यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत ।अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् ॥
yadā yadā hi dharmasya glānirbhavati bhārataabhyutthānamadharmasya tadātmānaṁ sṛjāmyaham
Whensoever there is the fading of the Dharma and the uprising of unrighteousness, then I loose myself forth into birth.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
His translation
KRISHNA Many are my births that are past and gone and thine also, Urjoona; all of them I know but thou knowest not, O scourge of thy foemen. Yea, though I be unborn and imperishable Spirit, though I be the Lord of all creatures, yet I resort to my own nature and am born by the power of my Self-Illusion. For whenever…Read the whole passage · 585 wordsClose the passage
KRISHNA Many are my births that are past and gone and thine also, Urjoona; all of them I know but thou knowest not, O scourge of thy foemen. Yea, though I be unborn and imperishable Spirit, though I be the Lord of all creatures, yet I resort to my own nature and am born by the power of my Self-Illusion. For whenever and whenever righteousness and justice decline & faint upon the earth, O Bharata, and unrighteousness and injustice arise and flourish, then do I put forth myself; for the salvation of the pure and the destruction of evildoers, to raise up justice and righteousness I am born again from age to age. He who in this sort knoweth aright my divine birth and works, cometh not to rebirth when he leaveth the body, to Me he cometh, Urjoona. Many have sought refuge with me and made themselves full of me, who have risen beyond love and wrath and fear, and they made themselves holy by the austere energisms of knowledge, and became even as Myself. In whatsoever way men come to me, in their own way I accept and love them; utterly do men, O son of Pritha, follow in the path in which I tread. Desiring good success of their works men sacrifice to the gods on earth, for very quickly in the world of men cometh the success that is born of works. By me were the four orders created according unto the division of the workings of the stuff of their nature, know me for their maker and yet neither for doer nor maker who am imperishable. On Me actions leave no stain for I have no craving for their fruit; he who really knows this of me, is not bound by his works. Knowing that in this wise works were done by the ancient seekers after salvation, do thou also do works that were done in old time by the men of old. What is action and what is inaction, as to this the very sages are bewildered; therefore I will declare action unto thee by the knowledge whereof thou shalt be delivered out of evil. For of works thou must understand, of miswork thou must understand, and thou must understand also of inaction; very difficult is the way of works and their mystery. He who in action can see inaction and action in inaction, he is the understanding mind among men; he doeth all works, yet is in Yoga. When the imaginations of desire are shut out from all that a man beginneth & undertaketh, and his works have been burned up in the fires of Knowledge, then it is he that the wise call the truly learned. He hath relinquished attachment to the fruit of his works, is ever satisfied of soul and dependeth not on any outward things; such a man though he engage himself deep in works, yet really doeth nothing:—pure of lusts, he is governed in heart and spirit, he has surrendered all sense of belonging, doing actions only with his body he receives no stain of sin:—well-content with the gains that chance & time may bring him, lifted above the plane of the dualities, void of jealousy, receiving success & failure alike as friends, though he do works, yet is he not bound by them:—leaving all heart clingings behind him, a spirit released, a mind safe in its tower of knowledge, performing works for a sacrifice, all his works are swallowed up & vanish.
Essays on the Gita
But all this, though of considerable historical importance, has none whatever for our present purpose. We are concerned only with the figure of the divine Teacher as it is presented to us in the Gita and with the Power for which it there stands in the spiritual illumination of the human being. The Gita accepts the human Avatarhood;4·5–6 for the Lord speaks of the repeated, the constant* manifestation of the Divine in humanity, when He the eternal Unborn assumes by his Maya, by the power of the infinite Consciousness to clothe itself apparently in finite forms, the conditions of becoming which we call birth. But it is not this upon which stress is laid, but on the transcendent, the cosmic and the internal Divine; it is on the Source of all things and the Master of all and on the Godhead secret in man. It is this internal divinity who is meant when the Gita speaks of the doer of violent Asuric austerities troubling the God within or of the sin of those who despise the Divine lodged in the human body or of the same Godhead destroying our ignorance by the blazing lamp of knowledge. It is then the eternal Avatar, this God in man, the divine Consciousness always present in the human being who manifested in a visible form speaks to the human soul in the Gita, illumines the meaning of life and the secret of divine action and gives it the light of the divine knowledge and guidance and the assuring and fortifying word of the Master of existence in the hour when it comes face to face with the painful mystery of the world. This is what the Indian religious consciousness seeks to make near to itself in whatever form, whether in the symbolic human image it enshrines in its temples or in the worship of its Avatars or in the devotion to the human Guru through whom the voice of the one world-Teacher makes itself heard. Through these it strives to awaken to that inner voice, unveil that form of the Formless and stand face to face with that manifest divine Power, Love and Knowledge.
