THE DOCTRINE OF THE
COMING ONE
Western Teaching
THE DOCTRINE OF AVATARS
Eastern Teaching
Right down the ages, in
many world cycles and in many countries (and today in all) great points of
tension have occurred which have been characterised by a hopeful sense of
expectancy. Some one is expected and His coming is anticipated. Always in the
past, it has been the religious teachers of the period who have fostered and
proclaimed this expectancy and the time has always been one of chaos and
difficulty, of a climaxing point at the close of a civilisation or culture and
when the resources of the old religions have seemed inadequate to meet men's
difficulties or to solve their problems. The coming of the Avatar, the advent
of a Coming One and, in terms of today, the reappearance of the Christ are the
keynotes of the prevalent expectancy. When the times are ripe, the invocation
of the masses is strident enough and the faith of those who know is keen
enough, then always He has come and today will be no exception to this ancient
rule or to this universal law. For decades, the reappearance of the Christ, the
Avatar, has been anticipated by the faithful in both hemispheres—not only by
the Christian faithful, but by those who look for Maitreya and for the
Boddhisattva as well as those who expect the Imam Mahdi.
When men feel that they
have exhausted all their own resources and have come to an end of all their own
innate possibilities and that the problems and conditions confronting them are
beyond their solving or handling, they are apt to look for a divine
Intermediary and for the [Page 6] Mediator Who
will plead their cause with God and bring about a rescue. They look for a
Saviour. This doctrine of Mediators, of Messiahs, of Christs and of Avatars can
be found running like a golden thread through all the world faiths and
Scriptures and, relating these world Scriptures to some central source of
emanation, they are found in rich abundance everywhere. Even the human soul is
regarded as an intermediary between man and God; Christ is believed by
countless millions to act as the divine mediator between humanity and divinity.
The whole system of
spiritual revelation is based (and has always been based) on this doctrine of
interdependence, of a planned and arranged conscious linking and of the
transmission of energy from one aspect of divine manifestation to another—from
God in the "secret Place of the Most High" to the humblest human
being, living and struggling and sorrowing on earth. Everywhere this
transmission is to be found; "I am come that they may have life" says
the Christ, and the Scriptures of the world are full of the intervention of
some Being, originating from some source higher than the strictly human. Always
the appropriate mechanism is found through which divinity can reach and
communicate with humanity, and it is with this communication and these
Instruments of divine energy that the doctrine of Avatars or of divine
"Coming Ones" has to do.
An Avatar is one Who has
a peculiar capacity (besides a self-initiated task and a pre-ordained destiny)
to transmit energy or divine power. This is necessarily a deep mystery and was
demonstrated in a peculiar manner and in relation to cosmic energy by the
Christ Who—for the first time in planetary history, as far as we know—transmitted
the divine energy of love directly to our planet and in a most definite sense
to humanity. Always [Page 7] too these Avatars
or divine Messengers are linked with the concept of some subjective spiritual
Order or Hierarchy of spiritual Lives, Who are concerned with the developing
welfare of humanity. All we really know is that, down the ages, great and
divine Representatives of God embody divine purpose, and affect the entire
world in such a manner that Their names and Their influence are known and felt
thousands of years after They no longer walk among men. Again and again, They
have come and have left a changed world and some new world religion behind
Them; we know also that prophecy and faith have ever held out to mankind the
promise of Their coming again amongst us in an hour of need. These statements
are statements of fact, historically proven. Beyond this we know relatively few
details.
The word
"Avatar" is a Sanskrit word, meaning literally "coming down from
far away." Ava (as prefix to verbs and verbal nouns) expresses the idea of
"off, away, down." Avataram (comparative) farther away. The root AV
seems at all times to denote the idea of protection from above, and is used in
compounds, in words referring to protections by kings or rulers; in regard to
the gods, it means accepted favourably when a sacrifice is offered. With the
result that the root word can be said to mean "Coming down with the
approval of the higher source from which it came and with benefit to the place
at which it arrives." (From Monier-Williams' Sanskrit Dictionary.)
