Avatar

“ The explanation usually given of an Avatar by 195 the ancient Masters, as “a descent, embodiment, or incarnation of Vishnu,” who is not only the “Preserver,” but the “Rejuvenator” of mankind, is rather a blind, and was an interpretation given to the common people, or the “profane.”
All things—even heaven and earth—pass away, and all things are renewed.
This renewal, or regeneration, through the constructive principle of evolution, is “designed” to be continually on higher and still higher planes. ”

“ Burn in her breast and pulse in her wing
While the endless ages roll;
Avatar—she—of the perilous pride
That plundered the golden West,
Her glance is a sword, but it sweeps too wide
For a rumour to trouble her rest.
She goeth her glorious way, the hawk,
She nurseth her brood alone;
She will not swoop for an owlet's whoop,
She hath calls and cries of her own.
VIII
There was never a dale in our isle so deep
That her wide wings were not free
To soar to the sovran heights and keep
Sight of the rolling sea:
Is it there, is it here in the rolling skies,
The realm of her future fame? ”

“ In our opinion the avatar-theory is older than either and is often only an assimilation of outlying totem-gods to the Brahman's god, or as in the case of the flood-story the necessary belief that the 'fish' must have been the god of the race. ”

“ In the coming Illuminati woman will stand by the side of man in all opportunity, endeavor, or achievement.
In the new age woman will be something few men have even yet dreamed of.
We might call this new age “the Woman’s Avatar,” without doing violence to either religion, tradition, history, or science; while the sacred Hymns of the Vedas, with the angel of the household and the inspirer of the soul of man, the worship of Divinity, by both men and women, opened a new heaven on this old earth. ”

“ An avatar lives in the omnipresent Spirit; for him there is no distance inverse to the square. Only one reason, therefore, can motivate Babaji in maintaining his physical form from century to century: the desire to furnish humanity with a concrete example of its own possibilities. ”

“ A concise and detailed review of the past, in the long journey of man toward civilization and independent self-knowledge, has not been herein attempted. Only hints, here and there, and the barest outline have been undertaken.
If, however, the intelligent student will follow these clews, he will find a mass of material and abundant evidence to corroborate the general thesis.
Every great religion has had its Avatar, its Redeemer, its Christos. ”

“ These believed that just as Buddha appeared at different intervals, and as Vishnu appeared at different intervals, the avatars appeared among the Jews. Adam, and Enoch, and Noah, and Elijah or Elias, might in outward appearance be different men, but they were really the self-same divine person successively animating various human bodies. [433:3] Christ Jesus was the avatar of the ninth age, Christ Cyrus was the avatar of the eighth. ”

“ To the philosopher who is thinking out a pantheistic system, or to the ascetic who is seeking after identity of consciousness with the One, the Hindu Avatars are only a part of the delusion, the Maya, in which men are steeped. To a pantheist, holding that his own consciousness of individuality is delusion, born of spiritual darkness and ignorance, the conception of an avatar or concrete presentation of deity as an individual is only still grosser delusion. ”

“ Oh, never star Was lost here but it rose afar! 260 Look East, where whole new thousands are! In Vishnu-land what Avatar? ”

“ Certain, however, it is that at least one of his Avatars is clearly based on the Vedic conception of the sun-god, viz. that of the dwarf who claims as much ground as he can cover by three steps, and then gains the whole universe by his three mighty strides. Of the ten or more Avatars, assumed by different authorities, only two have entered to any considerable extent into the religious worship of the people, viz. those of Rama (or Ramachandra) and Krishna, the favourite heroes of epic romance. ”

“ Of course those who hold this view make no attempt to explain how this one great personal God succeeded in setting up an intimate connection with the physical body of Krshna, constituted as the physical body of every man is, or even with a personality, or human individuality, that seems to be precisely similar to that of any other human being. And how are we to explain the theory of Avatars, as generally stated, with reference to the view of this particular Avatar to which I have referred? This view is without any support. The Logos in itself is not the one personal God of the cosmos. ”

“ Even in that case the conversion of the ant into an avatar of Zeus would be an example of the process of gravitation or attraction, whereby a great mythical name and personality attracts to itself floating fables. ”

“ The second Avatar was in the form of a Tortoise, which form he assumed to support the earth when the gods were churning the sea for the beverage of immortality, Amrita.
We may omit the other Avatars, which were of the same general character, that is, interpositions to protect the right or to punish wrong-doers, and come to the ninth, which is the most celebrated of the Avatars of Vishnu, in which he appeared in the human form of Krishna, an invincible warrior, who by his exploits relieved the earth from the tyrants who oppressed it. ”

“ The Avataras or Incarnations of God are born with Divine powers and Divine qualities. They can go anywhere and can stay Avataras. in any state of existence from the highest to the lowest. They can stand on the top of the house and come down by the stairs to the ground floor and can go back to the roof again. ”

“ This is what the Indian religious consciousness seeks to make near to itself in whatever form, whether in the symbolic human image it enshrines in its temples or in the worship of its Avatars or in the devotion to the human Guru through whom the voice of the one world-Teacher makes itself heard. Through these it strives to awaken to that inner voice, unveil that form of the Formless and stand face to face with that manifest divine Power, Love and Knowledge. ”

“ It is therefore the largest layer, and the layers of the Sky World and Under World grow successively smaller as they approach the zenith and nadir of the celestial globe, the boundary of the universe.34
The inhabitants of the universe consist chiefly of an incalculable number of greater and lesser deities and spirits.35 In addition to these, there are the souls of men, animals, and plants. [100] They have always existed in the various regions of the universe, and were brought to the Earth World by the gods. Men are descended from the gods of the Sky World, as we shall see in the myths. ”