- bahūni me vyatītāni janmāni … sambhavāmi yuge yuge.
The rest of Arjuna’s questions and utterances proceed from the same temperament and character.3·35 When he is told that once the soul-state is assured there need be no apparent change in the action, he must act always by the law of his nature, even if the act itself seem faulty and deficient compared with that of another law than his own, he is troubled. The nature! but what of this sense of sin in the action with which he is preoccupied? is it not this very nature which drives men as if by force and even against their better will into sin and guilt? His practical intelligence is baffled by Krishna’s assertion that it was he who in4·1–8 ancient times revealed to Vivasvan this Yoga, since lost, which he is now again revealing to Arjuna, and by his demand for an explanation he provokes the famous and oft-quoted statement of Avatarhood and its mundane purpose. He is again perplexed by the words in which Krishna continues to reconcile action and renunciation of action and asks once again for a decisive statement of that which is the best and highest, not this “mingled” word. When he realises fully the nature of the Yoga which he is bidden to embrace, his pragmatic nature accustomed6·33–34 to act from mental will and preference and desire is appalled by its difficulty and he asks what is the end of the soul which attempts and fails, whether it does not lose both this life of human activity and thought and emotion which it has left behind and the Brahmic consciousness to which it aspires and falling from both perish like a dissolving cloud?
We have had occasion already, when speaking of the divine Teacher, to state briefly the doctrine of Avatarhood as it appears to us in the light of Vedanta, the light in which the Gita presents it to us. We must now look a little more closely at this Avatarhood and at the significance of the divine Birth of which it is the outward expression; for that is a link of considerable importance in the integral teaching of the Gita. And we may first translate the words of the Teacher himself in which the nature and purpose of Avatarhood are given summarily and remind ourselves also of other passages or references which bear upon it. “Many are my lives that are past, and thine also, O Arjuna; all of them I know,4·5–11 but thou knowest not, O scourge of the foe. Though I am the unborn, though I am imperishable in my self-existence, though I am the Lord of all existences, yet I stand upon my own Nature and I come into birth by my self-Maya. For whensoever there is the fading of the Dharma and the uprising of unrighteousness, then I loose myself forth into birth. For the deliverance of the good, for the destruction of the evil-doers, for the enthroning of the Right I am born from age to age. He who knoweth thus in its right principles my divine birth and my divine work, when he abandons his body, comes not to rebirth, he comes to Me, O Arjuna. Delivered from liking and fear and wrath, full of me, taking refuge in me, many purified by austerity of knowledge have arrived at my nature of being (madbhāvam, the divine nature of the Purushottama). As men approach me, so I accept them to my love (bhajāmi); men follow in every way my path, O son of Pritha.”
