THE GOD-MAN The Life, Journeys and Work of Meher Baba with an ...

THE MAN 393man, he must manifest himself whenever the forces of evil threaten to destroy human values.A. K. Banerjee in his History of Philosophy Eastern and Western (Allen & Unwin, 1952) says' all thediverse orders of beings in the world may in a general sense be spoken of as incarnations (avataras) of thesupreme Being.' The Bauls of Bengal say in one of their songs, 'As we look on every creature we find eachto be his avatara.' These are not statements affirming the Avatar, as such.If the idea of Avatar has any specific meaning it must go beyond any consciousness of his own nature thatman may acquire, just as it must be more than 'God in everything'. That the Gods become men and liveamong them is a popular element in Hindu religion, in which there is a place for many devas or Gods. Thesame, can, indeed, be said of the Homeric world of the Greeks, and of Greek popular religion in which theGods had human form. The Roman Virgil starts a poem written before the birth of Christ:The great procession of the ages begins anew. Now the Virgin returns, and the reign of Saturn returns, andthe new child is sent down from high heaven.In India, Vishnu, the Preserver and Saviour, one of the aspects of the supreme Brahman, had a number ofincamations, 1 the favourites being Rama and Krishna, the latter the most loved because of his bravery,kindness and gaiety. There is a tendency, too, in India to apply the description of Avatar to remarkable men,as for instance Ramakrishna. 21 Some say the first descent was in the form of a fish, others say a tortoise.2 Ramakrishna (1836-86) was a priest devoted to the service of the goddess Kill. He was without Westerneducation, and could not write: a Hindu, he practised both Islam and Christianity, one after the other: a Godintoxicatedman, sometimes thought mad, a great teacher, who disclaimed being a founder of a religion orsect. His strange ecstasies before the image of Kali made his followers feel that he had become the goddess.Ramakrishna had difficulty at times in keeping his mind normally conscious and would slap himself and pullhis hair to do so. An Avatar should have no difficulty. His disciple Swami Vivekananda quoted him assaying on his deathbed, 'He who was Rama and Krishna is now Ramakrishna in the body - but not in yourVedantic sense.' That he was a Perfect Master is certain, but I am not sure that more can be said of him. Itdoes not seem to me to be of great consequence to say more, for reasons I have already indicated: the divineconsciousness in both Perfect Masters and Avatars is the same, though their activities are different. (Cf.Romain Rolland - Prophets of the New India. London 1903 and Sayings of Sri Ramakrashna. Mylapore,Madras, India, 1960.)