repository (ayatana) of all forms; so the ear (srotra) is of all sounds, etc. The one Chaitanya operates as all; no miracles are possible without the aid of the
--
The distinction between Avataras and Jnanis is absurd.
Knower of Brahman becomes Brahman only is otherwise contradicted.
--
Sankara, being the Avatar of Siva, was full of compassion for fallen beings.
He wanted all of them to realise their blissful Self. He could not reach them all with His Silence. So he composed the Dakshinamurti stotra in the form of a hymn so that people might read it and understand the Truth.
--
D.: Mind, Heart are all Avatars of Perumal (Vaishnavite term for
incarnate God).
--
M.: Surrender the mind to Perumal (God). His Avatar cannot remain
independent of Him. Render unto Him what is His and be happy.
1.450 - 1.500 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
D.: The Avatars are said to be more glorious than the self-realised jnanis. Maya does not affect them from birth; divine powers are manifest; new religions are started; and so on.
M.:
--
How is an Avatar different from a Jnani; or how can there be an Avatar as distinct from the universe?
D.: The eye (chakshu) is said to be the repository (ayatana) of all forms; so the ear (srotra) is of all sounds, etc. The one Chaitanya operates as all; no miracles are possible without the aid of the
--
The distinction between Avataras and Jnanis is absurd.
"Knower of Brahman becomes Brahman only" is otherwise contradicted.
1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Sankara, being the Avatar of Siva, was full of compassion for fallen beings.
He wanted all of them to realise their blissful Self. He could not reach them all with His Silence. So he composed the Dakshinamurti stotra in the form of a hymn so that people might read it and understand the Truth.
17.09 - Victory to the World Master, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
(The Ten Avataras of Gita Govinda)
In the waters of the Great Deluge, serving as a boat
1929-06-09 - Nature of religion - Religion and the spiritual life - Descent of Divine Truth and Force - To be sure of your religion, country, family-choose your own - Religion and numbers, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Each time that something of the Divine Truth and the Divine Force comes down to manifest upon earth, some change is effected in the earths atmosphere. In the descent, those who are receptive are awakened to some inspiration from it, some touch, some beginning of sight. If they were capable of holding and expressing rightly what they receive, they would say, A great force has come down; I am in contact with it and what I understand of it, I will tell you. But most of them are not capable of that, because they have small minds. They get illumined, possessed, as it were, and cry, I have the Divine Truth, I possess it whole and entire. There are now upon earth at least two dozen Christs, if not as many Buddhas; India alone can supply any number of Avatars, not to speak of minor manifestations. But in this way, the whole thing begins to look grotesque; but if you see what is behind, it is not so stupid as it seems at the first glance. The truth is that the human personality has come in contact with some Being, some Power, and under the influence of education and tradition calls it Buddha or Christ or by any other familiar name. It is difficult to affirm that it was Buddha himself or the very Christ with whom there was the contact, but none can assert either that the inspiration did not come from that which inspired the Christ or the Buddha. These human vessels may very well have received the inspiration from some such source. If they were modest and simple, they would be content to say that much and no more; they would say, I have received this inspiration from such and such a Great One, but instead they proclaim, I am that Great One. I knew one who affirmed that he was both Christ and Buddha! He had received something, had experienced a truth, had seen the Divine Presence in himself and in others. But the experience was too strong for him, the truth too great. He became half crazy and the next day went out into the streets, proclaiming that in him Christ and Buddha had become one.
One Divine Consciousness is here working through all these beings, preparing its way through all these manifestations. At this day it is here at work upon earth more powerfully than it has ever been before. There are some who receive its touch in some way, or to some degree; but what they receive they distort, they make their own thing out of it. Others feel the touch but cannot bear the force and go mad under the pressure. But some have the capacity to receive and the strength to bear, and it is they who will become the vessels of the full knowledge, the chosen instruments and agents.
1951-05-11 - Mahakali and Kali - Avatar and Vibhuti - Sachchidananda behind all states of being - The power of will - receiving the Divine Will, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:1951-05-11 - Mahakali and Kali - Avatar and Vibhuti - Sachchidananda behind all states of being - The power of will - receiving the Divine Will
author class:The Mother
--
What is the difference between an Avatar and a Vibhuti?
We said the other day that Vibhutis are aspects, qualities (what are called in occultism emanations) of a being. They are like certain forces, powers, qualities, attributes which are put in contact with an outer forma physical form, for instance and which manifest themselves through this form. This may be a human form. The Avatar (at least when understood in the true sense) is the incarnation upon earth of the supreme Truth. Now, many meanings are given to this word. There is even a word Avatar in French which has a very special meaning! It is said that an adventurer has many Avatars, that is, he changes his appearance, personality, occupation. But originally (as it is said in the Gita, for example) when the Supreme decides to manifest himself upon earth for a particular reason and takes an earthly body, it is said that he is an Avatar. He may take many successive bodies according to the needs and circumstances, but it is always what could be called the central being which takes an earthly body. That is what is called an Avatar. I thought you knew that. Sri Aurobindo has explained this in many places.
Imperial Maheshwari is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will.1 Is there a plane of will, as there is a mental plane, a vital plane, etc.?
1953-11-18, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The great work of the Avatar is to manifest the Divine Grace upon earth. To be a disciple of the Avatar is to become an instrument of the Divine Grace. The Mother is the great dispensatrixthrough identityof the Divine Grace with a perfect knowledgethrough identityof the absolute mechanism of Universal Justice.
And through her mediation each movement of sincere and confident aspiration towards the Divine calls down in response the intervention of the Grace.
1953-12-09, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, he is the Avatar. He is the incarnation of the Supreme.
Words of the Mother, CWM Vol. 14, p. 52.
1956-06-06 - Sign or indication from books of revelation - Spiritualised mind - Stages of sadhana - Reversal of consciousness - Organisation around central Presence - Boredom, most common human malady, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother concentrates for a moment, opens the book and reads silently.) This is the problem you are interested in: the purpose of the Avatar:
I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness.
This is where I put my paper-knife. He adds this:
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.
Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 22, p. 408
I dont know if this is a problem which you have been thinking about, but anyway this is what has come in reply. It was obviously for someone who had asked him: The Avatar comes and opens the Way, but if there is nobody to follow him, what happens? Sri Aurobindo says: either his conception is wrong or his life is quite futile. That is to say, if a divine Power comes on earth to open the Way to a higher realisation and it so happens that there is nobody on earth to follow the path, it is quite obvious that it was useless for him to come. But as a matter of fact, I dont think it has ever happened.
Let me see the end of the sentence. Yes, it is in reply to someone who said:
There is no way and no possibility of following it, and that all the struggles and sufferings of the Avatar are unreal and all humbug
That well-known English word! This person declared that there was
--
Such a conception makes nonsense of the whole idea of Avatarhood; and there is then no reason in it, no necessity in it, no meaning in it.
He adds (Mother laughs):
--
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 the Avatar has any meaning.
Letters on Yoga, pp. 408-09
1956-08-15 - Protection, purification, fear - Atmosphere at the Ashram on Darshan days - Darshan messages - Significance of 15-08 - State of surrender - Divine Grace always all-powerful - Assumption of Virgin Mary - SA message of 1947-08-15, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes. And he has also said it himself. The Assumption of the Virgin Mary is the divinisation of Matter. And this is the aim of the last Avatar.
***
1957-09-04 - Sri Aurobindo, an eternal birth, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And finally, from the purely spiritual point of view, it could be said that it is the birth of the Eternal on Earth. For each time the Avatar takes a physical form it is the birth of the Eternal himself on Earth.
All that, contained in two words: eternal birth.
1957-10-02 - The Mind of Light - Statues of the Buddha - Burden of the past, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo has said that the Buddha was an Avatar.
We have said this several times already.
1958-05-28 - The Avatar, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:1958-05-28 - The Avatar
class:chapter
--
Today I have been asked to speak to you about the Avatar.
The first thing I have to say is that Sri Aurobindo has written on this subject and the person who has asked me the question would do well to begin by reading what Sri Aurobindo has written.
--
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.
--
And it will go on multiplying and intensifying until the entire universe becomes the total Avatar of the Supreme.
***
1960 06 16, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 Lords aspect of love.
The death of Caesar marked a decisive change in the history of Rome and the countries dependent on her. It was therefore an important event in the history of Europe.
1962 05 24, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That is to say, however great, however conscious, however powerful he may be, one Avatar cannot by himself realise the supramental life on earth. It is either a group in time, extending over a period of time, or a group spread out in spaceperhaps both that are indispensable for this Realisation. I am convinced of it.
The individual can give the impulsion, indicate the path, walk on the path himself that is to say, show the path by realising it himself but he cannot fulfil. The fulfilment obeys certain group laws which are the expression of some aspect of Eternity and Infinitynaturally, it is all the same Being! They are not different individuals or different personalities, it is all the same Being. And it is all the same Being expressing Himself in a way which for us becomes a body, a group, a collectivity.
1969 09 23, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
157Thus said Ramakrishna and thus said Vivekananda. Yes, but let me know also the truths which the Avatar cast not forth into speech and the prophet has omitted from his teachings. There will always be more in God than the thought of man has ever conceived or the tongue of man has ever uttered.
158What was Ramakrishna? God manifest in a human being; but behind there is God in His infinite impersonality and His universal Personality. And what was Vivekananda? A radiant glance from the eye of Shiva; but behind him is the divine gaze from which he came and Shiva himself and Brahma and Vishnu and OM all-exceeding.
Will the Avatars still need to take birth on earth once the supramental consciousness is firmly established?
This question will be easier to answer when the supermind is manifested in living beings on earth.
I had always heard that Sri Aurobindo was the last Avatar; but he is probably the last Avatar in a human bodyafterwards, we do not know.
