The concept of an avatar (sanskrt. avatara) originates from Hinduism, and basically means “downcoming” or “descent”, of God into the world, of course. There are two basic understandings of how it works. The first is that it’s a normal human being, only with God as the soul, and the second is that it’s a virtual construct, an appearance that’s essentially an interface God uses to interact with humans in order to achieve some purpose.

Within the framework of personalist Vedanta, Vaishnavism or Shaivism for instance, the concept is straightforward. God is a person, this person incarnates, retaining some or all of his powers and knowledge. Within the framework of impersonalist, advaita Vedanta, the concept is so inherently problematic it doesn’t actually mean anything. To illustrate this, I will cite Sai Baba, who himself claimed to be an avatar. He stated that everything and everyone is God. Someone asked “If that is so, and we are all in our true nature God, what is it that makes you an avatar?” Sai Baba answered “We are all God, but I know it, and you don’t, and that’s the difference”.

You see the problem? Let’s say he’s talking to a yogi who had nirvikalpa samadhi in his experience. Let’s say it’s a gathering of Swamis who all had such experience, some at will. Now let’s say those yogis ask Sai Baba the same question – so, what is it that makes you an avatar?

Sure, Sai Baba was never the sharpest knife in the drawer, but in this case it’s advaita that is cornered by this question, not him. OK, sure, he acted as if being a conscious embodiment of brahman makes him something special and had them worship him like a deity, basically stating “everything is God but I’m particularly God”, which sounds like bullshit.

As always, the answer is that advaita is actually the problem, and the concept of avatars is real. They are just not some fake personal interface for an impersonal Absolute that advaita postulates.

At one point I more-less stopped using the term avatar because it implies things that very much diverge from my experience, and because people assume things that are actually not valid. Also, what does it even mean? God coming down? I prefer another, much more precise and exact, technical term from Tibetan Buddhism: tulku. A tulku is, essentially, a human being whose “soul” is created as the intent of compassion by a bodhisattva touches the world. They usually put it this way: Avalokiteshvara or Tara watches the world full of suffering and his/her tears of compassion fall onto the world and thus their tulku is conceived and born, translating their compassion into a human life that is meant to alleviate it and lead humans towards buddhahood. I like this concept because it understands that those high beings don’t actually incarnate; their intent forms the incarnation, and the essence of their intent creates “karma” of such a being, that is internally driven to achieve enlightenment and pulls others in its wake. The term tulku is not to be confused with another similar term, tulpa, which is essentially a construct of spiritual magic that creates an appearance of a human being, but is merely a strong astral imprint upon prana and physical matter. A tulpa is hardened intent of a yogi and is essentially an illusion. A tulku is a real human being with a real soul, only this soul is a result of a God’s intent to do something in this world.

As you can see, I expanded the definition somewhat – I don’t limit the concept to bodhisattvas, and I extend it to encompass the possibility of lila. If we do that, we get a technical explanation of how a concept of avatara, literally “God coming down”, actually works, and what kind of a being an avatara is. Technically, it’s a tulku of a deity.

So far, we are in the realm of what is more-less known, at least in very narrow circles of people who studied relevant literature. But now we’re going into the nitty-gritty of things, stuff that I managed to figure out along the way because it mattered.

For instance, a God who wants to incarnate here can’t just do it. There’s a contract with Satan that needs to be made, because he owns this place. Alternatively, a God needs to use pre-existing karma from beings that already made the contract with Satan to incarnate, and had obligations to return to work through the remaining karma, but they in some way surrendered that karma to their ishta-devata and lost a part of their soul-mass rather than go back here and risk ruin in this hell. A God can use such karmic substance, from one or several sources, to form his/her own incarnation here. Then you get a weird combination of karma from one or multiple beings, but the incarnating being is actually a God, and the lessons to be learned in order to finalise the transformation of this karma are essentially the thing such a tulku/avatar needs to do in this life; for instance, learn that being born in a Mleccha country isn’t spiritually degrading, that being born a woman isn’t spiritually degrading or detracting from a spiritual path, that having a husband and children isn’t something that is an alternative to spirituality but a vehicle for spirituality, and so on. Or, karma can be a source of talents, things s/he has an affinity for and learns quickly and easily, that make it easier to form competencies necessary for teaching people. Or it can be a musical talent that enables one to create physical music that embodies spiritual concepts. It can be many things, because the concept of a tulku allows for a great diversity of purposes. It’s not just “God comes down and formulates a new religion” or something. It’s much more subtle and sophisticated than that. It can allow for incarnation of Krishna and his companions who then get to have a lila and at the same time perform some useful service for the suffering souls bound to this place.

