Is the Kalki Avatar Coming?

The idea of Kalki Avatar is straight from the Vishnu Purana considered as few of the authentic Puranas rich in occult significance. He is described as a lame warrior according to some texts who rides a white horse and slays the wrongdoers by a sword thereby establishing a new Satya Yuga, a new era of spiritual progress. Though the predictions of a second coming are there in both Christianity and Buddhism (both were Avatars) it has been given its true divine sense by Sri Krishna in the Gita. The Gita does not dwell in the outer characteristics as much as it describes the inner work of the Avatar. He is characterised by his works which mainly consist of restoring the dharma, rescuing the doers of good, destroying the doers of evil, and finally, establishing dharma once again amongst the people. Through all these works he leads the collective march of mankind one step further towards its inevitable divine destiny. When we see in this light, then the details of Kalki’s life are clearly symbolic. To imagine that in this age of mankind someone would descend from heaven with a metal sword in hand and ride a white horse to destroy the evildoers is only to perpetuate a story whose true inner meaning will be lost and the Avatar pass by without even being noticed since we are looking at primarily outer physical things and missing the inner. The second coming is always the symbol of the Divine descending in a new form consistent with the Age and leading man according to the need of the hour, what is known as the yuga dharma.

When we look at the times we live in with the light that the Gita provides then we will be forced to conclude that the Avatar has come and gone back doing what he had to do. A clear look at the previous century shows us the great divide between the first and the second half. If we look at the figures around we shall see at the centre of this change none else but Sri Aurobindo, once again as the divine charioteer piloting humanity through the crisis of Nazism, Imperialism, Scientific Materialism, Communism which is like the distorted image of Vedantic Socialism. Among the first tasks that he undertook was to drive the British out of India. At the same time, he stood against Hitler’s Nazism and openly declared that he had put his spiritual force behind the allies seeing in the triad of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini the Asuras of the Age. India the custodian and upholder of dharma has fallen low and its mighty current of spirituality was either broken into a mass of superstitions and rituals whose meanings had been lost or else begun to dwindle after the wonderful manifestation of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekanand. It was the moment of dense darkness which is what, dharmasya glani really means. Sri Aurobindo took up the work of restoration whose ground was prepared by the saint of Dakhineswar and the fiery patriot sage as mentioned above. Subsequently, Sri Krishna himself handed over the baton of the coming Age to him in the Alipore jail. He gave a new key to the understanding of the Vedas and the Upanishads, laid down the larger lines along which India would attain freedom, stood against the Axis powers until they were defeated and destroyed, and eventually through his tremendous tapasya joined by the Mother’s Force (the white steed) he flashed the sword of Knowledge destroying darkness and opening the doors of man towards a new creation.

This is not to say that there were no other great figures during that period or there will not be other great human beings who will come thereafter. Also, it is not that everything has become wonderful and there are no more crises for man to face and overcome. As long as humanity resists its divine destiny, he will experience the pressure and the push. But the decisive turn has been taken which becomes obvious only if we slightly enlarge our time to include the previous century and a little before that. Equally, when we take a look at the great divine beings who manifested upon earth nowhere do we find this tremendous manifestation that serves at once as a divine example for humanity, reconciles the oppositions of Spirit and Matter with a synthetic spirituality, who by his Force single-handedly stayed the wheels of the British Empire and reversed the fortunes of Hitler by his lone spiritual power. Nowhere do we find such a luminously powerful pen that rescued the Vedas from the shroud of obscurity as also gave the Yuga dharma and the Gospel for the New Age which he not only foresaw but for which he worked to establish firmly within the heart of man. There is in Sri Aurobindo a very clear taking up and summing up of the previous Avatars, notably Sri Krishna as well as an embodiment of the anguish of the Age. He changed this anguish into a conscious aspiration and promised a new a happier Age emerging through a change of consciousness within man leading to outside changes in his ways of life. The Mother clearly said that ‘Sri Aurobindo is the last Avatar in a human body’ and one can simply bow down before her statement in humility and gratitude.