All the world Avatars or
Saviours, however, express two basic incentives: the need of God to contact
humanity and to have relationship with men and the need of humanity for divine
contact, help and understanding. Subject to those incentives, all true Avatars
are therefore divine Intermediaries. They can act in this fashion because They [Page 8] have completely divorced Themselves from
every limitation, from all sense of self hood and separativeness and are no
longer—by ordinary human standards—the dramatic centre of Their lives, as are
most of us. When They have reached that stage of spiritual decentralisation,
They Themselves can then become events in the life of our planet; toward Them
every eye can look and all men can be affected. Therefore, an Avatar or a
Christ comes forth for two reasons: one, the inscrutable and unknown Cause
prompts Him so to do, and the other is the demand or the invocation of humanity
itself. An Avatar is consequently a spiritual event, coming to us to bring
about great changes or major restorations, to inaugurate a new civilisation or
to restore the "ancient landmarks" and lead man nearer to the divine.
They have been defined as "extraordinary men Who from time to time appear
to change the face of the world and inaugurate a new era in the destinies of
humanity." They come in times of crisis; They frequently create crises in
order to bring to an end the old and the undesirable and make way for new and
more suitable forms for the evolving life of God Immanent in Nature. They come
when evil is rampant. For this reason, if for no other, an Avatar may be looked
for today. The necessary stage is set for the reappearance of the Christ.
Avatars are of all
degrees and kinds; some of them are of great planetary importance because They
express whole cycles of future development within Themselves and strike the
note and give the teaching which will bring in a new age and a new
civilisation; They embody great truths towards which the masses of men must
work and which still constitute an objective to the greatest minds of the age,
even though as yet unrealised. Certain Avatars also express in Themselves the
sum total of human achievement [Page 9] and of
racial perfection, and thus become the "ideal men" of the ages.
Others, greater still, are permitted to be the custodians of some divine
principle or some divine quality which needs fresh presentation and expression
upon Earth; this They can be because They have achieved perfection and have
attained to the highest possible initiations. They have the gift of being these
embodied spiritual qualities, and because They have in fullness expressed such
a specific principle or quality They can act as channels for its transmission
from the centre of all spiritual Life. This is the basis for the doctrine of
Avatars or Divine Messengers.
Such an one was the
Christ; He was twice an Avatar because He not only struck the keynote of the
new age (over two thousand years ago) but He also, in some mysterious and
incomprehensible manner, embodied in Himself the divine Principle of Love; He
was the first to reveal to men the true nature of God. The invocative cry of
humanity (the second of the incentives producing a divine Emergence) is potent
in effect because the souls of men, particularly in concerted action, have in
them something which is akin to the divine nature of the Avatar. We are all
Gods, all the children of the One Father, as the latest of the Avatars, the
Christ, has told us. It is that divine centre in every human heart which, when
awakened into activity, can call forth response from the high Place where the
Coming One awaits His hour of appearance. It is only the united demand of
humanity, its "massed intent," which can precipitate the descent (as
it is called) of an Avatar.
To sum up, therefore: the
doctrine of Avatars is paralleled by the doctrine of the continuity of
revelation. Ever down the ages, and at every great human crisis, always in the
hours of necessity, at the founding of a new [Page 10]
race, or in the awakening of a prepared humanity to a new and wider vision, the
Heart of God—impelled by the Law of Compassion—sends forth a Teacher, a world
Saviour, an Illuminator, an Avatar, a transmitting Intermediary, a Christ. He
gives the message which will heal, which will indicate the next step to be
taken by the race of men, which will illumine a dark world problem and give to
man an expression of some hitherto unrealised aspect of divinity. Upon this
fact of the continuity of revelation and upon the sequence of this progressive
manifestation of the divine Nature, is based the doctrine of Avatars, divine
Messengers, divine Appearances and Saviours. To Them all, history unmistakenly
testifies. It is upon the fact of this continuity, this sequence of Messengers
and Avatars, and upon the dire and dreadful need of humanity at this time, that
the worldwide expectancy of the reappearance of the Christ is based. It is the
innate recognition of all these facts that has led to the steadily mounting
invocative cry of humanity in every land for some form of divine relief or
divine intervention; it is the recognition of these facts which also prompts
the order which has gone forth from "the centre where the will of God is
known" that the Avatar should come again; it is the knowledge of both
these demands which has led the Christ to let His disciples in every land know
that He will reappear when they have done the needed preparatory work.
The Avatars most easily
known and recognised are the Buddha in the East and the Christ in the West.
