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

he A vatar*_ therefor e is a direct manifestation in humaniQ^ by Krishna th^diyine„.Soul. of that divine condition of jbeiilg to wtiich ‘Arjuna, the human soul, the type of a hig hest hum an being, a Vibhuti^ is called r^n by the Teacher to arise, ^and to which he can only arise by climbing. oUt of the ignorance * The word Avatara means a descent ; it is a coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status. and limitation of his ordinary humanity. It is the manifest atio n from^above _of_ th^ which we. hav e to de^Iop froih below ; it is the descent of GodLinto ffiaFldivine birth oF the human being into which we mortal creatures must climb ; it is the attracting divine example_^iven by God to man in the very type anSTform and perfected model of our human existence^

We see that the mystery of the divine Incarnation in man, the assumption by the Godhead of the human type and the human nature, is in the view of the Gita only the other side of the eternal mystery of human birth itself which is always in its essence, though not in its phenomenal appearance, even such a miraculous assumption. The eternal and universal self of every human being is God ; ^even his personal self is a part of the Godhead, m^dwdn^a^— not a fraction or fragment, surely, since we cannot think of God as broken up into little pieces, but a partial consciousness of the one Consciousness, a partial power of the one Power, a partial enjoyment of world-being by the one and universal Delight of being, and therefore in mani- festation or, as we say, in Nature a limitec^ and being of the one infinite and illimitable Being. The stamp of that limitation is an ignorance; which Jie forgets, not only _ the Go^ead from which he came forth, Ijut the Godhead which is always within him, there living in ^e_s^et heart of his own^iiatureT there burning'like a veiled Fire on A^iMer altar in his own temple-house of humw consciousness.

He is ignorant because there is upon the eyes of his soul and all its organs the seal of that Nature, Prakriti, Maya^, by winch he has been put fprA into manifestation out of God’s eterml teing; she h^as minted him like a coin out of the precious metal of the divine substance, but overlaid with a strong coating of the alloy of her phenomenal qualities, stamped with her own stamp and mark of animal humanity, and although the secret sigh of the God- head is there, it is at first indistinguishable and always with difficulty decipherable, not to be really discovered except by that initiation into the mystery of our own being which distinguishes a Godward from an earthward humanity. In the Avatar, the divinely-born Man, the real substance * 'shines through the coati^ ; the mark of the seal is there only ^6r form, the vision is that of the secret Godhead, the power of the life is that of the secret Godhead, and it breaks through the seals of the assumed human nature ; the sign of the Godhead, an inner soul-sign, not outward, not physical, stands out legible for all to read who care to see or who can see ; for the Asuric nature is always blind to these things, it sees the body and not the soul, the external being and not the internal, the mask and not the Person, vin the ordinary human_birji„the Nature-aspect of the universal Divine assuming humanity pre~valj[s ; in the incarnation Ae God- asjiect of the same phenomenon takes ite plac^ In the one he aUows the human nature to take possession of his partial being and to domin^tejS ;