Avataram – Traou an Dour

ॐ, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, Quotations, Rāja yoga, Toltec Teachings

Mayavirupa

The Mayavirupa is literally the illusory form; it is the body of temporary manifestation which the Adept creates on occasion through the power of the will and in which He functions in order to make certain contacts on the physical plane and to engage in certain work for the [human] race. CF 761

Mayavi Rupa. Sanskrit, “Illusive Form.” It is the body of manifestation created by the adept by an act of will for use in the three worlds. It has no material connection with the physical body. It is spiritual and ethereal and passes everywhere without let or hindrance. It is built by the power of the lower mind, of the highest type of astral matter. IHS 221

…The stage wherein–after the fourth initiation–there is direct unbroken relation between the Monad, via the Triad, and the form which the Master is using to do His work among men. This form may be either His temporary personality, arrived at along the normal lines of incarnation, or the specially created form to which Theosophists give the technical but cumbersome word “mayavirupa.” It is the “true mask, hiding the radiant light and the dynamic energy of a revealed Son of God.” RI 50-51

He [the initiate] can work through a physical body (with its subtler sheaths) or not, as he sees fit. He realizes that he, as an individual, no longer needs a physical body or an astral consciousness, and that the mind is only a service instrument. The body in which he now functions is a body of light which has its own type of substance. The Master, however, can build a body through which He can approach His incoming disciples and those who have not taken the higher initiations; He will normally build this body in semblance of the human form, doing so instantaneously and by an act of the will, when required. The majority of the Masters who are definitely working with humanity either preserve the old body in which They took the fifth initiation or else They build the “mayavirupa” or body of maya, of physical substance. This body will appear in the original form in which They took initiation. This I personally did in reference to the first case; i.e., preserving the body in which I took initiation. This the Master K.H. did in creating a body which was made in the form in which He took the fifth initiation. RI 705

The Master Jesus on the Cross could not respond to any saving process (even had He desired to do so) because the soul body–as is always the case at the fourth initiation–was destroyed; there was nothing to respond to the evocative power of an outside person, interested or loving. As an adept and as one in whom monadic consciousness was firmly established, the powers then available to Jesus could not be used in the saving of His physical body. At the same time, it must be remembered that He would have no desire to save it, because He now possessed the power (demonstrated later in the Gospel story) to create a body at will in order to meet His needs. EH 654

Some of the Masters will create what is called in the language of the East the “mayavirupa”–a vehicle of expression which is built of atomic physical and astral substance and of concrete mental substance. This They can create at will, use at will and cause to vanish at will; Their problem is not, therefore, so acute in the matter of appearing and of reappearing as is that of the initiate who cannot thus create to suit his purpose and his service. EX 697

Applicants for initiation and initiates up to the third initiation use both the sutratma and the antahkarana, employing them as a unit. The power of the Triad begins to pour through, thus energizing all human activities upon the physical plane, and vitalizing in ever increasing degree the man’s thought forms. The key to the formation of the Mayavirupa is found in the right comprehension of the process. CF 959-960 [See also: ENA 31]

The three aspects of the will, as focused in the Spiritual Triad, are now in full expression; the initiate is animated by Purpose, but faces still greater evolutionary developments; of these I do not need to speak, as they concern divine aspects as yet unknown and unregistered by man. The reason for this complete ignorance is that the vehicles of any man below the third initiation contain too much “impure matter” to record the impact of these divine qualities. Only the “created body” (the mayavirupa) of an initiate of the fourth initiation can begin to register these divine impacts; it is therefore a waste of our time to consider even the possibility of their existence. RI 317

The soul then prepares itself for the coming fourth initiation. This is basically a monadic experience and results–as you know–in the disappearance or destruction of the soul vehicle or causal body, and the establishment, therefore, of a direct relation between the monad on its own plane and the newly created personality, via the antahkarana. EH 518

The causal body is itself eventually done away with when the pupil takes the fourth initiation and can freely create his own body of manifestation. LOM 275

In the mode whereby the liberated disciple can now create a body for physical plane contact and for service in the three worlds–this time not under the Law of Necessity but under the Law of Service, as understood by the initiate. EH 505

The fourth initiation marks the complete realization of this relation by the initiate. It enables him to say: “I and my Father are one.” It is for this reason that the crucifixion, or the Great Renunciation, takes place. Forget not that it is the soul that is crucified. It is Christ Who “dies.” It is not the man; it is not Jesus. The causal body disappears. The man is monadically conscious. The soul-body no longer serves any useful purpose; it is no more needed. Nothing is left but the sutratma, qualified by consciousness–a consciousness which still preserves identity whilst merged in the whole. Another qualification is creativity; thus consciousness can be focussed at will on the physical plane in an outer body or form. This body is will-created by the Master. RI 455

