AVATÂRAS

 FOUR LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE TWENTY-FOURTH ANNIVERSARY MEETING OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY AT ADYAR, MADRAS, DECEMBER, 1899

 BY

 ANNIE BESANT

 _ENGLISH EDITION_

 Theosophical Publishing Society 3 Langham Place, London, W. 1900

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CONTENTS. 

 PAGE

LECTURE I. --

WHAT IS AN AVATÂRA? 7

LECTURE II. --

THE SOURCE OF AND NEED FOR AVATÂRAS 31

LECTURE III. --

SOME SPECIAL AVATÂRAS 65

LECTURE IV. --

SHRÎ KṚIṢHṆA 95

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AVATÂRAS. 

FIRST LECTURE. 

BROTHERS:--Every time that we come here together to study thefundamental truths of all religions, I cannot but feel how vast is thesubject, how small the expounder, how mighty the horizon that opensbefore our thoughts, how narrow the words which strive to sketch it foryour eyes. Year after year we meet, time after time we strive to fathomsome of those great mysteries of life, of the Self, which form the onlysubject really worthy of the profoundest thought of man. All else ispassing; all else is transient; all else is but the toy of a moment. Fame and power, wealth and science--all that is in this world below isas nothing beside the grandeur of the Eternal Self in the universe andin man, one in all His manifold manifestations, marvellous and beautifulin every form that He puts forth. And this year, of all themanifestations of the Supreme, we are going to dare to study the holiestof the holiest, those manifestations of God in the world in which Heshows Himself as divine, coming to help the world that He has made, shining forth in His essential nature, the form but a thin film whichscarce veils the Divinity from our eyes. How then shall we venture toapproach it, how shall we dare to study it, save with deepest reverence, with profoundest humility; for if there needs for the study of His workspatience, reverence and humbleness of heart, what when we study Himwhose works but partially reveal Him, when we try to understand what ismeant by an Avatâra, what is the meaning, what the purpose of such arevelation?

Our President has truly said that in all the faiths of the world thereis belief in such manifestations, and that ancient maxim as totruth--that which is as the hall mark on the silver showing that themetal is pure--that ancient maxim is here valid, that whatever has beenbelieved everywhere, whatever has been believed at every time, and byevery one, that is true, that is reality. Religions quarrel over manydetails; men dispute over many propositions; but where human heart andhuman voice speak a single word, there you have the mark of truth, thereyou have the sign of spiritual reality. But in dealing with the subjectone difficulty faces us, faces you as hearers, faces myself as speaker. In every religion in modern times truth is shorn of her fullproportions; the intellect alone cannot grasp the many aspects of theone truth. So we have school after school, philosophy after philosophy, each one showing an aspect of truth, and ignoring, or even denying, theother aspects which are equally true. Nor is this all; as the age inwhich we are passes on from century to century, from millennium tomillennium, knowledge becomes dimmer, spiritual insight becomes rarer, those who repeat far out-number those who know; and those who speak withclear vision of the spiritual verity are lost amidst the crowds, whoonly hold traditions whose origin they fail to understand. The priestand the prophet, to use two well-known words, have ever in later timescome into conflict one with the other. The priest carries on thetraditions of antiquity; too often he has lost the knowledge that madethem real. The prophet--coming forth from time to time with the divineword hot as fire on his lips--speaks out the ancient truth andilluminates tradition. But they who cling to the words of tradition areapt to be blinded by the light of the fire and to call out "heretic"against the one who speaks the truth that they have lost. Therefore, inreligion after religion, when some great teacher has arisen, there havebeen opposition, clamour, rejection, because the truth he spoke was toomighty to be narrowed within the limits of half-blinded men. And in sucha subject as we are to study to-day, certain grooves have been made, certain ruts as it were, in which the human mind is running, and I knowthat in laying before you the occult truth, I must needs, at somepoints, come into clash with details of a tradition that is ratherrepeated by memory than either understood or the truths beneath itgrasped. Pardon me then, my brothers, if in a speech on this great topicI should sometimes come athwart some of the dividing lines of differentschools of Hindu thought; I may not, I dare not, narrow the truth I havelearnt, to suit the limitations that have grown up by the ignorance ofages, nor make that which is the spiritual verity conform to the emptytraditions that are left in the faiths of the world. By the duty laidupon me by the Master that I serve, by the truth that He has bidden mespeak in the ears of men of all the faiths that are in this modernworld; by these I must tell you what is true, no matter whether or notyou agree with it for the moment; for the truth that is spoken winssubmission afterwards, if not at the moment; and any one who speaks ofthe Ṛishis of antiquity must speak the truths that they taught intheir days, and not repeat the mere commonplaces of commentators ofmodern times and the petty orthodoxies that ring us in on every side anddivide man from man. 

I propose in order to simplify this great subject to divide it undercertain heads. I propose first to remind you of the two great divisionsrecognised by all who have thought on the subject; then to take upespecially, for this morning, the question, "What is an Avatâra?"To-morrow we shall put and strive to answer, partly at least, thequestion, "Who is the source of Avatâras?" Then later we shall take upspecial Avatâras both of the kosmos and of human races. Thus I hope toplace before you a clear, definite succession of ideas on this greatsubject, not asking you to believe them because I speak them, not askingyou to accept them because I utter them. Your reason is the bar to whichevery truth must come which is true for you; and you err deeply, almostfatally, if you let the voice of authority impose itself where you donot answer to the speaking. Every truth is only true to you as you seeit, and as it illuminates the mind; and truth however true is not yettruth for you, unless your heart opens out to receive it, as the floweropens out its heart to receive the rays of the morning sun. 

First, then, let us take a statement that men of every religion willaccept. Divine manifestations of a special kind take place from time totime as the need arises for their appearance; and these specialmanifestations are marked out from the universal manifestation of God inHis kosmos; for never forget that in the lowest creature that crawls theearth I'shvara is present as in the highest Deva. But there are certainspecial manifestations marked out from this general self-revelation inthe kosmos, and it is these special manifestations which are calledforth by special needs. Two words especially have been used in Hinduism, marking a certain distinction in the nature of the manifestation--onethe word "Avatâra, " the other the word "A´vesha. " Only for a momentneed we stop on the meaning of the words, important to us because theliteral meaning of the words points to the fundamental differencebetween the two. The word "Avatâra, " as you know, has as its root"tṛi, " passing over, and with the prefix which is added, the "ava, "you get the idea of descent, one who descends. That is the literalmeaning of the word. The other word has as its root "viṣh, "permeating, penetrating, pervading, and you have there the thought ofsomething which is permeated or penetrated. So that while in the onecase, Avatâra, there is the thought of a descent from above, fromI´shvara to man or animal; in the other, there is rather the idea of anentity already existing who is influenced, permeated, pervaded by thedivine power, specially illuminated as it were. And thus we have a kindof intermediate step, if one may say so, between the divinemanifestation in the Avatâra and in the kosmos--the partial divinemanifestation in one who is permeated by the influence of the Supreme, or of some other being who practically dominates the individual, the Egowho is thus permeated. 

Now what are the occasions which lead to these great manifestations?None can speak with mightier authority on this point than He who cameHimself as an Avatâra just before the beginning of our own age, theDivine Lord Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa Himself. Turn to that marvellous poem, the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_, to the fourth Adhyâya, Shlokas 7 and 8; there Hetells us what draws Him forth to birth into His world in the manifestedform of the Supreme:

यदा यदाहिधर्मस्य घ्लानिर्भवति भारत ।

अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् ॥

परित्राणाय साधूनाम् विनासायचदुष्कृताम् ॥

धर्मसंस्धापनार्थाय संभवामि युगे युगे ॥

[Sanskrit:

yadA yadAhidharmasya GlAnirBavati BArata |

aByutthAnamadharmasya tadAtmAnaM sRujAmyaham ||

paritrANAya sAdhUnAm vinAsAyacaduShkRutAm ||

dharmasaMsdhApanArthAya saMBavAmi yuge yuge ||]

"When Dharma, --righteousness, law--decays, whenAdharma--unrighteousness, lawlessness--is exalted, then I Myself comeforth: for the protection of the good, for the destruction of the evil, for the establishing firmly of Dharma, I am born from age to age. " Thatis what He tells us of the coming forth of the Avatâra. That is, theneeds of His world call upon Him to manifest Himself in His divinepower; and we know from other of His sayings that in addition to thosewhich deal with the human needs, there are certain kosmic necessitieswhich in the earlier ages of the world's story called forth specialmanifestations. When in the great wheel of evolution another turn roundhas to be given, when some new form, new type of life is coming forth, then also the Supreme reveals Himself, embodying the type which thus Heinitiates in His kosmos, and in this way turning that everlasting wheelwhich He comes forth as I´shvara to turn. Such then, speaking quitegenerally, the meaning of the word, and the object of the coming. 

From that we may fitly turn to the more special question, "What is anAvatâra?" And it is here that I must ask your close attention, nay, yourpatient consideration, where points that to some extent may beunfamiliar are laid before you; for as I said, it is the occult view ofthe truth which I am going to partially unveil, and those who have notthus studied truth need to think carefully ere they reject, need toconsider long ere they refuse. We shall see as we try to answer thequestion how far the great authorities help us to understand, and howfar the lack of knowledge in reading those authorities has led tomisconception. You may remember that the late learned T. Subba Rao inthe lectures that he gave on the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_ put to you a certainview of the Avatâra, that it was a descent of I´shvara--or, as he said, using the theosophical term, the Logos, which is only the Greek name forI´shvara--a descent of I´shvara, uniting Himself with a human soul. Withall respect for the profound learning of the lamented pandit, I cannotbut think that that is only a partial definition. Probably he did not atthat time desire, had not very possibly the time, to deal with caseafter case, having so wide a field to cover in the small number oflectures that he gave, and he therefore chose out one form, as we maysay, of self-revelation, leaving untouched the others, which now indealing with the subject by itself we have full time to study. Let methen begin as it were at the beginning, and then give you certainauthorities which may make the view easier to accept; let me statewithout any kind of attempt to veil or evade, what is really an Avatâra. Fundamentally He is the result of evolution. In far past Kalpas, inworlds other than this, nay, in universes earlier than our own, thosewho were to be Avatâras climbed slowly, step by step, the vast ladder ofevolution, climbing from mineral to plant, from plant to animal, fromanimal to man, from man to Jîvanmukta, from Jîvanmukta higher and higheryet, up the mighty hierarchy that stretches beyond Those who haveliberated Themselves from the bonds of humanity; until at last, thusclimbing, They cast off not only all the limits of the separated Ego, not only burst asunder the limitations of the separated Self, butentered I´shvara Himself and expanded into the all-consciousness of theLord, becoming one in knowledge as they had ever been one in essencewith that eternal Life from which originally they came forth, living inthat life, centres without circumferences, living centres, one with theSupreme. There stretches behind such a One the endless chain of birthafter birth, of manifestation after manifestation. During the stage inwhich He was human, during the long climbing up of the ladder ofhumanity, there were two special characteristics that marked out thefuture Avatâra from the ranks of men. One his absolute bhakti, hisdevotion to the Supreme; for only those who are bhaktas and who to theirbhakti have wed gnyâna, or knowledge, can reach this goal; for bydevotion, says Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, can a man "enter into My being. "And the need of the devotion for the future Avatâra is this: he mustkeep the centre that he has built even in the life of I´shvara, so thathe may be able to draw the circumference once again round that centre, in order that he may come forth as a manifestation of I'shvara, one withHim in knowledge, one with Him in power, the very Supreme Himself inearthly life; he must hence have the power of limiting himself to form, for no form can exist in the universe save as there is a centre withinit round which that form is drawn. He must be so devoted as to bewilling to remain for the service of the universe while I´shvara Himselfabides in it, to share the continual sacrifice made by Him, thesacrifice whereby the universe lives. But not devotion alone marks thisgreat One who is climbing his divine path. He must also be, as I´shvarais, a lover of humanity. Unless within him there burns the flame of lovefor men--nay, men, do I say? it is too narrow--unless within him burnsthe flame of love for everything that exists, moving and unmoving, inthis universe of God, he will not be able to come forth as the Supremewhose life and love are in everything that He has brought forth out ofHis eternal and inexhaustible life. "There is nothing, " says theBeloved, "moving or unmoving, that may exist bereft of me;"[1] andunless the man can work that into his nature, unless he can loveeverything that is, not only the beautiful but the ugly, not only thegood but the evil, not only the attractive but the repellent, unless inevery form he sees the Self, he cannot climb the steep path the Avatâramust tread. 

[Footnote 1: _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_, x. 39. ]

These, then, are the two great characteristics of the man who is tobecome the special manifestation of God--bhakti, love to the One in whomhe is to merge, and love to those whose very life is the life of God. Only as these come forth in the man is he on the path that leads him tobe--in future universes, in far, far future kalpas--an Avatâra coming asGod to man. 

Now on this view of the nature of an Avatâra difficulties, I know, arise; but they are difficulties that arise from a partial view, andthen from that view having been merely accepted, as a rule, on theauthority of some great name, instead of on the thinking out andthorough understanding of it by the man who repeats the shibboleth ofhis own sect or school. The view once taken, every text in Shruti orSmṛiti that goes against that view is twisted out of its naturalmeaning, in order to be made to agree with the idea which alreadydominates the mind. That is the difficulty with every religion; a manacquires his view by tradition, by habit, by birth, by public opinion, by the surroundings of his own time and of his own day. He finds in thescriptures--which belong to no time, to no day, to no one age, and tono one people, but are expressions of the eternal Veda--he finds in themmany texts that do not fit into the narrow framework that he has made;and because he too often cares for the framework more than for thetruth, he manipulates the text until he can make it fit in, in somedislocated fashion; and the ingenuity of the commentator too oftenappears in the skill with which he can make words appear to mean whatthey do not mean in their grammatical and obvious sense. Thus, men ofevery school, under the mighty names of men who knew the truth--but whocould only give such portion of truth as they deemed man at the time wasable to receive--use their names to buttress up mistakeninterpretations, and thus walls are continually built up to block theadvancing life of man. 

Now let me take one example from one of the greatest names, one who knewthe truth he spoke, but also, like every teacher, had to remember thatwhile he was man, those to whom he spoke were children that could notgrasp truth with virile understanding. That great teacher, founder ofone of the three schools of the Vedânta, Shrî Râmânujâchârya, in hiscommentary on the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_--a priceless work which men of everyschool might read and profit by--dealing with the phrase in which ShrîKṛiṣhṇa declares that He has had बहूनिजन्मानि [Sanskrit: bahUnijanmAni]"many births, " points out how vast the variety of those births had been. Then, confining himself to His manifestations as I´shvara--that isafter He had attained to the Supreme--he says quite truly that He wasborn by His own will; not by karma that compelled Him, not by any forceoutside Him that coerced Him, but by His own will He came forth asI'shvara and incarnated in one form or another. But there is nothingsaid there of the innumerable steps traversed by the mighty One ere yetHe merged Himself in the Supreme. Those are left on one side, unmentioned, unnoticed, because what the writer had in his view was topresent to the hearts of men a great Object for adoration, who mightgradually lift them upwards and upwards until the Self should blossom inthem in turn. No word is said of the previous kalpas, of the universesstretching backward into the illimitable past. He speaks of His birth asDeva, as Nâga, as Gandharva, as those many shapes that He has taken byHis own will. As you know, or as you may learn if you turn to_Shrîmad-Bhâgavata_, there is a much longer list of manifestations thanthe ten usually called Avatâras. There are given one after another theforms which seem strange to the superficial reader when connected inmodern thought with the Supreme. But we find light thrown on thequestion by some other words of the great Lord; and we also find in onefamous book, full of occult hints--though not with much explanation ofthe hints given--the _Yoga Vâsiṣhṭha_, a clear definite statement thatthe deities, as Mahâdeva, Viṣhṇu and Brahmâ, have all climbed upward tothe mighty posts They hold. [2] And that may well be so, if you think ofit; there is nothing derogatory to Them in the thought; for there is butone Existence, the eternal fount of all that comes forth as separated, whether separated in the universe as I´shvara, or separated in the copyof the universe in man; there is but One without a second; there is nolife but His, no independence but His, no self-existence but His, andfrom Him Gods and men and all take their root and exist for ever in andby His one eternal life. Different stages of manifestation, but the OneSelf in all the different stages, the One living in all; and if it betrue, as true it is, that the Self in man is

प्रजो नित्यः शस्वतोऽयंपुराणो [Sanskrit: prajo nityaH SasvatoayaMpurANo]

"unborn, constant, eternal, ancient, " it is because the Self in man isone with the One Self-existent, and I´shvara Himself is only themightiest manifestation of that One who knows no second near Himself. Says an English poet:

 Closer is He than breathing, nearer than hands and feet. 

[Footnote 2: Part II. , Chapter ii. , Shlokas 14, 15, 16. ]

The Self is in you and in me, as much as the Self is in I´shvara, thatOne, eternal, unchanging, undecaying, whereof every manifested existenceis but one ray of glory. Thus it is true, that which is taught in the_Yoga Vâsiṣhṭha_; true it is that even the greatest, before whomwe bow in worship, has climbed in ages past all human reckoning to beone with the Supreme, and, ever there, to manifest Himself as God to theworld. 

