Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)
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indeed, for so he governs all nature, the human included ; from within also he governs all nature,' always, but hidden ; the difference here is that he is manifest, that the nature is conscious of the divine Presence as the Lord, the Inhabitant, and it is not by his secret will from above, **the will of the Father which is in heaven,” but by his quite direct and apparent wdll that he moves the nature. And here there seems to be no room for the human intermediary ; for it is by resort to his own nature, prakritim svdm, and not the special nature of the Jiva that the Lord of all existence thus takes upon himself the human birth. THE PROCESS OF AVATARHOOD
This doctrine is a Jiard saying, a difficult thing for the human reason to Jtocept ; and for an obvious reason, because of the evidenF humanity of the Ava tar. The Ayatar is always a dual phenomenon of divinity and humanity ; the Divme takes upon Timysdf ihe human namre^ with al l its outward limitation and makes them the circumstances, mean, instruments of the divine consciousness and the divine po\^r, a vessel of the divine birth and the divine works. But so surely it must be, since otherwise the object of the Avatar’s descent is not fulfilled ; for that o bject is precisely to show that the Jiuman birth with all its limitations can be made^uchni means and instrument of the divine birth and divine worl^ precisely to show that the human type of consciousness can be compatible with the divine essence of consciousness made manifest, can be converted into its vessel, drawn into nearer conformity with it by a change of its mould and a heightening of its powers of light and love and strength and purity ; and to show also how it can be. done If the Avatar were to act in an entirely supernormal fashion, this object would not be ful- filled. A merely supernormal or miraculous Avatar would be a meaningless absurdity ; not that there need be an entire absence of the use of supernormal powers such as Christ’s so-called miracles of healing, for the use of supernormal powers is quite a possibility of human nature ; but there need not be that at all, nor in any case is it the root of the matter, nor would it at all do if the life were nothing p else but a display of supernormal fireworks. The Avatar dpejL not cotne„as a thaumaturgi c magician, T) uF as the jdi vine leade r of humani ty and the .exemj5aL_ nf^ ^ divine humanity. Even human soSow and physical suffen^ ffe must as sume and use so as to show, first, how that suffering may be a means of redemption, — ^as did Christ, — secondly, to show how, ^having l3een assumed by the divine soul in the human nature, it can also be ov er come in the same nature, — ^as did Buddha. The rationalist who would have cried to Christ, “If thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross," or points out sagely that the Avatar was not divine because he died and died too by disease, — as a dog dieth, — knows not what he is saying: for he has missed the root of the whole matter. Even, the Avatar of sorrow and suffering must come before there can be the Avatar of divine joy ; the hum an limitation must be assumed in order to show how iFSn ^(Tpyercome ; and the way and the extent of the overcoming, whether internal only or external also, depends upon the stage of the human advance ; it must not be done by a nonhuman miracle.
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