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Title: Avatâras - Four lectures delivered at the twenty-fourth anniversary - meeting of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Madras, - December, 1899
Author: Besant, Annie Wood, 1847-1933
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Avatâras - Four lectures delivered at the twenty-fourth anniversary - meeting of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Madras, - December, 1899" ***
AVATÂRAS
FOUR LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE TWENTY-FOURTH
ANNIVERSARY MEETING OF THE
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY AT ADYAR,
MADRAS, DECEMBER, 1899
BY
ANNIE BESANT
_ENGLISH EDITION_
Theosophical Publishing Society
3 Langham Place, London, W.
1900
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
PAGE
LECTURE I.--
WHAT IS AN AVATÂRA? 7
LECTURE II.--
THE SOURCE OF AND NEED FOR AVATÂRAS 31
LECTURE III.--
SOME SPECIAL AVATÂRAS 65
LECTURE IV.--
SHRÎ KṚIṢHṆA 95
* * * * *
AVATÂRAS.
FIRST LECTURE.
BROTHERS:--Every time that we come here together to study the
fundamental truths of all religions, I cannot but feel how vast is the
subject, how small the expounder, how mighty the horizon that opens
before our thoughts, how narrow the words which strive to sketch it for
your eyes. Year after year we meet, time after time we strive to fathom
some of those great mysteries of life, of the Self, which form the only
subject really worthy of the profoundest thought of man. All else is
passing; all else is transient; all else is but the toy of a moment.
Fame and power, wealth and science--all that is in this world below is
as nothing beside the grandeur of the Eternal Self in the universe and
in man, one in all His manifold manifestations, marvellous and beautiful
in every form that He puts forth. And this year, of all the
manifestations of the Supreme, we are going to dare to study the holiest
of the holiest, those manifestations of God in the world in which He
shows Himself as divine, coming to help the world that He has made,
shining forth in His essential nature, the form but a thin film which
scarce veils the Divinity from our eyes. How then shall we venture to
approach it, how shall we dare to study it, save with deepest reverence,
with profoundest humility; for if there needs for the study of His works
patience, reverence and humbleness of heart, what when we study Him
whose works but partially reveal Him, when we try to understand what is
meant by an Avatâra, what is the meaning, what the purpose of such a
revelation?
Our President has truly said that in all the faiths of the world there
is belief in such manifestations, and that ancient maxim as to
truth--that which is as the hall mark on the silver showing that the
metal is pure--that ancient maxim is here valid, that whatever has been
believed everywhere, whatever has been believed at every time, and by
every one, that is true, that is reality. Religions quarrel over many
details; men dispute over many propositions; but where human heart and
human voice speak a single word, there you have the mark of truth, there
you have the sign of spiritual reality. But in dealing with the subject
one difficulty faces us, faces you as hearers, faces myself as speaker.
In every religion in modern times truth is shorn of her full
proportions; the intellect alone cannot grasp the many aspects of the
one truth. So we have school after school, philosophy after philosophy,
each one showing an aspect of truth, and ignoring, or even denying, the
other aspects which are equally true. Nor is this all; as the age in
which we are passes on from century to century, from millennium to
millennium, knowledge becomes dimmer, spiritual insight becomes rarer,
those who repeat far out-number those who know; and those who speak with
clear vision of the spiritual verity are lost amidst the crowds, who
only hold traditions whose origin they fail to understand. The priest
and the prophet, to use two well-known words, have ever in later times
come into conflict one with the other. The priest carries on the
traditions of antiquity; too often he has lost the knowledge that made
them real. The prophet--coming forth from time to time with the divine
word hot as fire on his lips--speaks out the ancient truth and
illuminates tradition. But they who cling to the words of tradition are
apt to be blinded by the light of the fire and to call out "heretic"
against the one who speaks the truth that they have lost. Therefore, in
religion after religion, when some great teacher has arisen, there have
been opposition, clamour, rejection, because the truth he spoke was too
mighty to be narrowed within the limits of half-blinded men. And in such
a subject as we are to study to-day, certain grooves have been made,
certain ruts as it were, in which the human mind is running, and I know
that in laying before you the occult truth, I must needs, at some
points, come into clash with details of a tradition that is rather
repeated by memory than either understood or the truths beneath it
grasped. Pardon me then, my brothers, if in a speech on this great topic
I should sometimes come athwart some of the dividing lines of different
schools of Hindu thought; I may not, I dare not, narrow the truth I have
learnt, to suit the limitations that have grown up by the ignorance of
ages, nor make that which is the spiritual verity conform to the empty
traditions that are left in the faiths of the world. By the duty laid
upon me by the Master that I serve, by the truth that He has bidden me
speak in the ears of men of all the faiths that are in this modern
world; by these I must tell you what is true, no matter whether or not
you agree with it for the moment; for the truth that is spoken wins
submission afterwards, if not at the moment; and any one who speaks of
the Ṛishis of antiquity must speak the truths that they taught in
their days, and not repeat the mere commonplaces of commentators of
modern times and the petty orthodoxies that ring us in on every side and
divide man from man.
I propose in order to simplify this great subject to divide it under
certain heads. I propose first to remind you of the two great divisions
recognised by all who have thought on the subject; then to take up
especially, for this morning, the question, "What is an Avatâra?"
To-morrow we shall put and strive to answer, partly at least, the
question, "Who is the source of Avatâras?" Then later we shall take up
special Avatâras both of the kosmos and of human races. Thus I hope to
place before you a clear, definite succession of ideas on this great
subject, not asking you to believe them because I speak them, not asking
you to accept them because I utter them. Your reason is the bar to which
every truth must come which is true for you; and you err deeply, almost
fatally, if you let the voice of authority impose itself where you do
not answer to the speaking. Every truth is only true to you as you see
it, and as it illuminates the mind; and truth however true is not yet
truth for you, unless your heart opens out to receive it, as the flower
opens out its heart to receive the rays of the morning sun.
First, then, let us take a statement that men of every religion will
accept. Divine manifestations of a special kind take place from time to
time as the need arises for their appearance; and these special
manifestations are marked out from the universal manifestation of God in
His kosmos; for never forget that in the lowest creature that crawls the
earth I'shvara is present as in the highest Deva. But there are certain
special manifestations marked out from this general self-revelation in
the kosmos, and it is these special manifestations which are called
forth by special needs. Two words especially have been used in Hinduism,
marking a certain distinction in the nature of the manifestation--one
the word "Avatâra," the other the word "A´vesha." Only for a moment
need we stop on the meaning of the words, important to us because the
literal meaning of the words points to the fundamental difference
between the two. The word "Avatâra," as you know, has as its root
"tṛi," passing over, and with the prefix which is added, the "ava,"
you get the idea of descent, one who descends. That is the literal
meaning of the word. The other word has as its root "viṣh,"
permeating, penetrating, pervading, and you have there the thought of
something which is permeated or penetrated. So that while in the one
case, Avatâra, there is the thought of a descent from above, from
I´shvara to man or animal; in the other, there is rather the idea of an
entity already existing who is influenced, permeated, pervaded by the
divine power, specially illuminated as it were. And thus we have a kind
of intermediate step, if one may say so, between the divine
manifestation in the Avatâra and in the kosmos--the partial divine
manifestation in one who is permeated by the influence of the Supreme,
or of some other being who practically dominates the individual, the Ego
who is thus permeated.
Now what are the occasions which lead to these great manifestations?
None can speak with mightier authority on this point than He who came
Himself as an Avatâra just before the beginning of our own age, the
Divine Lord Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa Himself. Turn to that marvellous poem,
the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_, to the fourth Adhyâya, Shlokas 7 and 8; there He
tells us what draws Him forth to birth into His world in the manifested
form of the Supreme:
यदा यदाहिधर्मस्य घ्लानिर्भवति भारत ।
अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् ॥
परित्राणाय साधूनाम् विनासायचदुष्कृताम् ॥
धर्मसंस्धापनार्थाय संभवामि युगे युगे ॥
[Sanskrit:
yadA yadAhidharmasya GlAnirBavati BArata |
aByutthAnamadharmasya tadAtmAnaM sRujAmyaham ||
paritrANAya sAdhUnAm vinAsAyacaduShkRutAm ||
dharmasaMsdhApanArthAya saMBavAmi yuge yuge ||]
"When Dharma,--righteousness, law--decays, when
Adharma--unrighteousness, lawlessness--is exalted, then I Myself come
forth: for the protection of the good, for the destruction of the evil,
for the establishing firmly of Dharma, I am born from age to age." That
is what He tells us of the coming forth of the Avatâra. That is, the
needs of His world call upon Him to manifest Himself in His divine
power; and we know from other of His sayings that in addition to those
which deal with the human needs, there are certain kosmic necessities
which in the earlier ages of the world's story called forth special
manifestations. When in the great wheel of evolution another turn round
has to be given, when some new form, new type of life is coming forth,
then also the Supreme reveals Himself, embodying the type which thus He
initiates in His kosmos, and in this way turning that everlasting wheel
which He comes forth as I´shvara to turn. Such then, speaking quite
generally, the meaning of the word, and the object of the coming.
From that we may fitly turn to the more special question, "What is an
Avatâra?" And it is here that I must ask your close attention, nay, your
patient consideration, where points that to some extent may be
unfamiliar are laid before you; for as I said, it is the occult view of
the truth which I am going to partially unveil, and those who have not
thus studied truth need to think carefully ere they reject, need to
consider long ere they refuse. We shall see as we try to answer the
question how far the great authorities help us to understand, and how
far the lack of knowledge in reading those authorities has led to
misconception. You may remember that the late learned T. Subba Rao in
the lectures that he gave on the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_ put to you a certain
view of the Avatâra, that it was a descent of I´shvara--or, as he said,
using the theosophical term, the Logos, which is only the Greek name for
I´shvara--a descent of I´shvara, uniting Himself with a human soul. With
all respect for the profound learning of the lamented pandit, I cannot
but think that that is only a partial definition. Probably he did not at
that time desire, had not very possibly the time, to deal with case
after case, having so wide a field to cover in the small number of
lectures that he gave, and he therefore chose out one form, as we may
say, of self-revelation, leaving untouched the others, which now in
dealing with the subject by itself we have full time to study. Let me
then begin as it were at the beginning, and then give you certain
authorities which may make the view easier to accept; let me state
without any kind of attempt to veil or evade, what is really an Avatâra.
Fundamentally He is the result of evolution. In far past Kalpas, in
worlds other than this, nay, in universes earlier than our own, those
who were to be Avatâras climbed slowly, step by step, the vast ladder of
evolution, climbing from mineral to plant, from plant to animal, from
animal to man, from man to Jîvanmukta, from Jîvanmukta higher and higher
yet, up the mighty hierarchy that stretches beyond Those who have
liberated Themselves from the bonds of humanity; until at last, thus
climbing, They cast off not only all the limits of the separated Ego,
not only burst asunder the limitations of the separated Self, but
entered I´shvara Himself and expanded into the all-consciousness of the
Lord, becoming one in knowledge as they had ever been one in essence
with that eternal Life from which originally they came forth, living in
that life, centres without circumferences, living centres, one with the
Supreme. There stretches behind such a One the endless chain of birth
after birth, of manifestation after manifestation. During the stage in
which He was human, during the long climbing up of the ladder of
humanity, there were two special characteristics that marked out the
future Avatâra from the ranks of men. One his absolute bhakti, his
devotion to the Supreme; for only those who are bhaktas and who to their
bhakti have wed gnyâna, or knowledge, can reach this goal; for by
devotion, says Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, can a man "enter into My being."
And the need of the devotion for the future Avatâra is this: he must
keep the centre that he has built even in the life of I´shvara, so that
he may be able to draw the circumference once again round that centre,
in order that he may come forth as a manifestation of I'shvara, one with
Him in knowledge, one with Him in power, the very Supreme Himself in
earthly life; he must hence have the power of limiting himself to form,
for no form can exist in the universe save as there is a centre within
it round which that form is drawn. He must be so devoted as to be
willing to remain for the service of the universe while I´shvara Himself
abides in it, to share the continual sacrifice made by Him, the
sacrifice whereby the universe lives. But not devotion alone marks this
great One who is climbing his divine path. He must also be, as I´shvara
is, a lover of humanity. Unless within him there burns the flame of love
for men--nay, men, do I say? it is too narrow--unless within him burns
the flame of love for everything that exists, moving and unmoving, in
this universe of God, he will not be able to come forth as the Supreme
whose life and love are in everything that He has brought forth out of
His eternal and inexhaustible life. "There is nothing," says the
Beloved, "moving or unmoving, that may exist bereft of me;"[1] and
unless the man can work that into his nature, unless he can love
everything that is, not only the beautiful but the ugly, not only the
good but the evil, not only the attractive but the repellent, unless in
every form he sees the Self, he cannot climb the steep path the Avatâra
must tread.
[Footnote 1: _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_, x. 39.]
These, then, are the two great characteristics of the man who is to
become the special manifestation of God--bhakti, love to the One in whom
he is to merge, and love to those whose very life is the life of God.
Only as these come forth in the man is he on the path that leads him to
be--in future universes, in far, far future kalpas--an Avatâra coming as
God to man.
Now on this view of the nature of an Avatâra difficulties, I know,
arise; but they are difficulties that arise from a partial view, and
then from that view having been merely accepted, as a rule, on the
authority of some great name, instead of on the thinking out and
thorough understanding of it by the man who repeats the shibboleth of
his own sect or school. The view once taken, every text in Shruti or
Smṛiti that goes against that view is twisted out of its natural
meaning, in order to be made to agree with the idea which already
dominates the mind. That is the difficulty with every religion; a man
acquires his view by tradition, by habit, by birth, by public opinion,
by the surroundings of his own time and of his own day. He finds in the
scriptures--which belong to no time, to no day, to no one age, and to
no one people, but are expressions of the eternal Veda--he finds in them
many texts that do not fit into the narrow framework that he has made;
and because he too often cares for the framework more than for the
truth, he manipulates the text until he can make it fit in, in some
dislocated fashion; and the ingenuity of the commentator too often
appears in the skill with which he can make words appear to mean what
they do not mean in their grammatical and obvious sense. Thus, men of
every school, under the mighty names of men who knew the truth--but who
could only give such portion of truth as they deemed man at the time was
able to receive--use their names to buttress up mistaken
interpretations, and thus walls are continually built up to block the
advancing life of man.
Now let me take one example from one of the greatest names, one who knew
the truth he spoke, but also, like every teacher, had to remember that
while he was man, those to whom he spoke were children that could not
grasp truth with virile understanding. That great teacher, founder of
one of the three schools of the Vedânta, Shrî Râmânujâchârya, in his
commentary on the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_--a priceless work which men of every
school might read and profit by--dealing with the phrase in which Shrî
Kṛiṣhṇa declares that He has had बहूनिजन्मानि [Sanskrit: bahUnijanmAni]
"many births," points out how vast the variety of those births had been.
Then, confining himself to His manifestations as I´shvara--that is
after He had attained to the Supreme--he says quite truly that He was
born by His own will; not by karma that compelled Him, not by any force
outside Him that coerced Him, but by His own will He came forth as
I'shvara and incarnated in one form or another. But there is nothing
said there of the innumerable steps traversed by the mighty One ere yet
He merged Himself in the Supreme. Those are left on one side,
unmentioned, unnoticed, because what the writer had in his view was to
present to the hearts of men a great Object for adoration, who might
gradually lift them upwards and upwards until the Self should blossom in
them in turn. No word is said of the previous kalpas, of the universes
stretching backward into the illimitable past. He speaks of His birth as
Deva, as Nâga, as Gandharva, as those many shapes that He has taken by
His own will. As you know, or as you may learn if you turn to
_Shrîmad-Bhâgavata_, there is a much longer list of manifestations than
the ten usually called Avatâras. There are given one after another the
forms which seem strange to the superficial reader when connected in
modern thought with the Supreme. But we find light thrown on the
question by some other words of the great Lord; and we also find in one
famous book, full of occult hints--though not with much explanation of
the hints given--the _Yoga Vâsiṣhṭha_, a clear definite statement that
the deities, as Mahâdeva, Viṣhṇu and Brahmâ, have all climbed upward to
the mighty posts They hold.[2] And that may well be so, if you think of
it; there is nothing derogatory to Them in the thought; for there is but
one Existence, the eternal fount of all that comes forth as separated,
whether separated in the universe as I´shvara, or separated in the copy
of the universe in man; there is but One without a second; there is no
life but His, no independence but His, no self-existence but His, and
from Him Gods and men and all take their root and exist for ever in and
by His one eternal life. Different stages of manifestation, but the One
Self in all the different stages, the One living in all; and if it be
true, as true it is, that the Self in man is
प्रजो नित्यः शस्वतोऽयंपुराणो [Sanskrit: prajo nityaH SasvatoayaMpurANo]
"unborn, constant, eternal, ancient," it is because the Self in man is
one with the One Self-existent, and I´shvara Himself is only the
mightiest manifestation of that One who knows no second near Himself.
Says an English poet:
Closer is He than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.
[Footnote 2: Part II., Chapter ii., Shlokas 14, 15, 16.]