But now we come to a distinction that we find made, and it is a realone. We read of a Pûrṇâvatâra, a full, complete, Avatâra. What is themeaning of that word "full" as applied to the Avatâra? The name isgiven, as we know, to Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa. He is marked out speciallyby that name. Truly the word "pûrṇa" cannot apply to the Illimitable, the Infinite; He may not be shown forth in any form; the eye may neverbehold Him; only the spirit that is Himself can know the One. What ismeant by it is that, so far as is possible within the limits of form, the manifestation of the formless appears, so far as is possible it cameforth in that great One who came for the helping of the world. This mayassist you to grasp the distinction. Where the manifestation is that ofa Pûrṇâvatâra, then at any moment of time, at His own will, by Yogaor otherwise, He can transcend every limit of the form in which He bindsHimself by His own will, and shine forth as the Lord of the Universe, within whom all the Universe is contained. Think for a moment once moreof Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, who teaches us so much on this. Turn to thatgreat storehouse of spiritual wisdom, the _Mahâbhârata_, to theAshvamedha Parva which contains the Anugîtâ, and you will find thatArjuṇa after the great battle, forgetting the teaching that was givenhim on Kurukshetra, asked his Teacher to repeat that teaching onceagain. And Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, rebuking him for the fickleness of hismind and stating that He was much displeased that such knowledge shouldby fickleness have been forgotten, uttered these remarkable words: "Itis not possible for me to state it in full in that way. I discoursed tothee on the Supreme Brahman, having concentrated myself in Yoga. " Andthen He goes on to give out the essence of that teaching, but not in thesame sublime form as we have it in the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_. That is onething that shows you what is meant by a Pûrṇâvatâra; in a conditionof Yoga, into which He throws Himself at will, He knows Himself as Lordof everything, as the Supreme on whom the Universe is built. Nay more;thrice at least--I am not sure if there may have been more cases, but ifso I cannot at the moment remember them--thrice at least during His lifeas Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa He shows himself forth as I´shvara, theSupreme. Once in the court of Dhritarâshṭra, when the madly foolishDuryodhana talked about imprisoning within cell-walls the universal Lordwhom the universe cannot confine; and to show the wild folly of thearrogant prince, out in the court before every eye He shone forth asLord of all, filling earth and sky with His glory, and all forms humanand divine, superhuman and subhuman, were seen gathered round Him in thelife from which they spring. Then on Kurukshetra to Arjuna, His beloveddisciple, to whom He gave the divine vision that he might see Him inHis Vaiṣhṇava form, the form of Viṣhṇu, the Supreme Upholder ofthe Universe. And later, on his way back to Dvârakâ, meeting withUtanka, He and the sage came to a misunderstanding, and the sage waspreparing to curse the Lord; to save him from the folly of uttering acurse against the Supreme, as a child might throw a tiny pebble againsta rock of immemorial age, He shone out before the eyes of him who wasreally His bhakta, and showed him the great Vaiṣhṇava form, that ofthe Supreme. What do those manifestations show? that at will He can showhimself forth as Lord of all, casting aside the limits of human form inwhich men live; casting aside the appearance so familiar to those aroundHim, He could reveal himself as the mighty One, I´shvara who is the lifeof all. There is the mark of a Pûrṇâvatâra; always within His grasp, at will, is the power to show Himself forth as I´shvara. 

But why--the thought may arise in your minds--are not all Avatâras ofthis kind, since all are verily of the Supreme Lord? The answer is thatby His own will, by his own Mâyâ, He veils Himself within the limitswhich serve the creatures whom He has come to help. Ah, how different Heis, this Mighty One, from you and me! When we are talking to some onewho knows a little less than ourselves, we talk out all we know to showour knowledge, expanding ourselves as much as we can so as to astonishand make marvel the one to whom we speak; that is because we are sosmall that we fear our greatness will not be recognised unless we makeourselves as large as we can to astonish, if possible to terrify; butwhen He comes who is really great, who is mightier than anything whichHe produces, He makes Himself small in order to help those whom Heloves. And do you know, my brothers, that only in proportion as Hisspirit enters into us, can we in our little measure be helpers in theuniverse of which He is the one life; until we, in all our doings andspeakings, place ourselves within the one we want to help and notoutside him, feeling as he feels, thinking as he thinks, knowing for thetime as he knows, with all his limitations, although there may befurther knowledge beyond, we cannot truly help; that is the condition ofall true help given by man to man, as it is the only condition of thehelp which is given to man by God Himself. 

And so in other Avatâras, He limits Himself for men's sake. Take thegreat king, Shrî Râma. What did he come to show? The ideal Kshattriya, in every relation of the Kshattriya life; as son--perfect as son aliketo loving father and to jealous and for the time unkind step-mother. Foryou may remember that when the father's wife who was not His own motherbade him go forth to the forest on the very eve of His coronation asheir, His gentle answer was: "Mother, I go. " Perfect as son. Perfect ashusband; if He had not limited Himself by His own will to show out whathusband should be to wife, how could He in the forest, when Sîtâ hadbeen reft away by Râvana, have shown the grief, have uttered the piteouslamentations, which have drawn tears from thousands of eyes, as He callson plants and on trees, on animals and birds, on Gods and men, to tellHim where His wife, His other self, the life of His life, had gone? Howcould he have taught men what wife should be to husband's heart unlessHe had limited Himself? The consciously Omnipresent Deity could not seekand search for His beloved who had disappeared. And then as king; asperfect king as He was perfect son and husband. When the welfare of Hissubjects was concerned, when the safety of the realm was to be thoughtof, when He remembered that He as king stood for God and must be perfectin the eyes of His subjects, so that they might give the obedience andthe loyalty, which men can only give to one whom they know as greaterthan themselves, then even His wife was put aside; then the test of thefire for Sîtâ, the unsullied and the suffering; then She must passthrough it to show that no sin or pollution had come upon Her by thefoul touch of Râvana, the Râkshasa; then the demand that ere husband'sheart that had been riven might again clasp the wife, She must comeforth pure as woman; and all this, because He was king as well ashusband, and on the throne the people honoured as divine there must onlybe purity, spotless as driven snow. Those limitations were needed inorder that a perfect example might be given to man, and man might learnto climb by reproducing virtues, made small in order that his smallgrasp might hold them. 

We come to the second great class of manifestations, that to which Ialluded in the beginning as covered by the wide term A´vesha. In thatcase it is not that a man in past universes has climbed upward and hasbecome one with I´shvara; but it is that a man has climbed so far as tobecome so great, so perfect in his manhood, and so full of love anddevotion to God and man, that God is able to permeate him with a portionof His own influence, His own power, His own knowledge, and send himforth into the world as a superhuman manifestation of Himself. Theindividual Ego remains; that is the great distinction. The _man_ isthere, though the power that is acting is the manifested God. Thereforethe manifestation will be coloured by the special characteristics of theone over whom this overshadowing is made; and you will be able to tracein the thoughts of this inspired teacher, the characteristics of therace, of the individual, of the form of knowledge which belongs to thatman in the incarnation in which the great overshadowing takes place. That is the fundamental difference. 

But here we find that we come at once to endless grades, endlessvarieties, and down the ladder of lesser and lesser evolution we maytread, step by step, until we come to the lower grades that we callinspiration. In a case of A´vesha it generally continues through a greatportion of the life, the latter portion, as a rule, and it iscomparatively seldom withdrawn. Inspiration, as generally understood, isa more partial thing, more temporary. Divine power comes down, illuminates and irradiates the man for the moment, and he speaks for thetime with authority, with knowledge, which in his normal state he willbe unable probably to compass. Such are the prophets who haveilluminated the world age after age; such were in ancient days theBrâhmaṇas who were the mouth of God. Then truly the distinction wasnot that I spoke of between priest and prophet; both were joined in theone illumination, and the teaching of the priest and the preaching ofthe prophet ran on the same lines and gave forth the same great truths. But in later times the distinction arose by the failure of thepriesthood, when the priest turned aside for money, for fame, for power, for all the things with which only younger souls ought to concernthemselves--human toys with which human babies play, and do wisely in soplaying, for they grow by them. Then the priests became formal, theprophets became more and more rare, until the great fact of inspirationwas thrown back wholly into the past, as though God or man had altered, man no longer divine in his nature, God no longer willing to speak wordsin the ears of men. But inspiration is a fact in all its stages; and itgoes far farther than some of you may think. The inspiration of theprophets, spiritually mighty and convincing, is needed, and they come tothe world to give a new impulse to spiritual truth. But there is ageneral inspiration that any one may share who strives to show out thedivine life from which no son of man is excluded, for every son of manis son of God. Have you ever been drawn away for a moment into higher, more peaceful realms, when you have come across something of beauty, ofart, of the wonders of science, of the grandeur of philosophy? Have youfor a time lost sight of the pettinesses of earth, of trivial troubles, of small worries and annoyances, and felt yourself lifted into a calmerregion, into a light that is not the light of common earth? Have youever stood before some wondrous picture wherein the palette of thepainter has been taxed to light the canvas with all the hues ofbeauteous colour that art can give to human sight? Or have you seen insome wondrous sculpture, the gracious living curves that the chisel hasfreed from the roughness of the marble? Or have you listened while thediviner spell of music has lifted you, step by step, till you seem tohear the Gandharvas singing and almost the divine flute is being playedand echoing in the lower world? Or have you stood on the mountain peakwith the snows around you, and felt the grandeur of the unmoving naturethat shows out God as well as the human spirit? Ah, if you have knownany of these peaceful spots in life's desert, then you know howall-pervading is inspiration; how wondrous the beauty and the power ofGod shown forth in man and in the world; then you know, if you neverknew it before, the truth of that great proclamation of ShrîKṛiṣhṇa the Beloved: "Whatever is royal, good, beautiful, andmighty, understand thou that to go forth from My Splendour";[3] all isthe reflection of that tejas[4] which is His and His alone. For as thereis nought in the universe without His love and life, so there is nobeauty that is not His beauty, that is not a ray of the illimitablesplendour, one little beam from the unfailing source of life. 

[Footnote 3: _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_, x. 41. ]

[Footnote 4: Splendour, radiance. ]

SECOND LECTURE. 

BROTHERS:--You will remember that yesterday, in dividing the subjectunder different heads, I put down certain questions which we would takein order. We dealt yesterday with the question: "What is an Avatâra?"The second question that we are to try to answer, "What is the source ofAvatâras?" is a question that leads us deep into the mysteries of thekosmos, and needs at least an outline of kosmic growth and evolution inorder to give an intelligible answer. I hope to-day to be able also todeal with the succeeding question, "How does the need for Avatârasarise?" This will leave us for to-morrow the subject of the specialAvatâras, and I shall endeavour, if possible, during to-morrow'sdiscourse, to touch on nine of the Avatâras out of the ten recognised asstanding out from all other manifestations of the Supreme. Then, if I amable to accomplish that task, we shall still have one morning left, andthat I propose to give entirely to the study of the greatest of theAvatâras, the Lord Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa Himself, endeavouring, ifpossible, to mark out the great characteristics of His life and Hiswork, and, it may be, to meet and answer some of the objections of theignorant which, especially in these later days, have been levelledagainst Him by those who understand nothing of His nature, nothing ofthe mighty work He came to accomplish in the world. 

Now we are to begin to-day by seeking an answer to the question, "Whatis the source of Avatâras?" and it is likely that I am going to take aline of thought somewhat unfamiliar, carrying us, as it does, outsidethe ordinary lines of our study which deals more with the evolution ofman, of the spiritual nature within him. It carries us to those far offtimes, almost incomprehensible to us, when our universe was coming intomanifestation, when its very foundations, as it were, were being laid. In answering the question, however, the mere answer is simple. It isrecognised in all religions admitting divine incarnations--and theyinclude the great religions the world--it is admitted that the source ofAvatâras, the source of the Divine incarnations, is the second or middlemanifestation of the sacred Triad. It matters not whether with Hindus wespeak of the Trimûrti, or whether with Christians we speak of theTrinity, the fundamental idea is one and the same. Taking first for amoment the Christian symbology, you will find that every Christian tellsyou that the one divine incarnation acknowledged in Christianity--for inChristianity they believe in one special incarnation only--you will findin the Christian nomenclature the divine incarnation or Avatâra is thatof the second person of the Trinity. No Christian will tell you thatthere has ever been an incarnation of God the Father, the primevalSource of life. They will never tell you that there has been anincarnation of the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, theSpirit of Wisdom, of creative Intelligence, who built up theworld-materials. But they will always say that it was the second Person, the Son, who took human form, who appeared under the likeness ofhumanity, who was manifested as man for helping the salvation of theworld. And if you analyse what is meant by that phrase, what, to themind of the Christian, is conveyed by the thought of the second Personof the Trinity--for remember in dealing with a religion that is notyours you should seek for the thought not the form, you should look atthe idea not at the label, for the thoughts are universal while theforms divide, the ideas are identical while the labels are marks ofseparation--if you seek for the underlying thought you will find it isthis: the sign of the second Person of the Trinity is duality; also, Heis the underlying life of the world; by His power the worlds were made, and are sustained, supported, and protected. You will find that whilethe Spirit of Wisdom is spoken of as bringing order out of disorder, kosmos out of chaos, that it is by the manifested Word of God, or thesecond Person of the Trinity, it is by Him that all forms are builded upin this world, and it is specially in His image that man is made. Soalso when we turn to what will be more familiar to the vast majority ofyou, the symbology of Hinduism, you will find that all Avatâras havetheir source in Viṣhṇu, in Him who pervades the universe, as thevery name Viṣhṇu implies, who is the Supporter, the Protector, thepervading, all-permeating Life by which the universe is held together, and by which it is sustained. Taking the names of the Trimûrti sofamiliar to us all--not the philosophical names Sat, Chit, A´nanda, those names which in philosophy show the attributes of the SupremeBrahman--taking the concrete idea, we have Mahâdeva or Shiva, Viṣhṇu, and Brahmâ: three names, just as in the other religion wehave three names; but the same fact comes out, that it is the middle orcentral one of the Three who is the source of Avatâras. There has neverbeen a direct Avatâra of Mahâdeva, of Shiva Himself. Appearances? Yes. Manifestations? Yes. Coming in form for a special purpose served by thatform? Oh yes. Take the _Mahâbhârata_, and you find Him appearing in theform of the hunter, the Kirâta, and testing the intuition of Arjuna, andstruggling with him to test his strength, his courage, and finally hisdevotion to Himself. But that is a mere form taken for a purpose andcast aside the moment the purpose is served; almost, we may say, a mereillusion, produced to serve a special purpose and then thrown away ashaving completed that which it was intended to perform. Over and overagain you find such appearances of Mahâdeva. You may remember one mostbeautiful story, in which He appears in the form of a Chandâla[5] at thegateway of His own city of Kâshî, when one who was especiallyovershadowed by a manifestation of Himself, Shrî Shankarâchârya, wascoming with his disciples to the sacred city; veiling Himself in theform of an outcaste--for to Him all forms are the same, the humandifferences are but as the grains of sand which vanish before themajesty of His greatness--He rolled Himself in the dust before thegateway, so that the great teacher could not walk across withouttouching Him, and he called to the Chandâla to make way in order thatthe Brâhmaṇa might go on unpolluted by the touch of the outcaste;then the Lord, speaking through the form He had chosen, rebuked the veryone whom His power overshadowed, asking him questions which he could notanswer and thus abasing his pride and teaching him humility. Such formstruly He has taken, but these are not what we can call Avatâras; merepassing forms, not manifestations upon earth where a life is lived and agreat drama is played out. So with Brahmâ; He also has appeared fromtime to time, has manifested Himself for some special purpose; but thereis no Avatâra of Brahmâ, which we can speak of by that very definite andwell understood term. 

[Footnote 5: An outcaste, equivalent to a scavenger. ]

Now for this fact there must be some reason. 

Why is it that we do not find the source of Avatâras alike in all thesegreat divine manifestations? Why do they come from only one aspect andthat the aspect of Viṣhṇu? I need not remind you that there is butone Self, and that these names we use are the names of the aspects thatare manifested by the Supreme; we must not separate them so much as tolose sight of the underlying unity. For remember how, when a worshipperof Viṣhṇu had a feeling in his heart against a worshipper ofMahâdeva, as he bowed before the image of Hari, the face of the imagedivided itself in half, and Shiva or Hara appeared on one side andViṣhṇu or Hari appeared on the other, and the two, smiling as oneface on the bigoted worshipper, told him that Mahâdeva and Viṣhṇuwere but one. But in Their functions a division arises; They manifestalong different lines, as it were, in the kosmos and for the helping ofman; not for Him but for us, do these lines of apparent separatenessarise. 