Now it is notable that with a slight but important variation of language the Gita describes in the same way both the action of the Divine in bringing about the ordinary birth of creatures and his action in his birth as the Avatar. “Leaning upon my own9·8 Nature, prakṛtiṁ svām avaṣṭabhya,” it will say later, “I loose forth variously, visṛjāmi, this multitude of creatures helplessly subject owing to the control of Prakriti, avaśaṁ prakṛter vaśāt.” “Standing upon my own Nature,” it says here,4·6–7 “I am born by my self-Maya, prakṛtiṁ svām adhiṣṭhāya … ātmamāyayā, I loose forth myself, ātmānaṁ sṛjāmi.” The action implied in the word avaṣṭabhya is a forceful downward pressure by which the object controlled is overcome, oppressed, blocked or limited in its movement or working and becomes helplessly subject to the controlling power, avaśaṁ vaśāt; Nature in this action becomes mechanical and its multitude of creatures are held helpless in the mechanism, not lords of their own action. On the contrary the action implied in the word adhiṣṭhāya is a dwelling in, but also a standing upon and over the Nature, a conscious control and government by the indwelling Godhead, adhiṣṭhātrī devatā, in which the Purusha is not helplessly driven by the Prakriti through ignorance, but rather the Prakriti is full of the light and the will of the Purusha. Therefore in the normal birth that which is loosed forth,—created, as we say,—is the multitude of creatures or becomings, bhūtagrāmam; in the divine9·8 birth that which is loosed forth, self-created, is the self-conscious4·7 self-existent being, ātmānam; for the Vedantic distinction between ātmā and bhūtāni is that which is made in European philosophy between the Being and its becomings. In both cases Maya is the means of the creation or manifestation, but in the divine birth it is by self-Maya, ātmamāyayā, not the involution in the lower Maya of the ignorance, but the conscious action of the self-existent Godhead in its phenomenal self-representation, well aware of its operation and its purpose,—that which the Gita calls elsewhere Yogamaya. In the ordinary birth Yogamaya is used by the Divine to envelop and conceal itself from the lower consciousness, so it becomes for us the means of the ignorance, avidyā-māyā; but it is by this same Yogamaya that self-knowledge also is made manifest in the return of our consciousness to the Divine, it is the means of the knowledge, vidyā-māyā; and in the divine birth it so operates—as the knowledge controlling and enlightening the works which are ordinarily done in the Ignorance.
But it is to assist that ascent or evolution the descent is made or accepted; that the Gita makes very clear. It is, we might say, to exemplify the possibility of the Divine manifest in the human being, so that man may see what that is and take courage to grow into it. It is also to leave the influence of that manifestation vibrating in the earth-nature and the soul of that manifestation presiding over its upward endeavour. It is to give a spiritual mould of divine manhood into which the seeking4·7–8 soul of the human being can cast itself. It is to give a dharma, a religion,—not a mere creed, but a method of inner and outer living,—a way, a rule and law of self-moulding by which he can grow towards divinity. It is too, since this growth, this ascent is no mere isolated and individual phenomenon, but like all in the divine world-activities a collective business, a work3·20–25 and the work for the race, to assist the human march, to hold it together in its great crises, to break the forces of the downward gravitation when they grow too insistent, to uphold or restore the great dharma of the Godward law in man’s nature, to prepare even, however far off, the kingdom of God, the victory of the seekers of light and perfection, sādhūnām, and the overthrow of those who fight for the continuance of the evil and the darkness. All these are recognised objects of the descent of the Avatar, and it is usually by his work that the mass of men seek to distinguish him and for that that they are ready to worship him. It is only the spiritual who see that this external Avatarhood is a sign, in the symbol of a human life, of the eternal inner Godhead making himself manifest in the field of their own human mentality and corporeality so that they can grow into unity with that and be possessed by it. The divine manifestation of a Christ, Krishna, Buddha in external humanity has for its inner truth the same manifestation of the eternal Avatar within in our own inner humanity. That which has been done in the outer human life of earth, may be repeated in the inner life of all human beings.
It is this truth which lies behind the natural human tendency to the deification of great minds and heroic characters; it comes out clearly enough in the Indian habit of mind which easily sees a partial (aṁśa) Avatar in great saints, teachers, founders, or most significantly in the belief of southern Vaishnavas that some of their saints were incarnations of the symbolic living weapons of Vishnu, — for that is what all great spirits are, living powers and weapons of the Divine in the upward march and battle. This idea is innate and inevitable in any mystic or spiritual view of life which does not draw an inexorable line between the being and nature of the Divine and our human being and nature; it is the sense of the divine in humanity. But still the Vibhuti is not the Avatar; otherwise Arjuna, Vyasa, Ushanas would be Avatars as well as Krishna, even if in a less degree of the power of Avatarhood. The divine quality is not enough; there must be the inner consciousness of the Lord and Self governing the human nature by his divine presence. The heightening of the power of the qualities is part of the becoming,9·8 bhūtagrāma, an ascent in the ordinary manifestation; in the Avatar there is the special manifestation, the divine birth from above, the eternal and universal Godhead descended into a form4·7 of individual humanity, ātmānaṁ sṛjāmi, and conscious not only behind the veil but in the outward nature.
