says Shri Krishna, can a man "enter into My being."
And the need of the devotion for the future Avatara is this: he must
keep the centre that he has built even in the life of I'shvara, so that
he may be able to draw the circumference once again round that centre,
in order that he may come forth as a manifestation of I'shvara, one with
Him in knowledge, one with Him in power, the very Supreme Himself in
earthly life; he must hence have the power of limiting himself to form,
for no form can exist in the universe save as there is a centre within
it round which that form is drawn. He must be so devoted as to be
willing to remain for the service of the universe while I'shvara Himself
abides in it, to share the continual sacrifice made by Him, the
sacrifice whereby the universe lives. But not devotion alone marks this
great One who is climbing his divine path. He must also be, as I'shvara
is, a lover of humanity. Unless within him there burns the flame of love
for men--nay, men, do I say? it is too narrow--unless within him burns
the flame of love for everything that exists, moving and unmoving, in
this universe of God, he will not be able to come forth as the Supreme
whose life and love are in everything that He has brought forth out of
His eternal and inexhaustible life. "There is nothing," says the
Beloved, "moving or unmoving, that may exist bereft of me;"[1] and
unless the man can work that into his nature, unless he can love
everything that is, not only the beautiful but the ugly, not only the
good but the evil, not only the attractive but the repellent, unless in
every form he sees the Self, he cannot climb the steep path the Avatara
must tread.

[Footnote 1: _Bhagavad-Gita_, x. 39.]

These, then, are the two great characteristics of the man who is to
become the special manifestation of God--bhakti, love to the One in whom
he is to merge, and love to those whose very life is the life of God.
Only as these come forth in the man is he on the path that leads him to
be--in future universes, in far, far future kalpas--an Avatara coming as
God to man.

Now on this view of the nature of an Avatara difficulties, I know,
arise; but they are difficulties that arise from a partial view, and
then from that view having been merely accepted, as a rule, on the
authority of some great name, instead of on the thinking out and
thorough understanding of it by the man who repeats the shibboleth of
his own sect or school. The view once