controlling and enlightening the works which are ordinarily done in the Ignorance. )
The language of the Gita shows therefore that the divine birth is that of the conscious Godhead in our humanity and essentially the opposite of the ordinary birth even though the same means are used, because it is not the birth into the Ignorance, but the birth of the knowledge, not a physical phenomenon, but a soul- birth. Itis the Soul’s coming into birth as the self- existent Being controlling consciously its becoming and not lost to self-knowledge in the cloud of the ignorance. It is the Soul born into the bodyas Lord of Nature, stand- ing above and operating in her freely by its will, not entangled and helplessly driven round and round in the mechanism ; for it works in the knowledge and not, as most do, in the ignorance. It isthe secret Soul in all coming forward from its governing secrecy behind the veil to possess wholly in a human type, but as the Divine, the birth which ordinarily it possesses only from behind the veil as the [shwara while the outward consciousness in front of the veil is rather possessed than in possession because there it is a partially con- scious being, the Jiva lost to-self-knowledge and bound in its works through a phenomenal subjection to Nature, The Avatar* therefore is a direct manifestation in humanity by Krishna the divine Soul of that divine condition of being to which Arjuna, the human soul, the type of a highest human being, a Vibhuti, is called upon by the Teacher to arise, and to which he can only arise by climbing out of the ignorance and limitation of
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- ↑ The word Avatara means adescent; it isa coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.