The question then arises, and it is the sole real difficulty, for here the intellect falters and stumbles over its own limits, how is this human mind and body assumed? For they were not created suddenly and all of a piece, but by some kind of evolution, physical or spiritual or both. No doubt, the descent of the Avatar, like the divine birth from the other side, is essentially a spiritual4·6 phenomenon, as is shown by the Gita’s ātmānaṁ sṛjāmi, it is a soul-birth; but still there is here an attendant physical birth. How then were this human mind and body of the Avatar created? If we suppose that the body is always created by the hereditary evolution, by inconscient Nature and its immanent Life-spirit without the intervention of the individual soul, the matter becomes simple. A physical and mental body is prepared fit for the divine incarnation by a pure or great heredity and the descending Godhead takes possession of it. But the Gita in this very passage applies the doctrine of reincarnation, boldly enough, to the Avatar himself, and in the usual theory of reincarnation the reincarnating soul by its past spiritual and psychological evolution itself determines and in a way prepares its own mental and physical body. The soul prepares its own body, the body is not prepared for it without any reference to the soul. Are we then to suppose an eternal or continual Avatar himself evolving, we might say, his own fit mental and physical body according to the needs and pace of the human evolution and so appearing from age to age, yuge yuge? In some such spirit some would interpret the ten incarnations of Vishnu, first in animal forms, then in the animal man, then in the dwarf man-soul, Vamana, the violent Asuric man, Rama of the axe, the divinely-natured man, a greater Rama, the awakened spiritual man, Buddha, and, preceding him in time, but final in place, the complete divine manhood, Krishna,—for the last Avatar, Kalki, only accomplishes the work Krishna began,—he fulfils in power the great struggle which the previous Avatars prepared in all its potentialities. It is a difficult assumption to our modern mentality, but the language of the Gita seems to demand it. Or, since the Gita does not expressly solve the problem, we may solve it in some other way of our own, as that the body is prepared by the Jiva but assumed from birth by the Godhead or that it is prepared by one of the four Manus,10·6 catvāro manavaḥ, of the Gita, the spiritual Fathers of every human mind and body. This is going far into the mystic field from which the modern reason is still averse; but once we admit Avatarhood, we have already entered into it and, once entered, may as well tread in it with firm footsteps.
The outward action of the Avatar is described in the Gita as the restoration of the Dharma; when from age to age the Dharma fades, languishes, loses force and its opposite arises,4·7–8 strong and oppressive, then the Avatar comes and raises it again to power; and as these things in idea are always represented by things in action and by human beings who obey their impulsion, his mission is, in its most human and outward terms, to relieve the seekers of the Dharma who are oppressed by the reign of the reactionary darkness and to destroy the wrong-doers who seek to maintain the denial of the Dharma. But the language used can easily be given a poor and insufficient connotation which would deprive Avatarhood of all its spiritual depth of meaning. Dharma is a word which has an ethical and practical, a natural and philosophical and a religious and spiritual significance, and it may be used in any of these senses exclusive of the others, in a purely ethical, a purely philosophical or a purely religious sense. Ethically it means the law of righteousness, the moral rule of conduct, or in a still more outward and practical significance social and political justice, or even simply the observation of the social law. If used in this sense we shall have to understand that when unrighteousness, injustice and oppression prevail, the Avatar descends to deliver the good and destroy the wicked, to break down injustice and oppression and restore the ethical balance of mankind.