The Self is in you and in me, as much as the Self is in I´shvara, that
One, eternal, unchanging, undecaying, whereof every manifested existence
is but one ray of glory. Thus it is true, that which is taught in the
_Yoga Vâsiṣhṭha_; true it is that even the greatest, before whom
we bow in worship, has climbed in ages past all human reckoning to be
one with the Supreme, and, ever there, to manifest Himself as God to the
world.
But now we come to a distinction that we find made, and it is a real
one. We read of a Pûrṇâvatâra, a full, complete, Avatâra. What is the
meaning of that word "full" as applied to the Avatâra? The name is
given, as we know, to Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa. He is marked out specially
by that name. Truly the word "pûrṇa" cannot apply to the Illimitable,
the Infinite; He may not be shown forth in any form; the eye may never
behold Him; only the spirit that is Himself can know the One. What is
meant by it is that, so far as is possible within the limits of form,
the manifestation of the formless appears, so far as is possible it came
forth in that great One who came for the helping of the world. This may
assist you to grasp the distinction. Where the manifestation is that of
a Pûrṇâvatâra, then at any moment of time, at His own will, by Yoga
or otherwise, He can transcend every limit of the form in which He binds
Himself by His own will, and shine forth as the Lord of the Universe,
within whom all the Universe is contained. Think for a moment once more
of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, who teaches us so much on this. Turn to that
great storehouse of spiritual wisdom, the _Mahâbhârata_, to the
Ashvamedha Parva which contains the Anugîtâ, and you will find that
Arjuṇa after the great battle, forgetting the teaching that was given
him on Kurukshetra, asked his Teacher to repeat that teaching once
again. And Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, rebuking him for the fickleness of his
mind and stating that He was much displeased that such knowledge should
by fickleness have been forgotten, uttered these remarkable words: "It
is not possible for me to state it in full in that way. I discoursed to
thee on the Supreme Brahman, having concentrated myself in Yoga." And
then He goes on to give out the essence of that teaching, but not in the
same sublime form as we have it in the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_. That is one
thing that shows you what is meant by a Pûrṇâvatâra; in a condition
of Yoga, into which He throws Himself at will, He knows Himself as Lord
of everything, as the Supreme on whom the Universe is built. Nay more;
thrice at least--I am not sure if there may have been more cases, but if
so I cannot at the moment remember them--thrice at least during His life
as Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa He shows himself forth as I´shvara, the
Supreme. Once in the court of Dhritarâshṭra, when the madly foolish
Duryodhana talked about imprisoning within cell-walls the universal Lord
whom the universe cannot confine; and to show the wild folly of the
arrogant prince, out in the court before every eye He shone forth as
Lord of all, filling earth and sky with His glory, and all forms human
and divine, superhuman and subhuman, were seen gathered round Him in the
life from which they spring. Then on Kurukshetra to Arjuna, His beloved
disciple, to whom He gave the divine vision that he might see Him in
His Vaiṣhṇava form, the form of Viṣhṇu, the Supreme Upholder of
the Universe. And later, on his way back to Dvârakâ, meeting with
Utanka, He and the sage came to a misunderstanding, and the sage was
preparing to curse the Lord; to save him from the folly of uttering a
curse against the Supreme, as a child might throw a tiny pebble against
a rock of immemorial age, He shone out before the eyes of him who was
really His bhakta, and showed him the great Vaiṣhṇava form, that of
the Supreme. What do those manifestations show? that at will He can show
himself forth as Lord of all, casting aside the limits of human form in
which men live; casting aside the appearance so familiar to those around
Him, He could reveal himself as the mighty One, I´shvara who is the life
of all. There is the mark of a Pûrṇâvatâra; always within His grasp,
at will, is the power to show Himself forth as I´shvara.
But why--the thought may arise in your minds--are not all Avatâras of
this kind, since all are verily of the Supreme Lord? The answer is that
by His own will, by his own Mâyâ, He veils Himself within the limits
which serve the creatures whom He has come to help. Ah, how different He
is, this Mighty One, from you and me! When we are talking to some one
who knows a little less than ourselves, we talk out all we know to show
our knowledge, expanding ourselves as much as we can so as to astonish
and make marvel the one to whom we speak; that is because we are so
small that we fear our greatness will not be recognised unless we make
ourselves as large as we can to astonish, if possible to terrify; but
when He comes who is really great, who is mightier than anything which
He produces, He makes Himself small in order to help those whom He
loves. And do you know, my brothers, that only in proportion as His
spirit enters into us, can we in our little measure be helpers in the
universe of which He is the one life; until we, in all our doings and
speakings, place ourselves within the one we want to help and not
outside him, feeling as he feels, thinking as he thinks, knowing for the
time as he knows, with all his limitations, although there may be
further knowledge beyond, we cannot truly help; that is the condition of
all true help given by man to man, as it is the only condition of the
help which is given to man by God Himself.
And so in other Avatâras, He limits Himself for men's sake. Take the
great king, Shrî Râma. What did he come to show? The ideal Kshattriya,
in every relation of the Kshattriya life; as son--perfect as son alike
to loving father and to jealous and for the time unkind step-mother. For
you may remember that when the father's wife who was not His own mother
bade him go forth to the forest on the very eve of His coronation as
heir, His gentle answer was: "Mother, I go." Perfect as son. Perfect as
husband; if He had not limited Himself by His own will to show out what
husband should be to wife, how could He in the forest, when Sîtâ had
been reft away by Râvana, have shown the grief, have uttered the piteous
lamentations, which have drawn tears from thousands of eyes, as He calls
on plants and on trees, on animals and birds, on Gods and men, to tell
Him where His wife, His other self, the life of His life, had gone? How
could he have taught men what wife should be to husband's heart unless
He had limited Himself? The consciously Omnipresent Deity could not seek
and search for His beloved who had disappeared. And then as king; as
perfect king as He was perfect son and husband. When the welfare of His
subjects was concerned, when the safety of the realm was to be thought
of, when He remembered that He as king stood for God and must be perfect
in the eyes of His subjects, so that they might give the obedience and
the loyalty, which men can only give to one whom they know as greater
than themselves, then even His wife was put aside; then the test of the
fire for Sîtâ, the unsullied and the suffering; then She must pass
through it to show that no sin or pollution had come upon Her by the
foul touch of Râvana, the Râkshasa; then the demand that ere husband's
heart that had been riven might again clasp the wife, She must come
forth pure as woman; and all this, because He was king as well as
husband, and on the throne the people honoured as divine there must only
be purity, spotless as driven snow. Those limitations were needed in
order that a perfect example might be given to man, and man might learn
to climb by reproducing virtues, made small in order that his small
grasp might hold them.
We come to the second great class of manifestations, that to which I
alluded in the beginning as covered by the wide term A´vesha. In that
case it is not that a man in past universes has climbed upward and has
become one with I´shvara; but it is that a man has climbed so far as to
become so great, so perfect in his manhood, and so full of love and
devotion to God and man, that God is able to permeate him with a portion
of His own influence, His own power, His own knowledge, and send him
forth into the world as a superhuman manifestation of Himself. The
individual Ego remains; that is the great distinction. The _man_ is
there, though the power that is acting is the manifested God. Therefore
the manifestation will be coloured by the special characteristics of the
one over whom this overshadowing is made; and you will be able to trace
in the thoughts of this inspired teacher, the characteristics of the
race, of the individual, of the form of knowledge which belongs to that
man in the incarnation in which the great overshadowing takes place.
That is the fundamental difference.
But here we find that we come at once to endless grades, endless
varieties, and down the ladder of lesser and lesser evolution we may
tread, step by step, until we come to the lower grades that we call
inspiration. In a case of A´vesha it generally continues through a great
portion of the life, the latter portion, as a rule, and it is
comparatively seldom withdrawn. Inspiration, as generally understood, is
a more partial thing, more temporary. Divine power comes down,
illuminates and irradiates the man for the moment, and he speaks for the
time with authority, with knowledge, which in his normal state he will
be unable probably to compass. Such are the prophets who have
illuminated the world age after age; such were in ancient days the
Brâhmaṇas who were the mouth of God. Then truly the distinction was
not that I spoke of between priest and prophet; both were joined in the
one illumination, and the teaching of the priest and the preaching of
the prophet ran on the same lines and gave forth the same great truths.
But in later times the distinction arose by the failure of the
priesthood, when the priest turned aside for money, for fame, for power,
for all the things with which only younger souls ought to concern
themselves--human toys with which human babies play, and do wisely in so
playing, for they grow by them. Then the priests became formal, the
prophets became more and more rare, until the great fact of inspiration
was thrown back wholly into the past, as though God or man had altered,
man no longer divine in his nature, God no longer willing to speak words
in the ears of men. But inspiration is a fact in all its stages; and it
goes far farther than some of you may think. The inspiration of the
prophets, spiritually mighty and convincing, is needed, and they come to
the world to give a new impulse to spiritual truth. But there is a
general inspiration that any one may share who strives to show out the
divine life from which no son of man is excluded, for every son of man
is son of God. Have you ever been drawn away for a moment into higher,
more peaceful realms, when you have come across something of beauty, of
art, of the wonders of science, of the grandeur of philosophy? Have you
for a time lost sight of the pettinesses of earth, of trivial troubles,
of small worries and annoyances, and felt yourself lifted into a calmer
region, into a light that is not the light of common earth? Have you
ever stood before some wondrous picture wherein the palette of the
painter has been taxed to light the canvas with all the hues of
beauteous colour that art can give to human sight? Or have you seen in
some wondrous sculpture, the gracious living curves that the chisel has
freed from the roughness of the marble? Or have you listened while the
diviner spell of music has lifted you, step by step, till you seem to
hear the Gandharvas singing and almost the divine flute is being played
and echoing in the lower world? Or have you stood on the mountain peak
with the snows around you, and felt the grandeur of the unmoving nature
that shows out God as well as the human spirit? Ah, if you have known
any of these peaceful spots in life's desert, then you know how
all-pervading is inspiration; how wondrous the beauty and the power of
God shown forth in man and in the world; then you know, if you never
knew it before, the truth of that great proclamation of Shrî
Kṛiṣhṇa the Beloved: "Whatever is royal, good, beautiful, and
mighty, understand thou that to go forth from My Splendour";[3] all is
the reflection of that tejas[4] which is His and His alone. For as there
is nought in the universe without His love and life, so there is no
beauty that is not His beauty, that is not a ray of the illimitable
splendour, one little beam from the unfailing source of life.
[Footnote 3: _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_, x. 41.]
[Footnote 4: Splendour, radiance.]
SECOND LECTURE.
BROTHERS:--You will remember that yesterday, in dividing the subject
under different heads, I put down certain questions which we would take
in order. We dealt yesterday with the question: "What is an Avatâra?"
The second question that we are to try to answer, "What is the source of
Avatâras?" is a question that leads us deep into the mysteries of the
kosmos, and needs at least an outline of kosmic growth and evolution in
order to give an intelligible answer. I hope to-day to be able also to
deal with the succeeding question, "How does the need for Avatâras
arise?" This will leave us for to-morrow the subject of the special
Avatâras, and I shall endeavour, if possible, during to-morrow's
discourse, to touch on nine of the Avatâras out of the ten recognised as
standing out from all other manifestations of the Supreme. Then, if I am
able to accomplish that task, we shall still have one morning left, and
that I propose to give entirely to the study of the greatest of the
Avatâras, the Lord Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa Himself, endeavouring, if
possible, to mark out the great characteristics of His life and His
work, and, it may be, to meet and answer some of the objections of the
ignorant which, especially in these later days, have been levelled
against Him by those who understand nothing of His nature, nothing of
the mighty work He came to accomplish in the world.
Now we are to begin to-day by seeking an answer to the question, "What
is the source of Avatâras?" and it is likely that I am going to take a
line of thought somewhat unfamiliar, carrying us, as it does, outside
the ordinary lines of our study which deals more with the evolution of
man, of the spiritual nature within him. It carries us to those far off
times, almost incomprehensible to us, when our universe was coming into
manifestation, when its very foundations, as it were, were being laid.
In answering the question, however, the mere answer is simple. It is
recognised in all religions admitting divine incarnations--and they
include the great religions the world--it is admitted that the source of
Avatâras, the source of the Divine incarnations, is the second or middle
manifestation of the sacred Triad. It matters not whether with Hindus we
speak of the Trimûrti, or whether with Christians we speak of the
Trinity, the fundamental idea is one and the same. Taking first for a
moment the Christian symbology, you will find that every Christian tells
you that the one divine incarnation acknowledged in Christianity--for in
Christianity they believe in one special incarnation only--you will find
in the Christian nomenclature the divine incarnation or Avatâra is that
of the second person of the Trinity. No Christian will tell you that
there has ever been an incarnation of God the Father, the primeval
Source of life. They will never tell you that there has been an
incarnation of the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the
Spirit of Wisdom, of creative Intelligence, who built up the
world-materials. But they will always say that it was the second Person,
the Son, who took human form, who appeared under the likeness of
humanity, who was manifested as man for helping the salvation of the
world. And if you analyse what is meant by that phrase, what, to the
mind of the Christian, is conveyed by the thought of the second Person
of the Trinity--for remember in dealing with a religion that is not
yours you should seek for the thought not the form, you should look at
the idea not at the label, for the thoughts are universal while the
forms divide, the ideas are identical while the labels are marks of
separation--if you seek for the underlying thought you will find it is
this: the sign of the second Person of the Trinity is duality; also, He
is the underlying life of the world; by His power the worlds were made,
and are sustained, supported, and protected. You will find that while
the Spirit of Wisdom is spoken of as bringing order out of disorder,
kosmos out of chaos, that it is by the manifested Word of God, or the
second Person of the Trinity, it is by Him that all forms are builded up
in this world, and it is specially in His image that man is made. So
also when we turn to what will be more familiar to the vast majority of
you, the symbology of Hinduism, you will find that all Avatâras have
their source in Viṣhṇu, in Him who pervades the universe, as the
very name Viṣhṇu implies, who is the Supporter, the Protector, the
pervading, all-permeating Life by which the universe is held together,
and by which it is sustained. Taking the names of the Trimûrti so
familiar to us all--not the philosophical names Sat, Chit, A´nanda,
those names which in philosophy show the attributes of the Supreme
Brahman--taking the concrete idea, we have Mahâdeva or Shiva,
Viṣhṇu, and Brahmâ: three names, just as in the other religion we
have three names; but the same fact comes out, that it is the middle or
central one of the Three who is the source of Avatâras. There has never
been a direct Avatâra of Mahâdeva, of Shiva Himself. Appearances? Yes.
Manifestations? Yes. Coming in form for a special purpose served by that
form? Oh yes. Take the _Mahâbhârata_, and you find Him appearing in the
form of the hunter, the Kirâta, and testing the intuition of Arjuna, and
struggling with him to test his strength, his courage, and finally his
devotion to Himself. But that is a mere form taken for a purpose and
cast aside the moment the purpose is served; almost, we may say, a mere
illusion, produced to serve a special purpose and then thrown away as
having completed that which it was intended to perform. Over and over
again you find such appearances of Mahâdeva. You may remember one most
beautiful story, in which He appears in the form of a Chandâla[5] at the
gateway of His own city of Kâshî, when one who was especially
overshadowed by a manifestation of Himself, Shrî Shankarâchârya, was
coming with his disciples to the sacred city; veiling Himself in the
form of an outcaste--for to Him all forms are the same, the human
differences are but as the grains of sand which vanish before the
majesty of His greatness--He rolled Himself in the dust before the
gateway, so that the great teacher could not walk across without
touching Him, and he called to the Chandâla to make way in order that
the Brâhmaṇa might go on unpolluted by the touch of the outcaste;
then the Lord, speaking through the form He had chosen, rebuked the very
one whom His power overshadowed, asking him questions which he could not
answer and thus abasing his pride and teaching him humility. Such forms
truly He has taken, but these are not what we can call Avatâras; mere
passing forms, not manifestations upon earth where a life is lived and a
great drama is played out. So with Brahmâ; He also has appeared from
time to time, has manifested Himself for some special purpose; but there
is no Avatâra of Brahmâ, which we can speak of by that very definite and
well understood term.
[Footnote 5: An outcaste, equivalent to a scavenger.]
Now for this fact there must be some reason.
Why is it that we do not find the source of Avatâras alike in all these
great divine manifestations? Why do they come from only one aspect and
that the aspect of Viṣhṇu? I need not remind you that there is but
one Self, and that these names we use are the names of the aspects that
are manifested by the Supreme; we must not separate them so much as to
lose sight of the underlying unity. For remember how, when a worshipper
of Viṣhṇu had a feeling in his heart against a worshipper of
Mahâdeva, as he bowed before the image of Hari, the face of the image
divided itself in half, and Shiva or Hara appeared on one side and
Viṣhṇu or Hari appeared on the other, and the two, smiling as one
face on the bigoted worshipper, told him that Mahâdeva and Viṣhṇu
were but one. But in Their functions a division arises; They manifest
along different lines, as it were, in the kosmos and for the helping of
man; not for Him but for us, do these lines of apparent separateness
arise.
