UPAPADAKA AND ANUPAPADAKA AVATARAS

There are really two kinds of avataras: the upapadaka and the anupapadaka, and the distinction between these avataric 'descents' is seen in the Sanskrit words themselves. Upapadaka means 'caused to follow along or according to,' 'caused to occur.' Anupapadaka is the opposite of this, 'not caused to follow along,' etc., and consequently may be translated as one who does not go or come according to a line of succession; hence, not signifying a messenger in a line of messengers, each passing the torch of Light to the hand of his successor.
The upapadaka class of avataric beings is almost unknown popularly, and scarcely even suspected in the philosophical schools of India and elsewhere, whereas the anupapadaka is fairly well understood as being a 'descent' of a portion of a divine being into a human individual for the purpose of carrying out some great and lofty objective in the world. The upapadakas, quite rare in human history, are called such because they are caused to follow along or to occur by the swabhava of the psychological instrument through which the avataric ray functions, much as a ray of brilliant sunlight streaming through a stained-glass window is caused to be the color of the glass. In other words, the divine ray, although having its own swabhava, nevertheless is de facto modified in its expression by the strong characteristics and individuality of the Buddha's psychological apparatus through which it works; and thus is said to be upapadaka.
Now the anupapadaka avataras are much more numerous since this class includes all the various modes by which a divine ray manifests itself in human life. The term anupapadaka was somewhat paraphrased by H.P.B. as "self-born of divine essence," and this exactly describes the nature and type of this class of avatara in any world where such manifestations take place.
As instances of the anupapadaka class, there are, first, the dhyani-buddhas, self-born from the womb of the cosmic intelligence, and nevertheless appearing through their own inherent spiritual swabhava and urge. Again, the various kinds of true logoi are likewise anupapadaka avataras in a sense, and indeed the dhyani-buddhas are rays from such logoi, although these dhyani-buddhas themselves are of anupapadaka character. As other examples of somewhat different types of anupapadakas, we may point to those fairly rare cases of surpassing human spiritual and intellectual genius, where the dhyani-buddha of the man himself inspires or infills by its direct radiance the man's own psychological apparatus; and perhaps the most noteworthy of this type of anupapadaka avataric descents are the manushya-buddhas, such as Gautama the Buddha.
All this teaching regarding the avataras is typically esoteric and therefore was only pointed to by H.P.B., and then usually in rather ambiguous terms and even sometimes in language which, while correct, is a 'blind.' In herTheosophical Glossary (p. 44) — a posthumous work which never underwent her correcting hand — she states that "there are two kinds of avatars: those born from woman, and the parentless, the anupapadaka." Now the anupapadakas are indeed "parentless," for they are divine rays arising in the bosom of the divine monad and streaming downwards in their various descents in order to do their work in the world through their reflections or representatives on earth — i.e. their own human vehicles. It is the much rarer cases of the upapadakas who are "born from woman"; and just here is the blind, for naturally, as far as physical bodies go, any human being who is an anupapadaka avatara likewise must work through a body born from a woman.
The point here is that the upapadaka avataras are really 'creations' of a sublime and lofty white magic. Sankaracharya was one, as was Jesus; and these two alone, with their greatly differing characteristics, show that the upapadakas vary among themselves.
The wide range of the anupapadaka class includes all the different individuals who send a radiance from themselves through their own lower constitution. Hence they extend all the way from the dhyani-buddhas and logoi down to those great men and women who are inspired each one by his or her inner god. Examples of avataras which are anupapadaka are very numerous in history, and are often mentioned in religion and philosophy. We may cite the long line of the true manushya-buddhas, of which Gautama was one. Tsong-kha-pa of Tibet, who lived in the fourteenth century of the Christian era, was a sort of minor anupapadaka manushya-buddha likewise. Krishna was another example of an anupapadaka avatara.
The 'second coming' of Christ — not of Jesus but of the Christ-spirit — alludes to the universally held belief that Adi-buddha or the Christos, the Logos, manifests itself from time to time in the world. In other words, the 'second coming' is simply a new manifestation of the Logos, the Christos. As Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita:

Whenever, O descendant of Bharata, a decline of duty comes into being — a springing up of unrighteousness — then, indeed, I emanate myself.

For the preservation of the righteous, for the destruction of the evil-doers, for the sake of establishing Duty, I take birth from age to age. — Chapter iv, slokas 7-8