There is therefore a distinction to be made between what is essential in the nature, its native and inevitable action, which it avails not at all to repress, suppress, coerce, and what is accidental to it, its wanderings, confusions, perversions, over which we must certainly get control. There is a distinction implied too between coercion and suppression, nigraha, and control with right use and right guidance, saṁyama. The former is a violence done to the nature by the will, which in the end depresses the natural powers of the being, ātmānam avasādayet; the latter is the control of the lower by the higher self, which successfully gives to those powers their right action and their maximum2·50 efficiency, — yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam. This nature of saṁyama is made very clear by the Gita in the opening of its sixth chapter, “By the self thou shouldst deliver the self, thou shouldst not4·5–7 depress and cast down the self (whether by self-indulgence or suppression); for the self is the friend of the self and the self is the enemy. To the man is his self a friend in whom the (lower) self has been conquered by the (higher) self, but to him who is not in possession of his (higher) self, the (lower) self is as if an enemy and it acts as an enemy.” When one has conquered one’s self and attained to the calm of a perfect self-mastery and self-possession, then is the supreme self in a man founded and poised even in his outwardly conscious human being, samāhita. In other words, to master the lower self by the higher, the natural self by the spiritual is the way of man’s perfection and liberation.
“Therefore now to the experience of a high impersonality add too this knowledge that the Supreme whom one meets as the pure silent Self can be met also as a vast dynamic Spirit who originates all works and is Lord of the worlds and the Master of man’s action and endeavour and sacrifice. This apparently self-acting mechanism of Nature conceals an immanent divine Will that compels and guides it and shapes its purposes. But you cannot feel or know that Will while you are shut up in your narrow cell of personality, blinded and chained to your viewpoint of the ego and its desires. For you can wholly respond to it only when you are impersonalised by knowledge and widened to see all things in the self and in God and the self and God in all things. All becomes here by the power of the Spirit; all do their works by the immanence of God in things and his presence in the heart of every creature. The Creator of the worlds is not limited by his creations; the Lord of works is not bound by his works; the divine Will is not attached to its labour and the results of its labour: for it is omnipotent, all-possessing and all-blissful. But still the Lord looks down on his creations from his transcendence; he descends as the Avatar; he is here in you; he rules from within all things in the steps of their nature. And you too must do works in him, after the way and in the steps of the divine nature, untouched by limitation, attachment or bondage. Act for the best good of all, act for the maintenance of the march of the world, for the support or the leading of its peoples. The action asked of you is the action of the liberated Yogin; it is the spontaneous output of a free and God-held energy, it is an equal-minded movement, it is a selfless and desireless labour.
Other writings
JAYSINGH Let Him come down Himself, then, as He promised. Then alone would rebellion be justified.
These are the conceptions we find expressed in the Puranic symbols familiar to our imagination. There is the Kalpa of a thousand ages with its term of fourteen Manwantaras dividing a sub-cycle of a hundred chaturyugas; there is the dharma, the well-harmonised law of being, perfect in the golden period of the Satya, impaired progressively in bronze Treta and copper Dwapara, collapsing in the iron Kali only to open the way by its disintegration to the manifestation in the next Satya of the old law, truth or natural principle of existence arranged in a new harmony. There is throughout this zigzag, this rhythm of rise and fall and rise again brought about by the struggle of upward, downward and stationary forces. There are the alternate triumphs of deva and daitya, helping god and opposing or too violently forward-striving Titan;—the dharmasya glani and abhyutthanam adharmasya, when harmony is denied and discord or wrong harmony established, and then the Avatara and the dharmasya sansthapanam, eternal Light and Force descending, restoring, effecting a new temporary adjustment of the world’s ways to the truth of things and of man.
