Super Bowl Sunday, February 2, 2014: Seattle SeaHawks against the Denver
Broncos
The Divine
Incarnation: the Avatara
Today we come to contemplate the great battle of life, between
the people of the sea and the people of the mountains. The people of the sea
are like hawks flying high and swooping low to snatch and harass their prey,
the wild and bucking broncos who are of earth and mountains. The people of the
sea are swift, flexible, and wise; the people of the mountain are hard, obstinate,
and tough. Who will win?
Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita taught that we must take
up arms and fight the battle of the Super Bowl of life. He taught that the
owner of the game sent his son, the manager, as the brains behind the whole
creation and that the son’s divine mother cheerleads and inspires the
quarterback, God’s own prophet, to take the team to victory.
We live in an age of individualism. It’s every person for
himself. All knowledge can found and accessed by anyone willing to make the
effort. Social barriers, prejudices, glass ceilings: all impediments created by
socially imposed rules have been dismantled or are under attack. Hierarchy,
rulership, and leadership are looked upon with suspicion and disfavor. Cultures
are in varying degrees embracing, fighting, or otherwise adapting to this new
wave of consciousness that, so far as we know, has never occurred on a mass
scale before in human history.
The freedom to do what we like and want is assumed and what
we do is presumed to be our right until proven otherwise. That’s a revolution
and a half, for sure.
And it isn’t wrong. But it can be misunderstood and abused,
causing harm to oneself and others. It can foster selfishness, laziness, and
narrow mindedness. Freedom can also inspire one to reach for the heights of one’s
potential.
In former times, the imposition of social castes and taboos
forced people to live within tight constraints of action and attitude. In this confinement,
unnecessary desires and impulses were suppressed or redirected into the
channels of one’s narrowly defined station in life. One could go deep into
dharma or suffer greatly under the lash of adharma. The image of God projected
in such times and out of such attitudes is not surprisingly one of King to his
subjects; one of absolute ruler whose mandates were not questioned and were
eternal and fixed. Religion in such circumstances is characterized by ritual,
formal prayers, highly stylized music, and rigid forms of art. It is top-down
and hierarchical. God as King delegates to others a portion of his absolute
authority over his subjects. This is of course the priestly class who claimed sway
even over kings and princes.
This rigidity of authority is fast crumbling and is rapidly
being eroded by those in every walk of life as well as religion who want to
take matters in their own hands. This is generally a positive step. The
democratization of religion is called “spiritual but not religious.”
What we potentially lose in this new-found freedom to think
and act for ourselves is the remembrance that “truth simply is.” Like the law of
gravity, its existence does not depend upon our acknowledgement. It’s not just
the laws of nature that exist outside our assent, but the moral laws that guide
the unfoldment of our consciousness. After the twentieth century’s
experimentation with the outside boundaries of behavior, we have seen a rise in
conservatism which affirms traditional values. Unfortunately with this affirmation has come
all the trappings of hierarchy and dogma. Thus a great struggle is taking place
in the world today: between earth and water, between rigidity and fluidity,
between social rules and individual freedom.
The age of individualism is, however, unstoppable though its
dark side of violence and selfishness will always result in a reactionary step
backwards whenever the dark side threatens too greatly that status quo.
So we come, then, at last to today’s subject: Does God
incarnate in human form?
Such a teaching has been with humanity as far back as one
can determine. It is expressed literally but also indirectly, as in when God
speaks to and through his human prophets. The teaching of God’s involvement in
human history and human lives has always had a place in spirituality and
religion.
Some religionists will say God “Himself” incarnates in human
form. One obvious example would be the Christian teaching that Jesus Christ is
the only begotten Son of God and that God, in creating the universe, manifests
Himself as One in Three: the Trinity. Another would be the dogma that great
prophets like Krishna are literal incarnations of the Hindu god, Vishnu,
preserver of dharma and creation.
In the other direction we have Buddha and Mohammed being
described only as human messengers. But in various sects of Buddhism we see the
Buddha revered every bit as much as Jesus Christ or Krishna, even if the
theology can get a little murky. Buddha, unlike Jesus or Krishna, made no overt
claim of divinity. The thrust of the Buddha’s teaching is to emphasize
self-effort, not dependency upon grace or higher powers.
But no matter how narrow or wide the slice of dogmatic pie
may be, the intercession of God, divinity or truth into the affairs of human
lives and history is an undeniable tenet of the world’s major religions and
most of the lesser branches of spirituality.
Here at Ananda we are in the lineage that includes Krishna,
Lord Rama, and many other great prophets of India. Our lineage includes Jesus
Christ and a link-up between east and west. We sit squarely in the traditional
teaching that God descends into human form. Well, perhaps not exactly that way!