23 September 1969
1969 12 11, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Rama was an Avatar or incarnation of Vishnu; Ravana was a Titan (Asura), mortal enemy of Rama.
***
1970 02 16, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
339Tangled is the way of works in the world. When Rama the Avatar murdered Vali,1 or Krishna, who was God himself, assassinated, to liberate his nation, his tyrant uncle Kansa, who shall say whether they did good or did evil? But this we can feel, that they acted divinely.
This is a supremely elegant way of saying that all notions of good and evil are exclusively human and are worthless in the eyes of the Divine.
1f.lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
into accepting him as an Avatar of the long-dead Curwen. Such things
had been known before, and on the same basis the hard-headed doctors
--
his travels and who plainly claimed to be survivals or Avatars of
Curwens old Salem colleagues; that he was regarding himself as the
--
or his Avatar, had eaten their heads off, so that now Dr. Allen did
not keep them in shape. And if not in shape, how save as the salts to
--
Curwen, and palpably regarded himself as an Avatar of the bygone
necromancer. And now from a fresh and unknown source had come a message
1f.lovecraft - The Haunter of the Dark, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
What am I afraid of? Is it not an Avatar of Nyarlathotep, who in
antique and shadowy Khem even took the form of man? I remember
1.kbr - Poem 7, #Songs of Kabir, #Kabir, #Sufism
They believe in ten Avatars; but no Avatar can be the Infinite Spirit, for he suffers the results of his deeds:
The Supreme One must be other than this.
1.rb - Waring, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar,
--
In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
[Mr. Alfred Domett, C.M.G., author of
1.whitman - Salut Au Monde, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by Avatars in
human forms;
1.whitman - So Long, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
I receive now again of my many translationsfrom my Avataras
ascendingwhile others doubtless await me;
2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: Most probably. In the Vishnu Purana, Buddha is regarded as an Avatar of Vishnu who came to deceive the Asuras. He is not referred to by name but is called Mayamoha. The reference to Buddha is very clear; it repeats "Buddhyaswa! Buddhyaswa." This Purana is a fine work.
18 JANUARY 1939
2.01 - The Yoga and Its Objects, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Lila or the Yoga; the reason for which the Avatars descend is to raise up man again and again, developing in him a higher and ever higher humanity, a greater and yet greater development of divine being, bringing more and more of heaven again and again upon the earth until our toil is done, our work accomplished and
Sachchidananda fulfilled in all even here, even in this material universe. Small is his work, even if he succeeds, who labours for his own salvation or the salvation of a few; infinitely great is his, even if he fail or succeed only partially or for a season, who lives only to bring about peace of soul, joy, purity and perfection among all mankind.
2.02 - On Letters, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
A disciple from Madras sent a copy of the Theosophist. It contained lectures and the latest declaration by Mrs. Besant about Krishnamurty's Avatarhood and the descent of the world-teacher in him.
Disciple: Did you read the Theosophist?
--
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, in their own way. But if a descent of a great Truth is to take place there must be a very solid preparation to hold it. That is a more important work than holding up somebody as the Avatar.
22 FEBRUARY 1926
--
Disciple: They even want to use physical force to make others accept you as the Guru and Avatar. (Laughter)
You know what happened to X, who is a friend of Y when he came here.
--
Sri Aurobindo: It is not always necessary to have the experience in order to believe in a thing. There are many people who believe on faith before they realise. But the difficulty comes when you want to force your faith on others. One can say: "I believe that so and so is an Avatar." But one can't say: "If you don't believe in him I will beat you." (Laughter) Then there are others who want to go into the Yoga with their families. There are husbands who get angry with their wives because they can't take to Yoga with them. (Laughter)
Disciple: They want to go to heaven with their family like Yudhishthira.
2.02 - THE DURGA PUJA FESTIVAL, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
And Thou the ten Avatars; this time save me Thou must!
With flowers and vilwa-leaves did Yaoda worship Thee, And Thou didst bless her by placing Krishna, the Child, in her arms.
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
Himself in His Avatars, Buddha, Rama, Srikrishna, has given us
the highest types of this selfless divine energy and it is therefore
--
Jesus was not the Christ, not the Son of God, not the Avatar
who dared to say "I and my Father are one", but a poor weak
--
saint or Avatar, he will harmonize all three, but still with one
predominant over the others and striking the main note of his
2.04 - The Secret of Secrets, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Teacher has had in view all along and therefore insisted on the sacrifice of works, the recognition of the Supreme as the master of our works and the doctrine of the Avatar and the divine birth, has yet been at first kept subordinate to the primary necessity of a quietistic liberation. Only the truths which lead to spiritual calm, detachment, equality and oneness, in a word, to the perception and becoming of the immutable self, have been fully developed and given their largest amplitude of power and significance. The other great and necessary truth, its complement, has been left in a certain obscurity of a lesser or relative light; it has been hinted at constantly, but not as yet developed. Now in these successive chapters it is being rapidly released into expression.
Throughout Krishna, the Avatar, the Teacher, the charioteer of the human soul in the world-action, has been preparing the revelation of the secret of himself, Nature's deepest secret. He has kept one note always sounding across his preparatory strain and insistently coming in as a warning and prelude of the larger ultimate harmony of his integral Truth. That note was the idea of a supreme Godhead which dwells within man and Nature,
306
2.05 - Renunciation, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For the Sadhaka of an integral Yoga none of these reasons are valid. With weakness and selfishness, however spiritual in their guise or trend, he can have no dealings; a divine strength and courage and a divine compassion and helpfulness are the very stuff of that which he would be, they are that very nature of the Divine which he would take upon himself as a robe of spiritual light and beauty. The revolvings of the great wheel bring to him no sense of terror or giddiness; he rises above it in hia soul and knows from above their divine law and their divine purpose. The difficulty of harmonising the divine life with human living, of being in God and yet living in man is the very difficulty that he is set here to solve and not to shun. He has learned that the joy, the peace and the deliverance are an imperfect crown and no real possession if they do not form a state secure in itself, inalienable to the soul, not dependent on aloofness and inaction but firm in the storm and the race and the battle, unsullied whether by the joy of the world or by its suffering. The ecstasy of the divine embrace will not abandon him because he obeys the impulse of divine love for God in humanity; or if it seems to draw back from him for a while, he knows by experience that it is to try and test him still farther so that some imperfection in his own way of meeting it may fall away from him. Personal salvation he does not seek except as a necessity for the human fulfilment and because he who is himself in bonds cannot easily free others, -- though to God nothing is impossible; for a heaven of personal joys he has no hankerings even as a hell of personal sufferings has for him no terrors. If there is an opposition between the spiritual life and that of the world, it is that gulf which he is here to bridge, that opposition which he is here to change into a harmony. If the world is ruled by the flesh and the devil, all the more reason that the children of Immortality should be here to conquer it for God and the Spirit. If life is an insanity, then there are so many million souls to whom there must be brought the light of divine reason; if a dream, yet is it real within itself to so many dreamers who must be brought either to dream nobler dreams or to awaken; or if a lie, then the truth has to be given to the deluded. Nor, if it be said that only by the luminous example of escape from the world can we help the world, shall we accept that dogma, since the contrary example of great Avataras is there to show that not only by rejecting the life of the world as it is can we help, but also and more by accepting and uplifting it. And if it is a play of the All-Existence, then we may well consent to play out our part in it with grace and courage, well take delight in the game along with our divine Playmate.
But, most of all, the view we have taken of the world forbids the renunciation of world-existence so long as we can be anything to God and man in their working-out of its purposes. We regard the world not as an invention of the devil or a self-delusion of the soul, but as a manifestation of the Divine, although as yet a partial because a progressive and evolutionary manifestation. Therefore for us renunciation of life cannot be the goal of life nor rejection of the world the object for which the world was created. We seek to realise our unity with God, but for us that realisation involves a complete and absolute recognition of our unity with man and we cannot cut the two asunder. To use Christian language, the Son of God is also the Son of Man and both elements are necessary to the complete Christhood; or to use an Indian form of thought, the divine Narayana of whom the universe is only one ray is revealed and fulfilled in man; the complete man is Nara-Narayana and in that completeness he symbolises the supreme mystery of existence.
--
We see in the teaching of the Gita how subtle a thing is the freedom from egoism which is demanded. Arjuna is driven to fight by the egoism of strength, the egoism of the Kshatriya; he is turned from the battle by the contrary egoism of weakness, the shrinking, the spirit of disgust, the false pity that overcomes the mind, the nervous being and the senses, -- not that divine compassion which streng thens the arm and clarifies the knowledge. But this weakness comes garbed as renunciation, as virtue : "Better the life of the beggar than to taste these blood-stained enjoyments; I desire not the rule of all the earth, no, nor the kingdom of the gods." How foolish of the Teacher, we might say, not to confirm this mood, to lose this sublime chance of adding one more great soul to the army of Sannyasins, one more shining example before the world of a holy renunciation. But the Guide sees otherwise, the Guide who is not to be deceived by words; "This is weakness and delusion and egoism that speak in thee. Behold the Self, open thy eyes to the knowledge, purify thy soul of egoism." And afterwards? "Fight, conquer, enjoy a wealthy kingdom." Or to take another example from ancient Indian tradition. It was egoism, it would seem, that drove Rama, the Avatara, to raise an army and destroy a nation in order to recover his wife from the King of Lanka. But would it have been a lesser egoism to drape himself in indifference and misusing the formal terms of the knowledge to say, "I have no wife, no enemy, no desire; these are illusions of the senses; let me cultivate the Brahman-knowledge and let Ravana do what he will with the daughter of Janaka"?
