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

The question then arises, and it is the sole real difficulty, for here the intellect falters and stumbles over its own limits, how is this human mind and body assumed ? For they were not created suddenly and all of a piece, but by some kind of evolution, physical or spiritual or both. No doubt, the descent of th e Avatar, like the divine birth from the "oth^FsiHeTis essentially a spiritu a l phe nomenal, THE PROCESS OF AVATARHOOD as is , shown by the Gita*s dtmdnam srijdmi, it is a soul-bir th ; but still there is here an attendant physicai^birth. How then were t his hu man mind and body of the Avatar created ? If we suppose thaflEenbo^y irilwayi^c^ the hereditary 2evolution, by inconscient Nature and its immanent Life-spirit without the intervention of the individual soul, the matter becomes simple. A physical and mental body is prepared fit for the divine incarna- tion by a pure or great heredity and the descending Godhead takes possession of it. But the Gita in this very passage applie s ^he doctrine of reincarna- tion, boldly enoi^h, to the Av atar himseTL and~iii Jie usual theory of reincarnation the reincarnating soul by its past spiritual and psychological evolution itseiri^temine^ ahd"ih a way prepares own inental and p hysical b ody. The soul prepares its own b^y, the body is not prepared for it without any reference to the soul. Are we then to suppose an eternal or continual Avatar himself evolving, we might say, his own fit mental and physical body according to the needs and pace of the human evolution and so appearing from age to age, yuge yugef In some such spirit some would interpret the t en incarnations of Vis hnu, first in animal forms, then in the animal man, then in the dwaH man-soul, Vamana, the violent Asuric man, Rama of the axe, the divinely-natured man, a greater Ram a, the awa^n^ .spiritual man, Buddha , and, preceding him in time, but final in place, the c omplete divine manhood, Krishna, — ^for the last