Chapter Five: Avatāra Doctrine and Rama Worship

The original form

The original form is the principal form. It depends upon no other form and is self-established. This original Bhagavan is the totality of all bliss, whom yogis, knowers, and perfected beings continually seek. His body is spiritual and blissful. The nectar of Bhagavan’s form that the devotee drinks is not merely the essence of beauty, sweetness, grace, tenderness, and the like; it is also the sole abode of the six divine opulences—sovereignty, fame, splendour, and the rest.

The essentially identical form

The tad-ekātma-rūpa is fundamentally and by nature entirely identical with the original form, but appears different because of figure, magnificence, deeds, and other features. It can manifest (a) as vilāsa, which is nearly equal in power to the original form—prāyeṇātma-samaṃ śaktyā—as Narayana is the vilāsa of Para-Vasudeva; or (b) as a svāṃśa form, relatively lesser in manifested power, such as Matsya, Varaha, or Sankarshana. The original Bhagavan possesses sixty-four arts or powers, Bhagavan sixty, the Supreme Self fifty-six, and those in the category of individual souls fifty.

Invested descent

When Bhagavan enters a great person through power, knowledge, or devotion, that person is called an invested avatāra. Shesha is an example of investment with power, Sanaka and Sanandana of investment with knowledge, and Narada of investment with devotion. These forms are not products of māyā; they are eternal forms. The manifestation of the two-armed form as four-armed is simply its further self-disclosure.

The general and particular purposes of divine descent

The purpose of divine descent is the work of the universe. “Work of the universe” means calming the disturbance that arises in primordial nature when it produces the mahat, or increasing the welfare of the gods and other beings by crushing the wicked.

In the Gītā, Bhagavan says that whenever righteousness declines and unrighteousness rises, he brings himself forth in human form:¹

Though unborn, imperishable, and the Lord of beings, I manifest through my own māyā, presiding over my own nature. Whenever righteousness declines, O Bharata, and unrighteousness rises, I bring myself forth. For the protection of the good, the destruction of evildoers, and the establishment of righteousness, I come into being age after age. My birth and action are divine…