THE GURU And mark that these retrogressions are most inevitable when the world, abandoning religion, plunges into philosophic materialism. Not immediately do they come; while the spirit of the old religion still survives the death of its body, the nations seem perhaps to gain in strength & power; but very soon the…Read the whole passage · 784 wordsClose the passage
THE GURU And mark that these retrogressions are most inevitable when the world, abandoning religion, plunges into philosophic materialism. Not immediately do they come; while the spirit of the old religion still survives the death of its body, the nations seem perhaps to gain in strength & power; but very soon the posthumous force is exhausted. All the old nations perished because in the pride of intellect they abandoned their dharma, their religion. India, China still live. What was the force that enabled India beaten down & trampled by mailed fist & iron hoof ever to survive immortally, ever to resist, ever to crush down the conqueror of the hour at last beneath her gigantic foot, ever to raise her mighty head again to the stars? It is because she never lost hold of religion, never gave up her faith in the spirit. Therefore the promise of Srikrishna ever holds good; therefore the Adyashakti, the mighty Chandi, ever descends when the people turn to her and tramples the Asura to pieces. Times change and a new kind of outer power rules over India in place of the Asuras of the East. But woe to India if she cast from her her eternal dharma. The fate of the old nations shall then overtake her, her name shall be cast out from the list of nations and her peoples become a memory and a legend upon the earth. Let her keep true to her Self, and the Atmashakti, the eternal Force of the Self shall again strengthen & raise her. Modern Science has engaged itself deeply in two cardinal errors; it has built out of the Law of Causation a new and more inexorable fate than Greek or Hindu or Arab ever imagined. Engrossed with this predestination, Science has come to believe that the human will is a mere servant, nay, a mere creation of eternal inanimate forces. Science is mistaken & unless it widen its view it may easily be convinced of its mistake in a very ugly fashion before long. The Will is mightier than any law, fate or force. The Will is eternal, omnipotent, it has created the law of causation and governs it; it has made the laws of matter and it can override them; it is itself all the forces which seem to govern and bind it. There is no compulsion on the human will to evolve towards progression; if it chooses to regress, back it will go and all the world reeling and shrieking with it into barbarism and chaos; if it chooses to go forward, no force can stop it. The other mistake Science has made, it borrows from Christianity; it is that action and emotion can be directed towards beings distinct from oneself; all action and emotion are for the self, in the self. But if Science teaches men to regard themselves as distinct and purely corporeal beings, with no connection with others except such as may be created by physical contact and the communication of the senses, it is obvious that the human Will under the obsession of this belief, will inevitably shape its action & thought in accordance passing over the more shadowy moral generalities of evolutionary theorists or play with them only as intellectual marbles. And that spells in the end a colossal selfishness, an increasing sensuality, lust of power, riches, comfort & dominion, a monstrous & egoistic brutality like that of a hundred-armed Titan wielding all the arms of the Gods in those hundred hands. If man believes himself to be an animal he will act like an animal & exalt the animal impulse into his guide. That Europe does not approach more swiftly to this condition is due to the obstinate refusal of Jnana, Religion, true enlightenment, maimed & wounded tho’ it be, to perish and make an end; it will not allow the human Will to believe that it is no more than nerve & flesh & body, animal & transitory. It persists & takes a hundred forms to elude the pursuit of materialistic Science, calling upon the Eternal Mother to come down and save; and surely before long she shall come. All bases of morality which do not go back to the original divine and sempiternal nature of man, must be erroneous and fleeting. Not from the instincts & customs of the ape & savage did the glories of religion & virtue arise,—they are the perennial light of the concealed godhead revealing themselves ever with clearer lines, with floods of more beautiful rainbow lustre, to culminate at last in the pure white light of the supreme realisation, when all creatures have become our Self and our Self realises its own Unity.
One shall descend and break the iron Law,
Change Nature’s doom by the lone spirit’s power.
But when the hour of the Divine draws near
The Mighty Mother shall take birth in Time
And God be born into the human clay
In forms made ready by your human lives.