Looking thus at it, we shall be able to find the answer to our question,
not only who is the source of Avatâras, but why Viṣhṇu is the
source. And it is here that I come to the unfamiliar part where I shall
have to ask for your special attention as regards the building of the
universe. Now I am using the word "universe," in the sense of our solar
system. There are many other systems, each of them complete in itself,
and, therefore, rightly spoken of as a kosmos, a universe. But each of
these systems in its turn is part of a mightier system, and our sun, the
centre of our own system, though it be in very truth the manifested
physical body of I´shwara Himself, is not the only sun. If you look
through the vast fields of space, myriads of suns are there, each one
the centre of its own system, of its own universe; and our sun, supreme
to us, is but, as it were, a planet in a vaster system, its orbit curved
round a sun greater than itself. So in turn that sun, round which our
sun is circling, is planet to a yet mightier sun, and each set of
systems in its turn circles round a more central sun, and so on--we know
not how far may stretch the chain that to us is illimitable; for who is
able to plumb the depths and heights of space, or to find a manifested
circumference which takes in all universes! Nay, we say that they are
infinite in number, and that there is no end to the manifestations of
the one Life.
Now that is true physically. Look at the physical universe with the eye
of spirit, and you see in it a picture of the spiritual universe. A
great word was spoken by one of the Masters or Ṛishis, whom in this
Society we honour and whose teachings we follow. Speaking to one of His
disciples, or pupils, He rebuked him, because, He said in words never to
be forgotten by those who have read them: "You always look at the things
of the spirit with the eyes of the flesh. What you ought to do is to
look at the things of the flesh with the eyes of the spirit." Now, what
does that mean? It means that instead of trying to degrade the spiritual
and to limit it within the narrow bounds of the physical, and to say of
the spiritual that it cannot be because the human brain is unable
clearly to grasp it, we ought to look at the physical universe with a
deeper insight and see in it the image, the shadow, the reflection of
the spiritual world, and learn the spiritual verities by studying the
images that exist of them in the physical world around us. The physical
world is easier to grasp. Do not think the spiritual is modelled on the
physical; the physical is fundamentally modelled on the spiritual, and
if you look at the physical with the eye of spirit, then you find that
it is the image of the higher, and then you are able to grasp the higher
truth by studying the faint reflections that you see in the world around
you. That is what I ask you to do now. Just as you have your sun and
suns, many universes, each one part of a system mightier than itself, so
in the spiritual universe there is hierarchy beyond hierarchy of
spiritual intelligences who are as the suns of the spiritual world. Our
physical system has at its centre the great spiritual Intelligence
manifested as a Trinity, the I´shvara of that system. Then beyond Him
there is a mightier I´shvara, round whom Those who are on the level of
the I´shvara of our system circle, looking to Him as Their central life.
And beyond Him yet another, and beyond Him others and others yet, until
as the physical universes are beyond our thinking, the spiritual
hierarchy stretches also beyond our thought, and, dazzled and blinded by
the splendour, we sink back to earth, as Arjuna was blinded when the
Vaiṣhṇava form shone forth on him, and we cry: "Oh! show us again
Thy more limited form that we may know it and live by it. We are not yet
ready for the mightier manifestations. We are blinded, not helped, by
such blaze of divine splendour."
And so we find that if we would learn we must limit ourselves--nay, we
must try to expand ourselves--to the limits of our own system. Why? I
have met people who have not really any grasp of this little world, this
grain of dust in which they live, who cannot be content unless you
answer questions about the One Existence, the Para-Brahma, whom sages
revere in silence, not daring to speak even with illuminated mind that
knows nirvânic life and has expanded to nirvânic consciousness. The more
ignorant the man, the more he thinks he can grasp. The less he
understands, the more he resents being told that there are some things
beyond the grasp of his intellect, existences so mighty that he cannot
even dream of the lowest of the attributes that mark them out. And for
myself, who know myself ignorant, who know that many an age must pass
ere I shall be able to think of dealing with these profounder problems,
I sometimes gauge the ignorance of the questioner by the questions that
he asks as to the ultimate existences, and when he wants to know what he
calls the primary origin, I know that he has not even grasped the
one-thousandth part of the origin out of which he himself has sprung.
Therefore, I say to you frankly that these mighty Ones whom we worship
are the Gods of our system; beyond them there stretch mightier Ones yet,
whom, perhaps, myriads of kalpas hence, we may begin to understand and
worship.
Let us then confine ourselves to our own system and be glad if we can
catch some ray of the glory that illumines it. Viṣhṇu has His own
functions, as also have Brahmâ and Mahâdeva. The first work in this
system is done by the third of the sacred great Ones of the Trimûrti,
Brahmâ, as you all know, for you have read that there came forth the
creative Intelligence as the third of the divine manifestations. I care
not what is the symbology you take; perchance that of the _Viṣhṇu
Purâṇa_ will be most familiar, wherein the unmanifested Viṣhṇu
is beneath the water, standing as the first of the Trimûrti, then the
Lotus, standing as the second, and the opened Lotus showing Brahmâ, the
third, the creative Mind. You may remember that the work of creation
began with His activity. When we study from the occult standpoint in
what that activity consisted, we find it consisted in impregnating with
His own life the matter of the solar system; that He gave His own life
to build up form after form of atom, to make the great divisions in the
kosmos; that He formed, one after another, the five kinds of matter.
Working by His mind--He is sometimes spoken of as Mahat, the great One,
Intelligence--He formed Tattvas one after another. Tattvas, you may
remember from last year, are the foundations of the atoms, and there are
five of them manifested at the present time. That is His special work.
Then He meditates, and forms--as thoughts--come forth. There His
manifest work may be said to end, though He maintains ever the life of
the atom. As far as the active work of the kosmos is concerned, He gives
way to the next of the great forces that is to work, the force of
Viṣhṇu. His work is to gather together that matter that has been
built, shaped, prepared, vivified, and build it into definite forms
after the creative ideas brought forth by the meditation of Brahmâ. He
gives to matter a binding force; He gives to it those energies that hold
form together. No form exists without Him, whether it be moving or
unmoving. How often does Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, speaking as the supreme
Viṣhṇu, lay stress on this fact. He is the life in every form;
without it the form could not exist, without it it would go back to its
primeval elements and no longer live as form. He is the all-pervading
life; the "Supporter of the Universe" is one of His names. Mahâdeva has
a different function in the universe; especially is He the great Yogî;
especially is He the great Teacher, the Mahâguru; He is sometimes called
Jagatguru, the Teacher of the world. Over and over again--to take a
comparatively modern example, as the _Gurugîtâ_--we find Him as Teacher,
to whom Pârvati goes asking for instruction as to the nature of the
Guru. He it is who defines the Guru's work, He it is who inspires the
Guru's teaching. Every Guru on earth is a reflection of Mahâdeva, and it
is His life which he is commissioned to give out to the world. Yogî,
immersed in contemplation, taking the ascetic form always--that marks
out His functions. For the symbols by which the mighty Ones are shown in
the teachings are not meaningless, but are replete with the deepest
meaning. And when you see Him represented as the eternal Yogî, with the
cord in His hand, sitting as an ascetic in contemplation, it means that
He is the supreme ideal of the ascetic life, and that men who come
especially under His influence must pass out of home, out of family, out
of the normal ties of evolution, and give themselves to a life of
asceticism, to a life of renunciation, to share, however feebly, in that
mighty yoga by which the universe is kept alive.
He then manifests not as Avatâra, but such manifestations come from Him
who is the God, the Spirit, of evolution, who evolves all forms. That is
why from Viṣhṇu all these Avatâras come. For it is He who by His
infinite love dwells in every form that He has made; with patience that
nothing can exhaust, with love that nothing can tire, with quiet, calm
endurance which no folly of man can shake from its eternal peace, He
lives in every form, moulding it as it will bear the moulding, shaping
it as it yields itself to His impulse, binding Himself, limiting Himself
in order that His universe may grow, Lord of eternal life and bliss,
dwelling in every form. If you grasp this, it is not difficult to say
why from Him alone the Avatâras come. Who else should take form save the
One who gives form? who else should work with this unending love save
He, who, while the universe exists, binds Himself that the universe may
live and ultimately share His freedom? He is bound that the universe may
be free. Who else then should come forth when special need arises?
And He gives the great types. Let me remind you of the
_Shrîmad-Bhâgavata_, where in an early chapter of the first Book, the
3rd chapter, a very long list is given of the forms that Viṣhṇu
took, not only the great Avatâras, but also a large number of others. It
is said He appeared as Nara and Nârâyana; it is said He appeared as
Kapila; He took female forms, and so on, a whole long list being given
of the shapes that He assumed. And, turning from that to a very
illuminative passage in the _Mahâbhârata_, we find Him in the form of
Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa explaining a profound truth to Arjuna.
There He gives the law of these appearances: "When, O son of Pritha, I
live in the order of the deities, then I act in every respect as a
deity. When I live in the order of the Gandharvas, then I act in every
respect as a Gandharva. When I live in the order of the Nâgas, I act as
a Nâga. When I live in the order of the Yakshas, or that of the
Râkshasas, I act after the manner of that order. Born now in the order
of humanity, I must act as a human being." A profound truth, a truth
that few in modern times recognise. Every type in the universe, in its
own place, is good; every type in the universe, in its own place, is
necessary. There is no life save His life; how then could any type come
into existence apart from the universal life, bereft whereof nothing can
exist?
We speak of good forms and evil, and rightly, as regards our own
evolution. But from the wider standpoint of the kosmos, good and evil
are relative terms, and everything is very good in the sight of the
Supreme who lives in every one. How can a type come into existence in
which He cannot live? How can anything live and move, save as it has its
being in Him? Each type has its work; each type has its place; the type
of the Râkshasa as much as the type of the Deva, of the Asura as much as
of the Sura. Let me give you one curious little simple example, which
yet has a certain graphic force. You have a pole you want to move, and
that pole is on a pivot, like the mountain which churned the ocean, a
pole with its two ends, positive and negative we will call them. The
positive end, we will say, is pushed in the direction of the river (the
river flowing beyond one end of the hall at Adyar). The negative pole is
pushed--in what direction? In the opposite. And those who are pushing
it have their faces turned in the opposite direction. One man looks at
the river, the other man has his back to it, looking in the opposite
direction. But the pole turns in the one direction although they push in
opposite directions. They are working round the same circle, and the
pole goes faster because it is pushed from its two ends. There is the
picture of our universe. The positive force you call the Deva or Sura;
his face is turned, it seems, to God. The negative force you call the
Râkshasa or Asura; his face, it seems, is turned away from God. Ah no!
God is everywhere, in every point of the circle round which they tread;
and they tread His circle and do His will and no otherwise; and all at
length find rest and peace in Him.
Therefore Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa Himself can incarnate in the form of
Râkshasa, and when in that form He will act as Râkshasa and not as Deva,
doing that part of the divine work with the same perfection as He does
the other, which men in their limited vision call the good. A great
truth hard to grasp. I shall have to return to it presently in speaking
of Râvana, one of the mightiest types of, perhaps the greatest of, all
the Râkshasas. And we shall see, if we can follow, how the profound
truth works out. But remember, if in the minds of some of you there is
some hesitation in accepting this, that the words that I read are not
mine, but those of the Lord who spoke of His own embodying; He has left
on record for your teaching, that He has embodied Himself in the form of
Râkshasa and has acted after the manner of that order.
Leaving that for a moment, there is one other point I must take, ere
speaking of the need for Avatâras, and it is this: when the great
central Deities have manifested, then there come forth from Them seven
Deities of what we may call the second order. In Theosophy, they are
spoken of as the planetary Logoi, to distinguish them from the great
solar Logoi, the central Life. Each of These has to do with one of the
seven sacred planets, and with the chain of worlds connected with that
planet. Our world is one of the links in this chain, and you and I pass
round this chain in successive incarnations in the great stages of life.
The world--our present world--is the midway globe of one such chain. One
Logos of the secondary order presides over the evolution of this chain
of worlds. He shows out three aspects, reflections of the great Logoi
who are at the centre of the system. You have read perhaps of the
seven-leaved lotus, the Saptaparnapadma; looked at with the higher
sight, gazed at with the open vision of the seer, that mighty group of
creative and directing Beings looks like the lotus with its seven leaves
and the great Ones are at the heart of the lotus. It is as though you
could see a vast lotus-flower spread out in space, the tips of the seven
leaves being the mighty Intelligences presiding over the evolution of
the chains of worlds. That lotus symbol is no mere symbol but a high
reality, as seen in that wondrous world wherefrom the symbol has been
taken by the sages. And because the great Ṛishis of old saw with the
open eye of knowledge, saw the lotus-flower spread in space, they took
it as the symbol of kosmos, the lotus with its seven leaves, each one a
mighty Deva presiding over a separate line of evolution. We are
primarily concerned with our own planetary Deva and through Him with the
great Devas of the solar system.
Now my reason for mentioning this is to explain one word that has
puzzled many students. Mahâviṣhṇu, the great Viṣhṇu, why
that particular epithet? What does it mean when that phrase is used? It
means the great solar Logos, Viṣhṇu in His essential nature: but
there is a reflection of His glory, a reflection of His power, of His
love, in more immediate connection with ourselves and our own world. He
is His representative, as a viceroy may represent the king. Some of the
Avatâras we shall find came forth from Mahâviṣhṇu through the
planetary Logos, who is concerned with our evolution and the evolution
of the world. But the Pûrṇâvatâra that I spoke of yesterday comes
forth directly from Mahâviṣhṇu, with no intermediary between
Himself and the world that He comes to help. Here is another distinction
between the Pûrṇâvatâra and those more limited ones, that I could not
mention yesterday, because the words used would, at that stage, have
been unintelligible. We shall find to-morrow, when we come to deal with
the Avatâras Matsya, Kûrma, and so on, that these special Avatâras,
connected with the evolution of certain types in the world, while
indirectly from Mahâviṣhṇu, come through the mediation of His
mighty representative for our own chain, the wondrous Intelligence that
conveys His love and ministers His will, and is the channel of His
all-pervading and supporting power. When we come to study Shrî
Kṛiṣhṇa we shall find that there is no intermediary. He stands
as the Supreme Himself. And while in the other cases there is the
Presence that may be recognised as an intermediary, it is absent in the
case of the great Lord of Life.
Leaving that for further elaboration then to-morrow, let us try to
answer the next question, "How arises this need for Avatâras?" because
in the minds of some, quite naturally, a difficulty does arise. The
difficulty that many thoughtful people feel may be formulated thus:
"Surely the whole plan of the world is in the mind of the Logos from the
beginning, and surely we cannot suppose that He is working like a human
workman, not thoroughly understanding that at which He aims. He must be
the architect as well as the builder; He must make the plan as well as
carry it out. He is not like the mason who puts a stone in the wall
where he is told, and knows nothing of the architecture of the building
to which he is contributing. He is the master-builder, the great
architect of the universe, and everything in the plan of that universe
must be in His mind ere ever the universe began. But if that be so--and
we cannot think otherwise--how is it that the need for special
intervention arises? Does not the fact of special intervention imply
some unforeseen difficulty that has arisen? If there must be a kind of
interference with the working out of the plan, does that not look as if
in the original plan some force was left out of account, some difficulty
had not been seen, something had arisen for which preparation had not
been made? If it be not so, why the need for interference, which looks
as though it were brought about to meet an unforeseen event?" A natural,
reasonable, and perfectly fair question. Let us try to answer it. I do
not believe in shirking difficulties; it is better to look them in the
face, and see if an answer be possible.
Now the answer comes along three different lines. There are three great
classes of facts, each of which contributes to the necessity; and each,
foreseen by the Logos, is definitely prepared for as needing a
particular manifestation.
The first of these lines arises from what I may perhaps call the nature
of things. I remarked at the beginning of this lecture on the fact that
our universe, our system, is part of a greater whole, not separate, not
independent, not primary, in comparatively a low scale in the universe,
our sun a planet in a vaster system. Now what does that imply? As
regards matter, Prakṛiti, it implies that our system is builded out
of matter already existing, out of matter already gifted with certain
properties, out of matter that spreads through all space, and from which
every Logos takes His materials, modifying it according to His own plan
and according to His own will. When we speak of Mûlaprakṛiti, the
root of matter, we do not mean that it exists as the matter we know. No
philosopher, no thinker would dream of saying that that which spreads
throughout space is identical with the matter of our very elementary
solar system. It is the root of matter, that of which all forms of
matter are merely modifications. What does that imply? It implies that
our great Lord, who brought our solar system into existence, is taking
matter which already has certain properties given to it by One yet
mightier than Himself. In that matter three guṇas exist in
equilibrium, and it is the breath of the Logos that throws them out of
equilibrium, and causes the motion by which our system is brought into
existence. There must be a throwing out of equilibrium, for equilibrium
means Pralaya, where there is not motion, nor any manifestation of life
and form. When life and form come forth, equilibrium must have been
disturbed, and motion must be liberated by which the world shall be
built. But the moment you grasp that truth you see that there must be
certain limitations by virtue of the very material in which the Deity
is working for the making of the system. It is true that when out of His
system, when not conditioned and confined and limited by it, as He is by
His most gracious will, it is true that He would be the Lord of that
matter by virtue of His union with the mightier Life beyond; but when
for the building of the world He limits Himself within His Mâyâ, then He
must work within the conditions of those materials that limit His
activity, as we are told over and over again.
