AVATAR 5

The standard concept of infinity is the very large, larger than the largest, so to say. This is the mathematical idea of infinity and it is this idea that has got stuck in the human mind owing, perhaps, to his experience of the vastness of space all around him. But this idea plays havoc with the real spiritual concept of infinitude which is neither large nor small but rather unbounded by space, time and causality.

The Avatar principle is based on this spiritual concept of infinity and becomes inaccessible to the so-called rational, scientific man with his material idea of infinity and the apparent absurdity in his eye as to the possibility of the descent of the infinite Divine Being in the so-called finite frame of the mortal man. But the resolution of this apparent contradiction of the Avatar is to be sought in spiritual terms by whosoever seeks to understand, even as a scientific concept is to be comprehended not in spiritual terms but in scientific terms alone. Each of these two apparently contradictory although, truly, complementary fields of study have their own domain and methodology of investigation. Science deals with the external, empirical universe whereas spirituality deals with the internal world of the mind and, further on, consciousness in its higher dimensions. Projected far and beyond the normal range these two fields eventually overlap and coalesce into a unified whole, true, but that is far beyond the realm of dialogue, deliberation or debate and demands submission of the egoistic faculties to the higher powers of introspection and inspiration so that the perceptions of the subtler world of the Spirit and of metaphysics are quickened in the purified mind of the seeker. The Avatar then comes alive in the consciousness as the summation of all life-giving principles, nay, of all life, as the saviour, as the redeemer, as the destroyer of human ignorance and the founder of the religion of the Age.