When the antahkarana is built, and the mental unit is superseded by the manasic permanent atom, and the causal body disappears, then the adept knows that the lower mind, the mental body, is also an illusion and is, for him, non-existent. There are then–as far as his individual consciousness is concerned–only three focal points or anchorages (both of these expressions are inadequate to express the full meaning):

1. Humanity, in which he can focus himself at will through the medium of what is called technically the “mayavirupa”–a bodily form which he creates for the fulfillment of monadic purpose. RI 481

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At the fourth initiation, the initiate is brought into the Presence of that aspect of Himself which is called “His Father in Heaven.” He is brought face to face with his own Monad, that pure spiritual essence on the highest plane but one, which is to his Ego or higher self what that Ego is to the personality or lower self….For the remainder of his appearances in the three worlds he is governed only by will and purpose, self-initiated, and creates his body of manifestation, and thus controls (within karmic limits) his own times and seasons. The karma here referred to is planetary karma, and not personal. IHS 117

This marks the fourth Initiation; after that Initiation, the Adept makes for Himself a body of manifestation, a free creation–there is nothing in Him to call into objectivity a body for use in the three worlds and evolved under the Law of Causes. LOM 11

The intuition (or buddhi) being the unifying principle and thus welding all, at the fourth initiation the lower vehicles go, and the adept stands in his intuitional body, and creates from thence his body of manifestation. LOM 339

Since buddhi is the unifying principle (or the welder of all), at the fifth initiation the adept lets the lower vehicles go, and stands in his buddhic sheath. He creates thence his body of manifestation. IHS 16-17

It must be remembered that a Master has no personality at all. His divine nature is all that He has. The form through which He works (if he is working through and living in a physical vehicle) is a created image, the product of a focussed will and the creative imagination; it is not the product of desire, as in the case of a human being. This is an important distinction and one which warrants careful thinking. The lesser lives (which are governed by the Moon) have been dispersed. They no longer respond to the ancient call of the reincarnating soul, which again and again has gathered to itself the lives which it has touched and colored by its quality in the past. The soul and the causal body no longer exist by the time the fourth initiation is undergone. What is left is the Monad and the thread, the antahkarana which it has spun out of its own life and consciousness down the ages and which it can focus at will upon the physical plane, where it can create a body of pure substance and radiant light for all that the Master may require. This will be a perfect body, utterly adapted to the need, the plan and the purpose of the Master. None of the lesser lives (as we understand the term) form part of it, for they can only be summoned by desire. In the Master there is no desire left, and this is the thought held before the disciple as he begins to master the significance of the fourth Rule. RI 101

If the deva, or solar Angel, is no longer attracted by matter, then there is no identification, and objective life is no longer the law of his existence. He identifies himself then with quality, or energy, and becomes an expression of the divine attributes. Objectivity may then ensue as a voluntary offering to the good of the group or planetary existence, but identification with the separated form is no longer the case. The human vehicle then created is as much a thought form in this case as any other particularized idea, and the greatest act of conscious magic is to be seen. All other magical creations are subsidiary to this. Through manipulation of negative and positive energy, thus bringing them to the point of equilibrium before informing them, the perfected body of the Adept is formed. CF 1013-1014

In the case of all avatars it is the will aspect which is brought into play, and which produces appearance–either the will of the perfected adept, such as the Buddha Himself, or (as in the case of the true Avatar, Who is, and Who has not achieved) the will of the planetary Logos or of the solar Logos, taking form for a specific purpose. It involves a higher display of the creative faculty than that displayed by the Adept in the creation of His body of manifestation, the Mayavirupa. CF 760-761

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ॐ, buddhism, Cause & Effect, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, New Age, Prophecy, Quotations, Rāja yoga, Synthesis

The Doctrine of the Coming One

Excerpted from:

The Reappearance of the Christ – Chapter I – The Doctrine of Avatars

By Alice Bailey and Djwhal Khul

CHAPTER ONE

The Doctrine of the Coming One (Western Teaching)
The Doctrine of Avatars (Eastern Teaching)

Whenever there is a withering of the law and an uprising of lawlessness on all sides, then I manifest Myself.

For the salvation of the righteous and the destruction of such as do evil, for the firm establishing of the Law, I come to birth age after age.

– Bhagavad Gita, Book IV, Sutra 7, 8.