Now when in the ceaseless interplay of Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas, Tamas
has the ascendancy, aided and, as it were, worked by Rajas, so that they
predominate over Sattva in the foreseen evolution, when the two
combining overpower the third, when the force of Rajas and the inertia
and stubbornness of Tamas, binding themselves together, check the
action, the harmony, the pleasure-giving qualities of Sattva, then comes
one of the conditions in which the Lord comes forth to restore that
which had been disturbed of the balanced interworking of the three
guṇas and to make again such balance between them as shall enable
evolution to go forward smoothly and not be checked in its progress. He
re-establishes the balance of power which gives orderly motion, the
order having been disturbed by the co-operation of the two in
contradistinction to the third. In these fundamental attributes of
matter, the three guṇas, lies the first reason of the need for
Avatâras.
The second need has to do with man himself, and now we come back in both
the second and the third to that question of good and evil, of which I
have already spoken. I´shvara, when He came to deal with the evolution
of man--with all reverence I say it--had a harder task to perform than
in the evolution of the lower forms of life. On them the law is imposed
and they must obey its impulse. On the mineral the law is compulsory;
every mineral moves according to the law, without interposing any
impulse from itself to work against the will of the One. In the
vegetable world the law is imposed, and every plant grows in orderly
method according to the law within it, developing steadily and in the
fashion of its order, interposing no impulse of its own. Nay, in the
animal world--save perhaps when we come to its highest members--the law
is still a force overpowering everything else, sweeping everything
before it, carrying along all living things. A wheel turning on the road
might carry with it on its axle the fly that happened to have settled
there; it does not interpose any obstacle to the turning of the wheel.
If the fly comes on to the circumference of the wheel and opposes itself
to its motion, it is crushed without the slightest jarring of the wheel
that rolls on, and the form goes out of existence, and the life takes
other shapes.
So is the wheel of law in the three lower kingdoms. But with man it is
not so. In man I´shvara sets himself to produce an image of Himself,
which is not the case in the lower kingdoms. As life has evolved, one
force after another has come out, and in man there begins to come out
the central life, for the time has arrived for the evolution of the
sovereign power of will, the self-initiated motion which is part of the
life of the Supreme. Do not misunderstand me--for the subject is a
subtle one; there is only one will in the universe, the will of
I´shvara, and all must conform itself to that will, all is conditioned
by that will, all must move according to that will, and that will marks
out the straight line of evolution. There may be swerving neither to the
right hand nor to the left. There is one will only which in its aspect
to us is free, but inasmuch as our life is the life of I´shvara Himself,
inasmuch as there is but one Self and that Self is yours and mine as
much as His--for He has given us His very Self to be our Self and our
life--there must evolve at one stage of this wondrous evolution that
royal power of will which is seen in Him. And from the A´tmâ within us,
which is Himself in us, there flows forth the sovereign will into the
sheaths in which the A´tmâ is as it were held. Now what happens is this:
force goes out through the sheaths and gives them some of its own
nature, and each sheath begins to set up a reflection of the will on its
own account, and you get the "I" of the body which wants to go this way,
and the "I" of passion or emotion which wants to go that way, and the
"I" of the mind which wants to go a third way, and none of these ways
is the way of the A´tmâ, the Supreme. These are the illusory wills of
man, and there is one way in which you may distinguish them from the
true will. Each of them is determined in its direction by external
attraction; the man's body wants to move in a particular way because
something attracts it, or something else repels it: it moves to what it
likes, to what is congenial to it, it moves away from that which it
dislikes, from that from which it feels itself repelled. But that motion
of the body is but motion determined by the I´shvara outside, as it
were, rather than by the I´shvara within, by the kosmos around and not
by the Self within, which has not yet achieved its mastery of the
kosmos. So with the emotions or passions: they are drawn this way or
that by the objects of the senses, and the "senses move after their
appropriate objects"; it is not the "I," the Self, which moves. And so
also with the mind. "The mind is fickle and restless, O
Kṛiṣhṇa, it seems as hard to curb as the wind," and the mind
lets the senses run after objects as a horse that has broken its reins
flies away with the unskilled driver. All these forces are set up; and
there is one more thing to remember. These forces reinforce the râjasic
guṇa and help to bring about that predominance of which I spoke; all
these reckless desires that are not according to the one will are yet
necessary in order that the will may evolve and in order to train and
develop the man.
Do you say why? How would you learn right if you knew not wrong? How
would you choose good if you knew not evil? How would you recognise the
light if there were no darkness? How would you move if there were no
resistance? The forces that are called dark, the forces of the
Râkshasas, of the Asuras, of all that seem to be working against
I´shvara--these are the forces that call out the inner strength of the
Self in man, by struggling with which the forces of A´tmâ within the man
are developed, and without which he would remain in Pralaya for
evermore. It is a perfectly stagnant pool where there is no motion, and
there you get corruption and not life. The evolution of force can only
be made by struggle, by combat, by effort, by exercise, and inasmuch as
I´shvara is building men and not babies, He must draw out men's forces
by pulling against their strength, making them struggle in order to
attain, and so vivifying into outer manifestation the life that
otherwise would remain enfolded in itself. In the seed the life is
hidden, but it will not grow if you leave the seed alone. Place it on
this table here, and come back a century hence, and, if you find it, it
will be a seed still and nothing more. So also is the A´tmâ in man ere
evolution and struggle have begun. Plant your seed in the ground, so
that the forces in the ground press on it, and the rays of the sun from
outside make vibrations that work on it, and the water from the rain
comes through the soil into it and forces it to swell--then the seed
begins to grow; but as it begins to grow it finds the earth around. How
shall it grow but by pushing at it and so bringing out the energies of
life that are within it? And against the opposition of the ground the
roots strike down, and against the opposition of the ground the growing
point mounts upward, and by the opposition of the ground the forces are
evolved that make the seed grow, and the little plant appears above the
soil. Then the wind comes and blows and tries to drag it away, and, in
order that it may live and not perish, it strikes its roots deeper and
gives itself a better hold against the battering force of the wind, and
so the tree grows against the forces which try to tear it out. And if
these forces were not, there would have been no growth of the root. And
so with the root of I'shvara, the life within us; were everything around
us smooth and easy, we would remain supine, lethargic, indifferent. It
is the whip of pain, of suffering, of disappointment, that drives us
onward and brings out the forces of our internal life which otherwise
would remain undeveloped. Would you have a man grow? Then don't throw
him on a couch with pillows on every side, and bring his meals and put
them into his mouth, so that he moves not limb nor exercises mind. Throw
him on a desert, where there is no food nor water to be found; let the
sun beat down on his head, the wind blow against him; let his mind be
made to think how to meet the necessities of the body, and the man
grows into a man and not a log. That is why there are forces which you
call evil. In this universe there is no evil; all is good that comes to
us from I´shvara, but it sometimes comes in the guise of evil that, by
opposing it, we may draw out our strength. Then we begin to understand
that these forces are necessary, and that they are within the plan of
I´shvara. They test evolution, they strengthen evolution, so that it
does not take the next step onward till it has strength enough to hold
its own, one step made firm by opposition before the next is taken. But
when, by the conflicting wills of men, the forces that work for
retardation, to keep a man back till he is able to overcome them and go
on, when they are so reinforced by men's unruly wishes that they are
beginning, as it were, to threaten progress, then ere that check takes
place, there is reinforcement from the other side: the presence pf the
Avatâra of the forces that threaten evolution calls forth the presence
of the Avatâra that leads to the progress of humanity.
We come to the third cause. The Avatâra does not come forth without a
call. The earth, it is said, is very heavy with its load of evil, "Save
us, O supreme Lord," the Devas come and cry. In answer to that cry the
Lord comes forth. But what is this that I spoke of purposely by a
strange phrase to catch your attention, that I spoke of as an Avatâra of
evil? By the will of the one Supreme, there is one incarnated in form
who gathers up together the forces that make for retardation, in order
that, thus gathered together, they may be destroyed by the opposing
force of good, and thus the balance may be re-established and evolution
go on along its appointed road. Devas work for joy, the reward of
Heaven. Svarga is their home, and they serve the Supreme for the joys
that there they have. Râkshasas also serve Him, first for rule on earth,
and power to grasp and hold and enjoy as they will in this lower world.
Both sides serve for reward, and are moved by the things that please.
And in order, as our time is drawing to a close, that I may take one
great example to show how these work, let me take the mighty one, Râvana
of Lanka,[6] that we may give a concrete form to a rather difficult and
abstruse thought. Râvana, as you all know, was the mighty intelligence,
the Râkshasa, who called forth the coming of Shrî Râma. But look back
into the past, and what was he? Keeper of Viṣhṇu's heaven,
door-keeper of the mighty Lord, devotee, bhakta, absolutely devoted to
the Lord. Look at his past, and where do you find a bhakta of Mahâdeva
more absolute in devotion than the one who came forth later as Râvana?
It was he who cast his head into the fire in order that Mahâdeva might
be served. It is he in whose name have been written some of the most
exquisite stotras, breathing the spirit of completest devotion; in one
of them, you may remember--and you could scarcely carry devotion to a
further point--it is in the mouth of Râvana words are put appealing to
Mahâdeva, and describing Him as surrounded by forms the most repellent
and undesirable, surrounded on every side by pisâchas and bhûtas,[7]
which to us seem but the embodiment of the dark shadows of the burning
ghat, forms from which all beauty is withdrawn. He cries out in a
passion of love:
Better wear pisâcha-form, so we
Evermore are near and wait on Thee.
[Footnote 6: Ceylon.]
[Footnote 7: Goblins and elementals.]
How did he then come to be the ravisher of Sîtâ and the enemy of God?
You know how through lack of intuition, through lack of power to
recognise the meaning of an order, following the words not the spirit,
following the outside not the inner, he refused to open the door of
heaven when Sanat Kumâra came and demanded entrance. In order that that
which was lacking might be filled, in order that that which was wanting
might be earned, that which was called a curse was pronounced, a curse
which was the natural reaction from the mistake. He was asked: "Will you
have seven incarnations friendly to Viṣhṇu, or three in which you
will be His enemy and oppose Him?" And because he was a true bhakta, and
because every moment of absence from his Lord meant to him hell of
torture, he chose three of enmity, which would let him go back sooner
to the Feet of the Beloved, rather than the seven of happiness, of
friendliness. Better a short time of utter enmity than a longer
remaining away with apparent happiness. It was love not hatred that made
him choose the form of a Râkshasa rather than the form of a Ṛishi.
There is the first note of explanation.
Then, coming into the form of Râkshasa, he must do his duty as Râkshasa.
This was no weak man to be swayed by momentary thought, by transient
objects. He had all the learning of the Vedas. With him, it was said,
passed away Vaidic learning, with him it disappeared from earth. He knew
his duty. What was his duty? To put forward every force which was in his
mighty nature in order to check evolution, and so call out every force
in man which could be called out by opposing energy which had to be
overcome; to gather round him all the forces which were opposing
evolution; to make himself king of the whole, centre and law-giver to
every force that was setting itself against the will of the Lord; to
gather them together as it were into one head, to call them together
into one arm; so that when their apparent triumph made the cry of the
earth go up to Viṣhṇu, the answer might come in Râma's Avatâra and
they be destroyed, that the life-wave might go on.
Nobly he did the work, thoroughly he discharged his duty. It is said
that even sages are confused about Dharma, and truly it is subtle and
hard to grasp in its entirety, though the fragment the plain man sees be
simple enough. His Dharma was the Dharma of a Râkshasa, to lead the
whole forces of evil against One whom in his inner soul, then clouded,
he loved. When Shrî Râma came, when He was wandering in the forest, how
could he sting Him into leaving the life of His life, His beloved Sîtâ,
and into coming out into the world to do His work? By taking away from
Him the one thing to which He clung, by taking away from Him the wife
whom He loved as His very Self, by placing her in the spot where all the
forces of evil were gathered together, so making one head for
destruction, which the arrow of Shrî Râma might destroy. Then the mighty
battle, then the struggle with all the forces of his great nature, that
the law might be obeyed to the uttermost, duly fulfilled to the last
grain, the debt paid that was owed; and then--ah then! the shaft of the
Beloved, then the arrow of Shrî Râma that struck off the head from the
seeming enemy, from the real devotee. And from the corpse of the
Râkshasa that fell upon the field near Lanka, the devotee went up to
Goloka[8] to sit at the feet of the Beloved, and rest for awhile till
the third incarnation had to be lived out.
[Footnote 8: A name for one of the heavens.]
Such then are some of the reasons by, the ways in which the coming of
the Avatâra is brought about. And my last word to you, my brothers,
to-day is but a sentence, in order to avoid the possibility of a mistake
to which our diving into these depths of thought may possibly give rise.
Remember that though all powers are His, all forces His, Râkshasa as
much as Deva, Asura as much as Sura; remember that for your evolution
you must be on the side of good, and struggle to the utmost against
evil. Do not let the thoughts I have put lead you into a bog, into a pit
of hell, in which you may for the time perish, that because evil is
relative, because it exists by the one will, because Râkshasa is His as
much as Deva, therefore you shall go on their side and walk along their
path. It is not so. If you yield to ambition, if you yield to pride, if
you set yourselves against the will of I´shvara, if you struggle for the
separated self, if in yourselves now you identify yourself with the past
in which you have dwelt instead of with the future towards which you
should be directing your steps, then, if your Karma be at a certain
stage, you pass into the ranks of those who work as enemies, because you
have chosen that fate for yourself, at the promptings of the lower
nature. Then with bitter inner pain--even if with complete
submission--accepting the Karma, but with profound sorrow, you shall
have to work out your own will against the will of the Beloved, and feel
the anguish of the rending that separates the inner from the outer life.
The will of I´shvara for you is evolution; these forces are made to
help your evolution--_but only if you strive against them_. If you yield
to them, then they carry you away. You do not then call out your own
strength, but only strengthen them. Therefore, O Arjuna, stand up and
fight. Do not be supine; do not yield yourself to the forces; they are
there to call out your energies by opposition and you must not sink down
on the floor of the chariot. And my last word is the word of Shrî
Kṛiṣhṇa to Arjuna: "Take up your bow, stand up and fight."
THIRD LECTURE.
The subject this morning, my brothers, is in some ways an easy and in
other ways a difficult one; easy, inasmuch as the stories of the
Avatâras can be readily told and readily grasped; difficult, inasmuch as
the meaning that underlies these manifestations may possibly be in some
ways unfamiliar, may not have been thoroughly thought out by individual
hearers. And I must begin with a general word as to these special
Avatâras. You may remember that I said that the whole universe may be
regarded as the Avatâra of the Supreme, the Self-revelation of I´shvara.
But we are not dealing with that general Self-revelation; nor are we
even considering the very many revelations that have taken place from
time to time, marked out by special characteristics; for we have seen by
referring to one or two of the old writings that many lists are given of
the comings of the Lord, and we are to-day concerned with only some of
those, those that are accepted specially as Avatâras.
Now on one point I confess myself puzzled at the outset, and I do not
know whether in your exoteric literature light is thrown upon the point
as to how these ten were singled out, who was the person who chose them
out of a longer list, on what authority that list was proclaimed. On
that point I must simply state the question, leaving it unanswered. It
may be a matter familiar to those who have made researches into the
exoteric literature. It is not a point of quite sufficient importance
for the moment to spend on it time and trouble, in what we may call the
occult way of research. I leave that then aside, for there is one reason
why some of these stand out in a way which is clear and definite. They
mark stages in the evolution of the world. They mark new departures in
the growth of the developing life, and whether it was that fact which
underlay the exoteric choice I am unable to say; but certainly that fact
by itself is sufficient to justify the special distinction which is
made.
There is one other general point to consider. Accounts of these Avatâras
are found in the Purâṇas; allusions to them, to one or other of them,
are found in other of the ancient writings, but the moment you come to
very much detail you must turn to the Paurâṇic accounts; as you are
aware, sages, in giving those Purâṇas, very often described things as
they are seen on the higher planes, giving the description of the
underlying truth of facts and events; you have appearances described
which sound very strange in the lower world; you have facts asserted
which raise very much of challenge in modern days. When you read in the
Purâṇas of strange forms and marvellous appearances, when you read
accounts of creatures that seem unlike anything that you have ever heard
of or dreamed of elsewhere, the modern mind, with its somewhat narrow
limitations, is apt to revolt against the accounts that are given; the
modern mind, trained within the limits of the science of observation, is
necessarily circumscribed within those limits and those limits are of an
exceedingly narrow description; they are limits which belong only to
modern time, modern to men, in the true sense of the word, though
geological researches stretch of course far back into what we call in
this nineteenth century the night of time. But you must remember that
the moment geology goes beyond the historic period, which is a mere
moment in the history of the world, it has more of guesses than of
facts, more of theories than of proofs. If you take half a dozen modern
geologists and ask each of them in turn for the date of the period of
which records remain in the small number of fossils collected, you will
find that almost every man gives a different date, and that they deal
with differences of millions of years as though they were only seconds
or minutes of ours. So that you will have to remember in what science
can tell you of the world, however accurate it may be within its limits,
that these limits are exceedingly narrow, narrow I mean when measured by
the sight that goes back kalpa after kalpa, and that knows that the
mind of the Supreme is not limited to the manifestations of a few
hundred thousands of years, but goes back million after million,
hundreds of millions after hundreds of millions, and that the varieties
of form, the enormous differences of types, the marvellous kinds of
creatures which have come out of that creative imagination, transcend in
actuality all that man's mind can dream of, and that the very wildest
images that man can make fail far short of the realities that actually
existed in the past kalpas through which the universe has gone. That
word of warning is necessary, and also the warning that on the higher
planes things look very different from what they look down here. You
have here a reflection only of part of those higher forms of existence.