Looking thus at it, we shall be able to find the answer to our question, not only who is the source of Avatâras, but why Viṣhṇu is thesource. And it is here that I come to the unfamiliar part where I shallhave to ask for your special attention as regards the building of theuniverse. Now I am using the word "universe, " in the sense of our solarsystem. There are many other systems, each of them complete in itself, and, therefore, rightly spoken of as a kosmos, a universe. But each ofthese systems in its turn is part of a mightier system, and our sun, thecentre of our own system, though it be in very truth the manifestedphysical body of I´shwara Himself, is not the only sun. If you lookthrough the vast fields of space, myriads of suns are there, each onethe centre of its own system, of its own universe; and our sun, supremeto us, is but, as it were, a planet in a vaster system, its orbit curvedround a sun greater than itself. So in turn that sun, round which oursun is circling, is planet to a yet mightier sun, and each set ofsystems in its turn circles round a more central sun, and so on--we knownot how far may stretch the chain that to us is illimitable; for who isable to plumb the depths and heights of space, or to find a manifestedcircumference which takes in all universes! Nay, we say that they areinfinite in number, and that there is no end to the manifestations ofthe one Life. 

Now that is true physically. Look at the physical universe with the eyeof spirit, and you see in it a picture of the spiritual universe. Agreat word was spoken by one of the Masters or Ṛishis, whom in thisSociety we honour and whose teachings we follow. Speaking to one of Hisdisciples, or pupils, He rebuked him, because, He said in words never tobe forgotten by those who have read them: "You always look at the thingsof the spirit with the eyes of the flesh. What you ought to do is tolook at the things of the flesh with the eyes of the spirit. " Now, whatdoes that mean? It means that instead of trying to degrade the spiritualand to limit it within the narrow bounds of the physical, and to say ofthe spiritual that it cannot be because the human brain is unableclearly to grasp it, we ought to look at the physical universe with adeeper insight and see in it the image, the shadow, the reflection ofthe spiritual world, and learn the spiritual verities by studying theimages that exist of them in the physical world around us. The physicalworld is easier to grasp. Do not think the spiritual is modelled on thephysical; the physical is fundamentally modelled on the spiritual, andif you look at the physical with the eye of spirit, then you find thatit is the image of the higher, and then you are able to grasp the highertruth by studying the faint reflections that you see in the world aroundyou. That is what I ask you to do now. Just as you have your sun andsuns, many universes, each one part of a system mightier than itself, soin the spiritual universe there is hierarchy beyond hierarchy ofspiritual intelligences who are as the suns of the spiritual world. Ourphysical system has at its centre the great spiritual Intelligencemanifested as a Trinity, the I´shvara of that system. Then beyond Himthere is a mightier I´shvara, round whom Those who are on the level ofthe I´shvara of our system circle, looking to Him as Their central life. And beyond Him yet another, and beyond Him others and others yet, untilas the physical universes are beyond our thinking, the spiritualhierarchy stretches also beyond our thought, and, dazzled and blinded bythe splendour, we sink back to earth, as Arjuna was blinded when theVaiṣhṇava form shone forth on him, and we cry: "Oh! show us againThy more limited form that we may know it and live by it. We are not yetready for the mightier manifestations. We are blinded, not helped, bysuch blaze of divine splendour. "

And so we find that if we would learn we must limit ourselves--nay, wemust try to expand ourselves--to the limits of our own system. Why? Ihave met people who have not really any grasp of this little world, thisgrain of dust in which they live, who cannot be content unless youanswer questions about the One Existence, the Para-Brahma, whom sagesrevere in silence, not daring to speak even with illuminated mind thatknows nirvânic life and has expanded to nirvânic consciousness. The moreignorant the man, the more he thinks he can grasp. The less heunderstands, the more he resents being told that there are some thingsbeyond the grasp of his intellect, existences so mighty that he cannoteven dream of the lowest of the attributes that mark them out. And formyself, who know myself ignorant, who know that many an age must passere I shall be able to think of dealing with these profounder problems, I sometimes gauge the ignorance of the questioner by the questions thathe asks as to the ultimate existences, and when he wants to know what hecalls the primary origin, I know that he has not even grasped theone-thousandth part of the origin out of which he himself has sprung. Therefore, I say to you frankly that these mighty Ones whom we worshipare the Gods of our system; beyond them there stretch mightier Ones yet, whom, perhaps, myriads of kalpas hence, we may begin to understand andworship. 

Let us then confine ourselves to our own system and be glad if we cancatch some ray of the glory that illumines it. Viṣhṇu has His ownfunctions, as also have Brahmâ and Mahâdeva. The first work in thissystem is done by the third of the sacred great Ones of the Trimûrti, Brahmâ, as you all know, for you have read that there came forth thecreative Intelligence as the third of the divine manifestations. I carenot what is the symbology you take; perchance that of the _ViṣhṇuPurâṇa_ will be most familiar, wherein the unmanifested Viṣhṇuis beneath the water, standing as the first of the Trimûrti, then theLotus, standing as the second, and the opened Lotus showing Brahmâ, thethird, the creative Mind. You may remember that the work of creationbegan with His activity. When we study from the occult standpoint inwhat that activity consisted, we find it consisted in impregnating withHis own life the matter of the solar system; that He gave His own lifeto build up form after form of atom, to make the great divisions in thekosmos; that He formed, one after another, the five kinds of matter. Working by His mind--He is sometimes spoken of as Mahat, the great One, Intelligence--He formed Tattvas one after another. Tattvas, you mayremember from last year, are the foundations of the atoms, and there arefive of them manifested at the present time. That is His special work. Then He meditates, and forms--as thoughts--come forth. There Hismanifest work may be said to end, though He maintains ever the life ofthe atom. As far as the active work of the kosmos is concerned, He givesway to the next of the great forces that is to work, the force ofViṣhṇu. His work is to gather together that matter that has beenbuilt, shaped, prepared, vivified, and build it into definite formsafter the creative ideas brought forth by the meditation of Brahmâ. Hegives to matter a binding force; He gives to it those energies that holdform together. No form exists without Him, whether it be moving orunmoving. How often does Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, speaking as the supremeViṣhṇu, lay stress on this fact. He is the life in every form;without it the form could not exist, without it it would go back to itsprimeval elements and no longer live as form. He is the all-pervadinglife; the "Supporter of the Universe" is one of His names. Mahâdeva hasa different function in the universe; especially is He the great Yogî;especially is He the great Teacher, the Mahâguru; He is sometimes calledJagatguru, the Teacher of the world. Over and over again--to take acomparatively modern example, as the _Gurugîtâ_--we find Him as Teacher, to whom Pârvati goes asking for instruction as to the nature of theGuru. He it is who defines the Guru's work, He it is who inspires theGuru's teaching. Every Guru on earth is a reflection of Mahâdeva, and itis His life which he is commissioned to give out to the world. Yogî, immersed in contemplation, taking the ascetic form always--that marksout His functions. For the symbols by which the mighty Ones are shown inthe teachings are not meaningless, but are replete with the deepestmeaning. And when you see Him represented as the eternal Yogî, with thecord in His hand, sitting as an ascetic in contemplation, it means thatHe is the supreme ideal of the ascetic life, and that men who comeespecially under His influence must pass out of home, out of family, outof the normal ties of evolution, and give themselves to a life ofasceticism, to a life of renunciation, to share, however feebly, in thatmighty yoga by which the universe is kept alive. 

He then manifests not as Avatâra, but such manifestations come from Himwho is the God, the Spirit, of evolution, who evolves all forms. That iswhy from Viṣhṇu all these Avatâras come. For it is He who by Hisinfinite love dwells in every form that He has made; with patience thatnothing can exhaust, with love that nothing can tire, with quiet, calmendurance which no folly of man can shake from its eternal peace, Helives in every form, moulding it as it will bear the moulding, shapingit as it yields itself to His impulse, binding Himself, limiting Himselfin order that His universe may grow, Lord of eternal life and bliss, dwelling in every form. If you grasp this, it is not difficult to saywhy from Him alone the Avatâras come. Who else should take form save theOne who gives form? who else should work with this unending love saveHe, who, while the universe exists, binds Himself that the universe maylive and ultimately share His freedom? He is bound that the universe maybe free. Who else then should come forth when special need arises?

And He gives the great types. Let me remind you of the_Shrîmad-Bhâgavata_, where in an early chapter of the first Book, the3rd chapter, a very long list is given of the forms that Viṣhṇutook, not only the great Avatâras, but also a large number of others. Itis said He appeared as Nara and Nârâyana; it is said He appeared asKapila; He took female forms, and so on, a whole long list being givenof the shapes that He assumed. And, turning from that to a veryilluminative passage in the _Mahâbhârata_, we find Him in the form ofShrî Kṛiṣhṇa explaining a profound truth to Arjuna. 

There He gives the law of these appearances: "When, O son of Pritha, Ilive in the order of the deities, then I act in every respect as adeity. When I live in the order of the Gandharvas, then I act in everyrespect as a Gandharva. When I live in the order of the Nâgas, I act asa Nâga. When I live in the order of the Yakshas, or that of theRâkshasas, I act after the manner of that order. Born now in the orderof humanity, I must act as a human being. " A profound truth, a truththat few in modern times recognise. Every type in the universe, in itsown place, is good; every type in the universe, in its own place, isnecessary. There is no life save His life; how then could any type comeinto existence apart from the universal life, bereft whereof nothing canexist?

We speak of good forms and evil, and rightly, as regards our ownevolution. But from the wider standpoint of the kosmos, good and evilare relative terms, and everything is very good in the sight of theSupreme who lives in every one. How can a type come into existence inwhich He cannot live? How can anything live and move, save as it has itsbeing in Him? Each type has its work; each type has its place; the typeof the Râkshasa as much as the type of the Deva, of the Asura as much asof the Sura. Let me give you one curious little simple example, whichyet has a certain graphic force. You have a pole you want to move, andthat pole is on a pivot, like the mountain which churned the ocean, apole with its two ends, positive and negative we will call them. Thepositive end, we will say, is pushed in the direction of the river (theriver flowing beyond one end of the hall at Adyar). The negative pole ispushed--in what direction? In the opposite. And those who are pushingit have their faces turned in the opposite direction. One man looks atthe river, the other man has his back to it, looking in the oppositedirection. But the pole turns in the one direction although they push inopposite directions. They are working round the same circle, and thepole goes faster because it is pushed from its two ends. There is thepicture of our universe. The positive force you call the Deva or Sura;his face is turned, it seems, to God. The negative force you call theRâkshasa or Asura; his face, it seems, is turned away from God. Ah no!God is everywhere, in every point of the circle round which they tread;and they tread His circle and do His will and no otherwise; and all atlength find rest and peace in Him. 

Therefore Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa Himself can incarnate in the form ofRâkshasa, and when in that form He will act as Râkshasa and not as Deva, doing that part of the divine work with the same perfection as He doesthe other, which men in their limited vision call the good. A greattruth hard to grasp. I shall have to return to it presently in speakingof Râvana, one of the mightiest types of, perhaps the greatest of, allthe Râkshasas. And we shall see, if we can follow, how the profoundtruth works out. But remember, if in the minds of some of you there issome hesitation in accepting this, that the words that I read are notmine, but those of the Lord who spoke of His own embodying; He has lefton record for your teaching, that He has embodied Himself in the form ofRâkshasa and has acted after the manner of that order. 

Leaving that for a moment, there is one other point I must take, erespeaking of the need for Avatâras, and it is this: when the greatcentral Deities have manifested, then there come forth from Them sevenDeities of what we may call the second order. In Theosophy, they arespoken of as the planetary Logoi, to distinguish them from the greatsolar Logoi, the central Life. Each of These has to do with one of theseven sacred planets, and with the chain of worlds connected with thatplanet. Our world is one of the links in this chain, and you and I passround this chain in successive incarnations in the great stages of life. The world--our present world--is the midway globe of one such chain. OneLogos of the secondary order presides over the evolution of this chainof worlds. He shows out three aspects, reflections of the great Logoiwho are at the centre of the system. You have read perhaps of theseven-leaved lotus, the Saptaparnapadma; looked at with the highersight, gazed at with the open vision of the seer, that mighty group ofcreative and directing Beings looks like the lotus with its seven leavesand the great Ones are at the heart of the lotus. It is as though youcould see a vast lotus-flower spread out in space, the tips of the sevenleaves being the mighty Intelligences presiding over the evolution ofthe chains of worlds. That lotus symbol is no mere symbol but a highreality, as seen in that wondrous world wherefrom the symbol has beentaken by the sages. And because the great Ṛishis of old saw with theopen eye of knowledge, saw the lotus-flower spread in space, they tookit as the symbol of kosmos, the lotus with its seven leaves, each one amighty Deva presiding over a separate line of evolution. We areprimarily concerned with our own planetary Deva and through Him with thegreat Devas of the solar system. 

Now my reason for mentioning this is to explain one word that haspuzzled many students. Mahâviṣhṇu, the great Viṣhṇu, whythat particular epithet? What does it mean when that phrase is used? Itmeans the great solar Logos, Viṣhṇu in His essential nature: butthere is a reflection of His glory, a reflection of His power, of Hislove, in more immediate connection with ourselves and our own world. Heis His representative, as a viceroy may represent the king. Some of theAvatâras we shall find came forth from Mahâviṣhṇu through theplanetary Logos, who is concerned with our evolution and the evolutionof the world. But the Pûrṇâvatâra that I spoke of yesterday comesforth directly from Mahâviṣhṇu, with no intermediary betweenHimself and the world that He comes to help. Here is another distinctionbetween the Pûrṇâvatâra and those more limited ones, that I could notmention yesterday, because the words used would, at that stage, havebeen unintelligible. We shall find to-morrow, when we come to deal withthe Avatâras Matsya, Kûrma, and so on, that these special Avatâras, connected with the evolution of certain types in the world, whileindirectly from Mahâviṣhṇu, come through the mediation of Hismighty representative for our own chain, the wondrous Intelligence thatconveys His love and ministers His will, and is the channel of Hisall-pervading and supporting power. When we come to study ShrîKṛiṣhṇa we shall find that there is no intermediary. He standsas the Supreme Himself. And while in the other cases there is thePresence that may be recognised as an intermediary, it is absent in thecase of the great Lord of Life. 

Leaving that for further elaboration then to-morrow, let us try toanswer the next question, "How arises this need for Avatâras?" becausein the minds of some, quite naturally, a difficulty does arise. Thedifficulty that many thoughtful people feel may be formulated thus:"Surely the whole plan of the world is in the mind of the Logos from thebeginning, and surely we cannot suppose that He is working like a humanworkman, not thoroughly understanding that at which He aims. He must bethe architect as well as the builder; He must make the plan as well ascarry it out. He is not like the mason who puts a stone in the wallwhere he is told, and knows nothing of the architecture of the buildingto which he is contributing. He is the master-builder, the greatarchitect of the universe, and everything in the plan of that universemust be in His mind ere ever the universe began. But if that be so--andwe cannot think otherwise--how is it that the need for specialintervention arises? Does not the fact of special intervention implysome unforeseen difficulty that has arisen? If there must be a kind ofinterference with the working out of the plan, does that not look as ifin the original plan some force was left out of account, some difficultyhad not been seen, something had arisen for which preparation had notbeen made? If it be not so, why the need for interference, which looksas though it were brought about to meet an unforeseen event?" A natural, reasonable, and perfectly fair question. Let us try to answer it. I donot believe in shirking difficulties; it is better to look them in theface, and see if an answer be possible. 

Now the answer comes along three different lines. There are three greatclasses of facts, each of which contributes to the necessity; and each, foreseen by the Logos, is definitely prepared for as needing aparticular manifestation. 

The first of these lines arises from what I may perhaps call the natureof things. I remarked at the beginning of this lecture on the fact thatour universe, our system, is part of a greater whole, not separate, notindependent, not primary, in comparatively a low scale in the universe, our sun a planet in a vaster system. Now what does that imply? Asregards matter, Prakṛiti, it implies that our system is builded outof matter already existing, out of matter already gifted with certainproperties, out of matter that spreads through all space, and from whichevery Logos takes His materials, modifying it according to His own planand according to His own will. When we speak of Mûlaprakṛiti, theroot of matter, we do not mean that it exists as the matter we know. Nophilosopher, no thinker would dream of saying that that which spreadsthroughout space is identical with the matter of our very elementarysolar system. It is the root of matter, that of which all forms ofmatter are merely modifications. What does that imply? It implies thatour great Lord, who brought our solar system into existence, is takingmatter which already has certain properties given to it by One yetmightier than Himself. In that matter three guṇas exist inequilibrium, and it is the breath of the Logos that throws them out ofequilibrium, and causes the motion by which our system is brought intoexistence. There must be a throwing out of equilibrium, for equilibriummeans Pralaya, where there is not motion, nor any manifestation of lifeand form. When life and form come forth, equilibrium must have beendisturbed, and motion must be liberated by which the world shall bebuilt. But the moment you grasp that truth you see that there must becertain limitations by virtue of the very material in which the Deityis working for the making of the system. It is true that when out of Hissystem, when not conditioned and confined and limited by it, as He is byHis most gracious will, it is true that He would be the Lord of thatmatter by virtue of His union with the mightier Life beyond; but whenfor the building of the world He limits Himself within His Mâyâ, then Hemust work within the conditions of those materials that limit Hisactivity, as we are told over and over again. 