Here we have Krishna, the type-avatara of Hindustan, implying that he comes at different times into the manifested world as an avataric energy at the beginnings of descending or materializing cycles in human experience. He spoke in his divine capacity as being one of the gods who inspirit and invigorate our universe. It is obvious from the reach of this teaching that many gods can and do have avataric manifestations. The one who was in Krishna as the divine essence may have manifested as an avatara many times before, and inevitably will manifest again; and the same divinity which worked through Jesus must have sent a divine ray into other human beings in the past, i.e. into other avataric entities, and will do so again.
In a way every human being's own inner god, who is a spark of the cosmic spirit, could say the same words as those ascribed to Krishna. For the average man today, buffeted as he is by the winds of destiny because he has no spiritual holding-power, it would be a manifestation resembling that of an avatara if his inner divinity — the heart of his reincarnating ego — were to express itself more or less continuously through his consciousness, and therefore through his physical brain. When such an event happens, we have a buddha — one no longer an ordinary human being, but one glorified.
A buddha is one who, during past ages, through self-directed evolution, has evolved forth the god within himself. Working for all that is, he advances steadily towards godhood; and it is this utter self-sacrifice of the human being, of the most lofty type conceivable, which makes of a buddha so holy and exalted a being. That is why any Buddha of Compassion is considered in the esoteric philosophy to be even above an avatara. Nevertheless, so far as rank goes, the avatara stands higher. We should not confuse mere rank with evolutionary development. Nothing on earth stands higher in evolution than the Buddhas of Compassion, for they are the very imbodiment of wisdom and love. It is they who form the Guardian Wall around mankind.
The avatara is a most sublime event in the spiritual history of mankind — like the coming of a great light for purposes esoteric and wonderful; but the light comes and passes; while a buddha continues his noble work forever, time without ending. But they really cannot be compared. The buddha assists the coming of the avatara. Both come at cyclic periods: the avataras usually at the beginning of a downward cycle, the buddhas at the beginning of ascending as well as descending cycles.
As said earlier, the dhyani-buddhas are all anupapadaka; yet they themselves (whether we count them as seven or as ten or twelve) were divine avataric rays from the Adi-buddha, the Logos, which Buddhist mystical writings call Avalokitesvara. Avalokitesvara itself is thus the synthesis or origin of the dhyani-buddhas radiating from it; and, furthermore, is a grand logoic avatara of the anupapadaka class.
Now, in a certain sense, every buddha, as being a manifestation of the spiritual efflux of a dhyani-buddha, is an anupapadaka avatara. Every time a human being unites himself with his inner god, even if it be momentarily, he becomes for that brief period an anupapadaka avatara — self-made or self-born. He is not necessarily made so by initiation, nor by an act of white magic as the other class of avataras is. For the same reason every buddha may be said to be an anupapadaka, a self-born avatara, because he is allied with the dhyani-buddha, the celestial buddha. For the time being he becomes the vehicle or channel through which this celestial buddha, his own inner divinity, manifests with relative fullness. In such case it is more than the buddha's own spiritual ego at work.
I have elsewhere stated that all of the manushya-buddhas, the racial buddhas, are, each one, the representative or reflection on earth of his respective dhyani-buddha. For example, Amitabha, the dhyani-buddha, radiated the inner god of Sakyamuni called Gautama the Buddha; and the same Amitabha radiated the inner individual buddha or inner god of Tsong-kha-pa. Now this fact alone establishes a very intimate or personal connection between Gautama the Buddha and Tsong-kha-pa. I quote here the significant passage from The Secret Doctrine (I, 108) which bears directly upon this matter:

Esoterically, however, the Dhyani-Buddhas are seven, of whom five only have hitherto manifested, and two are to come in the sixth and seventh Root-races. They are, so to speak, the eternal prototypes of the Buddhas who appear on this earth, each of whom has his particular divine prototype. So, for instance, Amitabha is the Dhyani-Buddha of Gautama Sakyamuni, manifesting through him whenever this great Soul incarnates on earth as He did in Tzon-kha-pa. As the synthesis of the seven Dhyani-Buddhas, Avalokiteswara was the first Buddha (the Logos), so Amitabha is the inner "God" of Gautama, who, in China, is called Amita (-Buddha). They are, as Mr. Rhys Davids correctly states, "the glorious counterparts in the mystic world, free from the debasing conditions of this material life" of every earthly mortal Buddha — the liberated Manushi-Buddhas appointed to govern the Earth in this Round. They are the "Buddhas of Contemplation," and are all Anupadaka (parentless), i.e., self-born of divine essence.

Each one of these seven dhyani-buddhas is the spiritual guide or Manu for one of the seven globes of our planetary chain, and during each round on any such globe, the manushya-buddhas respectively appearing in the seven root-races are all the anupapadaka 'reflections' of the dhyani-buddha of that globe.
There has been a good deal of rather gushy and vapid writing in certain circles about the coming of the next Buddha, whom Buddhists everywhere expect to come in the due course of the cycling ages, and whom they have called Maitreya — a Sanskrit word which can be translated as the Friendly. Now just when the Buddha-Maitreya is to appear is known only by the mahatmas themselves, and by those higher than they; but it certainly will not be for many thousands of years. The reason for this is twofold: (a) the Buddha-Maitreya in his manifested fullness of power will be the racial buddha of the seventh root-race on this globe in this fourth round; and (b), a minor racial buddha appears in every one of the seven great subraces of a root-race; and hence the Buddha-Maitreya who is expected to be the next buddhic avataric manifestation among men will be that particular minor manushya-buddha, called 'Maitreya,' who will appear at the end, or the seventh and last part, of our present great subrace and therefore at the beginning of the succeeding great subrace — and this is many, many thousands of years distant.

Source: http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/fso/fso10a.htm