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Avatars (to use the Sanskrit term) do not come to earth for the vague purpose of somehow uplifting humanity and “saving” sinners. Rather, They come with the intention enunciated by Saint John the Beloved at the beginning of his Gospel: “To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God.” (John 1:12) That is, an incarnation of God manifests upon the earth for the purpose of establishing a repository of spiritual power which will outlast His physical “lifetime,” and will bring salvation to future generations. Sometimes the avatar establishes a new religion upon the earth, and sometimes He regenerates a religion whose inner power has waned or even been lost.

In the case of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, a storehouse of power–the Church–was established which was to be a haven for those adherents of the ancient mysteries of the Mediterranean world which had lost their deifying power. I use the word “deifying” because “salvation” is not having our sins forgiven or escaping a miserable afterlife in hell, but rather it is freedom–freedom from all ignorance, and therefore from all necessity of further birth-manifestations in this lowest of planes of existence and in all other higher planes of existence as well. That is, salvation is the return of the individual spirit into the bosom of the Father from whence it came, and within which it has existed eternally.

Since human beings are what they are, in time the spiritual power so brought to earth becomes dimmed, distorted, and (often) eventually lost. Therefore the Lord must come again to again establish “the power to become the sons of God” among men.

Dual Incarnations

In the foregoing I have implied that God comes in a single form at a time–and that form a male form. Except in extremely rare instances, divine incarnation always takes place in a dual manifestation–that is, in both male and female forms. In the fourteenth century, in the controversy surrounding the Hesychast fathers of Mount Athos and their defender Saint Gregory Palamas, it was established as an irrevocable part of Eastern Christian theology that God, though one, has–from our standpoint at least–a dual nature: essence and energies. This teaching was not novel to Christianity, but had never before needed official expression and approbation. In Hinduism this duality is also to be found–that is, that God consists of two aspects, divine consciousness and divine creative power–Purusha and Prakriti. For this reason, also in Hinduism, every male deity representing the infinite guiding consciousness behind the universe also has a female consort (known as His Shakti, energy) Who represents the limitless field of conscious energy that is manifesting as the universe over which the Lord presides. Since the individual souls manifest and evolve within this great energy and are ultimately “born” out of it into the realm of pure consciousness, that energy field is called “Mother,” as distinguished from the “Father” of pure consciousness. All creation is looked upon as both the Mother and Her evolutionary “womb.”

In Christianity, this divine duality is manifested and symbolized through our Lord Jesus Christ and His Virgin Mother Mary. Usually the male incarnation marries His female counterpart, but because of Jesus’ unique spiritual mission–as well as the symbology which was to unfold through His life-drama–the divine power (also known as the Holy Spirit) was first born on earth and became His Virgin Mother.

Thus, there are virtually as many incarnations of God in female form as there in male form. (Although rare, sometimes there has been an incarnation in female form without the male counterpart.)

Two distinct modes

Since we are on the subject of divine incarnations, let me add that there are two distinct modes of divine incarnation.

The first–and most common–is the one in which the Supreme Consciousness manifests upon the earth in a body that is illusory–that is, it is not a body formed of dense matter but is itself a theophany (swarupa), formed of the Divine Consciousness, and is itself a revelation of God. That is, God is not inside that body, but God actually is that body. Therefore, whenever anyone sees the Incarnation they literally are beholding God. (The question as to whether they are seeing God with their two physical eyes or are actually having an internal, spiritual perception which seems to them external is to my way of thinking completely irrelevant.) As stated in the Bhagavad Gita, the Incarnation’s “birth” on earth is a mere appearance only. Such an Incarnation really has neither a father nor a mother, though for the sake of relating to human beings there is that appearance, including gestation and birth. The “body” of such an incarnation bears several distinctive marks or traits by which it can be known as what it truly is.

The second type of Incarnation is quite different, though morally-spiritually the same. This form of Incarnation differs in two major points. Firstly, rather than being a direct “raying forth” or extension of the Absolute Consciousness into the world in an illusory manner, the Incarnation is an individualized spirit that has traversed the entire range of evolution and attained absolute oneness with the Supreme and thereby participates in and manifests the omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence of God. Of such a person it is rightly said: “In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” (Colossians 2:9) In such a being humanity and divinity are manifested as one. In the other type of incarnation, there is no humanity whatsoever–not even a human body–but only divinity manifest in an inexplicable manner. This second type of divine incarnation is born into a truly material human body and has actual human ancestry. Whereas it is incorrect to speak of the first type of incarnation as human, it is improper to deny the humanity of this second mode of avatar.

Jesus Christ was this second type of incarnation. By the end of the third century the general consciousness of the Christian Church became dimmed to such a degree that the nature of Jesus Christ in His incarnation was incomprehensible. This gave rise to various erroneous definitions of His incarnate nature–definitions that would not even have been bothered with if Christians had not lost the direct communication with Christ that was the normal mode of Christian consciousness in the preceding generations.

There were those who held that the birth and body of Jesus Christ were merely an illusion and that consequently He was incapable of experiencing any material sensations whatever, especially the sufferings upon the cross. This was the view of those known as Docetists, and is currently (erroneously) considered the “Gnostic” view. Later there were those that concluded that Jesus Christ was a great super-being created by God and sent into the world for the purpose of its salvation. This is known as the Arian view. Another view was that Jesus the Christ was a virtuous human being who was somehow overshadowed or possessed by God and used as a sacred medium or shaman for communication with humanity, and that divinity withdrew itself from the human Christ before His crucifixion. This is known as the Nestorian view. Things came back somewhat full circle to the Docetic possession in the teachings of a Greek monk named Eutyches, who taught that Jesus Christ was in no way human but only divine. The current “orthodoxy” among Eastern and Oriental Christians is the view that Jesus Christ was God Who assumed a human nature and thereby became as fully human as He was divine. However, since their (contemporary) understanding of both divinity and humanity is defective, this “orthodoxy” is of little practical meaning.

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