Now when in the ceaseless interplay of Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas, Tamashas the ascendancy, aided and, as it were, worked by Rajas, so that theypredominate over Sattva in the foreseen evolution, when the twocombining overpower the third, when the force of Rajas and the inertiaand stubbornness of Tamas, binding themselves together, check theaction, the harmony, the pleasure-giving qualities of Sattva, then comesone of the conditions in which the Lord comes forth to restore thatwhich had been disturbed of the balanced interworking of the threeguṇas and to make again such balance between them as shall enableevolution to go forward smoothly and not be checked in its progress. Here-establishes the balance of power which gives orderly motion, theorder having been disturbed by the co-operation of the two incontradistinction to the third. In these fundamental attributes ofmatter, the three guṇas, lies the first reason of the need forAvatâras. 

The second need has to do with man himself, and now we come back in boththe second and the third to that question of good and evil, of which Ihave already spoken. I´shvara, when He came to deal with the evolutionof man--with all reverence I say it--had a harder task to perform thanin the evolution of the lower forms of life. On them the law is imposedand they must obey its impulse. On the mineral the law is compulsory;every mineral moves according to the law, without interposing anyimpulse from itself to work against the will of the One. In thevegetable world the law is imposed, and every plant grows in orderlymethod according to the law within it, developing steadily and in thefashion of its order, interposing no impulse of its own. Nay, in theanimal world--save perhaps when we come to its highest members--the lawis still a force overpowering everything else, sweeping everythingbefore it, carrying along all living things. A wheel turning on the roadmight carry with it on its axle the fly that happened to have settledthere; it does not interpose any obstacle to the turning of the wheel. If the fly comes on to the circumference of the wheel and opposes itselfto its motion, it is crushed without the slightest jarring of the wheelthat rolls on, and the form goes out of existence, and the life takesother shapes. 

So is the wheel of law in the three lower kingdoms. But with man it isnot so. In man I´shvara sets himself to produce an image of Himself, which is not the case in the lower kingdoms. As life has evolved, oneforce after another has come out, and in man there begins to come outthe central life, for the time has arrived for the evolution of thesovereign power of will, the self-initiated motion which is part of thelife of the Supreme. Do not misunderstand me--for the subject is asubtle one; there is only one will in the universe, the will ofI´shvara, and all must conform itself to that will, all is conditionedby that will, all must move according to that will, and that will marksout the straight line of evolution. There may be swerving neither to theright hand nor to the left. There is one will only which in its aspectto us is free, but inasmuch as our life is the life of I´shvara Himself, inasmuch as there is but one Self and that Self is yours and mine asmuch as His--for He has given us His very Self to be our Self and ourlife--there must evolve at one stage of this wondrous evolution thatroyal power of will which is seen in Him. And from the A´tmâ within us, which is Himself in us, there flows forth the sovereign will into thesheaths in which the A´tmâ is as it were held. Now what happens is this:force goes out through the sheaths and gives them some of its ownnature, and each sheath begins to set up a reflection of the will on itsown account, and you get the "I" of the body which wants to go this way, and the "I" of passion or emotion which wants to go that way, and the"I" of the mind which wants to go a third way, and none of these waysis the way of the A´tmâ, the Supreme. These are the illusory wills ofman, and there is one way in which you may distinguish them from thetrue will. Each of them is determined in its direction by externalattraction; the man's body wants to move in a particular way becausesomething attracts it, or something else repels it: it moves to what itlikes, to what is congenial to it, it moves away from that which itdislikes, from that from which it feels itself repelled. But that motionof the body is but motion determined by the I´shvara outside, as itwere, rather than by the I´shvara within, by the kosmos around and notby the Self within, which has not yet achieved its mastery of thekosmos. So with the emotions or passions: they are drawn this way orthat by the objects of the senses, and the "senses move after theirappropriate objects"; it is not the "I, " the Self, which moves. And soalso with the mind. "The mind is fickle and restless, OKṛiṣhṇa, it seems as hard to curb as the wind, " and the mindlets the senses run after objects as a horse that has broken its reinsflies away with the unskilled driver. All these forces are set up; andthere is one more thing to remember. These forces reinforce the râjasicguṇa and help to bring about that predominance of which I spoke; allthese reckless desires that are not according to the one will are yetnecessary in order that the will may evolve and in order to train anddevelop the man. 

Do you say why? How would you learn right if you knew not wrong? Howwould you choose good if you knew not evil? How would you recognise thelight if there were no darkness? How would you move if there were noresistance? The forces that are called dark, the forces of theRâkshasas, of the Asuras, of all that seem to be working againstI´shvara--these are the forces that call out the inner strength of theSelf in man, by struggling with which the forces of A´tmâ within the manare developed, and without which he would remain in Pralaya forevermore. It is a perfectly stagnant pool where there is no motion, andthere you get corruption and not life. The evolution of force can onlybe made by struggle, by combat, by effort, by exercise, and inasmuch asI´shvara is building men and not babies, He must draw out men's forcesby pulling against their strength, making them struggle in order toattain, and so vivifying into outer manifestation the life thatotherwise would remain enfolded in itself. In the seed the life ishidden, but it will not grow if you leave the seed alone. Place it onthis table here, and come back a century hence, and, if you find it, itwill be a seed still and nothing more. So also is the A´tmâ in man ereevolution and struggle have begun. Plant your seed in the ground, sothat the forces in the ground press on it, and the rays of the sun fromoutside make vibrations that work on it, and the water from the raincomes through the soil into it and forces it to swell--then the seedbegins to grow; but as it begins to grow it finds the earth around. Howshall it grow but by pushing at it and so bringing out the energies oflife that are within it? And against the opposition of the ground theroots strike down, and against the opposition of the ground the growingpoint mounts upward, and by the opposition of the ground the forces areevolved that make the seed grow, and the little plant appears above thesoil. Then the wind comes and blows and tries to drag it away, and, inorder that it may live and not perish, it strikes its roots deeper andgives itself a better hold against the battering force of the wind, andso the tree grows against the forces which try to tear it out. And ifthese forces were not, there would have been no growth of the root. Andso with the root of I'shvara, the life within us; were everything aroundus smooth and easy, we would remain supine, lethargic, indifferent. Itis the whip of pain, of suffering, of disappointment, that drives usonward and brings out the forces of our internal life which otherwisewould remain undeveloped. Would you have a man grow? Then don't throwhim on a couch with pillows on every side, and bring his meals and putthem into his mouth, so that he moves not limb nor exercises mind. Throwhim on a desert, where there is no food nor water to be found; let thesun beat down on his head, the wind blow against him; let his mind bemade to think how to meet the necessities of the body, and the mangrows into a man and not a log. That is why there are forces which youcall evil. In this universe there is no evil; all is good that comes tous from I´shvara, but it sometimes comes in the guise of evil that, byopposing it, we may draw out our strength. Then we begin to understandthat these forces are necessary, and that they are within the plan ofI´shvara. They test evolution, they strengthen evolution, so that itdoes not take the next step onward till it has strength enough to holdits own, one step made firm by opposition before the next is taken. Butwhen, by the conflicting wills of men, the forces that work forretardation, to keep a man back till he is able to overcome them and goon, when they are so reinforced by men's unruly wishes that they arebeginning, as it were, to threaten progress, then ere that check takesplace, there is reinforcement from the other side: the presence pf theAvatâra of the forces that threaten evolution calls forth the presenceof the Avatâra that leads to the progress of humanity. 

We come to the third cause. The Avatâra does not come forth without acall. The earth, it is said, is very heavy with its load of evil, "Saveus, O supreme Lord, " the Devas come and cry. In answer to that cry theLord comes forth. But what is this that I spoke of purposely by astrange phrase to catch your attention, that I spoke of as an Avatâra ofevil? By the will of the one Supreme, there is one incarnated in formwho gathers up together the forces that make for retardation, in orderthat, thus gathered together, they may be destroyed by the opposingforce of good, and thus the balance may be re-established and evolutiongo on along its appointed road. Devas work for joy, the reward ofHeaven. Svarga is their home, and they serve the Supreme for the joysthat there they have. Râkshasas also serve Him, first for rule on earth, and power to grasp and hold and enjoy as they will in this lower world. Both sides serve for reward, and are moved by the things that please. 

And in order, as our time is drawing to a close, that I may take onegreat example to show how these work, let me take the mighty one, Râvanaof Lanka, [6] that we may give a concrete form to a rather difficult andabstruse thought. Râvana, as you all know, was the mighty intelligence, the Râkshasa, who called forth the coming of Shrî Râma. But look backinto the past, and what was he? Keeper of Viṣhṇu's heaven, door-keeper of the mighty Lord, devotee, bhakta, absolutely devoted tothe Lord. Look at his past, and where do you find a bhakta of Mahâdevamore absolute in devotion than the one who came forth later as Râvana?It was he who cast his head into the fire in order that Mahâdeva mightbe served. It is he in whose name have been written some of the mostexquisite stotras, breathing the spirit of completest devotion; in oneof them, you may remember--and you could scarcely carry devotion to afurther point--it is in the mouth of Râvana words are put appealing toMahâdeva, and describing Him as surrounded by forms the most repellentand undesirable, surrounded on every side by pisâchas and bhûtas, [7]which to us seem but the embodiment of the dark shadows of the burningghat, forms from which all beauty is withdrawn. He cries out in apassion of love:

 Better wear pisâcha-form, so we Evermore are near and wait on Thee. 

[Footnote 6: Ceylon. ]

[Footnote 7: Goblins and elementals. ]

How did he then come to be the ravisher of Sîtâ and the enemy of God?

You know how through lack of intuition, through lack of power torecognise the meaning of an order, following the words not the spirit, following the outside not the inner, he refused to open the door ofheaven when Sanat Kumâra came and demanded entrance. In order that thatwhich was lacking might be filled, in order that that which was wantingmight be earned, that which was called a curse was pronounced, a cursewhich was the natural reaction from the mistake. He was asked: "Will youhave seven incarnations friendly to Viṣhṇu, or three in which youwill be His enemy and oppose Him?" And because he was a true bhakta, andbecause every moment of absence from his Lord meant to him hell oftorture, he chose three of enmity, which would let him go back soonerto the Feet of the Beloved, rather than the seven of happiness, offriendliness. Better a short time of utter enmity than a longerremaining away with apparent happiness. It was love not hatred that madehim choose the form of a Râkshasa rather than the form of a Ṛishi. There is the first note of explanation. 

Then, coming into the form of Râkshasa, he must do his duty as Râkshasa. This was no weak man to be swayed by momentary thought, by transientobjects. He had all the learning of the Vedas. With him, it was said, passed away Vaidic learning, with him it disappeared from earth. He knewhis duty. What was his duty? To put forward every force which was in hismighty nature in order to check evolution, and so call out every forcein man which could be called out by opposing energy which had to beovercome; to gather round him all the forces which were opposingevolution; to make himself king of the whole, centre and law-giver toevery force that was setting itself against the will of the Lord; togather them together as it were into one head, to call them togetherinto one arm; so that when their apparent triumph made the cry of theearth go up to Viṣhṇu, the answer might come in Râma's Avatâra andthey be destroyed, that the life-wave might go on. 

Nobly he did the work, thoroughly he discharged his duty. It is saidthat even sages are confused about Dharma, and truly it is subtle andhard to grasp in its entirety, though the fragment the plain man sees besimple enough. His Dharma was the Dharma of a Râkshasa, to lead thewhole forces of evil against One whom in his inner soul, then clouded, he loved. When Shrî Râma came, when He was wandering in the forest, howcould he sting Him into leaving the life of His life, His beloved Sîtâ, and into coming out into the world to do His work? By taking away fromHim the one thing to which He clung, by taking away from Him the wifewhom He loved as His very Self, by placing her in the spot where all theforces of evil were gathered together, so making one head fordestruction, which the arrow of Shrî Râma might destroy. Then the mightybattle, then the struggle with all the forces of his great nature, thatthe law might be obeyed to the uttermost, duly fulfilled to the lastgrain, the debt paid that was owed; and then--ah then! the shaft of theBeloved, then the arrow of Shrî Râma that struck off the head from theseeming enemy, from the real devotee. And from the corpse of theRâkshasa that fell upon the field near Lanka, the devotee went up toGoloka[8] to sit at the feet of the Beloved, and rest for awhile tillthe third incarnation had to be lived out. 

[Footnote 8: A name for one of the heavens. ]

Such then are some of the reasons by, the ways in which the coming ofthe Avatâra is brought about. And my last word to you, my brothers, to-day is but a sentence, in order to avoid the possibility of a mistaketo which our diving into these depths of thought may possibly give rise. Remember that though all powers are His, all forces His, Râkshasa asmuch as Deva, Asura as much as Sura; remember that for your evolutionyou must be on the side of good, and struggle to the utmost againstevil. Do not let the thoughts I have put lead you into a bog, into a pitof hell, in which you may for the time perish, that because evil isrelative, because it exists by the one will, because Râkshasa is His asmuch as Deva, therefore you shall go on their side and walk along theirpath. It is not so. If you yield to ambition, if you yield to pride, ifyou set yourselves against the will of I´shvara, if you struggle for theseparated self, if in yourselves now you identify yourself with the pastin which you have dwelt instead of with the future towards which youshould be directing your steps, then, if your Karma be at a certainstage, you pass into the ranks of those who work as enemies, because youhave chosen that fate for yourself, at the promptings of the lowernature. Then with bitter inner pain--even if with completesubmission--accepting the Karma, but with profound sorrow, you shallhave to work out your own will against the will of the Beloved, and feelthe anguish of the rending that separates the inner from the outer life. The will of I´shvara for you is evolution; these forces are made tohelp your evolution--_but only if you strive against them_. If you yieldto them, then they carry you away. You do not then call out your ownstrength, but only strengthen them. Therefore, O Arjuna, stand up andfight. Do not be supine; do not yield yourself to the forces; they arethere to call out your energies by opposition and you must not sink downon the floor of the chariot. And my last word is the word of ShrîKṛiṣhṇa to Arjuna: "Take up your bow, stand up and fight. "

THIRD LECTURE. 

The subject this morning, my brothers, is in some ways an easy and inother ways a difficult one; easy, inasmuch as the stories of theAvatâras can be readily told and readily grasped; difficult, inasmuch asthe meaning that underlies these manifestations may possibly be in someways unfamiliar, may not have been thoroughly thought out by individualhearers. And I must begin with a general word as to these specialAvatâras. You may remember that I said that the whole universe may beregarded as the Avatâra of the Supreme, the Self-revelation of I´shvara. But we are not dealing with that general Self-revelation; nor are weeven considering the very many revelations that have taken place fromtime to time, marked out by special characteristics; for we have seen byreferring to one or two of the old writings that many lists are given ofthe comings of the Lord, and we are to-day concerned with only some ofthose, those that are accepted specially as Avatâras. 

Now on one point I confess myself puzzled at the outset, and I do notknow whether in your exoteric literature light is thrown upon the pointas to how these ten were singled out, who was the person who chose themout of a longer list, on what authority that list was proclaimed. Onthat point I must simply state the question, leaving it unanswered. Itmay be a matter familiar to those who have made researches into theexoteric literature. It is not a point of quite sufficient importancefor the moment to spend on it time and trouble, in what we may call theoccult way of research. I leave that then aside, for there is one reasonwhy some of these stand out in a way which is clear and definite. Theymark stages in the evolution of the world. They mark new departures inthe growth of the developing life, and whether it was that fact whichunderlay the exoteric choice I am unable to say; but certainly that factby itself is sufficient to justify the special distinction which ismade. 