The criterion is within, as the Gita insists. It is to have the soul free from craving and attachment, but free from the attachment to inaction as well as from the egoistic impulse to action, free from attachment to the forms of virtue as well as from the attraction to sin. It is to be rid of "I-ness" and "my-ness" so as to live in the one Self and act in the one Self; to reject the egoism of refusing to work through the individual centre of the universal Being as well as the egoism of serving the individual mind and life and body to the exclusion of others. To live in the Self is not to dwell for oneself alone in the Infinite immersed and oblivious of all things in that ocean of impersonal self-delight; but it is to live as the Self and in the Self equal in this embodiment and all embodiments and beyond all embodiments. This is the integral knowledge.
2.05 - The Divine Truth and Way, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But also since this action is the action of the divine Nature, sva prakr.tih., and the divine Nature can never be separate from the Divine, in everything she creates the Godhead must be immanent. That is a relation which is not the whole truth of his being, but neither is it a truth which we can at all afford to ignore. He is lodged in the human body. Those who ignore his presence, who despise because of its masks the divinity in the human form, are bewildered and befooled by the appearances of Nature and they cannot realise that there is the secret Godhead within, whether conscious in humanity as in the Avatar or veiled by his Maya.
Those who are great-souled, who are not shut up in their idea of ego, who open themselves to the indwelling Divinity, know that the secret spirit in man which appears here bounded by the limited human nature, is the same ineffable splendour which we worship beyond as the supreme Godhead. They become aware of the highest status of him in which he is master and lord of all existences and yet see that in each existence he is still the supreme Deity and the indwelling Godhead. All the rest is a selflimitation for the manifesting of the variations of Nature in the cosmos. They see too that as it is his Nature which has become all that is in the universe, everything here is in its inner fact nothing but one Divine, all is Vasudeva, and they worship him not only as the supreme Godhead beyond, but here in the world, in his oneness and in every separate being. They see this truth and in this truth they live and act; him they adore, live, serve both as the Transcendent of things and as God in the world and as the Godhead in all that is, serve him with works of sacrifice, seek him out by knowledge, see nothing else but him everywhere and lift their whole being to him both in its self and in all its inward and outward nature. This they know to be the large and perfect way; for it is the way of the whole truth of the one supreme and universal and individual Godhead.4
2.06 - Works Devotion and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It ignores the divinity within itself and cannot see it in other men, and even though the Divine manifest himself in humanity as Avatar and Vibhuti, it is still blind and ignores or despises the veiled Godhead, avajananti mam mud.ha manus.m tanum asritam. And if it ignores him in the living creature, still less can it see him in the objective world on which it looks out from its prison of separative ego through the barred windows of the finite mind. It does not see God in the universe; it knows nothing of the supreme Divinity who is master of these planes full of various existences and dwells within them; it is blind to the vision by which all in the world grows divine and the soul itself awakens to its own inherent divinity and becomes of the Godhead, godlike. What it does see readily, and to that it attaches itself with passion, is only the life of the ego hunting after finite things for their own sake and for the satisfaction of the earthly hunger of the intellect, body, senses. Those who have given themselves up too entirely to this outward drive of the mentality, fall into the hands of the lower nature, cling to it and make it their foundation. They become a prey to the nature of the Rakshasa in man who sacrifices everything to a violent and inordinate satisfaction of his separate vital ego and makes that the dark godhead of his will and thought and action and enjoyment. Or they are hurried onward in a fruitless cycle by the arrogant self-will, self-sufficient thought, self-regarding act, self-satisfied and yet ever unsatisfied intellectualised appetite of enjoyment of the Asuric nature. But to live persistently in this separative ego-consciousness and make that the centre of all our activities is to miss altogether the true self-awareness. The charm it throws upon the misled instruments of the spirit is an enchantment that chains life to a profitless circling. All its hope, action, knowledge are vain things when judged by the divine and eternal standard, for it shuts out the great hope, excludes the liberating action, banishes the illuminating knowledge. It is a false knowledge that sees the phenomenon but misses the truth of the phenomenon, a blind hope that chases after the transient but misses the eternal, a sterile action whose every
Works, Devotion and Knowledge
2.07 - The Supreme Word of the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To make it perfectly and indisputably clear that this is the supreme and entire truth of his teaching, this the integral knowledge which he had promised to reveal, the divine Avatar declares, in a brief reiteration of the upshot of all that he has been saying, that this and no other is his supreme word, paramam vacah..
"Again hearken to my supreme word," bhuya eva sr.n.u me paramam vacah.. This supreme word of the Gita is, we find, first the explicit and unmistakable declaration that the highest
2.08 - God in Power of Becoming, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Arjuna accepts the entire knowledge that has thus been given to him by the divine Teacher. His mind is already delivered from its doubts and seekings; his heart, turned now from the outward aspect of the world, from its baffling appearance to its supreme sense and origin and its inner realities, is already released from sorrow and affliction and touched with the ineffable gladness of a divine revelation. The language which he is made to use in voicing his acceptance is such as to emphasise and insist once again on the profound integrality of this knowledge and its all-embracing finality and fullness. He accepts first the Avatar, the Godhead in man who is speaking to him as the supreme
God in Power of Becoming
2.1.01 - God The One Reality, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
& an extra-cosmic. We may move towards any of these ultimate affirmations, but he who accepts them all & harmonises them, is the highest human expression of Parabrahman. He is the Avatar or the divine Unit.
All being is the Eternal, the Infinite, the Divine; there is nothing beyond the Eternal and Infinite, neither is there anything else
2.1.02 - Combining Work, Meditation and Bhakti, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In spite of your disclaimer you practically come to the conclusion that all my nonsense about integral Yoga and karma being as much a way to realisation as jnana and bhakti is either a gleaming chimaera or practicable only by Avatars or else a sheer laborious superfluitysince one can bump straight into the Divine through the open door of Bhakti or sweep majestically in on him by the easy high road of meditation; so why this scramble through the jungle of karma by which nobody ever reached anywhere? The old Yogas are true, are they not? Then why a new-fangled, more difficult Yoga with unheard talk about the supramental and God knows what else? There can be no answer to that; for I can only answer by a repetition of the statement of my own knowledge and experience that is what I have done in todays answer to Xand that amounts only to a perverse obstinacy in riding my gleaming and dazzling chimaera and forcing my nuisance of a superfluity on a world weary of itself and anxious to get a short easy cut to the Divine. Unfortunately, I dont believe in short cutsat any rate none ever led me where I wanted to go. However, let it rest there.
I have never disputed the truth of the old Yogas I have myself had the experience of Vaishnava Bhakti and of Nirvana in the Brahman; I recognise their truth in their own field and for their own purpose the truth of their experience so far as it goesthough I am in no way bound to accept the truth of the mental philosophies founded on the experience. I similarly find that my Yoga is true in its own fielda larger field, as I think and for its own purpose. The purpose of the old is to get away from life to the Divineso, obviously, let us drop karma. The purpose of the new is to reach the Divine and bring the fullness of what is gained into life for that, Yoga by works is indispensable. It seems to me that there is no mystery about that or anything to perplex anybody it is rational and inevitable. Only you say that the thing is impossible; but that is what is said about everything before it is done.
21.03 - The Double Ladder, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So we see in the system of creation two lines of growth or development or expression - a double ladder, one mounting up from below and the other coming down from above. They are more like, they have been described as, genealogical trees, the upward rising tree is the tree of evolution starting from matter, the root substance, growing gradually into the trunk, its multiple branches and sub-branches spreading up and abroad, each new shoot branching out is represented by the advent of a new form of being or species or creature. We all know the gradations from the unformed, ill-formed types to better and better formed types till we reach man. On the other hand, the other tree is the Vedic Ashwattha tree that has its roots up in the supreme Space and sends down gradually its branches below. The unity at the origin gradually fissuring, dividing and subdividing and multiplying itself, at the same time the multiplied products becoming more and more distinct and definite, even rigid and limited, although more and more concrete and firm in form and function. In this line of devolution, the forms or the formations and emanations that have appeared and manifested, I have named in a generic way, gods. Their function is to infuse themselves wherever needed into the formations that have been prepared by the upward surge of the evolutionary movement from below and thus help fulfil that urge. Each type of divinity at the appropriate stage and occasion comes forward, embodies itself so to say, in the external creative movement. We know this process, although somewhat symbolically described, in the famous song of Jayadeva describing the Avataras.
The Gods, I have said, are types, self-existent realities, models for new creations which are gradually coming forward in the material world, which are to be directed and organised.
2.10 - The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What thou hast to see, replies the Avatar, the human eye cannot grasp, - for the human eye can see only the outward appearances of things or make out of them separate symbol forms, each of them significant of only a few aspects of the eternal Mystery. But there is a divine eye, an inmost seeing, by which the supreme Godhead in his Yoga can be beheld and that eye I now give to thee. Thou shalt see, he says, my hundreds and thousands of divine forms, various in kind, various in shape and hue; thou shalt see the Adityas and the Rudras and the
Maruts and the Aswins; thou shalt see many wonders that none has beheld; thou shalt see today the whole world related and unified in my body and whatever else thou willest to behold.
2.11 - The Vision of the World-Spirit - The Double Aspect, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But this supreme universal Being has lived here before him with the human face, in the mortal body, the divine Man, the embodied Godhead, the Avatar, and till now he has not known him. He has seen the humanity only and has treated the Divine as
Gita, XI. 35-55.
--
First, it is borne in upon him that in the body of this son of Man who moved beside him as a transient creature upon earth and sat by his side and lay with him on the same couch and ate with him in the banquet and was the object of jest and careless word, actor in war and council and common things, in this figure of mortal man was all the time something great, concealed, of tremendous significance, a Godhead, an Avatar, a universal Power, a One Reality, a supreme Transcendence. To this occult divinity in which all the significance of man and his long race is wrapped and from which all world-existence receives its inner meaning of ineffable greatness, he had been blind. Now only he sees the universal
Spirit in the individual frame, the Divine embodied in humanity, the transcendent Inhabitant of this symbol of Nature. He has seen now only this tremendous, infinite, immeasurable Reality of all these apparent things, this boundless universal Form which so exceeds every individual form and yet of whom each individual thing is a house for his dwelling. For that great Reality is equal
2.12 - On Miracles, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: Whenever the Avatar comes, does he not undergo a period of Sadhana to make it possible for humanity to attain a higher consciousness?
