Essays on the Gita

The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood 155other words, there is the inherent consciousness of the divine inall, for in all the Divine dwells; but he dwells there covered byhis Maya and the essential self-knowledge of beings is reft fromthem, turned into the error of egoism by the action of Maya, theaction of the mechanism of Prakriti. Still by drawing back fromthe mechanism of Nature to her inner and secret Master mancan become conscious of the indwelling Divinity.Now it is notable that with a slight but important variationof language the Gita describes in the same way both the actionof the Divine in bringing about the ordinary birth of creaturesand his action in his birth as the Avatar. “Leaning upon my ownNature, prakṛtiṁ svām avaṣṭabhya,” it will say later, “I looseforth variously, visṛjāmi, this multitude of creatures helplesslysubject owing to the control of Prakriti, avaśaṁprakṛter vaśāt.”“Standing upon my own Nature,” it says here, “I am bornby my self-Maya, prakṛtiṁ svām adhiṣṭhāya ...ātmamāyayā, Iloose forth myself, ātmānaṁ sṛjāmi.” The action implied in theword avaṣṭabhya is a forceful downward pressure by which theobject controlled is overcome, oppressed, blocked or limited inits movement or working and becomes helplessly subject to thecontrolling power, avaśaṁ vaśāt; Nature in this action becomesmechanical and its multitude of creatures are held helpless inthe mechanism, not lords of their own action. On the contrarythe action implied in the word adhiṣṭhāya is a dwelling in, butalso a standing upon and over the Nature, a conscious controland government by the indwelling Godhead, adhiṣṭhātrī devatā,in which the Purusha is not helplessly driven by the Prakritithrough ignorance, but rather the Prakriti is full of the light andthe will of the Purusha. Therefore in the normal birth that whichis loosed forth, — created, as we say, — is the multitude of creaturesor becomings, bhūtagrāmam; in the divine birth that whichis loosed forth, self-created, is the self-conscious self-existentbeing, ātmānam; for the Vedantic distinction between ātmā andbhūtāni is that which is made in European philosophy betweenthe Being and its becomings. In both cases Maya is the meansof the creation or manifestation, but in the divine birth it is byself-Maya, ātmamāyayā, not the involution in the lower Maya