There is one other general point to consider. Accounts of these Avatârasare found in the Purâṇas; allusions to them, to one or other of them, are found in other of the ancient writings, but the moment you come tovery much detail you must turn to the Paurâṇic accounts; as you areaware, sages, in giving those Purâṇas, very often described things asthey are seen on the higher planes, giving the description of theunderlying truth of facts and events; you have appearances describedwhich sound very strange in the lower world; you have facts assertedwhich raise very much of challenge in modern days. When you read in thePurâṇas of strange forms and marvellous appearances, when you readaccounts of creatures that seem unlike anything that you have ever heardof or dreamed of elsewhere, the modern mind, with its somewhat narrowlimitations, is apt to revolt against the accounts that are given; themodern mind, trained within the limits of the science of observation, isnecessarily circumscribed within those limits and those limits are of anexceedingly narrow description; they are limits which belong only tomodern time, modern to men, in the true sense of the word, thoughgeological researches stretch of course far back into what we call inthis nineteenth century the night of time. But you must remember thatthe moment geology goes beyond the historic period, which is a meremoment in the history of the world, it has more of guesses than offacts, more of theories than of proofs. If you take half a dozen moderngeologists and ask each of them in turn for the date of the period ofwhich records remain in the small number of fossils collected, you willfind that almost every man gives a different date, and that they dealwith differences of millions of years as though they were only secondsor minutes of ours. So that you will have to remember in what sciencecan tell you of the world, however accurate it may be within its limits, that these limits are exceedingly narrow, narrow I mean when measured bythe sight that goes back kalpa after kalpa, and that knows that themind of the Supreme is not limited to the manifestations of a fewhundred thousands of years, but goes back million after million, hundreds of millions after hundreds of millions, and that the varietiesof form, the enormous differences of types, the marvellous kinds ofcreatures which have come out of that creative imagination, transcend inactuality all that man's mind can dream of, and that the very wildestimages that man can make fail far short of the realities that actuallyexisted in the past kalpas through which the universe has gone. Thatword of warning is necessary, and also the warning that on the higherplanes things look very different from what they look down here. Youhave here a reflection only of part of those higher forms of existence. Space there has more dimensions than it has on the physical plane, andeach dimension of space adds a new fundamental variety to form; if toillustrate this I may use a simile I have often used, it may perhapsconvey to you a little idea of what I mean. Two similes I will take eachthrowing a little light on a very difficult subject. Suppose that apicture is presented to you of a solid form; the picture, being made bypen or pencil on a sheet of paper, must show on the sheet, which ispractically of two dimensions--a plane surface--a three dimensionalform; so that if you want to represent a solid object, a vase, you mustdraw it flat, and you can only represent the solidity of that vase byresorting to certain devices of light and shade, to the artificialdevice which is called perspective, in order to make an illusorysemblance of the third dimension. There on the plane surface you get asolid appearance, and the eye is deceived into thinking it sees a solidwhen really it is looking at a flat surface. Now as a matter of fact ifyou show a picture to a savage, an undeveloped savage, or to a veryyoung child, they will not see a solid but only a flat. They will notrecognise the picture as being the picture of a solid object they haveseen in the world round them; they will not see that that artificialrepresentation is meant to show a familiar solid, and it passes by themwithout making any impression on the mind; only the education of the eyeenables you to see on a flat surface the picture of a solid form. Now, by an effort of the imagination, can you think of a solid as being therepresentation of a form in one dimension more, shown by a kind ofperspective? Then you may get a vague idea of what is meant when wespeak of a further dimension in space. As the picture is to the vase, sois the vase to a higher object of which that vase itself is areflection. So again if you think, say, of the lotus flower I spoke ofyesterday, as having just the tips of its leaves above water, each tipwould appear as a separate object. If you know the whole you know thatthey are all parts of one object; but coming over the surface of thewater you will see tips only, one for each leaf of the seven-leavedlotus. So is every globe in space an apparently separate object, whilein reality it is not separated at all, but part of a whole that existsin a space of more dimensions; and the separateness is mere illusion dueto the limitations of our faculties. 

Now I have made this introduction in order to show you that when youread the Purâṇas you consistently get the fact on the higher planedescribed in terms of the lower, with the result that it seemsunintelligible, seems incomprehensible; then you have what is called anallegory, that is, a reality which looks like a fancy down here, but isa deeper truth than the illusion of physical matter, and is nearer tothe reality of things than the things which you call objective and real. If you follow that line of thought at all you will read the Purâṇaswith more intelligence and certainly with more reverence than some ofthe modern Hindus are apt to show in the reading, and you will begin tounderstand that when another vision is opened one sees thingsdifferently from the way that one sees them on the physical plane, andthat that which seems impossible on the physical is what is really seenwhen you pass beyond the physical limitations. 

From the Purâṇas then the stories come. 

Let me take the first three Avatâras apart from the remainder, for areason that you will readily understand as we go through them. We takethe Avatâra which is spoken of as that of Matsya or the fish; thatwhich is spoken of as that of Kûrma or the tortoise; that which isspoken of as that of Vârâha, or the boar. Three animal forms; howstrange! thinks the modern graduate. How strange that the Supreme shouldtake the forms of these lower animals, a fish, a tortoise, a boar! Whatchildish folly! "The babbling of a race in its infancy, " it is said bythe pandits of the Western world. Do not be so sure. Why this wonderfulconceit as to the human form? Why should you and I be the only worthyvessels of the Deity that have come out of the illimitable Mind in thecourse of ages? What is there in this particular shape of head, arms, and trunk which shall make it the only worthy vessel to serve as amanifestation of the supreme I´shvara? I know of nothing so wonderful inthe mere outer form that should make that shape alone worthy torepresent some of the aspects of the Highest. And may it not be thatfrom His standpoint those great differences that we see betweenourselves and those which we call the lower forms of life may be almostimperceptible, since He transcends them all? A little child sees animmense difference between himself of perhaps two and a half feet highand a baby only a foot and a half high, and thinks himself a mancompared with that tiny form rolling on the ground and unable to walk. But to the grown man there is not so much difference between the lengthof the two, and one seems very much like the other. While we are verysmall we see great differences between ourselves and others; but on themountain top the hovel and the palace do not differ so very much inheight. They all look like ant-hills, very much of the same size. And sofrom the standpoint of I´shvara, in the vast hierarchies from themineral to the loftiest Deva, the distinctions are but as ant-hills incomparison with Himself, and one form or another is equally worthy, sothat it suits His purpose, and manifests His will. 

Now for the Matsya Avatâra; the story you will all know: when the greatManu, Vaivasvata Manu, the Root Manu, as we call Him--that is, a Manunot of one race only, but of a whole vast round of kosmic evolution, presiding over the seven globes that are linked for the evolution of theworld--that mighty Manu, sitting one day immersed in contemplation, seesa tiny fish gasping for water; and moved by compassion, as all greatones are, He takes up the little fish and puts it in a bowl, and thefish grows till it fills the bowl; and He placed it in a water vesseland it grew to the size of the vessel; then He took it out of thatvessel and put it into a bigger one; afterwards into a tank, a pond, ariver, the sea, and still the marvellous fish grew and grew and grew. The time came when a vast change was impending; one of those changescalled a minor pralaya, and it was necessary that the seeds of lifeshould be carried over that pralaya to the next manvantara. That wouldbe a minor pralaya and a minor manvantara. What does that mean? Itmeans a passage of the seeds of life from one globe to another; fromwhat a we call the globe preceding our own to our own earth. It is thefunction of the Root Manu, with the help and the guidance of theplanetary Logos, to transfer the seeds of life from one globe to thenext, so as to plant them in a new soil where further growth ispossible. As waters rose, waters of matter submerging the globe whichwas passing into pralaya, an ark, a vessel appeared; into this vesselstepped the great Ṛishi with others, and the seeds of life werecarried by Them, and as They go forth upon the waters a mighty fishappears and to the horn of that fish the vessel is fastened by a rope, and it conveys the whole safely to the solid ground where the Manurebegins His work. A story! yes, but a story that tells a truth; forlooking at it as it takes place in the history of the world, we see thevast surging ocean of matter, we see the Root Manu and the greatInitiates with Him gathering up the seeds of life from the world whosework is over, carrying them under the guidance and with the help of theplanetary Viṣhṇu to the new globe where new impulse is to be givento the life; and the reason why the fish form was chosen was simplybecause in the building up again of the world, it was at first coveredwith water, and only that form of life was originally possible, so faras denser physical life was concerned. 

You have in that first stage what the geologists call the Silurian Age, the age of fishes, when the great divine manifestation was of all theseforms of life. The Purâṇa rightly starts in the previous Kalpa, rightly starts the manifestations with the manifestation in the form ofthe fish. Not so very ridiculous after all, you see, when read byknowledge instead of by ignorance; a truth, as the Purâṇas are fullof truth, if they were only read with intelligence and not withprejudice. 

But some of you may say that there is confusion about these firstAvatâras; in several accounts we find that the Boar stands the first;that is true, but the key of it is this; the Boar Avatâra initiated thatevolution which was followed unbrokenly by the human; whereas the othertwo bring in great stages, each of which is regarded as a separatekalpa; and if you look into the _Viṣhṇu Purâṇa_ you will findthere the key; for when that begins to relate the incarnation of theBoar, there is just a sentence thrown in, that the Matsya and KûrmaAvatâras belong to previous kalpas. 

Now if we take the theosophical nomenclature, we find each of thesekalpas covers what we call a Root Race, and you may remember that thefirst Root Race of humanity had not human form at all but was simply afloating mass able to live in the waters which then covered the earth, and only showing the ordinary protoplasmic motions connected with such atype of life and possible at that stage of its evolution. It was a seedof form rather than a form itself; it was the seed planted by the Manuin the waters of the earth, that out of that humanity might evolve. Butthe general course of physical evolution passed through the stage of thefish; and geology there gives a true fact, though it does notunderstand, naturally, the hidden meaning; while the Purâṇa gives youthe reality of the manifestation, and the deeper truth that underliesthe stages of the evolving world. 

Then we find, tracing it onward, that this great age passes, and theworld begins to rise out of the waters. How then shall types be broughtforth in order that evolution may go on? The next great type is to befitted either for land or for water; for the next stage of the earthshows the waters draining gradually away, and the land appearing, andthe creatures that are the marked characteristic of the age must existpartially on land and partially in water. Here again there must bemanifestation of the type of life, this time of what we call the reptiletype; the tortoise is chosen as the typical creature, and while thetortoise typifies the type to be evolved, reptiles, amphibious creaturesof every description, swarm over the earth, becoming more and moreland-like in their character as the proportion of land to waterincreases. There is meanwhile going on, in the "imperishable sacredland, " a preparation for further evolution. There is one part of theglobe that changes not, that from the beginning has been, and will lastwhile the globe is lasting; it is called the "imperishable land. " Andthere the great Ṛishis gather, and thence they ever come forth forthe helping of man; that is the imperishable sacred land, sometimescalled the "sacred pole of the earth. " Pole itself exists not on thephysical plane but on the higher, and its reflection coming downwardmakes, as it were, one spot which never changes, but is ever guardedfrom the tread of ordinary men. There took place a most instructivephenomenon. The type of the evolution then preceding, the Tortoise, theLogos in that form, makes Himself the base of the revolving axis ofevolution. That is typified by Mandâra, the mountain which, placed onthe tortoise, is made to revolve by the hosts of Suras and Asuras, onepulling at the head of the serpent, and the other at the tail--thepositive and negative forces that I spoke of yesterday. So the churningbegins in matter, evolving types of life. The type is ever evolvedbefore the lower manifestation, the type appears before the copies of itare born in the lower world. And how often have the students of thegreat Teachers themselves seen the very thing occur; the churning of thewaters of matter giving forth all the types of the many sorts andspecies that are generated in the lower world; these are the archetypes, as we call them, of classes and creatures, always produced inpreparation for the forward stretch of evolution. There came forth oneby one the archetypes, the elephant, the horse, the woman, and so on, one after another, showing the track along which evolution was to go. And first of all, Amṛita, nectar of immortality, comes forth, symbolof the one life which passes through every form--and that life appearsabove the waters the taking of which is necessary in order that everyform may live. 

We cannot delay on details; I can only trace hastily the outline, showing you how real is the truth that underlies the story, and as thatgradually goes on and the types are ready, there comes the whelming ofthe world under the waters, and the great continents vanish for a time. 

Then comes the third Avatâra, the Vârâha. No earth is to be seen; thewaters of the flood have overwhelmed it. The types that are to beproduced on earth are waiting in the higher region for place on which tomanifest. How shall the earth be brought up from the waters which haveoverwhelmed it? Now once again the great Helper is needed, the God, theProtector of Evolution. Then in the form of a mighty Boar, whose formfilled the heaven, plunging down into the waters that He alone couldseparate, the Great One descends. He brings up the earth from the lowerregion where it was lying awaiting His coming; and the land rises upagain from below the surface of the flood, and the vast Lemuriancontinent is the earth of that far-off age. Here science has a word tosay, rightly enough, that on the Lemurian continent were developed manytypes of life, and there the mammals first made their appearance. Quiteso; that was exactly what the sages taught thousands upon thousands ofyears ago; that when the Boar, the great type of the mammal, plungedinto the waters to bring up the earth, then was started the mammalianevolution, and the continent thus rescued from the waters was crowdedwith the forms of the mammalian kingdom. Just as the Fish had typifiedthe Silurian epoch, just as the Tortoise had started on its way thegreat amphibian evolution, so did the Boar, that typical mammal, startthe mammalian evolution, and we come to the Lemurian continent with itswonderful variety of forms of mammalian life. Not so very ignorant afterall, you see, the ancient writings! For men are only re-discoveringto-day what has been in the hands of the followers of the Ṛishis forthousands, tens of thousands of years. 

Then we come to a strange incarnation on this Lemurian continent:frightful conflicts existed; we are nearing what in the theosophicalnomenclature is the middle of the third Race, and man as man willshortly appear with all the characteristics of his nature. He is not yetquite come to birth; strange forms are seen, half human and half animal, wholly monstrous; terrible struggles arise between these monstrous formsborn from the slime as it is said--from the remains of formercreations--and the newer and higher life in which the future evolutionis enshrined. These forms are represented in the Purâṇas as those ofthe race of Daityas, who ruled the earth, who struggled against the Devamanifestations, who conquered the Devas from time to time, who subjectedthem, who ruled over earth and heaven alike, bringing every thing undertheir sway. You may read in the splendid stanzas of the Book of Dzyan, as given us by H. P. B. , hints of that mighty struggle of which thePurâṇas are so full, a struggle which was as real as any struggle oflater days, an absolute historical fact that many of us have seen. Weare instructed over and over again of a frightful conflict of forms, theforms of the past, monstrous in their strength and in their outline, against whom the Sons of Light were battling, against whom the greatLords of the Flame came down. One of these conflicts, the greatest ofall, is given in the story of the Avatâra known as that ofNarasimha--the Man-Lion. You know the story; what Hindu does not knowthe story of Prahlâda? In him we have typified the dawning spiritualitywhich is to show in the higher races of Daityas as they pass on intodefinite human evolution, and their form gives way that sexual man maybe born. I need not dwell on that familiar story of the devotee ofViṣhṇu; how his Daitya father strove to kill him because the nameof Hari was ever on his lips; how he strove to slay him, with a sword, and the sword fell broken from the neck of the child; how then he triedto poison him, and Viṣhṇu appeared and ate first of the poisonedrice, so that the boy might eat it with the name of Hari on his lips;how his father strove to slay him by the furious elephant, by the fangof the serpent, by throwing him over a precipice, and by crushing himunder a stone. But ever the cry of "Hari, Hari, " brought deliverance, for in the elephant, in the fang of the serpent, in the precipice, andin the stone, Hari was ever present, and his devotee was safe in thatpresence: how finally when the father, challenging the omnipresence ofthe Deity, pointed to the stone pillar and said in mocking language: "Isyour Hari also in the pillar?" "Hari, Hari, " cried the boy, and thepillar burst asunder, and the mighty form came forth and slew the Daityathat doubted, in order that he might learn the omnipresence of theSupreme. A story? facts, not fiction; truth, not imagination; and if youcould look back to the time of those struggles, there would seem to younothing strange or abnormal in the story; for you would see it repeatedwith less vividness in the smaller struggles where the Sons of the Firewere purging and redeeming the earth, in order that the later humanevolution might take place. 

We pass from those four Avatâras, every one of which comes within whatis called the Satya Yuga of the earth--not of the race remember, not thesmaller cycle, but of the earth--the Satya Yuga of the earth as a whole, when periods of time were of immense length, and when progress wasmarvellously slow. Then we come to the next age, that which we call theTreta Yuga, that which is, in the theosophical chronology--and I put thetwo together in order that students may be able to work their way out indetail--the middle of the third Root Race, when humanity receives thelight from above, and when man as man begins to evolve. How is thatevolution marked? By the coming of the Supreme in human form, as Vâmana, the Dwarf. The Dwarf? Yes; for man was as yet but dwarf in the trulyhuman stature, although vast in outer appearance; and He came as theinner man, small, yet stronger than the outer form; against him wasBali, the mighty, showing the outer form, while Vâmana, the Dwarf, showed the man that should be. And when Bali had offered a greatsacrifice, the Dwarf as a Brâhmaṇa came to beg. 

It is curious this question of the caste of the Avatâras. When we oncecome to the human Avatâras, They are mostly Kshattriyas, as you know, but in two cases. They are Brâhmaṇas, and this is one of them; for Hewas going to beg, and Kshattriya might not beg. Only he to whom theearth's wealth should be as nothing, who should have no store of wealthto hold, to whom gold and earth should be as one, only he may go to beg. He was an ancient Brâhmaṇa, not a modern Brâhmaṇa. 

He came with begging bowl in hand, to beg of the king; for of what useis sacrifice unless something be given at the sacrifice? Now Bali was apious ruler, on the side of the evolution that was passing away, andgladly gave a boon. "Brâhmaṇa, take thy boon, " said he. "Three stepsof earth alone I ask for, " said the Dwarf. Of that little man surelythree steps would not cover much, and the great king with his world-widedominion might well give three steps of earth to the short and punyDwarf. But one step covered earth, and the next step covered sky. Wherecould the third step be planted, where? so that the gift might be madecomplete. Nothing was left for Bali to give save himself; nothing tomake his gift complete--and his word might not be broken--save his ownbody. So, recognising the Lord of all, he threw himself before Him, andthe third step, planted on his body, fulfilled the promise of the kingand made him the ruler of the lower regions, of Pâtâla. Such the story. How full of significance. This inner man--so small at that stage butreally so mighty, who was to rule alike the earth and heaven--could forhis third step find no place to put his foot upon save his own lowernature; he was to go forward and forward ever; that is hinted in thethird step that was taken. What a graphic picture of the evolution thatlay in front, the wondrous evolution that now was to begin. 