Sri Aurobindo: What exactly do you mean?
--
But that apart, the question is: "Do all Avatars come to raise the consciousness of humanity?" Those that come to do that work practise Sadhana.
Disciple: It seems Krishna had done Sadhana.
--
Sri Aurobindo: And what do you mean by the Purna Avatar?
Disciple: I mean complete embodiment of the Truth.
--
Disciple: An Avatar embodying the Sachchidananda Divine knowledge, infinite power and delight, etc. on the physical plane.
Sri Aurobindo: What do you mean by "embodying on the physical plane"?
--
Sri Aurobindo: If an Avatar came it was a promise. The Truth was not made a fact in Matter. I can say this, that it may have been tried but it was never made a dynamic factor in the world. The difficulty in bringing down the Truth is not so much in the upper physical layers as in gross Matter, in the most material plane.
The earth-law has to be changed and a new atmosphere is to be created. The question is not merely to have knowledge, power, etc., but to bring it down; the whole difficulty is to make it flow down.
--
Sri Aurobindo: India has the greatest chance because of her past and because the spiritual force is accumulated here. The real movement is from Above the Truth trying to come down. Then there is a general upheaval and the vague feeling of the Truth coming down the idea of Avatars, a general questioning of all sorts of ideas and also perversions of the same Truth. But all is due to that movement from Above.
But if India remains indifferent and sticks to old worn-out forms and refuses to move forward, or listen to the call of her soul, then the Truth may recede and try somewhere else. The Truth is not confined to India, it is not India's property. But there is very little chance of its succeeding elsewhere if it fails in India. It may make an unsuccessful, or partially successful, effort somewhere else, like Christianity, and then retire.
2.13 - On Psychology, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: It seems there are two purposes for which souls descend into human birth. Perfected souls come down with the Avatar to take part in his Lila and help the world with him.
Sri Aurobindo: That is not the ordinary birth. But the question can be why there is any birth at all. It is as good as asking: "Why was the world created?" Or you can ask: "Why are you and I here even though we are divine, and, in a sense, perfect?" We can only say that a soul assumes birth in order to manifest divine perfection, to manifest the Divine in life. That is all we can say.
--
Now suppose we supramentalise the body. In that case we can carry the full physical experience and return with the fullest physical, vital and mental force and manifest the Divine. That is what happens in the case of Avatars and Vibhutis, there is full memory of the past vital and mental experiences and in the case of the Avatar even of the physical experiences. If we can supramentalise the body it can be retained or thrown away at will icch mtyu.And even when the body is thrown away, when the process of manifestation is undertaken the soul has not to gather the physical and the vital and the mental from any of the formations of Universal Nature as in the case of ordinary souls. In case these the physical, the vital, and the mental are supramentalised the whole being is quite ready; one has simply to take up the ready formation and manifest the Divine.
Disciple: But what affords the material for the physical or the vital bodies?
--
Sri Aurobindo: There are two results possible: either he may go mad, or he may manifest some power and pretend to be a great Avatar.
(After a pause) It is easy to fall in this Yoga, but it is very difficult to reclimb.
2.14 - On Movements, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: There are according to newspaper reports fourteen Avatars in Bengal!
Sri Aurobindo: Rhad suggested a committee of all the Avatars. It is a nice idea, no doubt, but it may not turn out to be peaceful! (Laughter)
Disciple: He wanted to convert the Ide Nouvelle activities into something like an Indian academy.
2.15 - On the Gods and Asuras, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
There was then talk about another spiritual figure in Bengal. A disciple of this Guru, A, argued with a Pandit trying to prove the Avatarhood of the Guru. But the Pandit would not accept it. So when he slept at night on an iron bed-stead they applied an electric current and gave him shocks, to make him accept the Guru's Avatarhood!
Sri Aurobindo: But Ithought A always denied that he was an Avatar.
Disciple: I also thought so. But after a famous leader became his disciple there has been a change in him.
Sri Aurobindo: That is likely. Success may have turned his head. But I don't understand why people demand external signs of an Avatar. What has it to do with the external life?
Disciple: The idea is that there must be Aishwarya, divine Powers, in an Avatar.
Sri Aurobindo: Aishwarya is all right. But it is essentially a consciousness. What external sign can there be of an inner spiritual consciousness?
--
Again, you cannot expect work from the Avatar in the same way as from ordinary men. He can work directly upon universal forces and thus work on humanity without seemingly doing anything and nobody can know what work he has done. It would look ridiculous and also arrogant if I were to say that I worked for the success of the Russian Revolution for three years. Yet I was one of the influences that worked to make it a success. I also worked for Turkey.
Disciple: What about India?
--
Sri Aurobindo: Temporary occupation by the Higher Consciousness is quite possible. But I do not see the use if the Avatar has to make himself recognised like this by declarations or self-advertisements. Ramakrishna said this and I think everybody who had a great spiritual Power has also said it sometime or other. There is nothing impossible in it. Such temporary occupation Chaitanya also had and in that state he used to speak as the Lord.
1 JUNE 1926
--
The Avatar does not come to do that kind of work, i.e., the work of the Gods. He comes to uphold the Dharma. Some beings also come with him for the purpose.
In T s case the higher being marked him out as a possible instrument, but his own conditions were not ready. The internal being must be awake and conscious of the connection and the surface-being should not stand in the way then everything is all right. But if the surface-being is egoistic then there is a crash.
2.17 - December 1938, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: Because he wanted to be an Avatar and because he could not get rid of the attachment to his work. He is very unscrupulous.
Disciple: Has he some power?
--
The only Ashram in which there was great unity, I heard, was Thakur Dayanand's. There was a strong sense of unity among them. I wrote an article on the Avatar in Karmayogin. Mahendra Dey, a disciple of Dayanand's, seeing the article wrote to me, "He is the Avatar." He was very enthusiastic about it.
Disciple: Why are Gurus obliged to work with imperfect and defective people like us? Here the difficulty seems to be more keen.
--
Disciple: The materialist and scientist say that Yogis have done nothing for human happiness. Buddhas and Avatars have come and gone but the sufferings of humanity are just the same.
Sri Aurobindo: Did Avatars come to relieve the sufferings of humanity? It was only Buddha who showed the way of release from suffering. But his path was to get away from the world and enter into Nirvana. Does mankind follow him? And if they do not and cannot get rid of their suffering, it is not Buddha's fault!
Disciple: They say that by scientific discoveries and medical inventions they have been able to improve the condition of the world, e.g., by cholera injections, smallpox vaccinations, the death rate is reduced.
2.18 - January 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: They want to prove him to be as great an Avatar as Chaitanya.
Sri Aurobindo: Oh, there is competition between two Avatars? Did Harnath proclaim himself an Avatar?
Disciple: No, but he behaved like one. There are cases of very rapid conversions of people who have met him.
--
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. They regard Bala Gopal as the Delight aspect or the Delight-Consciousness; but there are older schools of Vaishnavism that regarded Krishna as an Avatar of Vishnu.
Disciple: Krishna of Kurukshetra is, I suppose, the one who gave the Gita.
--
Sri Aurobindo: Most probably. In the Vishnu Purna, Buddha is regarded an Avatar of Vishnu who came to deceive the Asuras. He is not referred to by that name but is called Mayamoha. The reference to Buddha is very clear; it repeats, "Budhyaswa! Budhyaswa!" It is a fine work.
Disciple: It is said that the Tantras are derived from the Vedas.
2.19 - THE MASTER AND DR. SARKAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Kli Thou art, and Tara, and Thou the Ultimate Prakriti; Thou art the Fish, the Turtle, the Boar, and all other Avatars Earth, water, air, and fire art Thou, and Thou the sky, O Mother of the Absolute!
The Samkhya, Patanjala, Mimamsaka, and Nyaya
2.20 - Nov-Dec 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: No. Imet Mahindra Dey, one of his disciples who was a scientist in the Bengal National College. When Iwrote about the future Avatar, he said the Avatar was already there. After the shooting affair took place he recanted Dayananda's Avatarhood.
Disciple: He used to keep nothing for the morrow in his organisation they depended entirely on Divine Grace.
--
Disciple: Another Avatar is coming out from Poona. He is going to declare himself in 1941.
Sri Aurobindo: No objection. But there is a great danger of imagination mixing up in such things.
2.22 - 1941-1943, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Krishna took sides openly in the Mahabharata and Rama also in the Ramayana. But Rama, some people do not consider an Avatar: they say he was not Self-conscious because he was weeping. Why? An Avatar cannot weep?
Sri Aurobindo had sent a message to the Congress regarding the Cripp's proposals.
2.22 - Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It does not, however, remain always on earth, but alternates between earth and other worlds, celestial and infernal, where it exhausts its accumulated store of merit or demerit due to the enactment of sin or virtue and then returns to the earth and to some kind of terrestrial body, sometimes human, sometimes animal, sometimes even vegetable. The nature of this new incarnation and its fortunes are determined automatically by the soul's past actions, Karma; if the sum of past action was good, the birth is in the higher form, the life happy or successful or unaccountably fortunate; if bad, a lower form of Nature may house us or the life, if human, will be unhappy, unsuccessful, full of suffering and misfortune. If our past actions and character were mixed, then Nature, like a good accountant, gives us, according to the pitch and values of our former conduct, a well-assorted payment of mixed happiness and suffering, success and failure, the rarest good luck and the severest ill-fortune. At the same time a strong personal will or desire in the past life may also determine our new Avatar. A mathematical aspect is often given to these payments of Nature, for we are supposed to incur a precise penalty for our misdeeds, undergo or return the replica or equivalent of what we have inflicted or enacted; the inexorable rule of a tooth for a tooth is a frequent principle of the Karmic Law: for this Law is an arithmetician with his abacus as well as a judge with his code of penalties for long-past crimes and misdemeanours. It is also to be noted that in this system there is a double punishment and a double reward for sin and virtue; for the sinner is first tortured in hell and afterwards afflicted for the same sins in another life here and the righteous or the puritan is rewarded with celestial joys and afterwards again pampered for the same virtues and good deeds in a new terrestrial existence.