“ And those beings who happen to be existing there, perceiving each other by that radiance, say : — " Verily there be other beings living here ! ' : And the ten thousand worlds of the universe tremble and shudder and quake. And this infinite and splendid radiance is made manifest in the world, passing the glory of the gods. This, in such a case, is the rule.'
1 As an emblem of sovereignty, says the Cy., in which case the emblem is usually named, not its bearers. But these were devata, angels or fairies or gods.
2 Each action of the babe had for the later Buddhists its symbolical meaning. ”

“ On that perfect body he will see the whole triple universe; the beings who in the triple world disappear and appear, who are low or lofty, of good or of bad colour, in fortunate or in unfortunate condition, as well as the beings dwelling within the circular plane of the horizon and of the great horizon, on the chief moun- tains Meru and Sumeru, and the beings dwelling below in the Avîki and upwards to the extremity of existence; all of them he will see on his own body. ”

“ Most especially, the gods and goddesses symbolise the sun, moon, and stars, night and morning, summer and winter, and the general story of the year. No one will deny that the personification of Nature had a large share in all mythology. The Oriental mythologies rose to a large extent in this fashion. The Baals of Semitic worship all stood for one or other of the manifestations of the fructifying powers of nature, and the Chinese dragon is the symbol of the spiritual mystery of life suggested by the mysterious and protean characteristics of water. ”

“ Starting with the bold rough nature-myths into which the savage moulds the lessons he has learnt from his childlike contemplation of the universe, the ethnographer can follow these rude fictions up into times when they were shaped and incorporated into complex mythologic systems, gracefully artistic in Greece, stiff and monstrous in Mexico, swelled into bombastic exaggeration in Buddhist Asia. ”

“ The face of one had something of serene dignity and power in beatific repose upon it, and he held his right hand aloft, with the thumb, fore and fourth fingers slightly bent, and the middle and third fingers nearly straight—as do always the images of Buddha, or Foh, the representations of the incarnation of the Supreme Power and Intelligence, which are seen upon every shrine of the faith—while the right foot rested upon and crushed down to the earth a hideous, open-mouthed, writhing dragon. ”

“ It seemed as if the elf-things or beings carved by the thought of the magician, pushed aside by his strong will and falling away from him, entering into the child became part of her, linking her to the elemental beings who live in the star-soul that glows within the earth. ”

“ And as all symbols, in the same manner as the lightning which becomes Thor's hammer, in the mythology become epic-pragmatic realities, so this symbol becomes to the imagination a real mill, which operates deep down in the sea and causes the phenomena which it symbolizes. ”

“ Let us take, for example, the animal-thrones of the Five Dhyānī Buddhas as it describes them, in harmony with Northern Buddhist symbolology: the Lion-throne is associated with Vairochana, the Elephant-throne with Vajra-Sattva, the Horse-throne with Ratna-Sambhava, the Peacock-throne with Amitābha, the Harpy-throne with Amogha-Siddhi. And, in interpreting the symbols, we find them to be poetically descriptive of the peculiar attributes of each deity: the Lion symbolizes courage or might, and sovereign power; the Elephant, immutability ”

“ The features are so human as to suggest an actual portrait, but for the supernatural enlargement of the ears in Buddhist fashion. The contracted brows bespeak deep concentration; the eyes, dreamy yet awake, look through and past us into the infinite ”

“ The Logos is God in the aspect of being revealed, culminating in a human incarnation. According to the Taoist idea, Law has these twofold aspects, both of which, but especially the aspect of manifestation, are concerned in bringing the material universe into being. ”

“ Light of sweet sunlight, play and spray of waves?
When all around the air is charged and chill,
And all the place is drear and dark with hate?
Alas, alas, this people loves me not!
This strong, fair people, marble-cold and smooth
As modelled marble. I, an alien here,
That well can speak the language of their lips,
The language of their souls may never learn.
And in their hands, I, that did know myself
Ere now, a creature in whose veins ran blood
Redder, more rapid, than flows round most hearts,
Do seem a creature reft of life and soul. ”

“ The Wizard silently motions her to some piled-up cushions at a little distance. He listens to what she tells him. He appears unmoved, at a recital apparently full of tragedy. Only the eyes of the dragons move, and the heads of the Buddhas go slowly like pendulums. When she has finished speaking, hip loong makes reply.
“This is how passion always ends. I have lived for a thousand years; and on this planet it is ever the same.” ”

“ Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit.
Now, to bring these principles to bear upon the object I have in view, let it be observed,—First, that, in the mythology of all the pagan nations, in Asia, many of the idols they worship, are the most monstrous and hideous deformities imaginable. Ugliness, in every conceivable shape, is deified. ”

“ This change is greatly helped by the arrival of the meditative, star-gazing strangers, who take hold of the nature-worship and the nature-myths they find among the people to which they have come—a higher and more advanced race—and weave these, with their [Pg 362] own star-worship and astrological lore, into a new faith, a religious system most ingeniously combined, elaborately harmonized, and full of profoundest meaning. ”

“ Thus, for instance, the imagination can invent dragons, centaurs, and any number of fabulous monsters, by piecing together fragments of perceptions in new combinations; but ask it to invent a monster whose head shall be that of an inhabitant of Saturn and its body that of a denizen of Jupiter, and where is it? Of necessity all attempts to define or describe things of which we have never had perceptions, must be made in terms of things of which we have had perceptions, or, in other words, must be anthropomorphic. ”

“ They are sculptured in the thickness of the wall, and are curious from the scenes and costumes they represent. These scenes are drawn more from the sacred books of the people than from their history; for men with ten heads and twenty arms, fantastic animals, griffins and dragons, are favourite subjects. ”

“ Under foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one picture passing into another, as in a dream; forms beautiful and terrible mixed together; dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them drink from running fountains and feed from vases of crystal; the passions and the pleasures of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption ”