The term avatar is now widespread and has become commonplace especially because of its meanings related to computing and the web : with this term we denote an icon, an image, an animation or any other type of virtual alter-ego which represents a specific individuality online, especially in forums, social networks, etc.

These virtual avatars are just partial and temporary manifestations of the true identity behind them, of forms of "incarnation" that closely resemble the concept defined by the Sanskrit term "avatar".

The avatars of Vishnu

The concept of avatars is precisely linked to the Hindu culture, and literally means descent, in the sense of descent into a body or incarnation.

Although in the sacred texts and in the Hindu tradition the gods, major and minor, who decide to take a body are innumerable, the phenomenon of the avatar is unique and specific, closely linked to the figure of the god Vishnu, one of the main divinity of the Hindu pantheon, representation of the Supreme Being for Vishnuite theology, and part of the Trimurti with the function of preserver .

It is precisely because of this function that Vishnu is behind the phenomenon of the avatar.

Avatars and dharma

Let's start by asking ourselves: what is it being preserved? In our phenomenal reality, all forms, whether animated or not, are subject to the other two eternal principles that make up the trimurti, or the creation, through the god Brahma, and destruction, through the god Shiva.

This bipolarity and alternation of principles keeps the universe balanced and allows a constant evolutionary progress, to be refined and to be able to better represent the Absolute, the forms need to be recreated, and to be recreate they need before being reabsorbed. But there is something constant that must be preserved by this evolutionary carousel, what in Eastern religions is called Dharma.

Dharma and pralayas

Dharma is another term susceptible to numerous interpretations and represents a key concept untranslatable with a single word. Dharma is the law of being in accordance with the universal order, which regulates and coordinates all things of manifestation .

This dharma, although unique, manifests itself in every being in different ways. Dharma is the central fulcrum of the cosmological theory of pralayas, or the cyclical dissolution of the various worlds (or epochs - yugas ) linked to the loss or removal from the dharma: to the golden age in which dharma is followed by all creatures, an age follows in which the truth is only half-expressed, another follows in which the truth is expressed only for a third, and finally a last dark era in which ignorance and creation dominate the dance edge of destruction because of its detachment from the Dharma.

It is in these crucial and fatal times for the entire creation that Vishnu descends into a material body to re-establish the dharma, the new dharma that replaces the dying and lost, thus making the collective evolution proceed towards new expressions.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was the first to explicitly link the concept of dashavatara, the ten avatars of Vishnu, to the theory of evolution, showing us at the same time a physical evolution, a psychology and a spiritual one.

The ten avatars

The first avatar, Matsya, is a fish, linked to the Hindu version of the legend of the universal flood. We have a zoomorphic beginning of creation, linked to water, or to a subconscious environment.

Matsya saves from the flood waters the ancestor of all men, Manu (similar to the terms man and human ), which represents the rise of a mentally conscious being ( manusha ) from the subconscious waters .

Next is Kurma , the tortoise, an amphibious creature, no longer aquatic but not yet completely terrestrial, which offers itself as a center for the churning of the ocean of milk (a struggle between forces of good and evil) from which the immortality.

Here the polarity between good and evil is still incurable, the mind still fails to unite them .

The third avatar is the Varaha boar, which rips the beautiful earth goddess from the clutches of a demon who wanted to bring her back to the ocean floor.

Here the destiny of evolution is decided, it will not fall back into the subconscious but will continue at the top and , again, through the use of primordial and sexual energies, represented by the boar and the earth in the form of a beautiful woman.

The fourth avatar is Narasimha, a form halfway between the lion and the human, which kills the demon king to save the representative of devotion.

We note the first human characteristics emerging from the animal and a refinement of the main energies: inner emotions are favored to sexual instincts . Following Vamana, a very wise dwarf, who converts the last descendants of the demons completely, regaining the whole universe.

Emotions are replaced by wisdom and the animal characteristics disappear completely . The sixth is Parashurama, a Brahmin warrior who, armed with an ax, destroys the dominant corrupt power of the time, that of the aristocrats.

Here man is completely developed and strives for a still violent and approximate form of justice . The seventh is Rama, the protagonist of the Ramayana .

The background note of Rama's life is the complete respect of all the rules, even in the face of unfair and barbarous enemies. Here, the elevated figure of the prince emerges, and his idea of moral justice and ethics is the basis of a civil society .

Of all other nature is Krishna, libertine and ultraetic, who leads the Pandava clan to the victory of a crucial battle in which the moral law is exploited for interest against the true spiritual law; Krishna teaches us to recognize and foster the spirit of ethics . The ninth avatar is Buddha, the prince who abandons everything to seek the absolute truth.

The figure of the prince loses value and assumes a higher one, that of the ascetic who devotes himself to the absolute : the spiritual quest exceeds any form of service to the world. The tenth avatar, the mysterious Kalki, is eternity on a white horse that will finally clean up the world from the filth of ignorance, gleaming like a comet.

It is the same nemesis of ignorance, it represents an active and irrepressible form capable of contrasting both materialistic and spiritual ignorance, when the world will be guided by re-thieves.