These are very summary popular notions and offer no foothold to the philosophic reason and no answer to a search for the true significance of life. A vast world-system which exists only as a convenience for turning endlessly on a wheel of Ignorance with no issue except a final chance of stepping out of it, is not a world with any real reason for existence.
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This too simple and superficial idea of the soul and personality is born of the physical mind's inability to look beyond its own apparent self-formation in this single existence. In its conception, what returns in the reincarnation must be not only the same spiritual being, the same psychic entity, but the same formation of nature that inhabited the body of the last birth; the body changes, the circumstances are different, but the form of the being, the mind, the character, the disposition, temperament, tendencies are the same: John Smith in his new life is the same John Smith that he was in his last Avatar. But if that were so, there would be no spiritual utility or meaning at all in rebirth; for there would be the repetition of the same little personality, the same small mental and vital formation to the end of Time.
For the growth of the embodied being towards the full stature of its reality, not only a new experience, but a new personality is indispensable; to repeat the same personality would only be helpful if something had been incomplete in its formation of its experience which needed to be worked out in the same cadre of self, in the same building of mind and with the same formed capacity of energy. But normally this would be quite otiose: the soul that has been John Smith cannot gain anything or fulfil itself by remaining John Smith for ever; it cannot achieve growth or perfection by repeating the same character, interests, occupations, types of inner and outer movements for ever. Our life and rebirth would be always the same recurring decimal; it would be not an evolution but the meaningless continuity of an eternal repetition. Our attachment to our present personality demands such a continuity, such a repetition; John Smith wants to be John Smith for ever: but the demand is obviously ignorant and, if it were satisfied, that would be a frustration, not a fulfilment. It is only by a change of outer self, a constant progression of the nature, a growth in the spirit that we can justify our existence.
2.22 - THE MASTER AT COSSIPORE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"But if one retains vidyamaya one comes back to this world. The Avatars keep this vidyamaya. So long as a man has even the slightest desire, he must be born again and again. When he gets rid of all desires, then he is liberated. But the bhaktas do not seek liberation.
"If a person dies in Benares he attains liberation; he is not born again. Liberation is the goal of the jnanis."
--
"God becomes man, an Avatar, and comes to earth with His devotees. And the devotees leave the world with Him."
RAKHAL: "Therefore we pray that you may not go away and leave us behind."
2.24 - The Message of the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
"This is the great change and transfiguration," runs the message of the Godhead in man, the Avatar, the divine Teacher, "to which I call the elect, and the elect are all who can turn their will away from the ignorance of the natural instruments to the soul's deepest experience, its knowledge of the inner self and spirit, its contact with the Godhead, its power to enter into the Divine.
The elect are all who can accept this faith and this greater law.
--
Divine; he descends as the Avatar; he is manifest by his power in the Vibhuti; he is the Godhead secret in every human being. All the gods whom men worship are only personalities and forms and names and mental bodies of the one Divine Existence.
"The Supreme has manifested the world from his spiritual essence and in his own infinite existence and manifested himself too variously in the world. All things are his powers and figures and to the powers and figures of him there is no end, because he himself is infinite. As a pervading and containing impersonal self-existence he informs and sustains equally and without any partiality, preference or attachment to any person or thing or happening or feature all this infinite manifestation in Time and the universe. This pure and equal Self does not act, but supports impartially all the action of things. And yet it is the Supreme, but as the cosmic Spirit and the Time Spirit, who wills and conducts and determines the action of the world through his multitudinous power-to-be, that power of the Spirit which we call Nature.
--
narrow cell of personality, blinded and chained to your viewpoint of the ego and its desires. For you can wholly respond to it only when you are impersonalised by knowledge and widened to see all things in the self and in God and the self and God in all things. All becomes here by the power of the Spirit; all do their works by the immanence of God in things and his presence in the heart of every creature. The Creator of the worlds is not limited by his creations; the Lord of works is not bound by his works; the divine Will is not attached to its labour and the results of its labour: for it is omnipotent, all-possessing and allblissful. But still the Lord looks down on his creations from his transcendence; he descends as the Avatar; he is here in you; he rules from within all things in the steps of their nature. And you too must do works in him, after the way and in the steps of the divine nature, untouched by limitation, attachment or bondage.
Act for the best good of all, act for the maintenance of the march of the world, for the support or the leading of its peoples. The action asked of you is the action of the liberated Yogin; it is the spontaneous output of a free and God-held energy, it is an equal-minded movement, it is a selfless and desireless labour.
2.25 - List of Topics in Each Talk, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
| Part I | Sri Aurobindo's personality, his outer retirement; outside contacts after 1910; spiritual personalities: Vibhutis and Avatars; transformtion of human personality |
| Part II | The Home of the Guru |
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| 18-01-39 | Huxley's Ends and Means: Napoleon, Caesar, Kamal Pasha, Gandhi; Avatars and religions |
| 27-02-39 | Sri Aurobindo: linguist and magician |
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| 10- 09-26 | Chakras; aim of Vaman Avatar; Mind and Truth |
| 20-09-26 | Fitness for Yoga; success and fall in Yoga; music and Theosophy in Japan |
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| 30-04-23 | Arunachal Mission; committee of Avatars |
| 05-04-24 | Bahaism and Mahommedans; siddhis and miracles |
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| 09-12-25 | Avatars and occult powers; Sri Aurobindo and the Russian Revolution |
| 12-01-26 | Avatarhood |
| 01-06-26 | News media, democracy, lowering standards of life; men, gods, asuras |
--
| 27-12-38 | Municipalities; Indian system of government. Congress organisation; Hindi vs. English; racial persecution, Golden Age, Supermind, evolution and Avatars, Science |
| 28-12-38 | Doctors and Greek Augurs; European war, generals and soldiers |
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| 14-15-39 | Yogic action on world, Swami Dayananda of Bengal, Avatarhood; Rosicrucians, mysticism, ego and self; Buddhi and Mukti; Kant; disinterested action; Reason and Truth |
| 15-12-39 | Reason, spiritual experience; the Absolute, knowledge by identity; Siddhis |
27.02 - The Human Touch Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
How far can the human be divinised? The Divine as Avatara does become human, almost totally - in appearance at least. One may recall not only the impulses and passions, all the foibles and lapses, even misdeeds liberally recorded of Sri Krishna. But this does not mean that the human has been divinised in him, the Divine has only assumed the human character and qualities, it is after all a disguise, it is an assumption, the adhyaropaof Maya upon Brahman. The Divine is beyond the Maya. The question remains then how far can human remain human and yet be truly divinised. The feeling, the experience in the heart of the saintly human being which we have variously described as commiseration, 'caritas', 'karuna', seems to set the limit of divinisation. There is love of course, but it is a dangerous and ambiguous term. The central truth and reality of love is Ananda - ananda in the category of Sat-chit-ananda. But there I am afraid the human element gets dissolved.
The tear-drop in the eye of the Divine seems to be the supreme status of the human in the Divine. Can one go farther?
28.01 - Observations, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When the Avatar comes down, we know, there come down with Him a whole host of His comrades and followers. They form a unit, a nucleus, of the new creation that the Avatar initiates. The twelve apostles of Christ are famous. Chaitanya too had his group of Parshadas; nearer to us Ramakrishna with his Vivekananda-group, is familiar to us all.
But the greatest of them all was Sri Krishna who came down with a whole bevy of 160001
It is said the Avatar descends with His family repeatedly age after age pushing forward the Earth's march towards its divine goal.
Krishna is always conceived as a boy, quite a young boy. Krishna and Radha typify the love of a young boy and a young girl. The conception is to take love at its first flowering, at its earliest and purest expression. Later on with age and youth advancing, it becomes passion, dark and turbid: it grows in force and amplitude, in its own way, but soon it becomes a wild fury to end usually in a catastrophe. The Vaishnava poet says: when childhood and youth meet and unite[^2] [^2]: Sri Aurobindo in one of his private notes discloses that most of his disciples were Asuras, the bigger the disciple the greater the Asura. Perhaps they, impelled by a higher Call, came of themselves in order to surrender and be converted to the new life. It may be that that urge wore off in the end and had to be postponed for its fulfilment. It is significant what Sri Aurobindo says in his Hymn to Durga: "O Mother, give to our life and mind the Asura's strength, the Asura's energy and to our heart and intelligence a God's character and a God's knowledge." , then there is born the true love, love Divine. The Vaishnava discipline is to keep and maintain love at this stage and mode; for early youth is the best time and age (vaya kaisorakam vayam). Love Krishna the boy, Jet your heart's yearning be moulded in the crystal clear limpid stream welling out of the pure spring of a new-born heart - that is the way of purifying the vital urge, keeping it ever pure.
3.03 - Faith and the Divine Grace, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Divine Grace alone has the power to intervene and change the course of Universal Justice. The great work of the Avatar is to manifest the Divine Grace upon earth. To be a disciple of the Avatar is to become an instrument of the
Divine Grace. The Mother is the great dispensatrix through identity of the Divine Grace, with a perfect knowledge through identity of the absolute mechanism of Universal
--
Is it not true that even most of the seekers after God cannot call it down? And yet they can receive it if someone, a guru or Avatar, has once called it down within him. Is it so?
Yes.