Space there has more dimensions than it has on the physical plane, and
each dimension of space adds a new fundamental variety to form; if to
illustrate this I may use a simile I have often used, it may perhaps
convey to you a little idea of what I mean. Two similes I will take each
throwing a little light on a very difficult subject. Suppose that a
picture is presented to you of a solid form; the picture, being made by
pen or pencil on a sheet of paper, must show on the sheet, which is
practically of two dimensions--a plane surface--a three dimensional
form; so that if you want to represent a solid object, a vase, you must
draw it flat, and you can only represent the solidity of that vase by
resorting to certain devices of light and shade, to the artificial
device which is called perspective, in order to make an illusory
semblance of the third dimension. There on the plane surface you get a
solid appearance, and the eye is deceived into thinking it sees a solid
when really it is looking at a flat surface. Now as a matter of fact if
you show a picture to a savage, an undeveloped savage, or to a very
young child, they will not see a solid but only a flat. They will not
recognise the picture as being the picture of a solid object they have
seen in the world round them; they will not see that that artificial
representation is meant to show a familiar solid, and it passes by them
without making any impression on the mind; only the education of the eye
enables you to see on a flat surface the picture of a solid form. Now,
by an effort of the imagination, can you think of a solid as being the
representation of a form in one dimension more, shown by a kind of
perspective? Then you may get a vague idea of what is meant when we
speak of a further dimension in space. As the picture is to the vase, so
is the vase to a higher object of which that vase itself is a
reflection. So again if you think, say, of the lotus flower I spoke of
yesterday, as having just the tips of its leaves above water, each tip
would appear as a separate object. If you know the whole you know that
they are all parts of one object; but coming over the surface of the
water you will see tips only, one for each leaf of the seven-leaved
lotus. So is every globe in space an apparently separate object, while
in reality it is not separated at all, but part of a whole that exists
in a space of more dimensions; and the separateness is mere illusion due
to the limitations of our faculties.
Now I have made this introduction in order to show you that when you
read the Purâṇas you consistently get the fact on the higher plane
described in terms of the lower, with the result that it seems
unintelligible, seems incomprehensible; then you have what is called an
allegory, that is, a reality which looks like a fancy down here, but is
a deeper truth than the illusion of physical matter, and is nearer to
the reality of things than the things which you call objective and real.
If you follow that line of thought at all you will read the Purâṇas
with more intelligence and certainly with more reverence than some of
the modern Hindus are apt to show in the reading, and you will begin to
understand that when another vision is opened one sees things
differently from the way that one sees them on the physical plane, and
that that which seems impossible on the physical is what is really seen
when you pass beyond the physical limitations.
From the Purâṇas then the stories come.
Let me take the first three Avatâras apart from the remainder, for a
reason that you will readily understand as we go through them. We take
the Avatâra which is spoken of as that of Matsya or the fish; that
which is spoken of as that of Kûrma or the tortoise; that which is
spoken of as that of Vârâha, or the boar. Three animal forms; how
strange! thinks the modern graduate. How strange that the Supreme should
take the forms of these lower animals, a fish, a tortoise, a boar! What
childish folly! "The babbling of a race in its infancy," it is said by
the pandits of the Western world. Do not be so sure. Why this wonderful
conceit as to the human form? Why should you and I be the only worthy
vessels of the Deity that have come out of the illimitable Mind in the
course of ages? What is there in this particular shape of head, arms,
and trunk which shall make it the only worthy vessel to serve as a
manifestation of the supreme I´shvara? I know of nothing so wonderful in
the mere outer form that should make that shape alone worthy to
represent some of the aspects of the Highest. And may it not be that
from His standpoint those great differences that we see between
ourselves and those which we call the lower forms of life may be almost
imperceptible, since He transcends them all? A little child sees an
immense difference between himself of perhaps two and a half feet high
and a baby only a foot and a half high, and thinks himself a man
compared with that tiny form rolling on the ground and unable to walk.
But to the grown man there is not so much difference between the length
of the two, and one seems very much like the other. While we are very
small we see great differences between ourselves and others; but on the
mountain top the hovel and the palace do not differ so very much in
height. They all look like ant-hills, very much of the same size. And so
from the standpoint of I´shvara, in the vast hierarchies from the
mineral to the loftiest Deva, the distinctions are but as ant-hills in
comparison with Himself, and one form or another is equally worthy, so
that it suits His purpose, and manifests His will.
Now for the Matsya Avatâra; the story you will all know: when the great
Manu, Vaivasvata Manu, the Root Manu, as we call Him--that is, a Manu
not of one race only, but of a whole vast round of kosmic evolution,
presiding over the seven globes that are linked for the evolution of the
world--that mighty Manu, sitting one day immersed in contemplation, sees
a tiny fish gasping for water; and moved by compassion, as all great
ones are, He takes up the little fish and puts it in a bowl, and the
fish grows till it fills the bowl; and He placed it in a water vessel
and it grew to the size of the vessel; then He took it out of that
vessel and put it into a bigger one; afterwards into a tank, a pond, a
river, the sea, and still the marvellous fish grew and grew and grew.
The time came when a vast change was impending; one of those changes
called a minor pralaya, and it was necessary that the seeds of life
should be carried over that pralaya to the next manvantara. That would
be a minor pralaya and a minor manvantara. What does that mean? It
means a passage of the seeds of life from one globe to another; from
what a we call the globe preceding our own to our own earth. It is the
function of the Root Manu, with the help and the guidance of the
planetary Logos, to transfer the seeds of life from one globe to the
next, so as to plant them in a new soil where further growth is
possible. As waters rose, waters of matter submerging the globe which
was passing into pralaya, an ark, a vessel appeared; into this vessel
stepped the great Ṛishi with others, and the seeds of life were
carried by Them, and as They go forth upon the waters a mighty fish
appears and to the horn of that fish the vessel is fastened by a rope,
and it conveys the whole safely to the solid ground where the Manu
rebegins His work. A story! yes, but a story that tells a truth; for
looking at it as it takes place in the history of the world, we see the
vast surging ocean of matter, we see the Root Manu and the great
Initiates with Him gathering up the seeds of life from the world whose
work is over, carrying them under the guidance and with the help of the
planetary Viṣhṇu to the new globe where new impulse is to be given
to the life; and the reason why the fish form was chosen was simply
because in the building up again of the world, it was at first covered
with water, and only that form of life was originally possible, so far
as denser physical life was concerned.
You have in that first stage what the geologists call the Silurian Age,
the age of fishes, when the great divine manifestation was of all these
forms of life. The Purâṇa rightly starts in the previous Kalpa,
rightly starts the manifestations with the manifestation in the form of
the fish. Not so very ridiculous after all, you see, when read by
knowledge instead of by ignorance; a truth, as the Purâṇas are full
of truth, if they were only read with intelligence and not with
prejudice.
But some of you may say that there is confusion about these first
Avatâras; in several accounts we find that the Boar stands the first;
that is true, but the key of it is this; the Boar Avatâra initiated that
evolution which was followed unbrokenly by the human; whereas the other
two bring in great stages, each of which is regarded as a separate
kalpa; and if you look into the _Viṣhṇu Purâṇa_ you will find
there the key; for when that begins to relate the incarnation of the
Boar, there is just a sentence thrown in, that the Matsya and Kûrma
Avatâras belong to previous kalpas.
Now if we take the theosophical nomenclature, we find each of these
kalpas covers what we call a Root Race, and you may remember that the
first Root Race of humanity had not human form at all but was simply a
floating mass able to live in the waters which then covered the earth,
and only showing the ordinary protoplasmic motions connected with such a
type of life and possible at that stage of its evolution. It was a seed
of form rather than a form itself; it was the seed planted by the Manu
in the waters of the earth, that out of that humanity might evolve. But
the general course of physical evolution passed through the stage of the
fish; and geology there gives a true fact, though it does not
understand, naturally, the hidden meaning; while the Purâṇa gives you
the reality of the manifestation, and the deeper truth that underlies
the stages of the evolving world.
Then we find, tracing it onward, that this great age passes, and the
world begins to rise out of the waters. How then shall types be brought
forth in order that evolution may go on? The next great type is to be
fitted either for land or for water; for the next stage of the earth
shows the waters draining gradually away, and the land appearing, and
the creatures that are the marked characteristic of the age must exist
partially on land and partially in water. Here again there must be
manifestation of the type of life, this time of what we call the reptile
type; the tortoise is chosen as the typical creature, and while the
tortoise typifies the type to be evolved, reptiles, amphibious creatures
of every description, swarm over the earth, becoming more and more
land-like in their character as the proportion of land to water
increases. There is meanwhile going on, in the "imperishable sacred
land," a preparation for further evolution. There is one part of the
globe that changes not, that from the beginning has been, and will last
while the globe is lasting; it is called the "imperishable land." And
there the great Ṛishis gather, and thence they ever come forth for
the helping of man; that is the imperishable sacred land, sometimes
called the "sacred pole of the earth." Pole itself exists not on the
physical plane but on the higher, and its reflection coming downward
makes, as it were, one spot which never changes, but is ever guarded
from the tread of ordinary men. There took place a most instructive
phenomenon. The type of the evolution then preceding, the Tortoise, the
Logos in that form, makes Himself the base of the revolving axis of
evolution. That is typified by Mandâra, the mountain which, placed on
the tortoise, is made to revolve by the hosts of Suras and Asuras, one
pulling at the head of the serpent, and the other at the tail--the
positive and negative forces that I spoke of yesterday. So the churning
begins in matter, evolving types of life. The type is ever evolved
before the lower manifestation, the type appears before the copies of it
are born in the lower world. And how often have the students of the
great Teachers themselves seen the very thing occur; the churning of the
waters of matter giving forth all the types of the many sorts and
species that are generated in the lower world; these are the archetypes,
as we call them, of classes and creatures, always produced in
preparation for the forward stretch of evolution. There came forth one
by one the archetypes, the elephant, the horse, the woman, and so on,
one after another, showing the track along which evolution was to go.
And first of all, Amṛita, nectar of immortality, comes forth, symbol
of the one life which passes through every form--and that life appears
above the waters the taking of which is necessary in order that every
form may live.
We cannot delay on details; I can only trace hastily the outline,
showing you how real is the truth that underlies the story, and as that
gradually goes on and the types are ready, there comes the whelming of
the world under the waters, and the great continents vanish for a time.
Then comes the third Avatâra, the Vârâha. No earth is to be seen; the
waters of the flood have overwhelmed it. The types that are to be
produced on earth are waiting in the higher region for place on which to
manifest. How shall the earth be brought up from the waters which have
overwhelmed it? Now once again the great Helper is needed, the God, the
Protector of Evolution. Then in the form of a mighty Boar, whose form
filled the heaven, plunging down into the waters that He alone could
separate, the Great One descends. He brings up the earth from the lower
region where it was lying awaiting His coming; and the land rises up
again from below the surface of the flood, and the vast Lemurian
continent is the earth of that far-off age. Here science has a word to
say, rightly enough, that on the Lemurian continent were developed many
types of life, and there the mammals first made their appearance. Quite
so; that was exactly what the sages taught thousands upon thousands of
years ago; that when the Boar, the great type of the mammal, plunged
into the waters to bring up the earth, then was started the mammalian
evolution, and the continent thus rescued from the waters was crowded
with the forms of the mammalian kingdom. Just as the Fish had typified
the Silurian epoch, just as the Tortoise had started on its way the
great amphibian evolution, so did the Boar, that typical mammal, start
the mammalian evolution, and we come to the Lemurian continent with its
wonderful variety of forms of mammalian life. Not so very ignorant after
all, you see, the ancient writings! For men are only re-discovering
to-day what has been in the hands of the followers of the Ṛishis for
thousands, tens of thousands of years.
Then we come to a strange incarnation on this Lemurian continent:
frightful conflicts existed; we are nearing what in the theosophical
nomenclature is the middle of the third Race, and man as man will
shortly appear with all the characteristics of his nature. He is not yet
quite come to birth; strange forms are seen, half human and half animal,
wholly monstrous; terrible struggles arise between these monstrous forms
born from the slime as it is said--from the remains of former
creations--and the newer and higher life in which the future evolution
is enshrined. These forms are represented in the Purâṇas as those of
the race of Daityas, who ruled the earth, who struggled against the Deva
manifestations, who conquered the Devas from time to time, who subjected
them, who ruled over earth and heaven alike, bringing every thing under
their sway. You may read in the splendid stanzas of the Book of Dzyan,
as given us by H. P. B., hints of that mighty struggle of which the
Purâṇas are so full, a struggle which was as real as any struggle of
later days, an absolute historical fact that many of us have seen. We
are instructed over and over again of a frightful conflict of forms, the
forms of the past, monstrous in their strength and in their outline,
against whom the Sons of Light were battling, against whom the great
Lords of the Flame came down. One of these conflicts, the greatest of
all, is given in the story of the Avatâra known as that of
Narasimha--the Man-Lion. You know the story; what Hindu does not know
the story of Prahlâda? In him we have typified the dawning spirituality
which is to show in the higher races of Daityas as they pass on into
definite human evolution, and their form gives way that sexual man may
be born. I need not dwell on that familiar story of the devotee of
Viṣhṇu; how his Daitya father strove to kill him because the name
of Hari was ever on his lips; how he strove to slay him, with a sword,
and the sword fell broken from the neck of the child; how then he tried
to poison him, and Viṣhṇu appeared and ate first of the poisoned
rice, so that the boy might eat it with the name of Hari on his lips;
how his father strove to slay him by the furious elephant, by the fang
of the serpent, by throwing him over a precipice, and by crushing him
under a stone. But ever the cry of "Hari, Hari," brought deliverance,
for in the elephant, in the fang of the serpent, in the precipice, and
in the stone, Hari was ever present, and his devotee was safe in that
presence: how finally when the father, challenging the omnipresence of
the Deity, pointed to the stone pillar and said in mocking language: "Is
your Hari also in the pillar?" "Hari, Hari," cried the boy, and the
pillar burst asunder, and the mighty form came forth and slew the Daitya
that doubted, in order that he might learn the omnipresence of the
Supreme. A story? facts, not fiction; truth, not imagination; and if you
could look back to the time of those struggles, there would seem to you
nothing strange or abnormal in the story; for you would see it repeated
with less vividness in the smaller struggles where the Sons of the Fire
were purging and redeeming the earth, in order that the later human
evolution might take place.
We pass from those four Avatâras, every one of which comes within what
is called the Satya Yuga of the earth--not of the race remember, not the
smaller cycle, but of the earth--the Satya Yuga of the earth as a whole,
when periods of time were of immense length, and when progress was
marvellously slow. Then we come to the next age, that which we call the
Treta Yuga, that which is, in the theosophical chronology--and I put the
two together in order that students may be able to work their way out in
detail--the middle of the third Root Race, when humanity receives the
light from above, and when man as man begins to evolve. How is that
evolution marked? By the coming of the Supreme in human form, as Vâmana,
the Dwarf. The Dwarf? Yes; for man was as yet but dwarf in the truly
human stature, although vast in outer appearance; and He came as the
inner man, small, yet stronger than the outer form; against him was
Bali, the mighty, showing the outer form, while Vâmana, the Dwarf,
showed the man that should be. And when Bali had offered a great
sacrifice, the Dwarf as a Brâhmaṇa came to beg.
It is curious this question of the caste of the Avatâras. When we once
come to the human Avatâras, They are mostly Kshattriyas, as you know,
but in two cases. They are Brâhmaṇas, and this is one of them; for He
was going to beg, and Kshattriya might not beg. Only he to whom the
earth's wealth should be as nothing, who should have no store of wealth
to hold, to whom gold and earth should be as one, only he may go to beg.
He was an ancient Brâhmaṇa, not a modern Brâhmaṇa.
He came with begging bowl in hand, to beg of the king; for of what use
is sacrifice unless something be given at the sacrifice? Now Bali was a
pious ruler, on the side of the evolution that was passing away, and
gladly gave a boon. "Brâhmaṇa, take thy boon," said he. "Three steps
of earth alone I ask for," said the Dwarf. Of that little man surely
three steps would not cover much, and the great king with his world-wide
dominion might well give three steps of earth to the short and puny
Dwarf. But one step covered earth, and the next step covered sky. Where
could the third step be planted, where? so that the gift might be made
complete. Nothing was left for Bali to give save himself; nothing to
make his gift complete--and his word might not be broken--save his own
body. So, recognising the Lord of all, he threw himself before Him, and
the third step, planted on his body, fulfilled the promise of the king
and made him the ruler of the lower regions, of Pâtâla. Such the story.