Right down the ages, in many world cycles and in many countries (and today in all) great points of tension have occurred which have been characterized by a hopeful sense of expectancy. Some one is expected and His coming is anticipated. Always in the past, it has been the religious teachers of the period who have fostered and proclaimed this expectancy and the time has always been one of chaos and difficulty, of a climaxing point at the close of a civilization or culture and when the resources of the old religions have seemed inadequate to meet men’s difficulties or to solve their problems. The coming of the Avatar, the advent of a Coming One and, in terms of today, the reappearance of the Christ are the keynotes of the prevalent expectancy. When the times are ripe, the invocation of the masses is strident enough and the faith of those who know is keen enough, then always He has come and today will be no exception to this ancient rule or to this universal law. For decades, the reappearance of the Christ, the Avatar, has been anticipated by the faithful in both hemispheres – not only by the Christian faithful, but by those who look for Maitreya and for the Bodhisattva as well as those who expect the Imam Mahdi.

When men feel that they have exhausted all their own resources and have come to an end of all their own innate possibilities and that the problems and conditions confronting them are beyond their solving or handling, they are apt to look for a divine Intermediary and for the Mediator Who will plead their cause with God and bring about a rescue. They look for a Savior. This doctrine of Mediators, of Messiahs, of Christs and of Avatars can be found running like a golden thread through all the world faiths and Scriptures and, relating these world Scriptures to some central source of emanation, they are found in rich abundance everywhere. Even the human soul is regarded as an intermediary between man and God; Christ is believed by countless millions to act as the divine mediator between humanity and divinity.

The whole system of spiritual revelation is based (and has always been based) on this doctrine of interdependence, of a planned and arranged conscious linking and of the transmission of energy from one aspect of divine manifestation to another – from God in the “secret Place of the Most High” to the humblest human being, living and struggling and sorrowing on earth. Everywhere this transmission is to be found; “I am come that they may have life” says the Christ, and the Scriptures of the world are full of the intervention of some Being, originating from some source higher than the strictly human. Always the appropriate mechanism is found through which divinity can reach and communicate with humanity, and it is with this communication and these Instruments of divine energy that the doctrine of Avatars or of divine “Coming Ones” has to do.

An Avatar is one Who has a peculiar capacity (besides a self-initiated task and a preordained destiny) to transmit energy or divine power. This is necessarily a deep mystery and was demonstrated in a peculiar manner and in relation to cosmic energy by the Christ Who – for the first time in planetary history, as far as we know – transmitted the divine energy of love directly to our planet and in a most definite sense to humanity. Always too these Avatars or divine Messengers are linked with the concept of some subjective spiritual Order or Hierarchy of spiritual Lives, Who are concerned with the developing welfare of humanity. All we really know is that, down the ages, great and divine Representatives of God embody divine purpose, and affect the entire world in such a manner that Their names and Their influence are known and felt thousands of years after They no longer walk among men. Again and again, They have come and have left a changed world and some new world religion behind Them; we know also that prophecy and faith have ever held out to mankind the promise of Their coming again amongst us in an hour of need. These statements are statements of fact, historically proven. Beyond this we know relatively few details.

The word “Avatar” is a Sanskrit word, meaning literally “coming down from far away.” Ava (as prefix to verbs and verbal nouns) expresses the idea of “off, away, down.” Avataram, (comparative) farther away. The root AV seems at all times to denote the idea of Protection from above, and is used in compounds, in words referring to protections by kings or rulers; in regard to the gods, it means accepted favorably when a sacrifice is offered. With the result that the root word can be said to mean “Coming down with the approval of the higher source from which it came and with benefit to the place at which it arrives.” (From Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary.)

All the world Avatars or Saviors, however, express two basic incentives: the need of God to contact humanity and to have relationship with men and the need of humanity for divine contact, help and understanding. Subject to those incentives, all true Avatars are therefore divine Intermediaries. They can act in this fashion because They have completely divorced Themselves from every limitation, from all sense of selfhood and separativeness and are no longer – by ordinary human standards – the dramatic center of Their lives, as are most of us. When They have reached that stage of spiritual decentralization, They Themselves can then become events in the life of our planet; toward Them every eye can look and all men can be affected. Therefore, an Avatar or a Christ comes forth for two reasons: one, the inscrutable and unknown Cause prompts Him so to do, and the other is the demand or the invocation of humanity itself. An Avatar is consequently a spiritual event, coming to us to bring about great changes or major restorations, to inaugurate a new civilization or to restore the “ancient landmarks” and lead man nearer to the divine. They have been defined as “extraordinary men Who from time to time appear to change the face of the world and inaugurate a new era in the destinies of humanity.” They come in times of crisis; They frequently create crises in order to bring to an end the old and the undesirable and make way for new and more suitable forms for the evolving life of God Immanent in Nature. They come when evil is rampant. For this reason, if for no other, an Avatar may be looked for today. The necessary stage is set for the reappearance of the Christ.

