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

* Chaitanya, the Avatar of Nadiya, is said to have been thus partly or occasionally occupied by the divine Conscious- ness and Power. THE DIVINE TEACHER the human manifestation is its sign and development in the external world.

When we thus understand the conception of Avatarhood, we see that whether for the funda- mental teaching of the Gita, our present subject, or for spiritual life generally the external aspect has only a secondary importance. Such controversies as the one that has raged in Europe over the^ histori- city of Christ, would seem to a spiritually-minded Indian largely a waste of time ; he would concede to it a considerable historical, but hardly any religious importance ; for what does it matter in the end whether a Jesus son of the carpenter Joseph was actually born in Nazareth or Bethlehem, lived and taught and was done to death on a real or trumped- up charge of sedition, so long as we can know by spiritual experience the inner Chrik, live uplifted in the light of his teaching and escape from the yoke of the natural Law by that atonement of man with God of which the crucifixion is the symbol? If the Christ, God made man, lives within our spiritual being, it would seem to matter little whether or not a son of M^ry physically lived and suffered and died in Judea. too the Krishna who matters to us is the eternal incarnatioffof^jKe Divine and not the historical teacher and leader of men.

\In seeking the kernel of the thought of the Gita we need, therefore, only concern ourselves with the spiritual significance of the human-divine Krishna of the Maliabharata’who is presented to us as the teacher of Arjuna on the battle-field of Kurukshetra^