Letter3:
The difficulty of recognising an avatar
24/04/07
Everyone,
Hello. How are you? Let us talk about the difficulty of recognising an avatar.
“When Bhagavan Sri Ramachandra (Rama) came to this world, only twelve sages recognised Him as an Incarnation of God. So when God descends to this world, there are few who recognise His divine nature.” - Ramakrishna
Ramakrishna was also Bhagavan and learnt this himself through experience. When he was dying, he was counting the number of people who had recognised him as God. He counted only thirty-three people. God incarnated onto the Earth, and only thirty-three people realised, and for an avatar, it was not so few.
Bhagavan has also told me that avatars are not recognised during their lifetimes. He told me, “Jesus Christ had only twelve disciples! He was God and had only twelve disciples!”
The roles of the avatar and the devotees
To recognise an avatar is not easy. Everyone recognised Swami Vivekananda and the other disciples several years after his death. The power of Ramakrishna worked through them, and did his work. The works of an avatar are not done by the avatar. They are done by his devotees. What the avatar does is prepare the devotees to do the work that needs to be done. Swami Vivekananda was so great, but he himself said that Ramakrishna could have made a thousand Vivekanandas. Ramakrishna, a man who could not even read, managed to prepare enough saints to transform the spirituality and society of India.
Avatars are not understood in their lifetime
Krishna was very famous during his life, however not because he was God, but because he was the king of his country. Who recognised him as God? Just some milkmaids who knew him during his childhood in Vrindavan and some brothers abused by their cousins, and hardly anybody else. At the end of his life, his own people had a civil war about some nonsense, still without having realised that their king was God. 5000 years later on the other hand, everyone in India knows who he was. People only began to understand who Krishna was when Bhagavan incarnated again as Chaitanya Deva 4500 years later. The same thing will happen with Bhagavan. Everyone will know someone great came for a while, but thousands of years will be necessary for a large number of people to begin to understand who he actually is. However, by his grace, there will be a few exceptions among his own devotees who will indeed attain that knowledge.
Why is it so difficult to recognise an avatar? Ramakrishna explains:
“As the elephant has two sets of teeth, the external tusks and the inner grinders, so the God-men, like Sri Krishna, act and behave to all appearance as common men, while their heart and soul are absorbed in the Highest, far beyond the region of karma.”
The quality of God is not seen with the physical eyes, but with the eyes of divine sight. Bhagavan told me once, when he was drinking a cup of tea and eating a biscuit, that people would not recognise him because he wears a shirt just like anyone else’s and has a biscuit in his hand. He is not even a sanyasi. The eyes of materialistic people see only materialistic things. A normal mahapurush (great soul or saint) is recognised as great by everyone. Shankaracharya had 3000 disciples. Swami Pavitrananda, Bhagavan’s guru, had 10,000. However, an avatar is so great that he has the power to hide all the signs of his divinity, save one; his love. But who truly understands love? Twelve rishis recognised the love of Rama. Almost no-one. Only the pure heart catches the reflection.
Devotees of avatars become great souls
Bhagavan says that those who remain around him will not simply realise themselves, but will become mahapurushes. If we have the determination and devotion to our guru, we too will be purified sufficiently to catch that reflection. Then will come the realisations and the power to move the world and the necessary purity to do that with pure love, remaining uncorrupted.
We must pray, pray and pray, and chant, chant and chant Hare Krishna,
With lots of love,
Koji