Paramhansa Yogananda refined the teaching of the avatara
(descent of God into human form) toward a middle path. He taught that the human
incarnation of divinity occurs through an individual soul who, though many
lives, has achieved Self-realization. In achieving the realization that he and
all creation are but manifestations of the one and sole reality, God, such a
one becomes a true “son” of the Infinite Spirit of God beyond all creation. In
this distinction, a Jesus Christ, Buddha or Krishna is not a divinely created
puppet who is almost non-human and more like an alien but is, instead, a soul
like you and I. Not different in kind but in level of soul realization and Oneness
with the Father.
On a sidebar, Yogananda also explained that the entire
cosmos and creation is “avatara” in the sense that God didn’t make the universe
like a carpenter who goes out to obtain building materials. God became the universe by vibrating
His consciousness from its eternal rest in bliss. In doing so, he became triune
because Bliss remains untouched (as God the Father) by creation; the vibration
itself creates the illusion of separate objects and yet is God in vibration (as
the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the Aum, the Witness and the Word), while His
intelligence and consciousness which remain immanent at the still heart and
center of vibration constitute His reflection in creation as the “only-begotten
son.”
This sidebar relates more to the cosmogony and cosmology of
creation and isn’t directly related to the avatara as the savior and guru-preceptor.
But it relates in this way: we, as souls, as are as much “God”
as the avatar and as the Trinity because nothing within or without creation is
ever “wholly other.” All is God: God alone is the sole substance of reality.
But as a wave cannot claim to be the ocean, but can only claim
to be a part of the ocean, so too neither the savior nor you or I, or
any single and separate aspect of creation, can claim to “be God.” “He who says
he is God, isn’t. He who says he isn’t, isn’t. He who knows, knows.”
And yet, Jesus did claim, as does Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, that he is “one with the
Father.” When chastened for boasting, Jesus retorted that he knew of what he
spoke but they did not. So, yes, claims are sometimes made by the avatar. And,
unfortunately, so are such claims sometimes made by those who are not
Self-realized.
The history of religion is as much about frauds and wanna
bees as the real thing. Such is the human drama and the inherent illusionary
nature of creation. When Jesus asked his disciples “Who do men say I am,” it
was Peter who declared Jesus to be the “son of God.” Jesus remarked that Peter’s
gnosis came not from outside himself but was erected on the “rock” of his soul
intuition. It is through intuition, ultimately, that we know God: whether in
human form or in the formless state of our own soul.
God cannot be proved. “Ishwar ashidhha.” And of course this
is where religion and spirituality get sticky. But are the material sciences
free from constant doubt and paradox? Hardly. Ultimately the verdict lies with
each and every one of us to find our path and our way to the truth.
To ignore sources of wisdom in the name of going on alone or
being free from false teachings and teachers is simply not possible for truth
is One (though men call it by many names). Truth is something we open ourselves
to. We don’t create it to suit our personality, biases, or temperament. Truth
comes to us both from outside ourselves as scripture, teachers, life experience
and, yes, in the form of the Godhead in human form.
Yet its ultimate reality is
as much in ourselves as in every atom and in the form of the guru-preceptor.
We need to start where we are and do so with an attitude of
listening, of openness, and freedom from personal bias, likes or dislikes. To
receive truth we go step by step shedding every vestige of ego attachment or
self-identity. In the end we receive the pearl of great price by offering the “human
sacrifice” of body and personality into soul and soul into Infinity. This is the deeper meaning of the many and
varied forms of sacrifice: harvest, animals or human. We offer all matter, all
lower forms of consciousness, all materiality back into the consciousness from
which all things derive.
This is not a condemnation or denial of matter or form but a
recognition of the only reality that is absolute, eternal and unchanging.
Ever-existing, ever-self-aware, and ever in the bliss of Spirit — this
describes our true Self as unique manifestations of God.
The existence of the avatar is the promise of our own
immortality in God. If such a one did not exist, how could we possibly aspire
to such a realization? To acknowledge divinity in such a form is to acknowledge
our own potential.
The “first-coming” of the Christ divinity is thus in the
human form of the avatar. The “second-coming” is the awakening of the Christ
within ourselves which is sparked and nurtured by the spiritual teachings and
consciousness of the living Christ in human form. There is no “third coming” in
the sense that the creation itself ever becomes Self-realized. It may be
dissolved wholly or in part by the forces of nature and the divine will, but
only consciousness can become Self-realized because to be realized is an
awakening of consciousness, not matter as matter.
It could be said that the first descent, or avatar, is the
creation itself, but this gets confusing since the creation as creation is not,
as such, Self-realized.
The Super Bowl of Life then is the cosmic battle of the
forces of matter which are empowered to go outward and multiply versus the Spirit’s
invitation to awaken and go within to find itself and reveal itself to the
inquiring Mind. In Self-realization all paradox and duality and conflict are
resolved in the One. But in the creation itself, the pendulum of the opposites
means we will have Super Bowls onto eternity. As water is more fluid than
earth, may the hawks of the sea prevail!
May the best team win!
Nayaswami Hriman
