If Lord Dattatreya had already entered into You in Your mother's womb, then why did He again merge into You in Srisailam?

[An online spiritual discussion was conducted on January 23, 2021, in which several devotees participated. Some of the questions of devotees answered by Swāmi are given below.]

[Smt. Anita Renkuntla asked: Swami, You have said, “Datta existed in Me even when I was present in My mother's womb, but I was not aware of Datta at that time”. You also said that when Datta merged in You at the Srisailam temple, it was practically experienced by You. Now, I am not able to correlate the above two statements. If Lord Datta was already there in Your body, then what is the hidden meaning of His merging with You again? Is it for preaching spiritual knowledge?]

Swāmi replied: Knowledge is obtained on the basis of two authorities namely (1) perception or pratyakṣa and (2) inference or anumāna. God Datta appearing before My eyes at Srisailam belongs to the authority of perception since it took place before My eyes. The knowledge that God Datta had merged with Me in the womb of My mother was based on the authority of inference. After My birth and after I had grown up a little, I heard My mother telling some people that she was seeing temples and holy places of other religions in her dreams every night while I was in her womb. From this I inferred that God Datta must have merged with Me while I was in the womb of My mother. Several other incidents led to the same inference that God Datta had merged in Me. One of them was that on the day of My birth, two black magicians, who were killing people in My village through their black magic died. Another incident was that My father tried to teach Me Sanskrit and after teaching just eight verses from the Sanskrit epic Raghuvaṃśam, I started understanding and explaining the Sanskrit verses from ninth verse onwards. As a child, I also used to recite spontaneous poetry in Sanskrit and I even wrote a hundred books on philosophy in Sanskrit by the age of sixteen. Everybody understood that all these were divine miracles of God.

When God Datta had already merged with Me in the womb of My mother, what was the necessity for Him to demonstrate the merging once again? There was a need to demonstrate the process of merging of God with a human being to become a Human Incarnation. In this spiritual knowledge spoken by God Datta through My mouth, the main concept is that of the contemporary Human Incarnation of God. Since I have studied science, I do not believe anything without the proof of perception. So, this merging of God with the human medium was practically demonstrated by God Datta.

When God merges with the human medium to become an Incarnation, the unimaginable God does not disappear from His original position. In the imaginable world, when one item merges with another item, the first item disappears from its original place. But in the process of incarnation, God becomes the medium (tyat) by merging with it and He also simultaneously remains in His original position (Sat), as told in the Veda (Sat ca tyat ca abhavat). I am clarifying this additional point because you may ask a new question again about this point.

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