Chapter Two
The Divine Teacher
Note 2.4
Spiritual Significance of the Avatar
▀ ▄ ▀ Spiritual Significance of Avatar
This eternal divine Consciousness is always present in every human being. This God is always in man. When he partly or wholly takes possession of the human consciousness then we have the manifest Avatar.
For this to happen, the God has to become in visible human shape the guide, teacher and leader of the world.
We are not here referring to the case of the men who while living in their humanity yet feel something of the power or light or love of the divine Gnosis informing and conducting them. This is not Avatar.
What we need is the direct action from that divine Gnosis itself, direct from its central force and plentitude.
Then only we can call him the manifest Avatar. The inner Divinity is the eternal Avatar in every man. The human manifestation is its sign and development in the external world. This happens only in the case of manifest Avatar.
When we thus understand the conception of Avatarhood we see that the external aspect has only a secondary importance. This may be from the point of view of the fundamental teaching of Gita which is our present subject or for spiritual life generally.
Such controversies would seem to a spiritually-minded Indian largely a waste of time. On the other hand there is a raging controversy in Europe over the historicity of Christ.
An Indian would concede to it a considerable historical, but hardly any religious importance. In the final analysis, it does not matter whether a Jesus son of the carpenter Joseph was actually born in Nazareth or Bethlehem. It also does not matter whether he lived and taught and was done to death on a real or trumped-up charge of sedition.
What is of relevance is to know by spiritual experience the inner Christ, to live uplifted in the light of his teaching and escape from the yoke of the natural Law by that atonement of man with God.
The crucifixion is just the symbol of this atonement. We are mainly concerned if the Christ, God made man, lives within our spiritual being. If this be so, then it does not matter whether or not a son of Mary physically lived and suffered and died in Judea. Same is the case with Krishna. He matters to us as the eternal incarnation of the Divine. We are here not seriously interested in the historical teacher and leader of men.
Therefore in seeking the kernel of the thought of the Gita we need only concern ourselves with the spiritual significance of the human-divine Krishna of the Mahabharata.
He is presented to us as the teacher of Arjuna on the battle-field of Kurukshetra. It is certainty that the historical Krishna existed. His name is cited first in the Chhandogya Upanishad. Here all we can gather about him is that he was well-known in spiritual tradition as a knower of the Brahman.
In fact so well known in his personality and the circumstances of his life that it was sufficient to refer to him by the name of his mother as Krishna son of Devaki.
This identified correctly the Krishna as we know him. In the same Upanishad we find mention of King Dhritarashtra son of Vichitravirya. Both of these persons are leading personages in the action of the Mahabharata. The tradition has therefore associated both of them closely. Therefore we may fairly conclude that they were actually contemporaries and that the epic is to a great extent dealing with historical occurrence imprinted firmly on the memory of the race. We know too that Krishna and Arjuna were the object of religious worship in the pre-Christian centuries. There is some reason to suppose that they were so in connection with a religious and philosophical tradition.
....... ▀ ▄ Chapter Two - Note 4 ▄ ▀ ........
The Divine Teacher
.......... to continue
Commentaires