Biblioteca Esoterica Esonet.ORG http://www.esonet.ORG 1

Biblioteca Esoterica Esonet.ORG
http://www.esonet.ORG
In a planetary sense (that is, referring to humanity as a whole), the original great
Avatar embodies, as it were, the archetype of Man (Anthropos). But he may do so only
superphysically, and the term "reflects" or "focuses into the planetary field" may be more
appropriate than "embodies." In either case, what the first great Avatar "reflects" is the
"vision" or "imagination" that arose in the Godhead state at the symbolic Midnight — the
divine image of Man. But at the symbolic Noon, the "image" is as yet imprecise and
unlimited by "form"; it is more a Quality (or rather a vast complex of spiritual Qualities)
than a form. Religious mystics and poets have tried to express the character of this
Midnight "image" in the "mind" of the Godhead by projecting it onto the sky as the
"Heavenly Man" whose form was imaginatively and symbolically defined by
constellations of stars. This Heavenly Man, however, was a latter-day religious projection
of the archetype Man that already had "descended" into the earth-field with the coming of
the Kumaras or Promethean spirits. Nevertheless, I do not believe that the central figure in
the Hindu version of this descent, Sanat Kumara, should be considered the Supreme
Avatar. Rather, he brought down the archetype Man to the sphere of the earth, anchoring
it in the substance of the globe at the mystic place Buddhist tradition calls Shambhala.
In a somewhat different way, the process of embodiment of the archetype Man into
the crude physical organisms of human beings then controlled by biological energies may
be represented in Genesis 6 in the story of the "sons of God" (Ben Elohim) who married
"the daughters of man" giving rise to a race of "giants." As the Creator-God Elohim refers
to a "Host" of beings, so the term Avatar may be understood most significantly as a series
of manifestations, emanations, or interventions of the Godhead state (the state of
maximum Unity) throughout the whole period of the actualization of the archetype Man.
For this reason, when I use the term Avatar here, I mean the series of great Avatars. In the
past I have used the term "the avataric process" to refer to this continuing yet periodic
process. This process occurs between the symbolic Noon and Sunset.
The function of the Avatar is to "inject" into the consciousness of successive races and
cultures — to graft upon their collective consciousness — one aspect of the archetype after
another. The Avatar is able to do so (at least to some degree) because the power of the
Godhead is focused into or through the core of his being. He reveals to evolving mankind
one "Name" of God (one fundamentally human spiritual Quality) after another. Each
avataric "revelation" becomes the basis for the set of great symbols and images (Urbilder)
that ensouls a culture-whole.
In a different sense, every human being who becomes identified with his or her
individual archetype can be called the avatar of this archetypal reality which (as we shall
see in Part Three) is itself only the "form" taken by a spiritual Quality — that is, by one of
the immensely numerous aspects of the Creative God, one "Letter" of the creative Word
(the Logos). Such a human being has reached the condition of Illumined Man; the "divine
Marriage" between a spiritual Quality and a perfectly adequate human vehicle for it has
been consummated in him or her. The illumined being has reached this condition as an
individual, ahead of the masses of mankind. At the close of a large planetary cycle of the
earth's evolution, all traditions tell us, a more or less large number of such fully
individualized persons will have reached this stage. They will constitute a spiritual Race
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