Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)

We have had occasion already, when speaking of the divine Teacher, to state briefly the doctrine of Avatarhood as it appears to us in the light of Vedanta, the light in which the Gita presents it to us. We must now look a little more closely at this Avatarhood and at the significance of the divin e Birth of which it is the outward expression ; for that is a link of considerable impwtance in the integral teaching of the Gita. AndAve may first translate the words of the Teacher himself in which the nature and purpose of Avatarhood are given summarily and remind ourselves also of pother passages or references which bear upon it. l(”Manxare my that are past , and thine alsOj^ G Arjuna ; all of them yenow, but thou knowest not^ O scourge of the foe. Though I am the unborn, though 1 am imperishable ib my self-existence, though I am the Lord of afl existences, yet I stand upon my own Nature and I come into birth by my (self- Maya.,. For whenso- ever there is the fading of the Dharma and the uprising of unrighteousness, then I loose myself forth into birth. For the deliverance of the good, for the destruction of the evil-doers, for the enthron- ing of the Right I am born from age to ag^ He who knoweth thus in its right principles my divine birth and my divine work, when he abandons his body, comes not to rebirth, he comes to Me, O Arjuna. delivered from liking and fear and wrath, full of me, taking refuge, in me, many

THE POSSIBILITY AND PURPOSE OF AVATARHOOD purified by austerity of knowledge have arrived at my nature of being (vmdhhdv^, the divine nature of the Purushottama). "AFmen 'approach me, so I accept them to my love ^bhajdmi ) ; men follow in eve]^ jivay my_pat^, O son of Pritha./

(But most men, the Gita goes on to say, desiring the fulfilment of their works, sacrifice to the gods, to various forms and persotialities of the one Godhead, because the fulfilment (siddhi) that^ is born -.of works,: — of^orks^^lwithoulj knowledge, — ^is very swift and easxin the human world pit belongs indeed to that world alone. The other, the divine self-fulfilment in man by the sacrifice pvitf^ know- ledge to the supreme Godhead, is_._much more difficult ; its results belong to a higher plane of existence and they are less easily grasped. therefore have to follow the fourfold jaw of thenr nature and works and on this plane of mundane action they seek the Godhead through his various qualities. But, says Krishna, though I am the doer of the fourfold works and oceator of its fourfold law, yet I must be known also as the non-doer , the rmperishable, the iirimiitable Self. “Works affect me 'noC nor have I desire for the fruit of works For God is the impersonal beyond this egoistic personality and this strife of the modes of Nature, and as the , Purushottama also, the impersonal Personality, he possesses this supreme freedom even in works. Therefore the doer of divine works even while following the fourfold law has to know and live in that which is beyond, in the impersonal Self