3.1.01 - The Problem of Suffering and Evil, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Ignorance and its consequences, to intervene as the Avatar and the Vibhuti walking between the double sign of the Cross and the victory towards the fulfilment and deliverance. A too imaged rendering of the inexpressible Truth? but without images how to present to the intellect a mystery far beyond it? It is only when one has crossed the barrier of the limited intelligence and shared in the cosmic experience and the knowledge which sees things from identity that the supreme realities which lie behind these images - images corresponding to the terrestrial fact - assume their divine forms and are felt as simple, natural, implied in the essence of things. It is by entering into that greater consciousness alone that one can grasp the inevitability of its self-creation and its purpose.
This is indeed only the Truth of the manifestation as it presents itself to the consciousness when it stands on the border line between Eternity and the descent into Time where the relation between the One and the Many in the evolution is selfdetermined, a zone where all that is to be is implied but not yet in action. But the liberated consciousness can rise higher where the problem exists no longer and from there see it in the light of a supreme identity where all is predetermined in the automatic self-existent truth of things and self-justified to an absolute
3.11 - Spells, #Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E, #unset, #Zen
This cooperative spell is rarely used or spoken of, since its requirements are strict and the outcome is uncertain. The spell must be cast by six priests of the same faith. All six must touch hands at the time of casting. At the completion of the spell, the priests fall into a trance. The life essences of the priests leave their bodies and merge at a point within 10 feet of the casters. The spirits of the priests meld together to form the Avatar of the priests' deity.
In this manner, the six characters become a single being with all the powers and abilities allowed to that Avatar. The only stipulation is that the priests' deity cannot have created all Avatars allowed to it at that moment. If this has happened, the spell fails and the priests are drained as described below.
If the spell succeeds, the priests have completely given their wills over to their deity, essentially forming the vessel into which it funnels power. In becoming the Avatar, the priests retain the ability to make most of their own decisions. (The six must work in harmony or allow one of their number to decide all actions.) However, the deity can assume direct control of the Avatar at any time it desires--the Avatar is, after all, an earthly manifestation of the deity.
Although the spell has a duration of one hour, the deity is not obliged to release the priests at that time. If the priests are not released at the end of the spell's duration, they instantly die. A deity can choose to sacrifice its priests in order to maintain its Avatar on the Prime Material plane. Such a cruel and unjust action is almost never undertaken by good deities or those that have any respect for life, free will, or mercy. For dark and sinister gods, the question is much more uncertain. If a deity chooses to maintain the Avatar longer than one hour, control of the Avatar instantly and permanently passes to the
DM :::. (Clearly, a DM should seldom if ever exercise this power.)
While the priests are formed into the Avatar, their bodies remain in a death like trance.
The priests have no idea what might be happening to their real bodies (unless the Avatar can observe them). Any damage to a priest's body requires an instant system shock roll. If successful, the damage is recorded normally, but the damage does not take effect until the spell ends (at which point the priest will almost certainly die). If the system shock roll is failed, the character instantly dies and the spell ends. Characters who die in this manner cannot be raised, resurrected, or reincarnated. They have been taken to the ultimate reward (or punishment) for the service they have rendered. If the bodies are moved from their positions, the spell ends.
Even if the deity releases the priests, they are left severely drained. All spells memorized are lost until the priest can rest and perform his prayers once again. The physical drain leaves each priest with only 1 hit point upon awakening, regardless of the number of hit points the character had when the spell was cast. Since damage suffered during the spell takes effect instantly, any priest who is hurt dies immediately (although quick action by others might save him).
3.2.01 - On Ideals, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Until this difficulty is overcome and the Seer-Will becomes more common in man and more the master of life, the ideal works at a disadvantage, by a silent pressure upon the reluctant world, by occasional attacks and sudden upheavals; a little is accomplished in a long time or by a great and sudden effort, a little that is poor enough, coarse enough, material enough compared with the thing seen and attempted, but which still makes a farther advance possible though often after a period of quiescence and reaction. And times there are, ages of stupendous effort and initiative when the gods seem no longer satisfied with this tardy and fragmentary working, when the ideal breaks constantly through the dull walls of the material practical life, incalculable forces clash in its field, innumerable ideas meet and wrestle in the arena of the world and through the constant storm and flash, agitation of force and agitation of light the possibility of the victoriously fulfilled ideal, the hope of the Messiah, the expectation of the Avatar takes possession of the hearts and thoughts of men. Such an age seems now to be coming upon the world. But whether that hope and expectation and possibility are to come to anything depends upon whether men prepare their souls for the advent and rise in the effort of their faith, life and thought to the height and purity of a clearly-grasped ideal.
118
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The Messiah or Avatar is nothing but this, the divine Seer-Will descending upon the human consciousness to reveal to it the divine meaning behind our half-blind action and to give along with the vision the exalted will that is faithful and performs and the ideal force that executes according to the vision.
3.2.03 - Conservation and Progress, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The future repels us even while it irresistibly attracts. The repulsion lies partly in our own natural recoil from the unknown, because every step into this unknown is a wager between life and death; every decision we make may mean either the destruction or the greater fulfilment of what we now are, of the name and form to which we are attached. But also it lies in the future itself; for there, governing that future, there are not only powers which call us to fulfil them and attract us with an irresistible force but other powers which have to be conquered and do not desire to yield themselves. The future is a sphinx with two minds, an energy which offers itself and denies, gives itself and resists, seeks to enthrone us and seeks to slay. But the conquest has to be attempted, the wager has to be accepted. We have to face the futures offer of death as well as its offer of life, and it need not alarm us, for it is by constant death to our old names and forms that we shall live most vitally in greater and newer forms and names. Go on we must; for if we do not, Time itself will force us forward in spite of our fancied immobility. And this is the most pitiable and dangerous movement of all. For what can be more pitiable than to be borne helplessly forward clinging to the old that disintegrates in spite of our efforts and shrieking frantically to the dead ghosts and dissolving fragments of the past to save us alive? And what can be more dangerous than to impose immobility on that which is in its nature mobile? This means an increasing and horrible rottenness; it means an attempt to persist on as a putrid and stinking corpse instead of a living and self-renewing energetic creature. The greatest spirits are therefore those who have no fear of the future, who accept its challenge and its wager; they have that sublime trust in the God or Power that guides the world, that high audacity of the human soul to wrestle with the infinite and realise the impossible, that wise and warrior confidence in its ultimate destiny which mark the Avatars and prophets and great innovators and renovators.
If we consider carefully we shall see that the past is indeed a huge force of conservation, but of conservation that is not immobile, but on the contrary offers itself as material for change and new realisation; that the present is the constant change and new actual realisation which the past desires and compels; and that the future is that force of new realisation not yet actual towards which the past was moving and for the sake of which it lived. Then we perceive that there is no real opposition between these three; we see that they are parts of a single movement, a sort of Trinity of Vishnu-Brahma-Maheshwara fulfilling by an inseparable action the one Deity. Yet the human mind in its mania of division and opposition seeks to set them at strife and ranges humanity into various camps, the partisans of the past, the partisans of the present, the partisans of the future, the partisans of all sorts of compromises between the three forces. Nature makes good use of the struggle between these partisans and her method is necessary in our present state of passionate ignorance and egoistic obstinacy; but none the less is it from the point of view of a higher knowledge a pitiably ignorant struggle.
3.2.05 - The Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Gita does not speak expressly of the Divine Mother; it speaks always of surrender to the Purushottamait mentions her only as the Para Prakriti who becomes the Jiva, i.e., who manifests the Divine in the multiplicity and through whom all these worlds are created by the Supreme and he himself descends as the Avatar. The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishwara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it; the Tantrik tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishwari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother, because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it. This Yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the Yoga.
In regard to the Purushottama the Divine Mother is the supreme divine Consciousness and Power above the worlds, Adya Shakti; she carries the Supreme in herself and manifests the Divine in the worlds through the Akshara and the Kshara. In regard to the Akshara she is the same Para Shakti holding the Purusha immobile in herself and also herself immobile in him at the back of all creation. In regard to the Kshara she is the mobile cosmic Energy manifesting all beings and forces.
3.2.06 - The Adwaita of Shankaracharya, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The impulse towards laya is a creation of the mind, it is not the sole possible destiny of the soul. When the mind tries to abolish its own Ignorance, it finds no escape from it except laya, because it supposes that there is no higher principle of cosmic existence beyond itselfbeyond itself is only the pure Spirit, the absolute impersonal Divine. Those who go through the heart (love, bhakti) do not accept laya, they believe in a state beyond of eternal companionship with the Divine or dwelling in the Divine without laya. All this quite apart from supramentalisation. What then becomes of your starting point that laya is the inevitable destiny of the soul and it is only the personal descent of the Avatar that saves it from inevitable laya?
***
3.2.08 - Bhakti Yoga and Vaishnavism, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But I have already told you more than once that I have no objection to your seeking Krishna or to your asking for Ananda or milan or anything else. I have never pressed you or others either to seek after Supermind or to accept me as an Avatar. These things have risen as an answer to questions put by yourself or others and I have treated them as matters of knowledge. But each must go by his own way and his own nature to his own goal. Ahaituki bhakti according to the Vaishnava ideal is the highest way and also the quickest, but if one does not feel equal to it, sahaituki bhakti will do well enough. Or if one has no turn for bhakti at all, there are plenty of other ways. Or if one does not care to follow any way, there is, as I said, in answer to Xs question, the pressure of something in the nature to find the Self, if that is what it is after, or God or Krishna or the Mother or whatever it may be.
If you know the urge in you, well, follow it straight there is no need of questioning or going this side or that. Follow the hearts urge till it reaches what it is seeking.