And I may just remind you in passing that there is one word in the _RigVeda_, which refers to this very Avatâra, that has been a source ofendless controversy and dispute as to its meaning; there it is said:

 Through all this world strode Viṣhṇu; thrice His foot He planted and the whole Was gathered in His footstep's dust. (I. Xxii. , 17. )[9]

[Footnote 9: See also I. Cliv. , which speaks of His three steps, withinwhich all living creatures have their habitation; the three steps aresaid to be "the earth, the heavens, and all living creatures. " Here Baliis made the symbol of all living things. ]

That too is one of the "babblings of child humanity. " I know not whatfigure the greatest man could use more poetical, more full of meaning, more sublime in its imagery, than that the whole world was gathered inthe dust of the foot of the Supreme. For what is the world save the dustof His footsteps, and how would it have any life save as His foot hastouched it?

So we pass, still treading onwards in the Treta Yuga, and we come toanother manifestation--that of Parashurâma; a strange Avatâra you maythink, and a partial Avatâra, let me say, as we shall see when we cometo look at His life and read the words that are spoken of Him. The Yugahad now gone far and the Kshattriya caste had risen and was ruling, mighty in its power, great in its authority, the one warrior rulingcaste, and alas! abusing its power, as men will do when souls are stillbeing trained, and are young for their surroundings. The Kshattriyacaste abused its power, built up in order that it might rule; the dutyof the ruler, remember, is essentially protection: but these used theirpower not to protect, but to plunder, not to help but to oppress. Aterrible lesson must be taught the ruling caste, in order that it mightlearn, if possible, that the duty of ruling was to protect and supportand help, and not to tyrannise and plunder. The first great lesson wasgiven to the kings of the earth, the rulers of men, a lesson that had tobe repeated over and over again, and is not yet completely learnt. Adivine manifestation came in order that that lesson might be taught; andthe Teacher was not a Kshattriya save by mother. A strange story, thatstory of the birth. Food given to two Kshattriya women, each of whom wasto bear a son, the husband of one of them a Brâhmaṇa; and the twowomen exchanged the food, and that meant to bring forth a Kshattriya sonwas taken by the woman with the Brâhmaṇa husband. An accident, menwould say; there are no accidents in a universe of law. The food whichwas full of Kshattriya energy thus went into the Brâhmaṇa family, forit would not have been fitting that a Kshattriya should destroyKshattriyas. The lesson would not thus have been so well taught to theworld. So that we have the strange phenomenon of the Brâhmaṇa comingwith an axe to slay the Kshattriya, and three times seven times that axewas raised in slaughter, cutting the Kshattriya trunk off from thesurface of the earth. 

But while Parashurâma was still in the body, a greater Avatâra cameforth to show what a Kshattriya king should be. The Kshattriyas abusingtheir place and their power were swept away by Parashurâma, and, ere Hehad left the earth where the bitter lesson had been taught, the idealKshattriya came down to teach, now by example, the lesson of what shouldbe, after the lesson of what should not be had been enforced. The boyRâma was born, on whose exquisite story we have not time long to dwell, the ideal ruler, the utterly perfect king. While a boy He went forthwith the great teacher Visvâmitra, in order to protect the Yogî'ssacrifice; a boy, almost a child, but able to drive away, as youremember, the Râkshasas that interfered with the sacrifice, and then Heand His beloved brother Lakshmana and the Yogî went on to the court ofking Janaka. And there, at the court, was a great bow, a bow which hadbelonged to Mahâdeva Himself. To bend and string that bow was the taskfor the man who would wed Sîtâ, the child of marvellous birth, themaiden who had sprung from the furrow as the plough went through theearth, who had no physical father or physical mother. Who should wed thepeerless maiden, the incarnation of Shrî, Lakshmî, the consort ofViṣhṇu? Who should wed Her save the Avatâra of ViṣhṇuHimself? So the mighty bow remained unstrung, for who might string ituntil the boy Râma came? And He takes it up with boyish carelessness, and bends it so strongly that it breaks in half, the crash echoingthrough earth and sky. He weds Sîtâ, the beautiful, and goes forth withHer, and with His brother Lakshmana and his bride, and with His fatherwho had come to the bridal, and with a vast procession, wending theirway back to their own town Ayodhya. This breaking of Mahâdeva's bow hasrung through earth, the crashing of the bow has shaken all the worlds, and all, both men and Devas, know that the bow has been broken. Amongthe devotees of Mahâdeva, Parashurâma hears the clang of the broken bow, the bow of the One He worshipped; and proud with the might of Hisstrength, still with the energy of Viṣhṇu in Him, He goes forth tomeet this insolent boy, who had dared to break the bow that no other armcould bend. He challenges Him, and handing His own bow bids Him try whatHe can do with that. Can He shoot an arrow from its string? Râma takesthis offered bow, strings it, and sets an arrow on the string. Then Hestops, for in front of Him there is the body of a Brâhmaṇa; shall Hedraw an arrow against that form? As the two Râmas stand face to face, the energy of the elder, it is written, passes into the younger; theenergy of Viṣhṇu, the energy of the Supreme, leaves the form inwhich it had been dwelling and enters the higher manifestation of thesame divine life. The bow was stretched and the arrow waiting, but Râmawould not shoot it forth lest harm should come, until He had pacifiedHis antagonist; then feeling that energy pass, Parashurâma bows beforeRâma, diviner than Himself, hails Him as the Supreme Lord of theworlds, bends in reverence before Him, and then goes away. That Avatârawas over, although the form in which the energy had dwelt yet persisted. That is why I said it was a lesser Avatâra. Where you have the formpersisting when the influence is withdrawn, you have the clear proofthat there the incarnation cannot be said to be complete; the passingfrom the one to the other is the sign of the energy taken back by theGiver and put into a new vessel in which new work is to be done. 

The story of Râma you know; we need not follow it further in detail; wespoke of it yesterday in its highest aspect as combating the forces ofevil and starting the world, as it were, anew. We find the great reignof Râma lasting ten thousand years in the Dvapara Yuga, the Yuga at theclose of which Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa came. 

Then comes the Mighty One, Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa Himself, of whom Ispeak not to-day; we will try to study that Avatâra to-morrow with suchinsight and reverence as we may possess. Pass over that then for themoment, leaving it for fuller study, and we come to the ninth Avatâra asit is called, that of the Lord Buddha. Now round this much controversyhas raged, and a theory exists current to some extent among the Hindusthat the Lord Buddha, though an incarnation of Viṣhṇu, came tolead astray those who did not believe the Vedas, came to spreadconfusion upon earth. Viṣhṇu is the Lord of order, not ofdisorder; the Lord of love, not the Lord of hatred; the Lord ofcompassion, who only slays to help the life onward when the form hasbecome an obstruction. And they blaspheme who speak of an incarnation ofthe Supreme, as coming to mislead the world that He has made. Rightlydid your own learned pandit, T. Subba Row, speak of that theory with thedisdain born of knowledge; for no one who has a shadow of occultlearning, no one who knows anything of the inner realities of life, could thus speak of that beautiful and gracious manifestation of theSupreme, or dream that He could take the mighty form of an Avatâra inorder to mislead. 

But there is another point to put about this Avatâra, on which, perhaps, I may come into conflict with people on another side. For this is thedifficulty of keeping the middle path, the razor path which goes neitherto the left nor to the right, along which the great Gurus lead us. Oneither side you find objection to the central teaching. The Lord Buddha, in the ordinary sense of the word, was not what we have defined as anAvatâra. He was the first of our own humanity who climbed upwards tothat point, and there merged in the Logos and received fullillumination. His was not a body taken by the Logos for the purpose ofrevealing Himself, but was the last in myriads of births through whichhe had climbed to merge in I´shvara at last. That is not what isnormally spoken of as an Avatâra, though, you may say, the result trulyis the same. But in the case of the Avatâra, the evolving births are inprevious kalpas, and the Avatâra comes after the man has merged in theLogos, and the body is taken for the purpose of revelation. But he whobecame Gautama Buddha had climbed though birth after birth in our ownkalpa, as well as in the kalpas that went before; and he was incarnatedmany a time when the great Fourth Race dwelt in mighty Atlantis, androse onward to take the office of the Buddha; for the Buddha is thetitle of an office, not of a particular man. Finally by his ownstruggles, the very first of our race, he was able to reach that greatfunction in the world. What is the function? That of the Teacher of Godsand men. The previous Buddhas had been Buddhas who came from anotherplanet. Humanity had not lived long enough here to evolve its own son tothat height. Gautama Buddha was human-born. He had evolved through theFourth Race into this first family of the A´ryan Race, the Hindu. Bybirth after birth in India He had completed His course and took Hisfinal body in A´ryâvarta, to make the proclamation of the law to men. 

But the proclamation was not made primarily for India. It was given inIndia because India is the place whence the great religious revelations goforth by the will of the Supreme. Therefore was He born in India, but Hislaw was specially meant for nations beyond the bounds of A´ryâvarta, thatthey might learn a pure morality, a noble ethic, disjoined--because of thedarkness of the age--from all the complicated teachings which we find inconnection with the subtle, metaphysical Hindu faith. 

Hence you find in the teachings of the Lord Buddha two great divisions;one a philosophy meant for the learned, then an ethic disjoined from thephilosophy, so far as the masses are concerned, noble and pure andgreat, yet easy to be grasped. For the Lord knew that we were going intoan age of deeper and deeper materialism, that other nations were goingto arise, that India for a time was going to sink down for other nationsto rise above her in the scale of nations. Hence was it necessary togive a teaching of morality fitted for a more materialistic age, so thateven if nations would not believe in the Gods they might still practisemorality and obey the teachings of the Lord. In order also that thisland might not suffer loss, in order that India itself might not loseits subtle metaphysical teachings and the widespread belief among allclasses of people in the existence of the Gods and their part in theaffairs of men, the work of the great Lord Buddha was done. He leftmorality built upon a basis that could not be shaken by any change offaith, and, having done His work, passed away. Then was sent anothergreat One, overshadowed by the power of Mahâdeva, Shrî Shankarâchârya, in order that by His teaching He might give, in the Advaita Vedânta, thephilosophy which would do intellectually what morally the Buddha haddone, which intellectually would guard spirituality and allow amaterialistic age to break its teeth on the hard nut of a flawlessphilosophy. Thus in India metaphysical religion triumphed, while theteaching of the Blessed One passed from the Indian soil, to do its noblework in lands other than the land of A´ryâvarta, which must keepunshaken its belief in the Gods, and where highest and lowest alike mustbow before their power. That is the real truth about this much disputedquestion as to the teaching of the ninth Avatâra; the fact was that Histeaching was not meant for His birthplace, but was meant for otheryounger nations that were rising up around, who did not follow theVedas, but who yet needed instruction in the path of righteousness; notto mislead them but to guide them, was His teaching given. But, as Isay, and as I repeat, what in it might have done harm in India had itbeen left alone was prevented by the coming of the great Teacher of theAdvaita. You must remember, that His name has been worn by man afterman, through century after century; but the Shrî Shankarâchârya on whomwas the power of Mahâdeva was born but a few years after the passingaway of the Buddha, as the records of the Dwârakâ Math showplainly--giving date after date backward, until they bring His birthwithin 60 or 70 years of the passing away of the Buddha. 

We come to the tenth Avatâra, the future one, the Kalki. Of that butlittle may be said; but one or two hints perchance may be given. WithHis coming will dawn a brighter age; with His coming the Kali Yuga willpass away; with His coming will also come a higher race of men. He willcome when there is born upon earth the sixth Root Race. There will thenbe a great change in the world, a great manifestation of truth, ofoccult truth, and when He comes then occultism will again be able toshow itself to the world by proofs that none will be able to challengeor to deny; and He in His coming will give the rule over the sixth RootRace to the two Kings, of whom you read in the _Kalki Purâṇa_. As welook back down the past stream of time we find over and over again twogreat figures standing side by side--the ideal King and the idealPriest. They work together; the one rules, the other teaches; the onegoverns the nation, the other instructs it. And such a pair of mightyones come down in every age for each and every Race. Each Race has itsown Teacher, the ideal Brâhmaṇa, called in the Buddhist language theBodhisattva, the learned, full of wisdom and truth. Each has also itsown ruler, the Manu. Those two we can trace in the past, in Their actualincarnations; and we see Them in the third, the fourth, and fifth Races;the Manu in each race is the ideal King, the Brâhmaṇa in each race isthe ideal Teacher; and we learn that when the Kalki Avatâra shall comeHe shall call from the sacred village of Shamballa--the village known tothe occultist though not to the profane--two Kings who have remainedthroughout the age in order to help the world in its evolution. And thename of the Manu who will be the King of the next Race, is said in the_Purâṇa_ to be Moru; and the name of the ideal Brâhmaṇa who willbe the Teacher of the next Race is said to be Devapi; and these two areKing and Teacher for the sixth Race that is to be born. 

Those of you who have read something of the wondrous story of the pastwill know that the choosing out of the new Race, the evolving of it, themaking of a new Root Race, is a thing that takes centuries, millenniums, sometimes hundreds of thousands of years; and that the two who are to beits King and Priest, the Manu and the Brâhmaṇa, are at Their workthroughout the centuries, choosing the men who may be the seeds of thenew Race. In the womb of the fourth Race a choice was made out of whichthe fifth was born; isolated in the Gobi desert, for enormous periods oftime, that chosen family was trained, educated, reared, till its Manuincarnated in it, and its Teacher also incarnated in it, and the firstA´ryan family was led forth to settle in A´ryâvarta. Now in the womb ofthe fifth Race, the sixth Race is a choosing, and the King and theTeacher of the sixth Race are already at Their mighty and beneficentwork. They are choosing one by one, trying and testing, those who shallform the nucleus of the sixth Race; They are taking soul by soul, subjecting each to many a test, to many an ordeal, to see if there bethe strength out of which a new Race can spring; and in fulness of timewhen Their work is ready, then will come the Kalki Avatâra, to sweepaway the darkness, to send the Kali Yuga into the past, to proclaim thebirth of the new Satya Yuga, with a new and more spiritual Race, that isto live therein. Then will He call out the chosen, the King Moru and theBrâhmaṇa Devapi, and give into Their hands the Race that now They arebuilding, the Race to inhabit a fairer world, to carry onwards theevolution of humanity. 

FOURTH LECTURE. 

My brothers, there are themes so lofty that tongue of Deva would notsuffice to do full justice to that which they enclose, and when we thinkof the music of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa's flute, all human music seems asdiscord amidst its strains. Nevertheless since bhakti grows by thoughtand word, it is not amiss that we should come near a subject so sacred;only in dealing with it we must needs feel our incompetency, we mustneeds regret our limitations, we must needs wish for greater power ofexpression than we can have down here. For, perhaps, amid all the divinemanifestations that have glorified the world, there is none which hasaroused a wider, tenderer feeling than the Avatâra which we are to studythis morning. 

The austerer glories of Mahâdeva, the Lord of the burning ground, attract more the hearts of those who are weary of the world and who seethe futility of worldly attractions; but Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa is theGod of the household, the God of family life, the God whosemanifestations attract in every phase of His Self-revelation; He ishuman to the very core; born in humanity, as He has said, He acts as aman. As a child, He is a real child, full of playfulness, of fun, ofwinsome grace. Growing up into boyhood, into manhood, He exercises thesame human fascination over the hearts of men, of women, and ofchildren; the God in whose presence there is always joy, the God inwhose presence there is continual laughter and music. When we think ofShrî Kṛiṣhṇa we seem to hear the ripple of the river, therustling of the leaves in the forest, the lowing of the kine in thepasture, the laughter of happy children playing round their parents'knees. He is so fundamentally the God who is human in everything; whobends in human sympathy over the cradle of the babe, who sympathiseswith the play of the youth, who is the friend of the lover, the blesserof the bridegroom and the bride, who smiles on the young mother when herfirst-born lies in her arms--everywhere the God of love and of humanhappiness; what wonder that His winsome grace has fascinated the heartsof men!

We are to study Him, then, this morning. Now an Avatâra--I say this toclear away some preliminary difficulties--an Avatâra has two greataspects to the world. First, He is a historical fact. Do not let that beforgotten. When you are reading the story of the great Ones, you arereading history and not fable. But it is more than history; the Avatârasacts out on the stage of the world a mighty drama. He is, as it were, aplayer on the world's stage, and He plays a definite drama, and thatdrama is an exposition of spiritual truth. And though the facts arefacts of history, they are also an allegory under which great spiritualtruths are conveyed to the minds and to the hearts of men. If you thinkof it only as an allegory, you miss an aspect of the truth; if you thinkof it only as a history you miss an aspect of the truth. The history ofan Avatâra is an exposition of spiritual verities; but though the dramabe a real one, it is a drama with an object, a drama with distinctoutlines laid down, as it were, by the author, and the Avatâra plays Hispart on the stage at the same time as He is living out His life as manin the history of the world. That must be remembered, otherwise some ofthe great lessons of the Avatâra will be misread. 