How full of significance. This inner man--so small at that stage but
really so mighty, who was to rule alike the earth and heaven--could for
his third step find no place to put his foot upon save his own lower
nature; he was to go forward and forward ever; that is hinted in the
third step that was taken. What a graphic picture of the evolution that
lay in front, the wondrous evolution that now was to begin.
And I may just remind you in passing that there is one word in the _Rig
Veda_, which refers to this very Avatâra, that has been a source of
endless controversy and dispute as to its meaning; there it is said:
Through all this world strode Viṣhṇu; thrice His foot He planted and
the whole
Was gathered in His footstep's dust. (I. xxii., 17.)[9]
[Footnote 9: See also I. cliv., which speaks of His three steps, within
which all living creatures have their habitation; the three steps are
said to be "the earth, the heavens, and all living creatures." Here Bali
is made the symbol of all living things.]
That too is one of the "babblings of child humanity." I know not what
figure the greatest man could use more poetical, more full of meaning,
more sublime in its imagery, than that the whole world was gathered in
the dust of the foot of the Supreme. For what is the world save the dust
of His footsteps, and how would it have any life save as His foot has
touched it?
So we pass, still treading onwards in the Treta Yuga, and we come to
another manifestation--that of Parashurâma; a strange Avatâra you may
think, and a partial Avatâra, let me say, as we shall see when we come
to look at His life and read the words that are spoken of Him. The Yuga
had now gone far and the Kshattriya caste had risen and was ruling,
mighty in its power, great in its authority, the one warrior ruling
caste, and alas! abusing its power, as men will do when souls are still
being trained, and are young for their surroundings. The Kshattriya
caste abused its power, built up in order that it might rule; the duty
of the ruler, remember, is essentially protection: but these used their
power not to protect, but to plunder, not to help but to oppress. A
terrible lesson must be taught the ruling caste, in order that it might
learn, if possible, that the duty of ruling was to protect and support
and help, and not to tyrannise and plunder. The first great lesson was
given to the kings of the earth, the rulers of men, a lesson that had to
be repeated over and over again, and is not yet completely learnt. A
divine manifestation came in order that that lesson might be taught; and
the Teacher was not a Kshattriya save by mother. A strange story, that
story of the birth. Food given to two Kshattriya women, each of whom was
to bear a son, the husband of one of them a Brâhmaṇa; and the two
women exchanged the food, and that meant to bring forth a Kshattriya son
was taken by the woman with the Brâhmaṇa husband. An accident, men
would say; there are no accidents in a universe of law. The food which
was full of Kshattriya energy thus went into the Brâhmaṇa family, for
it would not have been fitting that a Kshattriya should destroy
Kshattriyas. The lesson would not thus have been so well taught to the
world. So that we have the strange phenomenon of the Brâhmaṇa coming
with an axe to slay the Kshattriya, and three times seven times that axe
was raised in slaughter, cutting the Kshattriya trunk off from the
surface of the earth.
But while Parashurâma was still in the body, a greater Avatâra came
forth to show what a Kshattriya king should be. The Kshattriyas abusing
their place and their power were swept away by Parashurâma, and, ere He
had left the earth where the bitter lesson had been taught, the ideal
Kshattriya came down to teach, now by example, the lesson of what should
be, after the lesson of what should not be had been enforced. The boy
Râma was born, on whose exquisite story we have not time long to dwell,
the ideal ruler, the utterly perfect king. While a boy He went forth
with the great teacher Visvâmitra, in order to protect the Yogî's
sacrifice; a boy, almost a child, but able to drive away, as you
remember, the Râkshasas that interfered with the sacrifice, and then He
and His beloved brother Lakshmana and the Yogî went on to the court of
king Janaka. And there, at the court, was a great bow, a bow which had
belonged to Mahâdeva Himself. To bend and string that bow was the task
for the man who would wed Sîtâ, the child of marvellous birth, the
maiden who had sprung from the furrow as the plough went through the
earth, who had no physical father or physical mother. Who should wed the
peerless maiden, the incarnation of Shrî, Lakshmî, the consort of
Viṣhṇu? Who should wed Her save the Avatâra of Viṣhṇu
Himself? So the mighty bow remained unstrung, for who might string it
until the boy Râma came? And He takes it up with boyish carelessness,
and bends it so strongly that it breaks in half, the crash echoing
through earth and sky. He weds Sîtâ, the beautiful, and goes forth with
Her, and with His brother Lakshmana and his bride, and with His father
who had come to the bridal, and with a vast procession, wending their
way back to their own town Ayodhya. This breaking of Mahâdeva's bow has
rung through earth, the crashing of the bow has shaken all the worlds,
and all, both men and Devas, know that the bow has been broken. Among
the devotees of Mahâdeva, Parashurâma hears the clang of the broken bow,
the bow of the One He worshipped; and proud with the might of His
strength, still with the energy of Viṣhṇu in Him, He goes forth to
meet this insolent boy, who had dared to break the bow that no other arm
could bend. He challenges Him, and handing His own bow bids Him try what
He can do with that. Can He shoot an arrow from its string? Râma takes
this offered bow, strings it, and sets an arrow on the string. Then He
stops, for in front of Him there is the body of a Brâhmaṇa; shall He
draw an arrow against that form? As the two Râmas stand face to face,
the energy of the elder, it is written, passes into the younger; the
energy of Viṣhṇu, the energy of the Supreme, leaves the form in
which it had been dwelling and enters the higher manifestation of the
same divine life. The bow was stretched and the arrow waiting, but Râma
would not shoot it forth lest harm should come, until He had pacified
His antagonist; then feeling that energy pass, Parashurâma bows before
Râma, diviner than Himself, hails Him as the Supreme Lord of the
worlds, bends in reverence before Him, and then goes away. That Avatâra
was over, although the form in which the energy had dwelt yet persisted.
That is why I said it was a lesser Avatâra. Where you have the form
persisting when the influence is withdrawn, you have the clear proof
that there the incarnation cannot be said to be complete; the passing
from the one to the other is the sign of the energy taken back by the
Giver and put into a new vessel in which new work is to be done.
The story of Râma you know; we need not follow it further in detail; we
spoke of it yesterday in its highest aspect as combating the forces of
evil and starting the world, as it were, anew. We find the great reign
of Râma lasting ten thousand years in the Dvapara Yuga, the Yuga at the
close of which Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa came.
Then comes the Mighty One, Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa Himself, of whom I
speak not to-day; we will try to study that Avatâra to-morrow with such
insight and reverence as we may possess. Pass over that then for the
moment, leaving it for fuller study, and we come to the ninth Avatâra as
it is called, that of the Lord Buddha. Now round this much controversy
has raged, and a theory exists current to some extent among the Hindus
that the Lord Buddha, though an incarnation of Viṣhṇu, came to
lead astray those who did not believe the Vedas, came to spread
confusion upon earth. Viṣhṇu is the Lord of order, not of
disorder; the Lord of love, not the Lord of hatred; the Lord of
compassion, who only slays to help the life onward when the form has
become an obstruction. And they blaspheme who speak of an incarnation of
the Supreme, as coming to mislead the world that He has made. Rightly
did your own learned pandit, T. Subba Row, speak of that theory with the
disdain born of knowledge; for no one who has a shadow of occult
learning, no one who knows anything of the inner realities of life,
could thus speak of that beautiful and gracious manifestation of the
Supreme, or dream that He could take the mighty form of an Avatâra in
order to mislead.
But there is another point to put about this Avatâra, on which, perhaps,
I may come into conflict with people on another side. For this is the
difficulty of keeping the middle path, the razor path which goes neither
to the left nor to the right, along which the great Gurus lead us. On
either side you find objection to the central teaching. The Lord Buddha,
in the ordinary sense of the word, was not what we have defined as an
Avatâra. He was the first of our own humanity who climbed upwards to
that point, and there merged in the Logos and received full
illumination. His was not a body taken by the Logos for the purpose of
revealing Himself, but was the last in myriads of births through which
he had climbed to merge in I´shvara at last. That is not what is
normally spoken of as an Avatâra, though, you may say, the result truly
is the same. But in the case of the Avatâra, the evolving births are in
previous kalpas, and the Avatâra comes after the man has merged in the
Logos, and the body is taken for the purpose of revelation. But he who
became Gautama Buddha had climbed though birth after birth in our own
kalpa, as well as in the kalpas that went before; and he was incarnated
many a time when the great Fourth Race dwelt in mighty Atlantis, and
rose onward to take the office of the Buddha; for the Buddha is the
title of an office, not of a particular man. Finally by his own
struggles, the very first of our race, he was able to reach that great
function in the world. What is the function? That of the Teacher of Gods
and men. The previous Buddhas had been Buddhas who came from another
planet. Humanity had not lived long enough here to evolve its own son to
that height. Gautama Buddha was human-born. He had evolved through the
Fourth Race into this first family of the A´ryan Race, the Hindu. By
birth after birth in India He had completed His course and took His
final body in A´ryâvarta, to make the proclamation of the law to men.
But the proclamation was not made primarily for India. It was given in
India because India is the place whence the great religious revelations go
forth by the will of the Supreme. Therefore was He born in India, but His
law was specially meant for nations beyond the bounds of A´ryâvarta, that
they might learn a pure morality, a noble ethic, disjoined--because of the
darkness of the age--from all the complicated teachings which we find in
connection with the subtle, metaphysical Hindu faith.
Hence you find in the teachings of the Lord Buddha two great divisions;
one a philosophy meant for the learned, then an ethic disjoined from the
philosophy, so far as the masses are concerned, noble and pure and
great, yet easy to be grasped. For the Lord knew that we were going into
an age of deeper and deeper materialism, that other nations were going
to arise, that India for a time was going to sink down for other nations
to rise above her in the scale of nations. Hence was it necessary to
give a teaching of morality fitted for a more materialistic age, so that
even if nations would not believe in the Gods they might still practise
morality and obey the teachings of the Lord. In order also that this
land might not suffer loss, in order that India itself might not lose
its subtle metaphysical teachings and the widespread belief among all
classes of people in the existence of the Gods and their part in the
affairs of men, the work of the great Lord Buddha was done. He left
morality built upon a basis that could not be shaken by any change of
faith, and, having done His work, passed away. Then was sent another
great One, overshadowed by the power of Mahâdeva, Shrî Shankarâchârya,
in order that by His teaching He might give, in the Advaita Vedânta, the
philosophy which would do intellectually what morally the Buddha had
done, which intellectually would guard spirituality and allow a
materialistic age to break its teeth on the hard nut of a flawless
philosophy. Thus in India metaphysical religion triumphed, while the
teaching of the Blessed One passed from the Indian soil, to do its noble
work in lands other than the land of A´ryâvarta, which must keep
unshaken its belief in the Gods, and where highest and lowest alike must
bow before their power. That is the real truth about this much disputed
question as to the teaching of the ninth Avatâra; the fact was that His
teaching was not meant for His birthplace, but was meant for other
younger nations that were rising up around, who did not follow the
Vedas, but who yet needed instruction in the path of righteousness; not
to mislead them but to guide them, was His teaching given. But, as I
say, and as I repeat, what in it might have done harm in India had it
been left alone was prevented by the coming of the great Teacher of the
Advaita. You must remember, that His name has been worn by man after
man, through century after century; but the Shrî Shankarâchârya on whom
was the power of Mahâdeva was born but a few years after the passing
away of the Buddha, as the records of the Dwârakâ Math show
plainly--giving date after date backward, until they bring His birth
within 60 or 70 years of the passing away of the Buddha.
We come to the tenth Avatâra, the future one, the Kalki. Of that but
little may be said; but one or two hints perchance may be given. With
His coming will dawn a brighter age; with His coming the Kali Yuga will
pass away; with His coming will also come a higher race of men. He will
come when there is born upon earth the sixth Root Race. There will then
be a great change in the world, a great manifestation of truth, of
occult truth, and when He comes then occultism will again be able to
show itself to the world by proofs that none will be able to challenge
or to deny; and He in His coming will give the rule over the sixth Root
Race to the two Kings, of whom you read in the _Kalki Purâṇa_. As we
look back down the past stream of time we find over and over again two
great figures standing side by side--the ideal King and the ideal
Priest. They work together; the one rules, the other teaches; the one
governs the nation, the other instructs it. And such a pair of mighty
ones come down in every age for each and every Race. Each Race has its
own Teacher, the ideal Brâhmaṇa, called in the Buddhist language the
Bodhisattva, the learned, full of wisdom and truth. Each has also its
own ruler, the Manu. Those two we can trace in the past, in Their actual
incarnations; and we see Them in the third, the fourth, and fifth Races;
the Manu in each race is the ideal King, the Brâhmaṇa in each race is
the ideal Teacher; and we learn that when the Kalki Avatâra shall come
He shall call from the sacred village of Shamballa--the village known to
the occultist though not to the profane--two Kings who have remained
throughout the age in order to help the world in its evolution. And the
name of the Manu who will be the King of the next Race, is said in the
_Purâṇa_ to be Moru; and the name of the ideal Brâhmaṇa who will
be the Teacher of the next Race is said to be Devapi; and these two are
King and Teacher for the sixth Race that is to be born.
Those of you who have read something of the wondrous story of the past
will know that the choosing out of the new Race, the evolving of it, the
making of a new Root Race, is a thing that takes centuries, millenniums,
sometimes hundreds of thousands of years; and that the two who are to be
its King and Priest, the Manu and the Brâhmaṇa, are at Their work
throughout the centuries, choosing the men who may be the seeds of the
new Race. In the womb of the fourth Race a choice was made out of which
the fifth was born; isolated in the Gobi desert, for enormous periods of
time, that chosen family was trained, educated, reared, till its Manu
incarnated in it, and its Teacher also incarnated in it, and the first
A´ryan family was led forth to settle in A´ryâvarta. Now in the womb of
the fifth Race, the sixth Race is a choosing, and the King and the
Teacher of the sixth Race are already at Their mighty and beneficent
work. They are choosing one by one, trying and testing, those who shall
form the nucleus of the sixth Race; They are taking soul by soul,
subjecting each to many a test, to many an ordeal, to see if there be
the strength out of which a new Race can spring; and in fulness of time
when Their work is ready, then will come the Kalki Avatâra, to sweep
away the darkness, to send the Kali Yuga into the past, to proclaim the
birth of the new Satya Yuga, with a new and more spiritual Race, that is
to live therein. Then will He call out the chosen, the King Moru and the
Brâhmaṇa Devapi, and give into Their hands the Race that now They are
building, the Race to inhabit a fairer world, to carry onwards the
evolution of humanity.
FOURTH LECTURE.
My brothers, there are themes so lofty that tongue of Deva would not
suffice to do full justice to that which they enclose, and when we think
of the music of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa's flute, all human music seems as
discord amidst its strains. Nevertheless since bhakti grows by thought
and word, it is not amiss that we should come near a subject so sacred;
only in dealing with it we must needs feel our incompetency, we must
needs regret our limitations, we must needs wish for greater power of
expression than we can have down here. For, perhaps, amid all the divine
manifestations that have glorified the world, there is none which has
aroused a wider, tenderer feeling than the Avatâra which we are to study
this morning.
The austerer glories of Mahâdeva, the Lord of the burning ground,
attract more the hearts of those who are weary of the world and who see
the futility of worldly attractions; but Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa is the
God of the household, the God of family life, the God whose
manifestations attract in every phase of His Self-revelation; He is
human to the very core; born in humanity, as He has said, He acts as a
man. As a child, He is a real child, full of playfulness, of fun, of
winsome grace. Growing up into boyhood, into manhood, He exercises the
same human fascination over the hearts of men, of women, and of
children; the God in whose presence there is always joy, the God in
whose presence there is continual laughter and music. When we think of
Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa we seem to hear the ripple of the river, the
rustling of the leaves in the forest, the lowing of the kine in the
pasture, the laughter of happy children playing round their parents'
knees. He is so fundamentally the God who is human in everything; who
bends in human sympathy over the cradle of the babe, who sympathises
with the play of the youth, who is the friend of the lover, the blesser
of the bridegroom and the bride, who smiles on the young mother when her
first-born lies in her arms--everywhere the God of love and of human
happiness; what wonder that His winsome grace has fascinated the hearts
of men!
We are to study Him, then, this morning. Now an Avatâra--I say this to
clear away some preliminary difficulties--an Avatâra has two great
aspects to the world. First, He is a historical fact. Do not let that be
forgotten. When you are reading the story of the great Ones, you are
reading history and not fable. But it is more than history; the Avatâras
acts out on the stage of the world a mighty drama. He is, as it were, a
player on the world's stage, and He plays a definite drama, and that
drama is an exposition of spiritual truth. And though the facts are
facts of history, they are also an allegory under which great spiritual
truths are conveyed to the minds and to the hearts of men. If you think
of it only as an allegory, you miss an aspect of the truth; if you think
of it only as a history you miss an aspect of the truth. The history of
an Avatâra is an exposition of spiritual verities; but though the drama
be a real one, it is a drama with an object, a drama with distinct
outlines laid down, as it were, by the author, and the Avatâra plays His
part on the stage at the same time as He is living out His life as man
in the history of the world. That must be remembered, otherwise some of
the great lessons of the Avatâra will be misread.