Writings in Bengali
সনাতন ধর্ম্মের মধ্যে অনেক গৌণ ধর্ম্ম নিহিত; সনাতনকে অবলম্বন করিয়া পরিবর্তনশীল মহান্, ক্ষুদ্র নানাবিধ ধর্ম্ম স্ব স্ব কার্য্যে প্রবৃত্ত হয়। সর্ব্বপ্রকার ধর্ম্মকর্ম্ম স্বভাবসৃষ্ট। সনাতন ধর্ম্ম জগতের সনাতন স্বভাব আশ্রিত, এই নানাবিধ ধর্ম্ম নানাবিধ আধারগত স্বভাবের ফল। ব্যক্তিগত ধর্ম্ম, জাতিধর্ম্ম, বর্ণাশ্রিত ধর্ম্ম, যুগধর্ম্ম ইত্যাদি নানা ধর্ম্ম আছে। অনিত্য বলিয়া সেইগুলি উপেক্ষণীয় বা বর্জ্জনীয় নয়, বরং এই অনিত্য পরিবর্তনশীল ধর্ম্ম দ্বারাই সনাতন ধর্ম্ম বিকশিত ও অনুষ্ঠিত হয়। ব্যক্তিগত ধর্ম্ম, জাতিধর্ম্ম, বর্ণাশ্রিত ধর্ম্ম, যুগধর্ম্ম পরিত্যাগ করিলে সনাতন ধর্ম্মের পুষ্টি না হইয়া অধর্ম্মই বর্দ্ধিত হয় এবং গীতায় যাহাকে সঙ্কর বলে, অর্থাৎ সনাতন প্রণালী ভঙ্গ ও ক্রমোন্নতির বিপরীত গতি বসুন্ধরাকে পাপে ও অত্যাচরে দগ্ধ করে। যখন সেই পাপের ও অত্যাচারের অতিরিক্ত মাত্রায় মানুষের উন্নতির বিরোধিনী ধর্ম্মদলনী আসুরিক শক্তিসকল স্ফীত ও বলযুক্ত হইয়া স্বার্থ, ক্রুরতা ও অহঙ্কারে দশদিক আচ্ছন্ন করে, অনীশ্বর জগতে ঈশ্বর সাজিতে আরম্ভ করে, তখন ভারার্ত্ত পৃথিবীর দুঃখলাঘব করিবার মানসে ভগবানের অবতার কিম্বা বিভূতি মানবদেহে প্রকাশ হইয়া আবার ধর্ম্মপথ নিষ্কণ্টক করেন।
কলিযুগে ভারতের অবনতি হইয়াছে, তাহা কেহ অস্বীকার করিতে পারে না। কিন্তু অবনতি আনয়ন করিবার জন্য ভগবান কখন অবতীর্ণ হন নাই। ধর্ম্মরক্ষা, বিশ্বরক্ষা, লোকরক্ষার জন্য অবতার। বিশেষতঃ কলিযুগেই ভগবান পূর্ণভাবে অবতীর্ণ হন, তাহার কারণ, কলিতে মানুষের অবনতির অধিক ভয়, অধর্ম্মবৃদ্ধি স্বাভাবিক, অতএব মানবজাতির রক্ষার জন্য, অধর্ম্মনাশ ও ধর্ম্মস্থাপনের জন্য, কলির গতি রুদ্ধ করিবার জন্য এই যুগে পুনঃ পুনঃ অবতার হয়। শ্রীকৃষ্ণ যখন অবতীর্ণ হইলেন, কলির রাজ্য আরম্ভ হইবার সময় হইয়াছিল, তাঁহারই আবির্ভাবে ভীত হইয়া কলি নিজের রাজ্যে পদস্থাপন করিতে পারেন নাই, তাঁহারই প্রসাদে পরীক্ষিত কলিকে পঞ্চ গ্রাম দান করিয়া তাঁহারই যুগে তাঁহার একাধিপত্য স্থগিত করিয়া রাখিলেন। যে কলিযুগের আদি হইতে শেষ পর্য্যন্ত কলির সঙ্গে মানবের ঘোর সংগ্রাম চলিতেছে ও চলিবে, সেই সংগ্রামের সহায় ও নায়করূপে ভগবানের অবতার ও বিভূতি কলিতে ঘন ঘন আসেন, সেই সংগ্রামের উপযোগী ব্রহ্মতেজ, জ্ঞান, ভক্তি, নিষ্কাম কর্ম্মের শিক্ষা ও রক্ষা করিতে ভগবান কলির মুখে মানবশরীর ধারণ করিয়াছিলেন। ভারতের রক্ষা মানবকল্যাণের ভিত্তি ও আশাস্থল। ভগবান কুরুক্ষেত্রে ভারতের রক্ষা করিয়াছেন। সেই রক্তসমুদ্রে নূতন জগতের লীলাপদ্মে কালরূপী বিরাটপুরুষ বিহার করিতে আরম্ভ করিলেন।