Then He comes into the world surrounded by many who have been with Himin former births, surrounded by celestial beings, born as men, and by avast body of beings of the opposing side born also as men. I am speakingspecially of the Avatâra of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, but this is true ofany other human Avatâra as well. They are not born into the world alone;They are born with a great circle round Them of friends, and a greathost before them of apparent foes, incarnated as human beings, to workout the world-drama that is being played. 

This is most of all, perhaps, apparent in the case of the One whom weare now studying. Because of the extremely complicated nature of theAvatâra of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, and the vast range that He covered asregards His manifestations of complex human life, in order to render thevast subject a little more manageable, I have divided this drama, as itwere, into its separate acts. I am using for a moment the language ofthe stage, for I think it will make my meaning rather more clear. Thatis, in dealing with His life, I have taken its stages which are clearlymarked out, and in each of these we shall see one great type of theteaching which the world is meant to learn from the playing of thisdrama before the eyes of men. To some extent the stages correspond withmarked periods in the life, and to some extent they overlap each other;but by having them clearly in our minds we shall be able, I think, tograsp better the whole object of the Avatâra--we shall have as it werecompartments in the mind in which the different types of teaching may beplaced. 

First then He comes to show forth to the world a great Object of bhakti, and the love of God to His bhakta, or devotee. That is the aim of thefirst act of the great drama--to stand forth as the Object of devotion, and to show forth the love with which God regards His devotees. We havethere a marked stage in the life of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa. 

Then the second act of the drama may be said to be His character as thedestroyer of the opposing forces that retard evolution, and that runsthrough the whole of His life. 

The third act is that of the statesman, the wise, politic, andintellectual actor on the world's stage of history, the guiding force ofthe nation by His wondrous policy and intelligence, standing forth notas king but rather as statesman. 

Then we have Him as friend, the human friend, especially of thePâṇḍavas and of Arjuna. 

The next act is that of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa as Teacher, theworld-teacher, not the teacher of one race alone. 

Then we see Him in the strange and wondrous aspect of the Searcher ofthe hearts of men, the trier and tester of human nature. 

Finally, we may regard Him in His manifestation as the Supreme, theall-pervading life of the universe, who looks on nothing as outsideHimself, who embraces in His arms evil and good, darkness and light, nothing alien to Himself. 

Into these seven acts, as it were, the life-history may be divided, andeach of them might serve as the study of a life-time instead of ourcompressing them into the lecture of a morning. We will, however, takethem in turn, however inadequately; for the hints I give can be workedout by you in detail according to the constitution of your own minds. One aspect will attract one man, another aspect will attract another;all the aspects are worthy of study, all are provocative of devotion. But most of all, with regard to devotion, is the earliest stage of Hislife inspiring and full of benediction, those early years of the Lord asinfant, as child, as young boy, when He is dwelling in Vraja, in theforest of Brindâban, when He is living with the cowherds and their wivesand their children, the marvellous child who stole the hearts of men. Itis noticeable--and if it had been remembered many a blasphemy would nothave been uttered--that Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa chose to show Himself asthe great object of devotion, as the lover of the devotee, in the formof a child, not in that of a man. 

Come then with me to the time of His birth, remembering that before thatbirth took place upon earth, the deities had been to Viṣhṇu in thehigher regions, and had asked Him to interfere in order that earth mightbe lightened of her load, that the oppression of the incarnate Daityasmight be stayed; and then Viṣhṇu said to the Gods: Go ye andincarnate yourselves in portions among men, go ye and take birth amidhumanity. Great Ṛishis also took birth in the place whereViṣhṇu Himself was to be born, so that ere He came, thesurroundings of the drama were, as it were, made in the place of Hiscoming, and those that we speak of as the cowherds of Vraja, Nanda andthose around Him, the Gopîs and all the inhabitants of that wondrouslyblessed spot, were, we are told, "God-like persons"; nay more, they were"the Protectors of the worlds" who were born as men for the progress ofthe world. But that means that the Gods themselves had come down andtaken birth as men; and when you think of all that took place throughoutthe wonderful childhood of the Lîlâ[10] of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, youmust remember that those who played that act of the drama were theordinary men, no ordinary women; they were the Protectors of the worldsincarnated as cowherds round Him. And the Gopîs, the graceful wives ofthe shepherds, they were the Ṛishis of ancient days, who by devotionto Viṣhṇu had gained the blessing of being incarnated as Gopîs, inorder that they might surround His childhood, and pour out their love atthe tiny feet of the boy they saw as boy, of the God they worshipped assupreme. 

[Footnote 10: Play. ]

When all these preparations were made for the coming of the child, thechild was born. I am not dwelling on all the well-known incidents thatsurrounded His birth, the prophecy that the destroyer of Kamsa was to beborn, the futile shutting up in the dungeon, the chaining with irons, and all the other follies with which the earthly tyrant strove to makeimpossible of accomplishment the decree of the Supreme. You all know howhis plans came to nothing, as the mounds of sand raised by the hands ofchildren are swept into a level plain when one wave of the sea ripplesover the playground of the child. He was born, born in His four-armedform, shining out for the moment in the dungeon, which before His birthhad been irradiated by Him through His mother's body, who was said to belike an alabaster vase--so pure was she--with a flame within it. Forthe Lord Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa was within her womb, herself thealabaster vase which was as a lamp containing Him, the world's light, sothat the glory illuminated the darkness of the dungeon where she lay. AtHis birth he came as Viṣhṇu, for the moment showing Himself withall the signs of the Deity on Him, with the discus, with the conch, withthe shrivatsa on His breast, with all the recognised emblems of theLord. But that form quickly vanished, and only the human child laybefore His parents' eyes. And the father, you remember, taking Him up, passed through the great locked doors and all the rest of it, andcarried Him in safety into his brother's house, where He was to dwell inthe place prepared for His coming. 

As a babe He showed forth the power that was in Him, as we shall see, when we come, to the second stage, the destroyer of the forces of evil. But for the moment only watch Him as He plays in his foster mother'shouse, as He gambols with children of His own age. And as He is growinginto a boy, able to go alone, He begins wandering through the fields andthrough the forest, and the notes of His wondrous flute are heard in allthe groves and over all the plains. The child, a child of five--onlyfive years of age when He wandered with His magic flute in His hands, charming the hearts of all that heard; so that the boys left tending thecattle and followed the music of the flute; the women left theirhousehold tasks and followed where the flute was playing; the menceased their labours that they might feast their ears on the music ofthe flute. Nay, not only the men, the women and the children, but thecows, it is said, stopped their grazing to listen as the notes fell ontheir ears, and the calves ceased suckling as the music came to them onthe wind, and the river rippled up that it might hear the better, andthe trees bowed down their branches that they might not lose a note, andthe birds no longer sang lest their music should make discord in themelody, as the wondrous child wandered over the country, and the musicof heaven flowed from His magic flute. 

And thus He lived and played and sported, and the hearts of all thecowherds and of their wives and daughters went out to that marvellouschild. And He played with them and loved them, and they would take Himup and place His baby feet on their bosoms, and would sing to Him as theLord of all, the Supreme, the mighty One. They recognised the Deity inthe child that played round their homes, and many lessons He taughtthem, this child, amid His gambols and His pranks--lessons that stillteach the world, and that those who know most understand best. 

Let me take one instance which ignorant lips have used most in order toinsult, to try to defame the majesty that they do not understand. Butlet me say this: that I believe that in most cases where these bitterinsults are uttered, they are uttered by people who have never reallyread the story, and who have heard only bits of it and have supplied therest out of their own imaginations. I therefore take a particularincident which I have heard most spoken of with bitterness as a proof ofthe frightful immorality of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa. 

While the child of six was one day wandering along, as He would, anumber of the Gopîs were bathing nude in the river, having cast asidetheir cloths--as they should not have done, that being against the lawand showing carelessness of womanly modesty. Leaving their garments onthe bank they had plunged into the river. The child of six saw this withthe eye of insight, and He gathered up their cloths and climbed up atree near by, carrying them with Him, and threw them round His ownshoulders and waited to see what would chance. The water was bitterlycold and the Gopîs were shivering; but they did not like to come out ofit before the clear steady eyes of the child. And He called them to comeand get the garments they had thrown off; and as they hesitated, thebaby lips told them that they had sinned against God by immodestlycasting aside the garments that should have been worn, and musttherefore expiate their sin by coming and taking from His hands thatwhich they had cast aside. They came and worshipped, and He gave themback their robes. An immoral story, with a child of six as the centralfigure! It is spoken of as though he were a full grown man, insultingthe modesty of women. The Gopîs were Ṛishis, and the Lord, theSupreme, as a babe is teaching them a lesson. But there is more thanthat; there is a profound occult lesson below the story--a storyrepeated over and over again in different forms--and it is this: thatwhen the soul is approaching the supreme Lord at one great stage ofinitiation, it has to pass through a great ordeal; stripped ofeverything on which it has hitherto relied, stripped of everything thatis not of its inner Self, deprived of all external aid, of all externalprotection, of all external covering, the soul itself, in its owninherent life, must stand naked and alone with nothing to rely on, savethe life of the Self within it. If it flinches before the ordeal, if itclings to anything to which hitherto it has looked for help, if in thatsupreme hour it cries out for friend or helper, nay even for the Guruhimself, the soul fails in that ordeal. Naked and alone it must goforth, with absolutely none to aid it save the divinity within itself. And it is that nakedness of the soul as it approaches the supreme goal, that is told of in that story of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, the child, andthe Gopîs, the nakedness of life before the One who gave it. You findmany another similar allegory. When the Lord comes in the Kalki, thetenth, Avatâra, He fights on the battlefield and is overcome. He usesall His weapons; every weapon fails Him; and it is not till He castsevery weapon aside and fights with His naked hands, that He conquers. Exactly the same idea. Intellect, everything, fails the naked soulbefore God. [11]

[Footnote 11: So in the _Imitation of Christ_, the work of an occultist, it is written that we must "naked follow the naked Jesus. "]

If I have taken up this story specially, out of hundreds of stories, todwell upon, it is because it is one of the points of attack, and becauseyou who are Hindus by birth ought to know enough of the inner truths ofyour own religion not to stand silent and ashamed when attacks are made, but should speak with knowledge and thus prevent such blasphemies. 

Then we learn more details of His play with the Gopîs as a child ofseven: how He wandered into the forest and disappeared and all wentafter Him seeking Him; how they tried to imitate His own play, in orderto fill up the void that was left by His absence. The child of seven, that He was at this time, disappeared for a while, but came back tothose who loved Him, as God ever does with His bhaktas. And then takesplace that wondrous dance, the Râsa[12] of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, partof His Lîlâ, when He multiplied Himself so that every pair of Gopîsfound Him standing between them; amid the ring of women the child wasthere between each pair of them, giving a hand to each; and so themystic dance was danced. This is another of these points of attack whichare made by ignorant minds. What but an unclean mind can see aught thatis impure in the child dancing there as lover and beloved? It is asthough He looked forward down the ages, and saw what later would besaid, and it is as though He kept the child form in the Lîlâ, in orderthat He might breathe harmlessly into men's blind unclean hearts thelesson that He would fain give. And what was the lesson? One otherincident I remind you of, before I draw the lesson from the whole ofthis stage of His life. He sent for food, He who is the Feeder of theworlds, and some of His Brâhmaṇas refused to give it, and sent awaythe boys who came to ask for food for Him; and when the men refused, Hesent them back to the women, to see if they too would refuse the foodtheir husbands had declined to give. And the women--who have ever lovedthe Lord--caught up the food from every part of their houses where theycould find it and went out, crowds of them, bearing food for Him, leaving house, and husband, and household duties. And all tried to stopthem, but they would not be stopped; and brothers and husbands andfriends tried to hold them back, but no, they must go to Him, to theirLover, Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa; He must not be hungry, the child of theirlove. And so they went and gave Him food and He ate. But they say: Theyleft their husbands! they left their homes! how wrong to leave husbandsand homes and follow after Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa! The implication alwaysis that their love was purely physical love, as though that werepossible with a child of seven. I know that words of physical love areused, and I know it is said in a curious translation that "they cameunder the spell of Cupid. " It matters not for the words, let us look atthe facts. There is not a religion in the world that has not taught thatwhen the Supreme calls, all else must be cast aside. I have seen ShrîKṛiṣhṇa contrasted with Jesus of Nazareth to the detriment ofShrî Kṛiṣhṇa, and a contrast is drawn between the purity of theone and the impurity of the other; the proof given was that the husbandswere left while the wives went to play with and wait on the Lord. But Ihave read words that came from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth; "He thatloveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he thatloveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. " "And every onethat hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, ormother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shallreceive an hundred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life. " (Matt. X. 37, and xix. 29. ) And again, yet more strongly: "If any man come to meand hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, andbrethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be mydisciple. " (Luke xiv. 26. ) That is exactly the same idea. When Jesuscalls, husband and wife, father and mother, must be forsaken, and thereward will be eternal life. Why is that right when done for Jesus, which is wrong when done for Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa?

[Footnote 12: Dance. ]

It is not only that you find the same teaching in both religions; but inevery other religion of the world the terms of physical love are used todescribe the relation between the soul and God. Take the "Song ofSolomon. " If you take the Christian _Bible_ and read the margin you willsee "The Love of Christ for His Church"; and if from the margin you lookdown the column, you will find the most passionate of love songs, adescription of the exquisite female form in all the details of itsattractive beauty; the cry of the lover to the beloved to come to himthat they might take their fill of love. "Christ and His Church" issupposed to make it all right, and I am content that it should be so. Ihave no word to say against the "Song of Solomon, " nor any complaintagainst its gorgeous and luxuriant imagery; but I refuse to take fromthe Hebrew as pure, what I am to refuse from the Hindu as impure. I askthat all may be judged by the same standard, and that if one becondemned the same condemnation may be levelled against the other. Soalso in the songs of the Sûfîs, the mystics of the faith of Islâm, woman's love is ever used as the best symbol of love between the souland God. In all ages the love between husband and wife has been thesymbol of union between the Supreme and His devotees; the closest of allearthly ties, the most intimate of all earthly unions, the merging ofheart and body of twain into one--where will you find a better image ofthe merging of the soul in its God? Ever has the object of devotionbeen symbolised as the lover or husband, ever the devotee as wife ormistress. This symbology is universal, because it is fundamentally true. The absolute surrender of the wife to the husband is the type upon earthof the absolute surrender of the soul to God. That is the justificationof the Râsa of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa; that is the explanation of thestory of His life in Vraja. 

I have dwelt specially on this, my brothers, you all know why. Let uspass from it, remembering that till the nineteenth century this storyprovoked only devotion not ribaldry, and it is only with the coming inof the grosser type of western thought that you have these ideas putinto the _Bhâgavad-Purâṇa_. I would to God that the Ṛishis hadtaken away the _Shrîmad Bhâgavata_ from a race that is unworthy to haveit; that as They have already withdrawn the greater part of the Vedas, the greater part of the ancient books, they would take away also thisstory of the love of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, until men are pure enough toread it without blasphemy and clean enough to read it without ideas ofsexuality. 

Pass from this to the next great stage, that of the Destroyer of evil, shortly, very shortly. From the time when as a babe but a few weeks oldHe sucked to death the Râkshasî, Pûtana; from the time He entered thegreat cave made by the demon, and expanding Himself shivered the wholeinto fragments; from the time He trampled on the head of the serpentKalia so that it might not poison the water needed for the drinking ofthe people; until He left Vraja to meet Kamsa, we find Him ever chasingaway every form of evil that came within the limits of His abode. We aretold that when He had left Vraja and stood in the tournament field ofKamsa with His brother, His brother and Himself were mere boys, in thetender delicate bodies of youths. After the whole of the Lîlâ was overThey were still children, when They went forth to fight. From that timeonwards He met, one after another, the great incarnations of evil andcrushed them with His resistless strength: we need not dwell on thesestories, for they fill His life. 

