Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

Fragment ID: 20890

If the Avatars are shams, they have no value for others nor any true effect, Avatarhood becomes perfectly irrational and unreal and meaningless. The Divine does not need to suffer or struggle for himself; if he takes on these things, it is in order to bear the world-burden and the world and men; and if the sufferings and struggles are to be of any help, they must be real. A sham or falsehood cannot help – they must be as real as the struggles and sufferings of men themselves – the Divine bears them and at the same time shows the way out of them. Otherwise, his assumption of human nature has no meaning and no utility and no value. What is the use of admitting Avatarhood if you take all the meaning out of it?.... The manifestation of the Divine in the Avatar is of help to man because it helps him to discover his own divinity and find the way to realise it. If the difference is so great that the humanity by its very nature prevents all possibility of following the Way opened by the Avatar, it merely means that there is no divinity in man that can respond to the Divinity in the Avatar.

I repeat, the Divine when he takes on the burden of terrestrial nature takes it fully, sincerely and without any conjuring tricks or pretence. If he has something behind him which emerges always out of the coverings, it is the same thing in essence, even if greater in degree, that is behind others, and it is to awaken that that he is there....

The psychic being does the same for all who are intended for the spiritual way; men need not be extraordinary beings to follow it. That is the mistake you are making, to harp on greatness as if only the great can be spiritual...

If absolute surrender, faith, etc. from the beginning were essential for Yoga, then nobody could do it. I myself could not have done it if such a condition had been demanded of me....