The Human and the Divine side of the Avatar (HH 173)

The Avatar is a double phenomenon. He is not an evolutionary being who has reached the Divine Consciousness through a process of psychic evolution spread across many lives. And yet he is very much a conscious and active participant in the evolutionary process going on upon Earth. In fact he is a descent from Above, the Divine forfeiting His divinity to redeem earth, the Divine identifying with our humanity so as to hew the ways for us to follow. As we approach the 24th April Darshan we dwell a little upon this great mystery, the mystery of the Divine becoming human.

Words of the Mother

There are two parallel things that, from the eternal and supreme point of view, are of identical importance, in that both are equally essential for the realization to be a true realization. On the one hand, there is what Sri Aurobindo – who, as the Avatar, represented the supreme Consciousness and Will on earth – declared me to be, that is, the supreme universal Mother; and on the other hand, there is what I am realizing in my body through the integral sadhana.’ I could be the supreme Mother and not do any sadhana, and as a matter of fact, as long as Sri Aurobindo was in his body, it was he who did the sadhana, and I received the effects. These effects were automatically established in the outer being, but he was the one doing it, not I – I was merely the bridge between his sadhana and the world. Only when he left his body was I forced to take up the sadhana myself; not only did I have to do what I was doing before – being a bridge between his sadhana and the world – but I had to carry on the sadhana myself. When he left, he turned over to me the responsibility for what he himself had been doing in his body, and I had to do it. So there are both these things. Sometimes one predominates, sometimes the other (I don’t mean successively in time, but … it depends on the moment), and they are trying to combine in a total and perfect realization: the eternal, ineffable and immutable Consciousness of the Executrice of the Supreme, and the consciousness of the Sadhak of the integral Yoga who strives in an ascending effort towards an ever increasing progression.

To this has been added a growing initiation into the supramental realization which is (I understand it well now) the perfect union of what comes from above and what comes from below, or in other words, the eternal position and the evolutionary realization.

Then – and this becomes rather amusing like life’s play … Depending upon each one’s nature and position and bias, and because human beings are very limited, very partial and incapable of a global vision, there are those who believe, who have faith, or to whom the eternal Mother is revealed through Grace, who have this kind of relationship with the eternal Mother – and there are those who themselves are plunged in sadhana, who have the consciousness of a developed sadhak, and thereby have the same relationship with me as one has with what they generally call a ‘realized soul.’ Such persons consider me the prototype of the Guru teaching a new way, but the others don’t have this relationship of sadhak to Guru (I am taking the two extremes, but of course there are all the possibilities in between), they are only in contact with the eternal Mother and, in the simplicity of their hearts, they expect Her to do everything for them. If they were perfect in this attitude, the eternal Mother would do everything for them – as a matter of fact, She does do everything, but as they aren’t perfect, they cannot receive it totally. But the two paths are very different, the two kinds of relationships are very different; and as we all live according to the law of external things, in a material body, there is a kind of annoyance, an almost irritated misunderstanding, between those who follow this path (not consciously and intentionally, but spontaneously), who have this relationship of the child to the Mother, and those who have this other relationship of the sadhak to the Guru. So it creates a whole play, with an infinite diversity of shades….

Those who have what I would call the more ‘outer’ relationship compared to the other (although it is not really so) – the relationship of yoga, of sadhana – consider the others superstitious; and the others, who have faith and perception, or the Grace to have understood what Sri Aurobindo meant (perhaps even before knowing what he said, but in any event, after he said it), discard the others as ignorant unbelievers! And there are all the gradations in between, so it really becomes quite funny!

It opens up extraordinary horizons; once you have understood this, you have the key – you have the key to many, many things: the different positions of each of the different saints, the different realizations and … it resolves all the incoherencies of the various manifestations on earth.

For example, this question of Power – THE Power – over Matter. Those who perceive me as the eternal, universal Mother and Sri Aurobindo as the Avatar are surprised that our power is not absolute. They are surprised that we have not merely to say, ‘Let it be thus’ for it to be ‘thus.’ This is because, in the integral realization, the union of the two is essential: a union of the power that proceeds from the eternal position and the power that proceeds from the sadhana through evolutionary growth. Similarly, how is it that those who have reached even the summits of yogic knowledge (I was thinking of Swami) need to resort to beings like gods or demigods to be able to realize things? – Because they have indeed united with certain higher forces and entities, but it was not decreed since the beginning of time that they were this particular being. They were not born as this or that, but through evolution they united with a latent possibility in themselves. Each one carries the Eternal within himself, but one can join Him only when one has realized the complete union of the latent Eternal with the eternal Eternal.

And … this explains everything, absolutely everything: how it works, how it functions in the world.’….

October 10, 1958