We come to the third stage of Statesman, a marvellously interestingfeature in His life--the tact, the delicacy, the foresight, the skill inalways putting the man opposed to Him in the wrong, and so winning Hisway and carrying others with Him. As you know, this part of His life isplayed out especially in connection with the Pâṇḍavas. He is theone who in every difficulty steps forward as ambassador; it is He whogoes with Arjuna and Bhîma to slay the giant king Jarasandha, who wasgoing to make a human sacrifice to Mahâdeva, a sacrifice that was put astop to as blasphemous; it was He who went with them in order that theconflict might take place without transgressing the strictest rules ofKshattriya morality. Follow Him as He and Arjuna and his brother enterinto the city of the king. They will not come by the open gate, that isthe pathway of the friend. They break down a portion of the wall as asign that they come as foes. They will not go undecorated; andchallenged why they wore flowers and sandal, the answer is that theycome for the celebration of a triumph, the fulfilling of a vow. Offeredfood, the answer of the great ambassador is that they will not take foodthen, that they will meet the king later and explain their purpose. Whenthe time arrives He tells him in the most courteous but the clearestlanguage that all these acts have been performed that he may know thatthey had come not as friends but as foes to challenge him to battle. Soagain when the question arises, after the thirteen years of exile, howshall the land be won back without struggle, without fight, you see Himstanding in the assembly of Pâṇḍavas and their friends with thewisest counsel how perchance war may be averted; you see Him offering togo as ambassador that all the magic of His golden tongue may be used forthe preservation of peace; you see Him going as ambassador and avoidingall the pavilions raised by the order of Duryodhana, that He may nottake from one who is a foe a courtesy that might bind him as a friend. So when he pays the call on Duryodhana that courtesy demands, neverfailing in the perfect duty of the ambassador, fulfilling every demandof politeness, He will not touch the food that would make a bond betweenHimself and the one against whom He had come to struggle. See how theonly food that He will take is the food of the King's brother, for thatalone, He says, "is clean and worthy to be eaten by me. " See how in theassembly of hostile kings He tries to pacify and tries to please. Seehow He apologises with the gentlest humility; how to the great king, theblind king, He speaks in the name of the Pâṇḍavas as suppliant, not as outraged and indignant foe. See how with soft words He tries toturn away words of wrath, and uses every device of oratory to win theirhearts and convince their judgments. See how later again, when thebattle of Kurukshetra is over, when all the sons of the blind king areslain, see how He goes once more as ambassador to meet the childlessfather and, still bitterer, the childless mother, that the first angermay break itself on Him, and His words may charm away the wrath andsoothe the grief of the bereft. See how later on He still guides andadvises till all the work is done, till His task is accomplished and Hisend is drawing near. A statesman of marvellous ability; a politician ofkeenest tact and insight; as though to say to men of the world that whenthey are acting as men of the world they should be careful ofrighteousness, but also careful of discretion and of skill, that thereis nothing alien to the truth of religion in the skill of the tongue andin the use of the keen intelligence of the brain. 

Then pass on again from Him as Statesman to His character as Friend. Would that I had time to dwell on it, and paint you some of the fairpictures of His relations with the family He loved so well, from the daywhen, standing in the midst of the self-choice of Kṛiṣhṇa, thefair future wife of the Pâṇḍavas, He saw for the first time inthat human incarnation Arjuna, His beloved of old. Think what it musthave been, when the eyes of the two young men met, with memories in theone pair of the close friendship of the past, and the drawing of theother by the tie of those many births to the ancient friend whom he knewnot. From that day when they first meet in this life onwards, howconstant His friendship, how ceaseless His protection, how careful Histhought to guard their honour and their lives; and yet how wise; atevery point where His presence would have frustrated the object of Hiscoming, He goes away. He is not present at the great game of dice, forthat was necessary for the working out of the divine purpose; He wasaway. Had He been there, He must needs have interfered; had He beenthere, He could not have left His friends unaided. He remained away, until Draupadî cried in her agony for help when her modesty wasthreatened; then he came with Dharma and clothed her with garments asthey were dragged from her; but then the game was over, the dice werecast, and destiny had gone on its appointed road. 

How strange to watch that working! One object followed without change, without hesitation: but every means used that might give people anopportunity of escaping if only they would. He came to bring about thatbattle on Kurukshetra. He came, as we shall see in a moment, in order tocarry out that one object in preparation for the centuries thatstretched in front; but in the carrying of it out, He would give everychance to men who were entangled in that evil by their own past, so thatif one of them would answer to His pleading he might come over to theside of light against the forces of darkness. He never wavered in Hisobject; yet He never left unused one means that man could use to preventthat object taking place. A lesson full of significance! The will of theSupreme must be done, but the doing of that will is no excuse for anyindividual man who does not carry out the law to the fullest of hispower. Although the will must be carried out, everything should be donethat righteousness permits and that compassion suggests in order thatmen may choose light rather than darkness, and that only the resolutelyobstinate may at last be, whelmed in the ruin that falls upon the land. 

As Teacher--need I speak of Him as teacher who gave the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_between the contending armies on Kurukshetra? Teacher not of Arjunaalone, not of India alone, but of every human heart which can listen tospiritual instruction, and understand a little of the profound wisdomthere clothed in the words of man. Remember a later saying: "I, OArjuna, am the Teacher and the mind is my pupil;" the mind of every manwho is willing to be taught; the mind of every one who is ready to beinstructed. Never does the spiritual teacher withhold knowledge becausehe grudges the giving. He is hampered in the giving by the want ofreceptivity in those to whom his message is addressed. Ill do men judgethe divine heart of the great Teachers, or the faint reflection of thatlove in the mouth of Their messengers, when they think that knowledge iswithheld because it is a precious possession to be grudgingly dealt out, that has to be given in as small a share as possible. It is not thewithholding of the teacher but the closing of the heart of the hearer;not the hesitation of the teacher but the want of the ear that hears;not the dearth of teachers but the dearth of pupils who are willing andready to be taught. I hear men say: "Why not an Avatâra now, or if notan Avatâra, why do not the great Ṛishis come forward to speak Theirgolden wisdom in the ears of men? Why do They desert us? Why do Theyleave us? Why should this world in this age not have the wisdom as Theygave it of old?" The answer is that They are waiting, waiting, waiting, with tireless patience, in order to find some one willing to be taught, and when one human heart opens itself out and says: "O Lord, teach me, "then the teaching comes down in a stream of divine energy and floods theheart. And if you have not the teaching, it is because your hearts arelocked with the key of gold, with the key of fame, with the key ofpower, and with the key of desire for the enjoyments of this world. While those keys lock your hearts, the teachers of wisdom cannot enterin; but unlock the heart and throw away the key, and you will findyourselves flooded with a wisdom which is ever waiting to come in. 

As Searcher of hearts--Ah! here again He is so difficult to understand, this Lord of Mâyâ, this Master of illusion. He tests the hearts of Hisbeloved, not so much the world at large. To them is the teaching thatshall guide them aright. For Arjuna, for Bhîma, for Yudhiṣhṭhira, for them the keener touch, the sharper trial, in order to see if withinthe heart one grain of evil still remains, that will prevent their unionwith Himself. For what does he seek? That they shall be His very own, that they shall enter into His being. But they cannot enter thereinwhile one seed of evil remains in their hearts. They cannot entertherein while one sin is left in their nature. And so in tenderness andnot in anger, in wisest love and not with a desire to mislead, the Lordof Love tries the hearts of His beloved, so that any evil that is inthem may be wrung out by the grip that He places on them. Two or threeoccasions of it I remember. I may mention perhaps a couple of them toshow you the method of the trial. The battle of Kurukshetra had beenraging many a day; thousands and tens of thousands of the dead layscattered on that terrible field, and every day when the sun roseBhîshma came forth, generalissimo of the army of the Kurus, carryingbefore him everything, save where Arjuna barred his way; but Arjunacould not be everywhere; he was called away, with the horses guided bythe Charioteer Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa sweeping across the field like awhirlwind, carrying victory in their course; and where the Charioteerand Arjuna were not there Bhîshma had his way. The hearts of thePâṇḍavas sank low within them, and at last one night under theirtents, resting ere the next day's struggle, the bitter despondency ofKing Yudhiṣhṭhira broke out in words, and he declared that untilBhîshma was slain nothing could be done. Then came the test from thelips of the searcher of hearts. "Behold, I will go forth and slay him onthe morrow. " Would Yudhiṣhṭhira consent? A promise stood in hisway. You may remember that when Duryodhana and Arjuna went to ShrîKṛiṣhṇa who lay sleeping, the question arose as to what eachshould take. Alone, unarmed, Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa would go with one, Hewould not fight; a mighty battalion of troops He would give to theother. Arjuna chose the unarmed Kṛiṣhṇa; Duryodhana, the mightyarmy ready to fight; so the word of the Avatâra was pledged that Hewould not fight. Unarmed He went into the battle, clad in his yellowsilken robe, and only with the whip of the charioteer in His hand;twice, in order to stimulate Arjuna into combat, He had sprung downfrom the chariot and gone forth with His whip in His hand as though Hewould attack Bhîshma and slay him where he fought. Each time Arjunastopped Him, reminding Him of His words. Now came the trial for theblameless King, as he is often called; should Shrî Kṛiṣhṇabreak His word to give him victory? He stood firm. "Thy promise isgiven, " was his answer; "that promise may not be broken. " He passed thetrial; he stood the test. But still one weakness was left in that nobleheart; one underlying weakness that threatened to keep him away from hisLord. The lack of power to stand absolutely alone in the moment oftrial, the ever clinging to some one stronger than himself, in orderthat his own decision might be upheld. That last weakness had to beburnt out as by fire. In a critical moment of the battle the word camethat the success of Droṇa was carrying everything before him; thatDroṇa was resistless and that the only way to slay him was to spreadthe report that his son was dead, and then he would no longer fight. Bhîma slew an elephant of the same name as Droṇa's son, and he saidin the hearing of Droṇa: "Ashvatthâma is dead. " But Droṇa wouldnot believe unless King Yudhiṣhṭhira said so. Then the test came. Will he tell a practical lie but a nominal truth, in order to win thebattle? He refused; not for his brother's pleadings would he do it. Would he stand firm by truth quite alone when all he revered seemed tobe on the other side? The great One said: "Say that Ashvatthâma isslain. " Ought he to have done it because He, Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, badehim? Ought he to have told the lie because the revered One counselledit? Ah no! neither for the voice of God nor man, may the human soul do athing which he knows to be against God and His law; and alone he muststand in the universe, rather than sin against right. And when the liewas told under cover of that excuse, Yudhiṣhṭhira doing what hewished in his heart under cover of the command from one he revered, thenhe fell, his chariot descended to the ground, and suffering and miseryfollowed him from that day till the day of his ending, until in the faceof the King of the celestials he stood alone, holding the duty ofprotection even to a dog higher than divine command and joy of heaven. And then he showed that the lesson had worked out in his purification, and that the heart was clean from the slightest taint of weakness. Oh, but men say, Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa counselled the telling of a lie! Mybrothers, can you not see beneath the illusion? What is there in thisworld that the Supreme does not do? There is no life but His, no Selfbut His, nothing save His life through all His universe; and every actis His act, when you go back to the ultimates. He had warned them ofthat truth. "I" He said, "am the gambling of the cheat, " as well as thechants of the Veda. Strange lesson, and hard to learn, and yet true. Forat every stage of evolution there is a lesson to be learnt. He teachesall the lessons; at each point of growth the next step is to be taken, and very often that step is the experiencing of evil, in order thatsuffering may burn the desire for evil out of the very heart. And justas the knife of the surgeon is different from the knife of the murderer, although both may pierce the human flesh, the one cutting to cure, theother to slay; so is the sharp knife of the Supreme, when by experienceof evil and consequent pain He purifies the man, different, because themotive is other than the doing of evil to gratify passion, the steppingaside from righteousness in order to please the lower nature. 

Last of all He shows himself as the Supreme; there is theVaiṣhṇava form, the universal form, the form that contains theuniverse. But still more is the Supreme seen in the profound wisdom ofthe teaching, in the steadfastness of His walk through life. Does itsound strange to say that God is seen more in the latter than theformer, that the outer form that contains the universe is less divinethan the perfect steadfast nature, swerving neither to the right handnor the left? Read that life again with this thought in your mind, ofone purpose followed to its end no matter what forces might play on theother side, and its greatness may appear. 

What did He come to do? He came to give the last lesson to theKshattriya caste of India, and to open India to the world. Many lessonshad been given to that great caste. We know that twenty-one times theyhad been cut off, and yet re-established. We know that Shrî Râma hadshown the perfect life of Kshattriya, as an example that they mightfollow. They would not learn the lesson, either by destruction or bylove. They would not follow the example either from fear or fromadmiration. Then their hour struck on the bell of Heaven, the knell ofthe Kshattriya caste. He came to sweep away that caste and to leave onlyscattered remnants of it, dotted over the Indian soil. It had been thesword of India, the iron wall that ringed her round. He came to shiverthat wall into pieces, and to break the sword that it might not strikeagain. It had been used to oppress instead of to protect. It had beenused for tyranny instead of for justice. Therefore he who gave it brakeit, till men should learn by suffering what they would not learn byprecept. And on the field of Kuru, the Kshattriya caste fought its lastgreat battle; none were left of all that mighty host save a handful, when the fighting was over. Never has the caste recovered fromKurukshetra. It has not utterly disappeared. In some districts we findfamilies belonging to it; but you know well enough that as a caste inmost parts of modern India, you are hard put to find it. Why in thegreat counsels of the world's welfare was this done? Not only to teach alesson for all time to kings and rulers, that if they would not governaright they should not govern at all; but also to lay India open to theworld. 

How strange that sounds! To lay her open to invasion? He who loved herto lay her open to conquest? He who had consecrated her, He who hadhallowed her plains and forests by His treading, and whose voice hadrung through her land? Aye, for He judges not as man judges, and He seesthe end from the beginning. India as she was of old, kept isolated fromall the world, was so kept that she might have the treasure of spiritualknowledge poured into her and make a vessel for the containing. But whenyou fill the vessel, you do not then put that vessel high away on ashelf, and leave men thirsting for the liquid that it contains. Themighty One filled His Indian vessel with the water of spiritualknowledge, and at last the time came when that water should be pouredout for the quenching of the thirst of the world, and should not be leftonly for the quenching of the thirst of a single nation, for the use ofa single people. Therefore the Lover of men came, in order that thewater of life might be poured out; He broke down the wall, so that theforeigner might overstep her borders. The Greeks swept in, theMussulmâns swept in, invasion after invasion, invasion after invasion, until the conquerors who now rule India were the latest in time. Do yousee in that only decay, only misery, only that India is under a curse?Ah no, my brothers! That which seems a curse for the time is for theworld's healing and the world's blessing; and India may well suffer fora time in order that the world may be redeemed. 

What does it mean? I am not speaking politically, but from thestandpoint of a spiritual student, who is trying to understand how theevolution of the race goes on. The people who last conquered India, whonow rule her as governors, are the people whose language is the mostwidely spread of all the languages of the world, and it is likely tobecome the world's language. It belongs not only to that little islandof Britain, it belongs also to the great continent of America, to thegreat continent of Australia. It has spread from land to land, untilthat one tongue is the tongue most widely understood amongst all thepeoples of the world. Other nations are beginning to learn it, becausebusiness and trade and even diplomacy are beginning to be carried on inthat English speech. What wonder then that the Supreme should send toIndia this nation whose language is becoming the world-language, and layher open to be held as part of that world-wide empire, in order that herScriptures, translated into the most widely spoken language, may helpthe whole human family and purify and spiritualise the hearts of all Hissons. 

There is the deepest object of His coming, to prepare thespiritualisation of the world. It is not enough that one nation shall bespiritual; it is not enough that one country shall have wisdom; it isnot enough that one land, however mighty and however beloved--and do notI love India as few of you love her?--it is not enough that she shouldhave the gold of spiritual truth, and the rest of the world be paupersbegging for a coin. No; far better that for a time she should sink inthe scale of nations, in order that what she cannot do for herself maybe done by divine agencies that are ever guiding the evolution of theworld. Thus what from outside looks as conquest and subjection, to theeye of the spirit looks as the opening of the spiritual temple, so thatall the nations may come in and learn. 

Only that leaves to you a duty, a responsibility. I hear so much, I havespoken so often, of the descendants of Ṛishis and of the blood of theṚishis in your veins. True, but not enough. If you are again to bewhat Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa means you to be in His eternal counsels, theBrâhmaṇa of nations, the teacher of divine truth, the mouth throughwhich the Gods speak in the ears of men, then the Indian nation mustpurify itself, then the Indian nation must spiritualise itself. Shallyour Scriptures spiritualise the whole world while you remainunspiritual? Shall the wisdom of the Ṛishis go out to Mlechchas inevery part of the world, and they learn and profit by it, while you, thephysical descendants of the Ṛishis, know not your own literature andlove it even less than you know? That is the great lesson with which Iwould fain close. So true is this, that, in order to gain teachers ofthe Brahmavidyâ which belongs to this land by right of birth, the greatṚishis have had to send some of their children to other lands inorder that they may come back to teach your own religion amidst yourpeople. Shall it not be that this shame shall come to an end? Shall itnot be that there are some among you that shall lead again the oldspiritual life, and follow and love the Lord? Shall it not be, not onlyhere and there, but at last that the whole nation shall show the powerof Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa in His life incarnated amongst you, which wouldreally be greater than any special Avatâra? May we not hope and praythat His Avatâra shall be the nation that incarnates His knowledge, Hislove, His universal brotherliness to every man that treads the soil ofearth? Away with the walls of separation, with the disdain and contemptand hatred that divide Indian from Indian, and India from the rest ofthe world. Let our motto from this time forward be the motto of ShrîKṛiṣhṇa, that as He meets men on any road, so we will walkbeside them on any road as well, for all roads are His. There is no roadwhich He does not tread, and if we follow the Beloved who leads us, wemust walk as He walks. 

PEACE TO ALL BEINGS. 

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