Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

CWSA 35

Fragment ID: 8836

The Avatar and Terrestrial Conditions [3]

I am eagerly waiting to see what you say in reply to X’s questions of tonight.¹ Often I have wondered why you made your cases equal to ours. Did you ever suffer from desires, passions, ignorance, attachment etc. as we do?

We have had sufferings and struggles to which yours are mere child’s play,– I have not made our cases equal to yours. I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness – if nobody can follow the Way, then either our conception of the thing, which is that of Christ and Krishna and Buddha also, is all wrong or the whole life and action of the Avatar is quite futile. X seems to say that there is no Way and no possibility of following, that the struggles and sufferings of the Avatar are unreal and all humbug,– there is no possibility of struggle for one who represents the Divine. Such an idea makes nonsense of the whole idea of Avatarhood – there is no reason in it, no necessity for it, no meaning in it. The Divine being all-powerful can lift people up without bothering to come down on earth. It is only if it is part of the world-arrangement that he should take upon himself the burden of humanity and open the Way that Avatarhood has any meaning.

7 March 1935

¹ The reference is to the series of questions in the letter of 7 March 1935 on pages 416–19. – Ed.

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