The Miracle of the Avatar

From Chapter One,
by Carolyn Lee, PhD

In Sanskrit, the word "Avatar" means "One who has crossed down".

A unique Intervention is indicated — not merely a man or woman who has attained enlightenment by Spiritual effort, or even a reincarnating Master, but a direct appearance, in physical form, of the One Supreme Reality and Infinite Consciousness.

That such a miracle could occur, when most sorely needed, lay deep in the Indian psyche, as Upasani Baba's outburst indicated.

But what kind of process could possibly enable That Which is Limitless to coincide with a limited human form? There has never been a description of such a process, because the tradition of the Avatar is associated with appearances for which there is no historical record.

Speaking out of His own tacit knowledge of what such an Intervention requires, Adi Da has emphasized that the appearance of the Avatar is not some kind of magic — the Divine Being suddenly deciding to appear as a man — which is what many traditional myths imply.

Rather, such an appearance can only manifest within the laws of the human structure.

A human being is not just the outwardly appearing person, born of the parents. There is also a deeper self, a subtle energy-pattern that is shaped by all previous lifetimes.

For there to even be the possibility that the Divine would be able to conjoin with a specific human form, it is not just a human birth that is required, but a uniquely-equipped deeper self combining with that birth.

In Adi Da's words:

It is not (as has often been imagined) a simple matter that "God" wants to Save humankind and, therefore, "Makes" a "Man" Who will Come and Save every one.

The Vehicles for That Divine Avataric Work of Salvation and Liberation must be prepared, through a Process of unforeseeable and (even in retrospect) unknowable Complexity, Subtlety, and Spontaneity.

...the Vehicle whereby I Am Incarnate here, made physical by virtue of the copulation of My blood parents, was made possible by that Deeper Personality of Two-Combined-As-One — Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, in Spiritual Union — become One, through a Great Act of Spiritual Transmission (even historically acknowledged).

— The Knee Of Listening

In the form of the baby boy, born to Frank and Dorothy Jones, a Western body was combined with the deeper self of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, representing the highest Spiritual Realization of the East married to the great impulse to serve in the West.

And by some unfathomable mystery, That Which Is was moved into association with this extraordinary deeper self, allowing the miraculous emergence of Reality Itself, into visible human form.

And so, rightly understood, Adi Da is not a "reincarnation" of Masters who lived before Him. Rather, He is the very Source-Condition in which they appeared:

This Avataric Birth is My Intervention — not Vivekananda's, and not Ramakrishna's. The vehicle, however, is theirs, and that of others before them.

The Purpose of My bodily (human) Appearance here is the Divine Liberation of all of humankind — not merely the human beings of the East or the human beings of the West, but all human beings (and, indeed, all beings and things altogether).

— His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da
May 23 and 24, 2007

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