Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Himself and the Ashram
The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35
The Leader and the Guide
The Guru and the Avatar [1]
About the question of the Avatar, I do not think it is
useful to press in the matter. It has become very much the tendency, especially
in Bengal, to regard the Guru as the Avatar. To every disciple the Guru is the
Divine, but in a special sense — for the Guru is supposed to live in the divine
consciousness, to have attained union and when he gives to the disciple, it is
the Divine that gives and what he gives is the consciousness of the Divine who
is within the Guru. But that and Avatarhood are two different things. It is
mostly in East Bengal recently that those have come who were acclaimed as
Avatars; those who came had each of them the idea of a work to be done for the
world and the sense of a Divine Power working through them, which shows that
there was a pressure for manifestation there and something came in each case,
for something of the Divine Power always comes when it is called, but it does
not look as if there was anywhere the complete descent. It is this that may have
created the idea that the Avatar was born there. It has always been said of the
Advent that is to come now that there would be many in whom it would seem that
it had come, but the real Avatar would work behind a veil until the destined
hour came.
I do not gather from what is quoted as said by your
Guru that he claimed to be the Avatar. It seems to me that he claimed to be a
Power preparing the way for the work of the Divine Mother and even to indicate
that all that he meant would be manifested not only by his own followers but by
other groups (
[sampradāya]),
consisting evidently of those who had not had him for Guru but had some other
Head and Teacher. This is also confirmed by the saying that some other one than
his disciples might be the means of his 
[prakāśa]
— that is to say, would be the means of carrying on his work and aiding the
manifestation of 
the Mother. If this meant
proclaiming him as the Avatar, I do not see how it can agree with the other
saying that after his leaving his body the Avatar would come to the Asram he had
created.
I do not quite know what is meant by
ayoni-sambhava. An incarnation is always through a human mother, though
there have been one or two cases in which a virgin birth has been proclaimed
(Christ, Buddha). The only other meaning — unless we suppose an unprecedented
miracle — might be a descent such as sometimes happens, the Godhead manifesting
in somebody who at birth was a Vibhuti, not at once the full incarnation. But in
the absence of a clear statement from your Guru himself, these are only
speculations.
I have written this much as an answer to your question,
but I doubt whether it is necessary or advisable to write anything of it to your
friends. They have their own feeling about the matter; it seems to me better not
to challenge or disturb it.
25 August 1935