32.11 - Life and Self-Control (A Letter), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You may ask: to what good? Suppose, one goes beyond the sphere of life to Vaikuntha, to Heaven, attains Nirvana and gets merged in the Brahman; in that case life is lost. And it is really what has happened in India. There has been no dearth of saints, seers and Avatars. But they live in their own worlds. The dwellers on our realistic plane are poor, distressed and miserable. True, there is a class of men who are not in the least perturbed at this state of things. Time was when from the mouth of a daughter of India rose the ringing voice:
"Of what use to me are the things that cannot make me immortal?"
3.21 - Of Black Magic, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Teacher in his present Avatar. Moreover, Adepts are at pains to record their
teachings in books, monuments, or pictures, and to appoint spiritual guardians to
3.3.01 - The Superman, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Power and Love: yet neither of these deities can be safely neglected. What can be more divine than Love? But followed exclusively it is impotent to solve the world's discords. The worshipped Avatar of love and the tender saint of saints leave behind them a divine but unfollowed example, a luminous and imperishable but ineffective memory. They have added an element to the potentialities of the heart, but the race cannot utilise it effectively for life because it has not been harmonised with the rest of the qualities that are essential to our fullness. Shall we therefore turn round and give ourselves to Power with its iron hands of action and its hard and clear practical intellect? The men of power may say that they have done a more tangible work for their race than the souls of Love, but it is a vain advantage.
For they have not even tried to raise us beyond our imperfect humanity. They have erected a temporary form or given a secular impetus. An empire has been created, an age or a century organised, but the level of humanity has not been raised nearer to the secret of a Caesar or a Napoleon. Love fails because it hastily rejects the material of the world's discords or only tramples them underfoot in an unusual ecstasy; Power because it seeks only to
3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
and etiquette. Love is brought in by the Avataras to break down
these dead forms in order that the world may be rejuvenated and
4.04 - THE REGENERATION OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[378] Nowhere in this material, however, do we find the very specific motif of Gods senescence, and the source Ripley could have used remains obscure. Even so, there is always the possibility of an autochthonous revival of the mythologem from the collective unconscious. Nelken has published a case of this kind. His patient was a primary-school teacher who suffered from paranoia. He developed a theory about a Father-God with immense procreative powers. Originally he had 550 membra virilia, but in the course of time they were reduced to three. He also possessed two scrota with three testicles each. His colossal sperm production weakened him in the end, and finally he shrank to a five-ton lump and was found chained up in a ravine. This psychologem contains the motif of ageing and loss of procreative power. The patient was the rejuvenated Father-God or his Avatar.86 The embellishment of the archetypal theme is in this case completely original, so that we can safely take it as an autochthonous product.
[379] In Ripleys case there is the more immediate possibility that he modified for his own purpose the conception of the Ancient of Days and his youthful son the Logos, who in the visions of Valentinus the Gnostic and of Meister Eckhart was a small boy. These concepts are closely related to those of Dionysus, youngest of the gods, and of the Horus-child, Harpocrates, Aion, etc. All naturally imply the renewal of the ageing god. The step from the world of Christian ideas back into paganism is not a long one,87 and the naturalistic conclusion that the father dwindles when the son appears, or that he is rejuvenated in the son, is implicit in all these age-old conceptions, whose effect is all the stronger the more they are consciously denied. Such a combination of ideas is almost to be expected in a cleric like Ripley, even though, like all alchemists, he may not have been conscious of their full import.
4.17 - The Action of the Divine Shakti, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A third stage comes by the increasing manifestation of the Divine, the Ishwara in all our being and action. This is when we are constantly and uninterruptedly aware of him. He is felt in us as the possessor of our being and above us as the ruler of all its workings and they become to us nothing but a manifestation of him in the existence of the Jiva. All our consciousness is his consciousness, all our knowledge is his knowledge, all our thought is his thought, all our will is his will, all our feeling is his Ananda and form of his delight in being, all our action is his action. The distinction between the shakti and the Ishwara begins to disappear; there is only the conscious activity in us of the Divine with the great self of the Divine behind and around and possessing it; all the world and Nature is seen to be only that, but here it has become fully conscious, the Maya of the ego removed, and the Jiva is there only as an eternal portion of his being, amsa sanatana, put forth to support a divine individualisation and living now fulfilled in the complete presence and power of the Divine, the complete joy of the Spirit manifested in the being. This is the highest realisation of the perfection and delight of the active oneness; for beyond it there could be only the consciousness of the Avatara, the Ishwara himself assuming a human name and form for action in the Lila.
author class:Sri Aurobindo
4.1 - Jnana, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
157. Thus said Ramakrishna and thus said Vivekananda. Yes, but let me know also the truths which the Avatar cast not forth into speech and the prophet has omitted from his teachings.
There will always be more in God than the thought of man has ever conceived or the tongue of man has ever uttered.
4.2 - Karma, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
338. Tangled is the way of works in the world. When Rama the Avatar murdered Vali or Krishna, who was God himself,
468
4.3.3 - Dealing with Hostile Attacks, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Mothers help is always there but you are not conscious of it except when the psychic is active and the consciousness not clouded. The coming of suggestions is not a proof that the help is not there. Suggestions come to all, even to the greatest sadhaks or to the Avatarsas they came to Christ or Buddha. Obstacles are therethey are part of Nature and they have to be overcome. What has to be attained is not to accept the suggestions, not to admit them as the truth or as ones own thoughts, to see them for what they are and keep oneself separate. Obstacles have to be looked at as something wrong in the machinery of human nature which has to be changed they should not be regarded as sins or wrongdoings which make one despair of oneself and of the sadhana.
***
9.99 - Glossary, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Avatar: Incarnation of God.
avidya: Ignorance, cosmic or individual, which is responsible tor the nonperception of Reality.
Avatars of the Tortoise, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
the Infinite. Their purpose is to register certain Avatars of the second paradox
of Zeno.
--
The next Avatar of Zeno my disorderly notes register is Agrippa the
skeptic. He denies that anything can be proven, since every proof requires a
BOOK II. -- PART I. ANTHROPOGENESIS., #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
race from which the "tenth," or Kalki Avatar, so called, is to issue. This he calls the "Kingly race born
in Argos" (888). But Argos has no reference here to Argos in Greece. It comes from Arg or arca -- the
--
Kalki Avatar is expected. The Airyana-Varsedya of the Zoroastrians, as a locality, is identical with it.
It is now said to have been situated between the sea of Aral, Baltistan, and little Tibet; but in olden
--
(tenth) Avatar, the glorified Spiritual Christos, who will deliver the suffering Christos (mankind, or
Prometheus, on its trial). This, say Brahminical and Buddhistic legends, echoed by the Zoroastrian and
--
"Buddhas," may just as well be called Rishis, or Avatars, etc., as they are "Buddhas who have
preceded Sakyamuni" only for the Northern followers of the ethics preached by Gautama. These great
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Wisdom" had incarnated, and who were, therefore, so to speak, minor Avatars of the Celestial Beings -eleven only belong to the Atlantean race, and 24 to the Fifth race, from its beginnings. They are
identical with the Tirtankaras of the Jainas.
BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
Creation and Being, i.e., that of the purely human personality and the divine impersonality of the socalled Avatars, or divine incarnations, and of the universal Spirit, called Christos by the Gnostics, and
the Farvarshi (or Ferouer) of Ahura Mazda in the Mazdean philosophy. On the lower rungs of
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symbols of the human races. Once landed on, and having touched this planet of dense matter, no snowwhite wings of the highest angel can remain immaculate, or the Avatar (or incarnation) be perfect, as
every such Avatar is
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
--
Sisumara, one of the Avatars of Vishnu), has the Cross placed on it by nature in its division and
localisation of stars, planets and constellations. Thus in Bhagavata Purana V., xxx., it is said that "at
--
alone (Juno), without the participation of a father, or like the Avatars (Krishna, for instance), in the
West as in the East -- Karttikeya is born, but in a still more miraculous manner -- begotten by neither
--
solve it by their Avatars, the Christians think
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
--
connected with Oannes, the Babylonian Dag, and further also with the (fish) Avatar of Vishnu,
Matsya, both teaching mortals Wisdom. The Dolphin, as every mythologist knows, was placed for his
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would have to be written from its first to its last page by a great adept, if not by an Avatar. Then only
should we say, "This is verily a work without sin or blemish in it!" But, so long as the artist is
BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
hypostases of the manifesting "Spirit of the Supreme Spirit" (by which title Prithivi -- the Earth -greets Vishnu in his first Avatar) -- are the purely metaphysical abstract qualities of formation,
preservation, and destruction, and are the three divine Avasthas (lit. hypostases) of that which "does
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periodical Avatars (special incarnations of the World-Spirit in Man, as seen in the case of all the great
religious reformers) . . . . "the essence of man is spirit . . . . only by stripping himself of his finiteness
--
White Horse, as the last Avatar amid fire and flames; and Sosiosh will be brought down equally on a
White Horse in a "tornado of fire." "And I saw heaven open and behold a white horse, and he that sat
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year 1355 A.D. in Amdo, and was the Avatar of Amitabha, the celestial name of Gautama Buddha.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 109 THEOGONY OF THE CREATORS.
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other as the last "Kalki Avatar."
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
Saviours and Avatars. Hence the connecting link between the Buddhas, the Avatars, and so many
other incarnations of the highest SEVEN. The closer the approach to one's Prototype, "in Heaven," the
--
what of the further facts that Brahmins also connect their "Messiah," the eternal Avatar Vishnu, with a
fish and the Deluge, and that the Babylonians made of their Dag-On, equally a fish and a Messiah, the
--
Triad in its successive AvatarS or manifestations unto man," whither can we turn to trace these
theosophic ideas to their very root -- better than to old Indian wisdom? We say it again: archaic
BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
the Zodiac called Meenam in Sanskrit), and even with the Matsya (fish) Avatar, and the Lotus -- the
symbol of the womb, or the water-lily, which is the same.
