Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
THE prcx:ess of avatarhood me asured by thdr PQFxr and "TK^vibfiuitW the Divine is therefore, impersonally, the manifest pow^ of his quality, it is hU_out- flowng, in whatever form, of Knowlec^e, Energy, tqye^ Strength an d th e rest ; personally, it is the naental form and the animate being In whom this power is achieved 'and does its great worlw^ A pr(Sinihence in this inner and outer achievement, a greater power of divine quality, an effective energy is always the sign, ^he human vibhuti is the he ro of the race's str uggle tp waiSs divine tffiTiero in tKeX^Sriy sense of heroism, a power of God in man . *1 am Vasudev^a (Krishna) among tl^^Wishnis,” says the Lord in the Gita, “Dhanan- jaya (Arjuna) among the Pandavas, Vym among the sages , Jthe jeer-poet yshanas among the seer- poets,*' the first jn ^_ach category, the greatest of each group, the most powerfully representative of the qualities and works in which its characteristic soul-power manifests itself. This heightening of the powers of the being is a very necessary step in the progress .of the divine inanifestatio^ Every great man who rises above our average level, raises by that very fact our common humanity ; Vfic is a living assurance of our divine possibilities, a promisp the Godhead, a glow of the divine Light and a breath of the divine PowerTV
It is this truth which lies behind the natural human tendency to the deification of great minds and heroic characters ; it comes out clearly enough in the Indian habit of mind which easily sees a partial (an^ra) Avatar in great^^ints, teachers, foun^rs, or most significantly in the belief of southern Vaishnavas that some of their saints were incarnations of the symbolic living weapons of Vishnu,— for that is what all great spirits are, living powers and weapons of the Divine in the upward march and battle. (This idea is innate and inevitable in any mystic or spiritual view of life which does not draw ^n inexorable llnenbetween thel)eln^and nature of the Divine and our human being and nature ; it is the sense the divine in humanity. But still the Vibhuti is not the Avatar ; otherwise Arjuna, Vyasa, Ushanas would be Avatars as well as Krishna, even if in a less degree of the power of Avatarhood. The divine quality is not enough ; there must be the inner consciousness of the Lord and Self governing the human nature by his divine presence. The heightening of the power of the qualities is part of the becoming, bhutagrdma, an ascent in the ordinary manifestation ; in the Avatar there is the special manifestation^ the divine birth from above, the eternal and universal Godhead descended into a form of individual humanity, ^fmdnam srijdmi, and conscious not only behind the veil but in the outward nature.|
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.