বাজে বংশী ভবনদী পুলিন সৈকতে নাচে বামাগণ জ্যোৎস্নাপ্লুত মধুরাত্রী মর্ত্ত্য পৃথিবীতে এলে, আখণ্ডল বজ্রী।” আখণ্ডল ধনুর্দ্ধারী উত্তর করিল। “ধর্ম্ম রক্ষা-অর্থে, কৃষ্ণ, মহাত্মা জন্মায় কর্ম্মক্ষেত্র জগে। পাপভার ক্লিষ্টা যবে দেবী বসুন্ধরা, বাড়ে অধর্ম্ম সর্ব্বত্র, ধর্ম্ম-অঙ্গে আসে গ্লানি, নারায়ণ জিষ্ণু অবতরি নরদেহে দুর্জ্জনে বধিয়া দূর করে মহেষ্বাস ভারতের ভীতি। উগ্র দৈত্যগণ মধুর দানবদ্বীপে বহু পরাভবে ভগ্ন পুনর্ব্বার শক্তি জমাইছে। রাজধানী সে সুদূর দেশে কিন্তু প্রাগ্জ্যোতিষ, কিন্তু হুনা চীনভূমি মানে ভীম শাসন, তুরুষ্ক করাধীন, টলিছে যবনেশ্বর মহাহ্রদতীরে। অর্দ্ধভাগ পৃথিবীর ছাইল সে শক্তি। সহায় শঙ্কর নিত্য দানবপতির, যোগ দিবে বরবেশে স্কন্দ তারকারি দানব সম্বন্ধ-লোভে। মহান অনর্থ আর্য্যের দেবের সে বিবাহে। পাঠাইবে দৈত্যভূমি প্রদ্যুম্ন-দয়িতা অনিরুদ্ধে চারুস্মিতা দেবী। সহায় বিরিঞ্চি যবে, হরিবে দৈত্যকুমারী ভাঙ্গিবে বালক উগ্রফল এ বিবাহ, নিঃসন্দেহে জানি। কিন্তু মহাবলী দৈত্য প্রসাদে শম্ভুর কুমার দানবজিৎ রহে পাশে সদা পরন্তপ ধনুর্দ্ধারী। সাধি বিশ্বহিত যেন না বিপদে পড়ে চারু অনিরুদ্ধ অকাল মরণে। উঠ, মহাবলী যোদ্ধা
शक्तिः परा कोटिषु मानवानां समन्यूनां त्वं भवसि प्रबुद्धा । आर्यान्विपन्नानवतीर्य पासि युगे युगे युध्यस आर्यमातः ॥ ५८ ॥
Evening talks
Sri Aurobindo: It is not necessary that you should regard Ramakrishna as an Avatar. When I wrote about Avatarhood in the _Essays_, I tried to express the idea of the Gita about it. Avatar may be understood in many senses. The term is so loosely used now-a-days that it has almost become meaningless. X once asked me whether I was an Avatar; I replied to him, “Avatarhood is too small for my ambition.” (_laughter_)
The Avatar does not come to do that kind of work, i.e., the work of the Gods. He comes to uphold the Dharma. Some beings also come with him for the purpose.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but that does not mean the absence of consent. The Divine may consent to things and events happening, whose results may not be favourable for the present, but may lead to some utility in the future. The Divine doesn’t see things from the human mental point of view or only from the present and immediate results. Perhaps people think that the Divine is like a super-Mussolini according to whose Will everything must turn. When a person descends to do some particular work for the Divine, he accepts the play of forces and works through that play so that ultimately the Divine Will may prevail and fulfil itself; for a time the opposing forces may conquer and the Divine Will withdraw, as is said in the Bhagavad Gita. Did not Sri Krishna have to leave the battle? The Divine foresees and provides for everything in the original plan but that plan is carried out through the play of forces whatever the ultimate purpose is. The Divine does not take up each particular thing and say that it must be done, that it must happen and so on – unless there is some Supreme Vision to be imperatively carried out.