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Indian Avatars are a proof to the contrary. After which, having come "to realize clearer"* what "the
Divine Father and Son" were with the Egyptians, de Rouge still fails to account for, and perceive what
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the last of the Avatars and Buddhas, in the seventh Race. This belief and expectation are universal
throughout the East. Only it is not in the Kali yug, our present terrifically materialistic age of
LUX.05 - AUGOEIDES, #Liber Null, #Peter J Carroll, #Occultism
The Augoeides may be defined as the most perfect vehicle of Kia on the plane of duality. As the Avatar of Kia on earth, the Augoeides represents the true will, the raison d'etre of the magician, his purpose in existing. The discovery of one's true will or real nature may be difficult and fraught with danger, since a false identification leads to obsession and madness.
The operation of obtaining the knowledge and conversation is usually a lengthy one. The magician is attempting a progressive metamorphosis, a complete overhaul of his entire existence. Yet he has to seek the blueprint for his reborn self as he goes along. Life is less the meaningless accident it seems. Kia has incarnated in these particular conditions of duality for some purpose. The inertia of previous existences propels Kia into new forms of manifestation. Each incarnation represents a task, or a puzzle to be solved, on the way to some greater form of completion.
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
703. An Avatara (Incarnation) is a human messenger of God. He is like a viceroy of a mighty monarch. As
the king sends the viceroy when there is any disturbance in some far-off province in order to quell it, so
whenever there is waning of religion in any part of the world, God sends there His Avatara to guard
virtue and to foster its growth.
--
interpreted both historically and allegorically. The Avataras are to Brahman what waves are to the
ocean.
705. The Avatara is always one and the same. Having plunged into the ocean of life, the one God rises up
at one point and is known as Krishna, and when after another plunge, He rises up at another point, He is
--
707. The Avataras are born with Divine powers and Divine qualities. They can go into, and stay in, any
state of realisation from the highest to the lowest. In a king's palace a stranger can go only to the outer
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cannot truly recognise the Avataras. Only seven Rishis Bharadwaja and the restcould recognise Sri
Rama as an Avatara. God incarnates in the human form to teach man true Jnana and Bhakti.
Nara Lila1 = God has four distinct aspects of manifestation. One aspect of His is Isvara, the supreme
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earth and dust, lays open an old well that has been covered up by disuse. The Avatara is like a great
engineer who sinks a new well even in a place where there was no water before. Whereas the former
can give salvation only to those men who have the waters of salvation near at hand, an Avatara saves
him too whose heart is devoid of all love and is dry as a desert.
--
Like unto this are the Avataras. Then there is another kind of flower-pot which, when lighted, burns a
little and then goes off all at once. Similarly, ordinary Jivas, after long practice and devotional exercises,
--
731. Those who come with the Avataras are either souls who are eternally free, or souls who are born
for the last time.
--
inside and outside a room. But the Jnana of the Avatara is still more powerful, and may be likened to the
sun. He is the sun of Divine knowledge whose light dispels the accumulated ignorance of ages.
Talks 600-652, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
D.: Mind, Heart are all Avatars of Perumal (Vaishnavite term for incarnate God).
M.: If so no need to worry ourselves.
--
M.: Surrender the mind to Perumal (God). His Avatar cannot remain independent of Him. Render unto Him what is His and be happy.
D.: How to do so?
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Thakur Dayanand's. Once I wrote an article on the Avatar in the Karmayogin. Mahendra Day, one of Dayanand's disciples, seeing the article wrote to
me: "Here is the Avatar." He was very enthusiastic about it.
NIRODBARAN: Why are Gurus obliged to work with imperfect and defective
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for human happiness. Buddhas and Avatars have come and gone, but the sufferings of humanity are just the same.
[1]
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SRI AUROBINDO: Did Avatars come to relieve the sufferings of humanity? It
was only Buddha who showed the way to a release from suffering. But his
--
SATYENDRA: They want to prove him an Avatar as great as Gauranga.
SRI AUROBINDO: Oh, competition for Avatarhood? But did he proclaim himself an Avatar?
SATYENDRA: No, Sir; but he behaved like one.
SRI AUROBINDO: Gauranga is regarded as an Avatar of Krishna, and if Haranath is an Avatar of Gauranga, naturally both are Avatars of Krishna, Then
why quarrel?
--
an Avatar of Vishnu, and they were also Vaishnavas.
SATYENDRA: It is the Kurukshetra Krishna who spoke the Gita.
--
vision of the last Avatar Kalki destroying everybody is an easy but rather
drastic solution.
--
consider Buddha an Avatar.
SRI AUROBINDO: It is the Mahayana path that goes through devotion. But isn't
--
A gave a good beating to B for not accepting you as an Avatar.
SRI AUROBINDO: And after the beating did B feel like accepting me?
SATYENDRA: I don't understand how that sort of acceptance can help. If, without experiencing anything, one says about anybody 'He is an Avatar," it
hasn't much value.
--
on others. You can say, "I believe so and so is an Avatar." But you can't say,
"If you don't believe, I will thrash you."
--
College. When I wrote about the future Avatar, he said Avatar was already
there, meaning Dayanand.
--
SATYENDRA: Another Avatar is coming out from Poona. He will declare himself in 1941.
SRI AUROBINDO: Who is that?
--
NIRODBARAN: Isn't that what Avatars do? If we accept Ramakrishna as an
Avatar, we have his saying that the body is an iron cage and now you as an
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even the Avatars don't have. The Avatars have to fight all the way with Rakshasas like Ravana.
SATYENDRA: Don't the Avatars come for particular purposes and are they not
concerned only with them, so that their field of action is limited?
--
SATYENDRA: The Tirthankaras appear to be somewhat like Avatars, because a
Tirthankara does not allow knowledge to get lost.
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 2, #Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
or vehicle of Ka Iki, the last Avatar, is said to be the horse.
SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, Krishnalal is very apposite and has some power of
--
BECHARLAL: Does an Avatar know everything?
SRI AUROBINDO: What everything? It is the same question. Did Rama
--
example? Then the Ramayana and Rama lose all their value. And his lamentation for Sita is also a pretension? Does an Avatar resort to deception in order to teach people?
PURANI: What about Sita's Agniparisha?1
The Coming Race Contents, #The Coming Race, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
rare soul. An Avatar, a Messiah or a Prophet
is the centre, the focus through which a Truth
--
one of the Avataras: the discipline of
Nirvana and Maya was reserved as the last
The Riddle of this World, #unknown, #Unknown, #unset
consequences, to intervene as the Avatar and the Vibhuti walking
between the double sign of the Cross and the Victory towards the
--- Overview of noun avatar
The noun avatar has 2 senses (no senses from tagged texts)
1. embodiment, incarnation, avatar ::: (a new personification of a familiar idea; "the embodiment of hope"; "the incarnation of evil"; "the very avatar of cunning")
2. avatar ::: (the manifestation of a Hindu deity (especially Vishnu) in human or superhuman or animal form; "the Buddha is considered an avatar of the god Vishnu")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun avatar
2 senses of avatar
Sense 1
embodiment, incarnation, avatar
=> personification
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 2
avatar
=> Hindu deity
=> deity, divinity, god, immortal
=> spiritual being, supernatural being
=> belief
=> content, cognitive content, mental object
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun avatar
2 senses of avatar
Sense 1
embodiment, incarnation, avatar
=> deification
=> reincarnation
Sense 2
avatar
HAS INSTANCE=> Jagannath, Jagannatha, Jagganath, Juggernaut
HAS INSTANCE=> Kalki
HAS INSTANCE=> Krishna
HAS INSTANCE=> Rama
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun avatar
2 senses of avatar
Sense 1
embodiment, incarnation, avatar
=> personification
Sense 2
avatar
=> Hindu deity
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun avatar
2 senses of avatar
Sense 1
embodiment, incarnation, avatar
-> personification
=> embodiment, incarnation, avatar
=> queen
Sense 2
avatar
-> Hindu deity
HAS INSTANCE=> Aditi
=> Aditya
HAS INSTANCE=> Agni
HAS INSTANCE=> Asura
=> Ahura
=> Asvins
HAS INSTANCE=> Bhaga
HAS INSTANCE=> Brahma
HAS INSTANCE=> Brihaspati
HAS INSTANCE=> Bhumi Devi
HAS INSTANCE=> Devi
HAS INSTANCE=> Chandi
=> Dharma
HAS INSTANCE=> Durga
HAS INSTANCE=> Dyaus, Dyaus-pitar
HAS INSTANCE=> Ganesh, Ganesa, Ganesha, Ganapati
=> Garuda
HAS INSTANCE=> Gauri
HAS INSTANCE=> Hanuman
HAS INSTANCE=> Indra
HAS INSTANCE=> Ka
HAS INSTANCE=> Kali
HAS INSTANCE=> Kama
HAS INSTANCE=> Mara
HAS INSTANCE=> Kartikeya, Karttikeya
HAS INSTANCE=> Lakshmi
=> Marut
HAS INSTANCE=> Mitra
HAS INSTANCE=> Parjanya
HAS INSTANCE=> Parvati, Anapurna, Annapurna
HAS INSTANCE=> Prajapati
HAS INSTANCE=> Pushan
HAS INSTANCE=> Rahu
=> Ribhus, Rhibhus
HAS INSTANCE=> Rudra
HAS INSTANCE=> Sarasvati
HAS INSTANCE=> Savitar
HAS INSTANCE=> Shakti, Sakti
HAS INSTANCE=> Siva, Shiva
HAS INSTANCE=> Skanda
=> Soma
HAS INSTANCE=> Surya
HAS INSTANCE=> Uma
HAS INSTANCE=> Ushas
=> Vajra
HAS INSTANCE=> Varuna
HAS INSTANCE=> Vayu
HAS INSTANCE=> Vishnu
HAS INSTANCE=> Yama
=> avatar
--- Grep of noun avatar
avatar