Posted by Steve Beckow
Last week a reader asked me to write something about avatars. Given that D’Arcy and I are today visiting an avatar, Mata Amritanandamayi, given the white spaces that often arise while one is waiting for Ammachi’s “darshan” (a moment to speak and get a hug from her), and given that we’ve been here so many times that we’re no longer purchasing books and DVDs, I have the time to answer that question.Ammachi is beginning her North American tour which will see her visit Seattle, San Ramon, Los Angeles, Albequerque, Dallas, Chicago, Washington, Boston and Toronto between today (the first day of her tour) and July 22. In that time she’ll hug tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of people sitting maybe sixteen hours a day, eight hours at a time, without getting up once for a pee break or anything to eat. (For tour details see http://amma.org.)
Amma’s humanitarian projects include housing for thousands of victims of tsunamis and earthquakes, pensions for widows, scholarships for the children of farmers who have suicided (bankrupted by GMO seeds), hospitals for the poor, on and on the list goes.
The significant distinction between avatars and others is that avatars descend from the Divine into physical life whereas all of us are ascending to God from physical life. If the purpose of life is that we ascend through countless dimensions of existence until we return in full consciousness to God, an avatar descends from God to revive religion in every age, to reward the virtuous and restrain the vicious, and to model the dharmic or spiritual life.










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