What is an Avatar?
Sunday, April 8th, 2007The Sanskrit word avatāra means a down coming or a descent. In general, people in dualistic religions, or simply with a dualistic View, think of an avatar as God coming to earth in human form. Avatars, such as Jesus Christ, Krishna, and Anandamayi MA are thought to be made of different stuff than are other human beings. From the View of Kashmir Shaivism, we are all avatars. We are all embodied manifestations of God, of Shiva/Shakti. We are all expressions from and of one Reality.
The process of coming and going, in and out of different forms of manifestation is simply the life process. It is the life process of everything, not just of special beings, and not even just of human or animal beings. Everything comes and goes, in and out of states of denser and more subtle forms of manifestation, or as we more commonly say, in and out of manifestation and the unmanifest. This is the pulse of life.
When MA was dying, her disciples tried to heal her human form so that she would live in that form for a longer time. She said, “This body has no illness. It is being recalled toward the Unmanifest. Whatever you see happening now is conducive toward that event.”
In these words, we have an indication of what makes certain avatars so special: they render Reality more available to us.
MA says: “Everything you see now is conducive toward that event.” She invites others to see. She makes a fuller Reality visible and available to be known and experienced. This is her function.
Availability is the key characteristic of the great beings we call avatars.
The great avatars are manifestations of total availability to the life process. We are all available to life, but for most of us, an aspect of our quality of availability is resistance. We resist the flow and the openness of life. This is our expression, our mode of manifestation. On one level, we are still totally available. We are Shiva/Shakti expressing in this way without reserve. On another level, we are resisting availability. We are limited in our availability to the fullness of Reality. Both of these things are true, depending on your perspective.
The great avatars do not resist; they are openness itself made visible. MA described herself as a “tuning fork.” When any person or any situation came to her, she vibrated to that and responded appropriately. Avatars manifest this total openness, and they make this openness available to us. They show us, on a grand scale, the true potential of human life.
Avatars manifest to our senses so much more of the capacity of life than we are used to seeing in a human being, we believe they are something more than human. But it is we who are less than fully participating human manifestations.
The great avatars live with us, in active life, not hidden away. Krishna was a cowherd, a musician, and a lover. Christ was born into poverty and lived with the poor and disenfranchised. MA lived among great numbers of people. She cooked, cleaned, sang, danced, cracked jokes, and made herself available to those around her in ways that most of us could not tolerate for a day, or even imagine.
The great avatars are here to reveal human life to us as humans. They are the fullness of human life come to meet us. This is why they have such power to melt our hearts, and why they have such a huge impact on human life and culture.
When we are moved by a great avatar, we are moved by a direct insight into what we really are, without limitations. People would come to MA with many worries and questions. Oftentimes, these would simply vanish in her presence. The relaxed, open, natural condition became more available for those normally stalled in a more contracted state.
Each great avatar is what the Buddhists call “a wish fullfilling gem.” No matter how limited is our situation, we all are shaped by a longing to return to fullness and completion, to the embodied understanding of creation and continuity. The great avatars are gems, lucidly transmitting the primordial light of the world Self and the promise that our deepest longing will inevitably be fulfilled.
In Matriseva,
Shambhavi
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