Their messages are familiar to all, and the fruits of Their lives and words
have conditioned the thinking and civilisations of both hemispheres. Because
They are human-divine Avatars, They represent what humanity can easily
understand; because They are of like nature to us, "flesh of [Page 11] our flesh and spirit of our spirit," we
know and trust Them and They mean more to us than other divine Emergences. They
are known, trusted and loved by countless millions. The nucleus of spiritual energy
which each of Them set up is beyond our measuring; the establishing of a
nucleus of persistent energy, spiritually positive, is the constant task of an
Avatar; He focusses or anchors a dynamic truth, a potent thoughtform or a
vortex of magnetic energy in the world of human living. This focal point acts
increasingly as a transmitter of spiritual energy; it enables humanity to
express some divine idea and this in time produces a civilisation with its
accompanying culture, religions, policies, governments and educational
processes. Thus is history made. History is after all only the record of
humanity's cyclic reaction to some inflowing divine energy, to some inspired
leader, or to some Avatar.
An Avatar is at present
usually a Representative of the second divine aspect, that of Love-Wisdom, the
Love of God. He will manifest as the Saviour, the Builder, the Preserver;
humanity is not yet sufficiently developed or adequately oriented to the life
of the Spirit to bear easily the impact of an Avatar Who would express the
dynamic will of God. For us as yet (and this is our limitation) an Avatar is
one Who preserves, develops, builds, protects, shields and succours the
spiritual impulses by which men live; that which brings Him into manifestation
is man's need and man's demand for preservation and help. Humanity needs love,
understanding and right human relations as an expression of attained divinity.
It was this need which brought the Christ to us before as the Avatar of Love.
The Christ, that great human-divine Messenger, because of His stupendous
achievement—along the line of understanding—transmitted to [Page 12] humanity an aspect and a potency of the
nature of God Himself, the love Principle of Deity. Light, aspiration, and the
recognition of God Transcendent had been the flickering expression of the human
attitude to God, prior to the advent of the Buddha, the Avatar of Illumination.
Then the Buddha came and demonstrated in His Own life the fact of God Immanent
as well as God Transcendent, of God in the universe and of God within humanity.
The Selfhood of Deity and the Self in the heart of individual man became a
factor in human consciousness. It was a relatively new truth to man.
However, until Christ
came and lived a life of love and service and gave men the new command to love
one another, there had been very little emphasis upon God as Love in any of the
world Scriptures. After He had come as the Avatar of Love, then God became
known as love supernal, love as the goal and objective of creation, love as the
basic principle of relationship and love as working throughout all
manifestation towards a Plan motivated by love. This divine quality, Christ
revealed and emphasised and thus altered all human living, goals and values.
The reason He has not
come again is that the needed work has not been done by His followers in all
countries. His coming is largely dependent, as we shall later see, upon the
establishing of right human relations. This the church has hindered down the
centuries, and has not helped because of its fanatical zeal to make
"Christians" of all peoples and not followers of the Christ. It has
emphasised theological doctrine, and not love and loving understanding as
Christ exemplified it. The Church has preached the fiery Saul of Tarsus and not
the gentle Carpenter of Galilee. And so, He has waited. But His hour has now
come, because of the people's need in every [Page 13]
land and because of the invocative cry of the masses everywhere and the advice
of His disciples of all faiths and of all world religions.
It is not for us yet to
know the date or the hour of the reappearance of the Christ. His coming is
dependent upon the appeal (the often voiceless appeal) of all who stand with
massed intent; it is dependent also upon the better establishment of right
human relations and upon certain work being done at this time by senior Members
of the Kingdom of God, the Church Invisible, the spiritual Hierarchy of our
planet; it is dependent also upon the steadfastness of the Christ's disciples
in the world at this time and His initiate-workers—all working in the many
groups, religious, political and economic. To the above must be added what
Christians like to call "the inscrutable Will of God," that
unrecognised purpose of the Lord of the World, the Ancient of Days (as He is
called in The Old Testament) Who "knows His own Mind, radiates the highest
quality of love and focusses His Will in His Own high Place within the centre
where the Will of God is known."
When the Christ, the
Avatar of Love, makes His reappearance then will the
"Sons of men who are
now the Sons of God withdraw Their faces from the shining light and radiate
that light upon the sons of men who know not yet they are the Sons of God. Then
shall the Coming One appear, His footsteps hastened through the valley of the
shadow by the One of awful power Who stands upon the mountain top, breathing
out love eternal, light supernal and peaceful, silent Will.
"Then will the sons
of men respond. Then will a newer light shine forth into the dismal, weary vale
of earth. Then will new life course through the veins of men, and then will their vision compass all
the ways of what may be.
"So peace will come
again on earth, but a peace unlike aught known before. Then will the
will-to-good flower forth as understanding, and understanding blossom as
goodwill in men."
Alice Bailey: The Reappearance of the Christ, pp. 25-14