Then He comes into the world surrounded by many who have been with Him
in former births, surrounded by celestial beings, born as men, and by a
vast body of beings of the opposing side born also as men. I am speaking
specially of the Avatâra of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, but this is true of
any other human Avatâra as well. They are not born into the world alone;
They are born with a great circle round Them of friends, and a great
host before them of apparent foes, incarnated as human beings, to work
out the world-drama that is being played.
This is most of all, perhaps, apparent in the case of the One whom we
are now studying. Because of the extremely complicated nature of the
Avatâra of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, and the vast range that He covered as
regards His manifestations of complex human life, in order to render the
vast subject a little more manageable, I have divided this drama, as it
were, into its separate acts. I am using for a moment the language of
the stage, for I think it will make my meaning rather more clear. That
is, in dealing with His life, I have taken its stages which are clearly
marked out, and in each of these we shall see one great type of the
teaching which the world is meant to learn from the playing of this
drama before the eyes of men. To some extent the stages correspond with
marked periods in the life, and to some extent they overlap each other;
but by having them clearly in our minds we shall be able, I think, to
grasp better the whole object of the Avatâra--we shall have as it were
compartments in the mind in which the different types of teaching may be
placed.
First then He comes to show forth to the world a great Object of bhakti,
and the love of God to His bhakta, or devotee. That is the aim of the
first act of the great drama--to stand forth as the Object of devotion,
and to show forth the love with which God regards His devotees. We have
there a marked stage in the life of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa.
Then the second act of the drama may be said to be His character as the
destroyer of the opposing forces that retard evolution, and that runs
through the whole of His life.
The third act is that of the statesman, the wise, politic, and
intellectual actor on the world's stage of history, the guiding force of
the nation by His wondrous policy and intelligence, standing forth not
as king but rather as statesman.
Then we have Him as friend, the human friend, especially of the
Pâṇḍavas and of Arjuna.
The next act is that of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa as Teacher, the
world-teacher, not the teacher of one race alone.
Then we see Him in the strange and wondrous aspect of the Searcher of
the hearts of men, the trier and tester of human nature.
Finally, we may regard Him in His manifestation as the Supreme, the
all-pervading life of the universe, who looks on nothing as outside
Himself, who embraces in His arms evil and good, darkness and light,
nothing alien to Himself.
Into these seven acts, as it were, the life-history may be divided, and
each of them might serve as the study of a life-time instead of our
compressing them into the lecture of a morning. We will, however, take
them in turn, however inadequately; for the hints I give can be worked
out by you in detail according to the constitution of your own minds.
One aspect will attract one man, another aspect will attract another;
all the aspects are worthy of study, all are provocative of devotion.
But most of all, with regard to devotion, is the earliest stage of His
life inspiring and full of benediction, those early years of the Lord as
infant, as child, as young boy, when He is dwelling in Vraja, in the
forest of Brindâban, when He is living with the cowherds and their wives
and their children, the marvellous child who stole the hearts of men. It
is noticeable--and if it had been remembered many a blasphemy would not
have been uttered--that Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa chose to show Himself as
the great object of devotion, as the lover of the devotee, in the form
of a child, not in that of a man.
Come then with me to the time of His birth, remembering that before that
birth took place upon earth, the deities had been to Viṣhṇu in the
higher regions, and had asked Him to interfere in order that earth might
be lightened of her load, that the oppression of the incarnate Daityas
might be stayed; and then Viṣhṇu said to the Gods: Go ye and
incarnate yourselves in portions among men, go ye and take birth amid
humanity. Great Ṛishis also took birth in the place where
Viṣhṇu Himself was to be born, so that ere He came, the
surroundings of the drama were, as it were, made in the place of His
coming, and those that we speak of as the cowherds of Vraja, Nanda and
those around Him, the Gopîs and all the inhabitants of that wondrously
blessed spot, were, we are told, "God-like persons"; nay more, they were
"the Protectors of the worlds" who were born as men for the progress of
the world. But that means that the Gods themselves had come down and
taken birth as men; and when you think of all that took place throughout
the wonderful childhood of the Lîlâ[10] of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, you
must remember that those who played that act of the drama were the
ordinary men, no ordinary women; they were the Protectors of the worlds
incarnated as cowherds round Him. And the Gopîs, the graceful wives of
the shepherds, they were the Ṛishis of ancient days, who by devotion
to Viṣhṇu had gained the blessing of being incarnated as Gopîs, in
order that they might surround His childhood, and pour out their love at
the tiny feet of the boy they saw as boy, of the God they worshipped as
supreme.
[Footnote 10: Play.]
When all these preparations were made for the coming of the child, the
child was born. I am not dwelling on all the well-known incidents that
surrounded His birth, the prophecy that the destroyer of Kamsa was to be
born, the futile shutting up in the dungeon, the chaining with irons,
and all the other follies with which the earthly tyrant strove to make
impossible of accomplishment the decree of the Supreme. You all know how
his plans came to nothing, as the mounds of sand raised by the hands of
children are swept into a level plain when one wave of the sea ripples
over the playground of the child. He was born, born in His four-armed
form, shining out for the moment in the dungeon, which before His birth
had been irradiated by Him through His mother's body, who was said to be
like an alabaster vase--so pure was she--with a flame within it. For
the Lord Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa was within her womb, herself the
alabaster vase which was as a lamp containing Him, the world's light, so
that the glory illuminated the darkness of the dungeon where she lay. At
His birth he came as Viṣhṇu, for the moment showing Himself with
all the signs of the Deity on Him, with the discus, with the conch, with
the shrivatsa on His breast, with all the recognised emblems of the
Lord. But that form quickly vanished, and only the human child lay
before His parents' eyes. And the father, you remember, taking Him up,
passed through the great locked doors and all the rest of it, and
carried Him in safety into his brother's house, where He was to dwell in
the place prepared for His coming.
As a babe He showed forth the power that was in Him, as we shall see,
when we come, to the second stage, the destroyer of the forces of evil.
But for the moment only watch Him as He plays in his foster mother's
house, as He gambols with children of His own age. And as He is growing
into a boy, able to go alone, He begins wandering through the fields and
through the forest, and the notes of His wondrous flute are heard in all
the groves and over all the plains. The child, a child of five--only
five years of age when He wandered with His magic flute in His hands,
charming the hearts of all that heard; so that the boys left tending the
cattle and followed the music of the flute; the women left their
household tasks and followed where the flute was playing; the men
ceased their labours that they might feast their ears on the music of
the flute. Nay, not only the men, the women and the children, but the
cows, it is said, stopped their grazing to listen as the notes fell on
their ears, and the calves ceased suckling as the music came to them on
the wind, and the river rippled up that it might hear the better, and
the trees bowed down their branches that they might not lose a note, and
the birds no longer sang lest their music should make discord in the
melody, as the wondrous child wandered over the country, and the music
of heaven flowed from His magic flute.
And thus He lived and played and sported, and the hearts of all the
cowherds and of their wives and daughters went out to that marvellous
child. And He played with them and loved them, and they would take Him
up and place His baby feet on their bosoms, and would sing to Him as the
Lord of all, the Supreme, the mighty One. They recognised the Deity in
the child that played round their homes, and many lessons He taught
them, this child, amid His gambols and His pranks--lessons that still
teach the world, and that those who know most understand best.
Let me take one instance which ignorant lips have used most in order to
insult, to try to defame the majesty that they do not understand. But
let me say this: that I believe that in most cases where these bitter
insults are uttered, they are uttered by people who have never really
read the story, and who have heard only bits of it and have supplied the
rest out of their own imaginations. I therefore take a particular
incident which I have heard most spoken of with bitterness as a proof of
the frightful immorality of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa.
While the child of six was one day wandering along, as He would, a
number of the Gopîs were bathing nude in the river, having cast aside
their cloths--as they should not have done, that being against the law
and showing carelessness of womanly modesty. Leaving their garments on
the bank they had plunged into the river. The child of six saw this with
the eye of insight, and He gathered up their cloths and climbed up a
tree near by, carrying them with Him, and threw them round His own
shoulders and waited to see what would chance. The water was bitterly
cold and the Gopîs were shivering; but they did not like to come out of
it before the clear steady eyes of the child. And He called them to come
and get the garments they had thrown off; and as they hesitated, the
baby lips told them that they had sinned against God by immodestly
casting aside the garments that should have been worn, and must
therefore expiate their sin by coming and taking from His hands that
which they had cast aside. They came and worshipped, and He gave them
back their robes. An immoral story, with a child of six as the central
figure! It is spoken of as though he were a full grown man, insulting
the modesty of women. The Gopîs were Ṛishis, and the Lord, the
Supreme, as a babe is teaching them a lesson. But there is more than
that; there is a profound occult lesson below the story--a story
repeated over and over again in different forms--and it is this: that
when the soul is approaching the supreme Lord at one great stage of
initiation, it has to pass through a great ordeal; stripped of
everything on which it has hitherto relied, stripped of everything that
is not of its inner Self, deprived of all external aid, of all external
protection, of all external covering, the soul itself, in its own
inherent life, must stand naked and alone with nothing to rely on, save
the life of the Self within it. If it flinches before the ordeal, if it
clings to anything to which hitherto it has looked for help, if in that
supreme hour it cries out for friend or helper, nay even for the Guru
himself, the soul fails in that ordeal. Naked and alone it must go
forth, with absolutely none to aid it save the divinity within itself.
And it is that nakedness of the soul as it approaches the supreme goal,
that is told of in that story of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, the child, and
the Gopîs, the nakedness of life before the One who gave it. You find
many another similar allegory. When the Lord comes in the Kalki, the
tenth, Avatâra, He fights on the battlefield and is overcome. He uses
all His weapons; every weapon fails Him; and it is not till He casts
every weapon aside and fights with His naked hands, that He conquers.
Exactly the same idea. Intellect, everything, fails the naked soul
before God.[11]
[Footnote 11: So in the _Imitation of Christ_, the work of an occultist,
it is written that we must "naked follow the naked Jesus."]
If I have taken up this story specially, out of hundreds of stories, to
dwell upon, it is because it is one of the points of attack, and because
you who are Hindus by birth ought to know enough of the inner truths of
your own religion not to stand silent and ashamed when attacks are made,
but should speak with knowledge and thus prevent such blasphemies.
Then we learn more details of His play with the Gopîs as a child of
seven: how He wandered into the forest and disappeared and all went
after Him seeking Him; how they tried to imitate His own play, in order
to fill up the void that was left by His absence. The child of seven,
that He was at this time, disappeared for a while, but came back to
those who loved Him, as God ever does with His bhaktas. And then takes
place that wondrous dance, the Râsa[12] of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, part
of His Lîlâ, when He multiplied Himself so that every pair of Gopîs
found Him standing between them; amid the ring of women the child was
there between each pair of them, giving a hand to each; and so the
mystic dance was danced. This is another of these points of attack which
are made by ignorant minds. What but an unclean mind can see aught that
is impure in the child dancing there as lover and beloved? It is as
though He looked forward down the ages, and saw what later would be
said, and it is as though He kept the child form in the Lîlâ, in order
that He might breathe harmlessly into men's blind unclean hearts the
lesson that He would fain give. And what was the lesson? One other
incident I remind you of, before I draw the lesson from the whole of
this stage of His life. He sent for food, He who is the Feeder of the
worlds, and some of His Brâhmaṇas refused to give it, and sent away
the boys who came to ask for food for Him; and when the men refused, He
sent them back to the women, to see if they too would refuse the food
their husbands had declined to give. And the women--who have ever loved
the Lord--caught up the food from every part of their houses where they
could find it and went out, crowds of them, bearing food for Him,
leaving house, and husband, and household duties. And all tried to stop
them, but they would not be stopped; and brothers and husbands and
friends tried to hold them back, but no, they must go to Him, to their
Lover, Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa; He must not be hungry, the child of their
love. And so they went and gave Him food and He ate. But they say: They
left their husbands! they left their homes! how wrong to leave husbands
and homes and follow after Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa! The implication always
is that their love was purely physical love, as though that were
possible with a child of seven. I know that words of physical love are
used, and I know it is said in a curious translation that "they came
under the spell of Cupid." It matters not for the words, let us look at
the facts. There is not a religion in the world that has not taught that
when the Supreme calls, all else must be cast aside. I have seen Shrî
Kṛiṣhṇa contrasted with Jesus of Nazareth to the detriment of
Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, and a contrast is drawn between the purity of the
one and the impurity of the other; the proof given was that the husbands
were left while the wives went to play with and wait on the Lord. But I
have read words that came from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth; "He that
loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that
loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." "And every one
that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or
mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall
receive an hundred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life." (Matt. x.
37, and xix. 29.) And again, yet more strongly: "If any man come to me
and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and
brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my
disciple." (Luke xiv. 26.) That is exactly the same idea. When Jesus
calls, husband and wife, father and mother, must be forsaken, and the
reward will be eternal life. Why is that right when done for Jesus,
which is wrong when done for Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa?
[Footnote 12: Dance.]
It is not only that you find the same teaching in both religions; but in
every other religion of the world the terms of physical love are used to
describe the relation between the soul and God. Take the "Song of
Solomon." If you take the Christian _Bible_ and read the margin you will
see "The Love of Christ for His Church"; and if from the margin you look
down the column, you will find the most passionate of love songs, a
description of the exquisite female form in all the details of its
attractive beauty; the cry of the lover to the beloved to come to him
that they might take their fill of love. "Christ and His Church" is
supposed to make it all right, and I am content that it should be so. I
have no word to say against the "Song of Solomon," nor any complaint
against its gorgeous and luxuriant imagery; but I refuse to take from
the Hebrew as pure, what I am to refuse from the Hindu as impure. I ask
that all may be judged by the same standard, and that if one be
condemned the same condemnation may be levelled against the other. So
also in the songs of the Sûfîs, the mystics of the faith of Islâm,
woman's love is ever used as the best symbol of love between the soul
and God. In all ages the love between husband and wife has been the
symbol of union between the Supreme and His devotees; the closest of all
earthly ties, the most intimate of all earthly unions, the merging of
heart and body of twain into one--where will you find a better image of
the merging of the soul in its God? Ever has the object of devotion
been symbolised as the lover or husband, ever the devotee as wife or
mistress. This symbology is universal, because it is fundamentally true.
The absolute surrender of the wife to the husband is the type upon earth
of the absolute surrender of the soul to God. That is the justification
of the Râsa of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa; that is the explanation of the
story of His life in Vraja.
I have dwelt specially on this, my brothers, you all know why. Let us
pass from it, remembering that till the nineteenth century this story
provoked only devotion not ribaldry, and it is only with the coming in
of the grosser type of western thought that you have these ideas put
into the _Bhâgavad-Purâṇa_. I would to God that the Ṛishis had
taken away the _Shrîmad Bhâgavata_ from a race that is unworthy to have
it; that as They have already withdrawn the greater part of the Vedas,
the greater part of the ancient books, they would take away also this
story of the love of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, until men are pure enough to
read it without blasphemy and clean enough to read it without ideas of
sexuality.
Pass from this to the next great stage, that of the Destroyer of evil,
shortly, very shortly. From the time when as a babe but a few weeks old
He sucked to death the Râkshasî, Pûtana; from the time He entered the
great cave made by the demon, and expanding Himself shivered the whole
into fragments; from the time He trampled on the head of the serpent
Kalia so that it might not poison the water needed for the drinking of
the people; until He left Vraja to meet Kamsa, we find Him ever chasing
away every form of evil that came within the limits of His abode. We are
told that when He had left Vraja and stood in the tournament field of
Kamsa with His brother, His brother and Himself were mere boys, in the
tender delicate bodies of youths. After the whole of the Lîlâ was over
They were still children, when They went forth to fight. From that time
onwards He met, one after another, the great incarnations of evil and
crushed them with His resistless strength: we need not dwell on these
stories, for they fill His life.
We come to the third stage of Statesman, a marvellously interesting
feature in His life--the tact, the delicacy, the foresight, the skill in
always putting the man opposed to Him in the wrong, and so winning His
way and carrying others with Him. As you know, this part of His life is
played out especially in connection with the Pâṇḍavas. He is the
one who in every difficulty steps forward as ambassador; it is He who
goes with Arjuna and Bhîma to slay the giant king Jarasandha, who was
going to make a human sacrifice to Mahâdeva, a sacrifice that was put a
stop to as blasphemous; it was He who went with them in order that the
conflict might take place without transgressing the strictest rules of
Kshattriya morality. Follow Him as He and Arjuna and his brother enter
into the city of the king. They will not come by the open gate, that is
the pathway of the friend. They break down a portion of the wall as a
sign that they come as foes. They will not go undecorated; and
challenged why they wore flowers and sandal, the answer is that they
come for the celebration of a triumph, the fulfilling of a vow. Offered
food, the answer of the great ambassador is that they will not take food
then, that they will meet the king later and explain their purpose. When
the time arrives He tells him in the most courteous but the clearest
language that all these acts have been performed that he may know that
they had come not as friends but as foes to challenge him to battle. So
again when the question arises, after the thirteen years of exile, how
shall the land be won back without struggle, without fight, you see Him
standing in the assembly of Pâṇḍavas and their friends with the
wisest counsel how perchance war may be averted; you see Him offering to
go as ambassador that all the magic of His golden tongue may be used for
the preservation of peace; you see Him going as ambassador and avoiding
all the pavilions raised by the order of Duryodhana, that He may not
take from one who is a foe a courtesy that might bind him as a friend.