The Avatars most easily known and recognized are the Buddha in the East and the Christ in the West. Their messages are familiar to all, and the fruits of Their lives and words have conditioned the thinking and civilizations of both hemispheres. Because They are human-divine Avatars, They represent what humanity can easily understand; because They are of like nature to us, “flesh of our flesh and spirit of our spirit,” we know and trust Them and They mean more to us than other divine Emergencies. They are known, trusted and loved by countless millions. The nucleus of spiritual energy which each of Them set up is beyond our measuring; the establishing of a nucleus of persistent energy, spiritually positive, is the constant task of an Avatar; He focuses or anchors a dynamic truth, a potent thought-form or a vortex of magnetic energy in the world of human living. This focal point acts increasingly as a transmitter of spiritual energy; it enables humanity to express some divine idea and this in time produces a civilization with its accompanying culture, religions, policies, governments and educational processes. Thus is history made. History is after all only the record of humanity’s cyclic reaction to some inflowing divine energy, to some inspired leader, or to some Avatar.

An Avatar is at present usually a Representative of the second divine aspect, that of Love-Wisdom, the Love of God. He will manifest as the Savior, the Builder, the Preserver; humanity is not yet sufficiently developed or adequately oriented to the life of the Spirit to bear easily the impact of an Avatar Who would express the dynamic will of God. For us as yet (and this is our limitation) an Avatar is one Who preserves, develops, builds, protects, shields and succors the spiritual impulses by which men live; that which brings Him into manifestation is man’s need and man’s demand for preservation and help. Humanity needs love, understanding and right human relations as an expression of attained divinity. It was this need which brought the Christ to us before as the Avatar of Love. The Christ, that great human-divine Messenger, because of His stupendous achievement – along the line of understanding – transmitted to humanity an aspect and a potency of the nature of God Himself, the love Principle of Deity. Light, aspiration, and the recognition of God Transcendent had been the flickering expression of the human attitude to God, prior to the advent of the Buddha, the Avatar of Illumination. Then the Buddha came and demonstrated in His Own life the fact of God Immanent as well as God Transcendent, of God in the universe and of God within humanity. The Selfhood of Deity and the Self in the heart of individual man became a factor in human consciousness. It was a relatively new truth to man.

However, until Christ came and lived a life of love and service and gave men the new command to love one another, there had been very little emphasis upon God as Love in any of the world Scriptures. After He had come as the Avatar of Love, then God became known as love supernal, love as the goal and objective of creation, love as the basic principle of relationship and love as working throughout all manifestation towards a Plan motivated by love. This divine quality, Christ revealed and emphasized and thus altered all human living, goals and values.

The reason He has not come again is that the needed work has not been done by His followers in all countries. His coming is largely dependent, as we shall later see, upon the establishing of right human relations. This the church has hindered down the centuries, and has not helped because of its fanatical zeal to make “Christians” of all peoples and not followers of the Christ. It has emphasized theological doctrine, and not love and loving understanding as Christ exemplified it. The Church has preached the fiery Saul of Tarsus and not the gentle Carpenter of Galilee. And so, He has waited. But His hour has now come, because of the people’s need in every land and because of the invocative cry of the masses everywhere and the advice of His disciples of all faiths and of all world religions.

It is not for us yet to know the date or the hour of the reappearance of the Christ. His coming is dependent upon the appeal (the often voiceless appeal) of all who stand with massed intent; it is dependent also upon the better establishment of right human relations and upon certain work being done at this time by senior Members of the Kingdom of God, the Church Invisible, the spiritual Hierarchy of our planet; it is dependent also upon the steadfastness of the Christ’s disciples in the world at this time and His initiate-workers – all working in the many groups, religious, political and economic. To the above must be added what Christians like to call “the inscrutable Will of God,” that unrecognized purpose of the Lord of the World, the Ancient of Days (as He is called in The Old Testament) Who “knows His own Mind, radiates the highest quality of love and focuses His Will in His Own high Place within the center where the Will of God is known.”

When the Christ, the Avatar of Love, makes His reappearance then will the

“Sons of men who are now the Sons of God withdraw Their faces from the shining light and radiate that light upon the sons of men who know not yet they are the Sons of God. Then shall the Coming One appear, His footsteps hastened through the valley of the shadow by the One of awful power Who stands upon the mountain top, breathing out love eternal, light supernal and peaceful, silent Will.

“Then will the sons of men respond. Then will a newer light shine forth into the dismal, weary vale of earth. Then will new life course through the veins of men, and then will their vision compass all the ways of what may be.

“So peace will come again on earth, but a peace unlike aught known before. Then will the will-to-good flower forth as understanding, and understanding blossom as goodwill in men.”

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