There’s only one case I’ve seen where karma necessary for incarnation wasn’t inherited from someone who was in a hurry to surrender it all to God, but created from scratch as a synthetic entity. That thing is a wonder to behold, because the way it is formulated intimidated me like nothing else, being a testimony to its creator’s absolute mastery of, well, God-level magic, because there’s no other word for it. The tulku that was created in such a way is Biljana, my wife. One would expect this synthetic, mathematical perfection to create some kind of a perfect life with all the good stuff, but it’s actually not the case at all; Goddess just calculated with absolute precision what kinds of concessions she needs to give Satan to allow him to harm, attack and tempt her, what kinds of injuries she had to suffer, at the fault of her parents, Satan and all kinds of world-energies, to buy out her sovereignty from them and own herself, and so on. As I said, it’s a marvel to behold, like watching super-elegant code or a mathematical equation, containing self-destruct clauses so that Satan could not steal or misappropriate the energy contained, and with activation mechanisms that can be triggered only by me, and in very specific ways; basically, she incarnates fully when I accept her as my wife, the activation can be done only during sex, and literally only by me, because it’s done by wielding shivaratri through a physical body in a specific sequence that implies that I have a very precise skill in the physical incarnation which makes it possible for me to react to specific things that light up in her soul and require a God-level response to seal. It takes a lot to intimidate me, but having this incarnation-sealing process play through while we had sex for the first time after I formally accepted her as my wife, that was intimidating; especially since it was obvious from the code that her incarnation was set to terminate if that activation sequence wasn’t successfully locked in by a certain age and so on. I know there are some idiots who ask themselves what the hell did I see in her and think it must have been just her physical beauty and sexual attractiveness, but obviously they don’t know what I know. I’ve seen many things in this life. I’ve seen beings who claim to be avatars or gurus. I’ve seen Gods, Judges of Karma, all kinds of spiritual beings, I’ve seen Satan try to kill me with everything he had, and I’ve seen him die. I’ve seen the Jewel that runs this world as a virtual reality, and I’ve seen the magic it wields, but there’s only one thing that truly intimidated me to the point of “oh shit”, and that’s Biljana. Imagine having sex with someone more impressive than the Jewel, the “world-engine”. Imagine the foolishness of beings who harmed her. I recently basically laughed my ass off when I saw that Goddess herself created herself that way to be here with me, because then it was obvious – of course it had to be her, because only the two of us can pull off something like that.

Biljana, days after “locking in” her incarnation

There is more, of course. Not all avatars succeed. Some never awaken and just fade away in misery of ordinary human existence. Some awaken partially, and that’s the most dangerous part, because they “get” parts of the things they are supposed to be and do, and they get other parts wrong. The parts they get wrong leave lots of room for incredible mischief. I met several. I wonder how many exist in the world, never waking up, never realising their true potential and purpose, or achieving some things and then breaking under the illusions of the world and failure to attain strength sufficient to overcome it, or make very bad decisions. How many came in pairs, and when one failed to awaken, the other was also destined to failure and solitude? It’s not something I like to think about, but it’s inevitable.

So yes, you can be a tulku, created by a God as a technical way to implement avatara, and you can fail, fuck up, do great damage, and condemn your “spellcaster” to the loss of karmic substance invested in you, or worse – you can create such amounts of attachment and sin that I don’t even know what happens with all that. At a minimum, you return to your spellcaster with a demerit, a Title that speaks of failure, sin, disaster and betrayal, a little shit-stain on the face of a God who made you. At worst, a God who made you will have to choose between loss of karmic substance that made you, in which case you become an ordinary spiritual being, no longer Divine, and have your own separate evolution or demise apart from your God, or try to incarnate again in order to fix it, which might not even be an option. At best, a successful avatara enriches the karma invested in it, achieving great deeds, creating Divine substance in addition to the Divinity of their maker, and after death re-joins its true being, adding to its splendour and glory.