So when he pays the call on Duryodhana that courtesy demands, never
failing in the perfect duty of the ambassador, fulfilling every demand
of politeness, He will not touch the food that would make a bond between
Himself and the one against whom He had come to struggle. See how the
only food that He will take is the food of the King's brother, for that
alone, He says, "is clean and worthy to be eaten by me." See how in the
assembly of hostile kings He tries to pacify and tries to please. See
how He apologises with the gentlest humility; how to the great king, the
blind king, He speaks in the name of the Pâṇḍavas as suppliant,
not as outraged and indignant foe. See how with soft words He tries to
turn away words of wrath, and uses every device of oratory to win their
hearts and convince their judgments. See how later again, when the
battle of Kurukshetra is over, when all the sons of the blind king are
slain, see how He goes once more as ambassador to meet the childless
father and, still bitterer, the childless mother, that the first anger
may break itself on Him, and His words may charm away the wrath and
soothe the grief of the bereft. See how later on He still guides and
advises till all the work is done, till His task is accomplished and His
end is drawing near. A statesman of marvellous ability; a politician of
keenest tact and insight; as though to say to men of the world that when
they are acting as men of the world they should be careful of
righteousness, but also careful of discretion and of skill, that there
is nothing alien to the truth of religion in the skill of the tongue and
in the use of the keen intelligence of the brain.
Then pass on again from Him as Statesman to His character as Friend.
Would that I had time to dwell on it, and paint you some of the fair
pictures of His relations with the family He loved so well, from the day
when, standing in the midst of the self-choice of Kṛiṣhṇa, the
fair future wife of the Pâṇḍavas, He saw for the first time in
that human incarnation Arjuna, His beloved of old. Think what it must
have been, when the eyes of the two young men met, with memories in the
one pair of the close friendship of the past, and the drawing of the
other by the tie of those many births to the ancient friend whom he knew
not. From that day when they first meet in this life onwards, how
constant His friendship, how ceaseless His protection, how careful His
thought to guard their honour and their lives; and yet how wise; at
every point where His presence would have frustrated the object of His
coming, He goes away. He is not present at the great game of dice, for
that was necessary for the working out of the divine purpose; He was
away. Had He been there, He must needs have interfered; had He been
there, He could not have left His friends unaided. He remained away,
until Draupadî cried in her agony for help when her modesty was
threatened; then he came with Dharma and clothed her with garments as
they were dragged from her; but then the game was over, the dice were
cast, and destiny had gone on its appointed road.
How strange to watch that working! One object followed without change,
without hesitation: but every means used that might give people an
opportunity of escaping if only they would. He came to bring about that
battle on Kurukshetra. He came, as we shall see in a moment, in order to
carry out that one object in preparation for the centuries that
stretched in front; but in the carrying of it out, He would give every
chance to men who were entangled in that evil by their own past, so that
if one of them would answer to His pleading he might come over to the
side of light against the forces of darkness. He never wavered in His
object; yet He never left unused one means that man could use to prevent
that object taking place. A lesson full of significance! The will of the
Supreme must be done, but the doing of that will is no excuse for any
individual man who does not carry out the law to the fullest of his
power. Although the will must be carried out, everything should be done
that righteousness permits and that compassion suggests in order that
men may choose light rather than darkness, and that only the resolutely
obstinate may at last be, whelmed in the ruin that falls upon the land.
As Teacher--need I speak of Him as teacher who gave the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_
between the contending armies on Kurukshetra? Teacher not of Arjuna
alone, not of India alone, but of every human heart which can listen to
spiritual instruction, and understand a little of the profound wisdom
there clothed in the words of man. Remember a later saying: "I, O
Arjuna, am the Teacher and the mind is my pupil;" the mind of every man
who is willing to be taught; the mind of every one who is ready to be
instructed. Never does the spiritual teacher withhold knowledge because
he grudges the giving. He is hampered in the giving by the want of
receptivity in those to whom his message is addressed. Ill do men judge
the divine heart of the great Teachers, or the faint reflection of that
love in the mouth of Their messengers, when they think that knowledge is
withheld because it is a precious possession to be grudgingly dealt out,
that has to be given in as small a share as possible. It is not the
withholding of the teacher but the closing of the heart of the hearer;
not the hesitation of the teacher but the want of the ear that hears;
not the dearth of teachers but the dearth of pupils who are willing and
ready to be taught. I hear men say: "Why not an Avatâra now, or if not
an Avatâra, why do not the great Ṛishis come forward to speak Their
golden wisdom in the ears of men? Why do They desert us? Why do They
leave us? Why should this world in this age not have the wisdom as They
gave it of old?" The answer is that They are waiting, waiting, waiting,
with tireless patience, in order to find some one willing to be taught,
and when one human heart opens itself out and says: "O Lord, teach me,"
then the teaching comes down in a stream of divine energy and floods the
heart. And if you have not the teaching, it is because your hearts are
locked with the key of gold, with the key of fame, with the key of
power, and with the key of desire for the enjoyments of this world.
While those keys lock your hearts, the teachers of wisdom cannot enter
in; but unlock the heart and throw away the key, and you will find
yourselves flooded with a wisdom which is ever waiting to come in.
As Searcher of hearts--Ah! here again He is so difficult to understand,
this Lord of Mâyâ, this Master of illusion. He tests the hearts of His
beloved, not so much the world at large. To them is the teaching that
shall guide them aright. For Arjuna, for Bhîma, for Yudhiṣhṭhira,
for them the keener touch, the sharper trial, in order to see if within
the heart one grain of evil still remains, that will prevent their union
with Himself. For what does he seek? That they shall be His very own,
that they shall enter into His being. But they cannot enter therein
while one seed of evil remains in their hearts. They cannot enter
therein while one sin is left in their nature. And so in tenderness and
not in anger, in wisest love and not with a desire to mislead, the Lord
of Love tries the hearts of His beloved, so that any evil that is in
them may be wrung out by the grip that He places on them. Two or three
occasions of it I remember. I may mention perhaps a couple of them to
show you the method of the trial. The battle of Kurukshetra had been
raging many a day; thousands and tens of thousands of the dead lay
scattered on that terrible field, and every day when the sun rose
Bhîshma came forth, generalissimo of the army of the Kurus, carrying
before him everything, save where Arjuna barred his way; but Arjuna
could not be everywhere; he was called away, with the horses guided by
the Charioteer Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa sweeping across the field like a
whirlwind, carrying victory in their course; and where the Charioteer
and Arjuna were not there Bhîshma had his way. The hearts of the
Pâṇḍavas sank low within them, and at last one night under their
tents, resting ere the next day's struggle, the bitter despondency of
King Yudhiṣhṭhira broke out in words, and he declared that until
Bhîshma was slain nothing could be done. Then came the test from the
lips of the searcher of hearts. "Behold, I will go forth and slay him on
the morrow." Would Yudhiṣhṭhira consent? A promise stood in his
way. You may remember that when Duryodhana and Arjuna went to Shrî
Kṛiṣhṇa who lay sleeping, the question arose as to what each
should take. Alone, unarmed, Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa would go with one, He
would not fight; a mighty battalion of troops He would give to the
other. Arjuna chose the unarmed Kṛiṣhṇa; Duryodhana, the mighty
army ready to fight; so the word of the Avatâra was pledged that He
would not fight. Unarmed He went into the battle, clad in his yellow
silken robe, and only with the whip of the charioteer in His hand;
twice, in order to stimulate Arjuna into combat, He had sprung down
from the chariot and gone forth with His whip in His hand as though He
would attack Bhîshma and slay him where he fought. Each time Arjuna
stopped Him, reminding Him of His words. Now came the trial for the
blameless King, as he is often called; should Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa
break His word to give him victory? He stood firm. "Thy promise is
given," was his answer; "that promise may not be broken." He passed the
trial; he stood the test. But still one weakness was left in that noble
heart; one underlying weakness that threatened to keep him away from his
Lord. The lack of power to stand absolutely alone in the moment of
trial, the ever clinging to some one stronger than himself, in order
that his own decision might be upheld. That last weakness had to be
burnt out as by fire. In a critical moment of the battle the word came
that the success of Droṇa was carrying everything before him; that
Droṇa was resistless and that the only way to slay him was to spread
the report that his son was dead, and then he would no longer fight.
Bhîma slew an elephant of the same name as Droṇa's son, and he said
in the hearing of Droṇa: "Ashvatthâma is dead." But Droṇa would
not believe unless King Yudhiṣhṭhira said so. Then the test came.
Will he tell a practical lie but a nominal truth, in order to win the
battle? He refused; not for his brother's pleadings would he do it.
Would he stand firm by truth quite alone when all he revered seemed to
be on the other side? The great One said: "Say that Ashvatthâma is
slain." Ought he to have done it because He, Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, bade
him? Ought he to have told the lie because the revered One counselled
it? Ah no! neither for the voice of God nor man, may the human soul do a
thing which he knows to be against God and His law; and alone he must
stand in the universe, rather than sin against right. And when the lie
was told under cover of that excuse, Yudhiṣhṭhira doing what he
wished in his heart under cover of the command from one he revered, then
he fell, his chariot descended to the ground, and suffering and misery
followed him from that day till the day of his ending, until in the face
of the King of the celestials he stood alone, holding the duty of
protection even to a dog higher than divine command and joy of heaven.
And then he showed that the lesson had worked out in his purification,
and that the heart was clean from the slightest taint of weakness. Oh,
but men say, Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa counselled the telling of a lie! My
brothers, can you not see beneath the illusion? What is there in this
world that the Supreme does not do? There is no life but His, no Self
but His, nothing save His life through all His universe; and every act
is His act, when you go back to the ultimates. He had warned them of
that truth. "I" He said, "am the gambling of the cheat," as well as the
chants of the Veda. Strange lesson, and hard to learn, and yet true. For
at every stage of evolution there is a lesson to be learnt. He teaches
all the lessons; at each point of growth the next step is to be taken,
and very often that step is the experiencing of evil, in order that
suffering may burn the desire for evil out of the very heart. And just
as the knife of the surgeon is different from the knife of the murderer,
although both may pierce the human flesh, the one cutting to cure, the
other to slay; so is the sharp knife of the Supreme, when by experience
of evil and consequent pain He purifies the man, different, because the
motive is other than the doing of evil to gratify passion, the stepping
aside from righteousness in order to please the lower nature.
Last of all He shows himself as the Supreme; there is the
Vaiṣhṇava form, the universal form, the form that contains the
universe. But still more is the Supreme seen in the profound wisdom of
the teaching, in the steadfastness of His walk through life. Does it
sound strange to say that God is seen more in the latter than the
former, that the outer form that contains the universe is less divine
than the perfect steadfast nature, swerving neither to the right hand
nor the left? Read that life again with this thought in your mind, of
one purpose followed to its end no matter what forces might play on the
other side, and its greatness may appear.
What did He come to do? He came to give the last lesson to the
Kshattriya caste of India, and to open India to the world. Many lessons
had been given to that great caste. We know that twenty-one times they
had been cut off, and yet re-established. We know that Shrî Râma had
shown the perfect life of Kshattriya, as an example that they might
follow. They would not learn the lesson, either by destruction or by
love. They would not follow the example either from fear or from
admiration. Then their hour struck on the bell of Heaven, the knell of
the Kshattriya caste. He came to sweep away that caste and to leave only
scattered remnants of it, dotted over the Indian soil. It had been the
sword of India, the iron wall that ringed her round. He came to shiver
that wall into pieces, and to break the sword that it might not strike
again. It had been used to oppress instead of to protect. It had been
used for tyranny instead of for justice. Therefore he who gave it brake
it, till men should learn by suffering what they would not learn by
precept. And on the field of Kuru, the Kshattriya caste fought its last
great battle; none were left of all that mighty host save a handful,
when the fighting was over. Never has the caste recovered from
Kurukshetra. It has not utterly disappeared. In some districts we find
families belonging to it; but you know well enough that as a caste in
most parts of modern India, you are hard put to find it. Why in the
great counsels of the world's welfare was this done? Not only to teach a
lesson for all time to kings and rulers, that if they would not govern
aright they should not govern at all; but also to lay India open to the
world.
How strange that sounds! To lay her open to invasion? He who loved her
to lay her open to conquest? He who had consecrated her, He who had
hallowed her plains and forests by His treading, and whose voice had
rung through her land? Aye, for He judges not as man judges, and He sees
the end from the beginning. India as she was of old, kept isolated from
all the world, was so kept that she might have the treasure of spiritual
knowledge poured into her and make a vessel for the containing. But when
you fill the vessel, you do not then put that vessel high away on a
shelf, and leave men thirsting for the liquid that it contains. The
mighty One filled His Indian vessel with the water of spiritual
knowledge, and at last the time came when that water should be poured
out for the quenching of the thirst of the world, and should not be left
only for the quenching of the thirst of a single nation, for the use of
a single people. Therefore the Lover of men came, in order that the
water of life might be poured out; He broke down the wall, so that the
foreigner might overstep her borders. The Greeks swept in, the
Mussulmâns swept in, invasion after invasion, invasion after invasion,
until the conquerors who now rule India were the latest in time. Do you
see in that only decay, only misery, only that India is under a curse?
Ah no, my brothers! That which seems a curse for the time is for the
world's healing and the world's blessing; and India may well suffer for
a time in order that the world may be redeemed.
What does it mean? I am not speaking politically, but from the
standpoint of a spiritual student, who is trying to understand how the
evolution of the race goes on. The people who last conquered India, who
now rule her as governors, are the people whose language is the most
widely spread of all the languages of the world, and it is likely to
become the world's language. It belongs not only to that little island
of Britain, it belongs also to the great continent of America, to the
great continent of Australia. It has spread from land to land, until
that one tongue is the tongue most widely understood amongst all the
peoples of the world. Other nations are beginning to learn it, because
business and trade and even diplomacy are beginning to be carried on in
that English speech. What wonder then that the Supreme should send to
India this nation whose language is becoming the world-language, and lay
her open to be held as part of that world-wide empire, in order that her
Scriptures, translated into the most widely spoken language, may help
the whole human family and purify and spiritualise the hearts of all His
sons.
There is the deepest object of His coming, to prepare the
spiritualisation of the world. It is not enough that one nation shall be
spiritual; it is not enough that one country shall have wisdom; it is
not enough that one land, however mighty and however beloved--and do not
I love India as few of you love her?--it is not enough that she should
have the gold of spiritual truth, and the rest of the world be paupers
begging for a coin. No; far better that for a time she should sink in
the scale of nations, in order that what she cannot do for herself may
be done by divine agencies that are ever guiding the evolution of the
world. Thus what from outside looks as conquest and subjection, to the
eye of the spirit looks as the opening of the spiritual temple, so that
all the nations may come in and learn.
Only that leaves to you a duty, a responsibility. I hear so much, I have
spoken so often, of the descendants of Ṛishis and of the blood of the
Ṛishis in your veins. True, but not enough. If you are again to be
what Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa means you to be in His eternal counsels, the
Brâhmaṇa of nations, the teacher of divine truth, the mouth through
which the Gods speak in the ears of men, then the Indian nation must
purify itself, then the Indian nation must spiritualise itself. Shall
your Scriptures spiritualise the whole world while you remain
unspiritual? Shall the wisdom of the Ṛishis go out to Mlechchas in
every part of the world, and they learn and profit by it, while you, the
physical descendants of the Ṛishis, know not your own literature and
love it even less than you know? That is the great lesson with which I
would fain close. So true is this, that, in order to gain teachers of
the Brahmavidyâ which belongs to this land by right of birth, the great
Ṛishis have had to send some of their children to other lands in
order that they may come back to teach your own religion amidst your
people. Shall it not be that this shame shall come to an end? Shall it
not be that there are some among you that shall lead again the old
spiritual life, and follow and love the Lord? Shall it not be, not only
here and there, but at last that the whole nation shall show the power
of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa in His life incarnated amongst you, which would
really be greater than any special Avatâra? May we not hope and pray
that His Avatâra shall be the nation that incarnates His knowledge, His
love, His universal brotherliness to every man that treads the soil of
earth? Away with the walls of separation, with the disdain and contempt
and hatred that divide Indian from Indian, and India from the rest of
the world. Let our motto from this time forward be the motto of Shrî
Kṛiṣhṇa, that as He meets men on any road, so we will walk
beside them on any road as well, for all roads are His. There is no road
which He does not tread, and if we follow the Beloved who leads us, we
must walk as He walks.
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