23 Jul 2012
[A devotee asked: Why does God choose only the human form for incarnation? Shri Swami gave the following answer.]
God chooses the human form, which is convenient for communication with the humanity whenever He likes to interact with the humanity. God can enter a statue and speak due to His omnipotence. But, the receivers of the knowledge from the statue are excited with shock so that their minds get blocked. The doubts will not arise in such excited state due to fear in the expression. The human beings should be in the ground state so that doubts are freely expressed. Suppose, you approach somebody as the human incarnation. You will get a doubt in no time and start believing that He is a human being only. Now, you will be free to express doubts to Him. The answers come out from the human incarnation. You will think that these answers are given because the preacher is a learned scholar. But, you get satisfaction that the answer given is good and it is immaterial whether the preacher is God or learned scholar. You are concerned with the clarification of your doubts only. This is the stage of imposing ignorance on you. In course of time, the realization in your heart comes by the effect of the extraordinary knowledge of the human incarnation. This is the stage of knowledge imposed on you. Due to this, you will get the memory of your first approach in which you believed the preacher as the human incarnation. These three stages, which are ignorance, knowledge and memory, happen due to the will of God only as said in the Gita (Mattah Smrutih Jnanam Apohanamcha…). The Lord said in the Gita that the ignorance, knowledge and memory are created by His will only.
The Veda also says that you will cross the death by ignorance and attain God by knowledge (Avidyayaa Mrutyum Teertvaa Vidyayaa Amrutam Ashnute…). Here, death means the ignorance of knowledge due to the doubts. This means that the clarification of doubts takes place with the help of ignorance only. The word ignorance here means the ignorance of human incarnation as God since you are ignoring the human incarnation as God and believe Him as an ordinary human being, who became scholar by learning. Such belief is based on the ignorance of the truth that the preacher before you is God. Therefore, this ignorance is helping you to clarify your doubts in free state. After this, when all the doubts are clarified, the knot of the inner ignorance breaks due to the complete realization brought by such unimaginable divine knowledge “Bhidyate hrudaya grandhih, chidyante sarva samshayaah”. The meaning of the above verse is that knot of your ignorance is broken and all your doubts get cleared by the preaching from God. But, in course of time, again, ignorance comes followed by knowledge. After a long time, the realization becomes firm. After this, God will test you about the firmness of your realization before giving the final divine fruit of salvation.
Arjuna realized that Krishna was God in human form through several occasions. When Krishna started preaching the Gita, Arjuna expressed the doubt about the divinity of Krishna (Aparam bhavato janma…) Krishna clarified all the doubts of Arjuna by delivering the divine knowledge, called as the Gita. Even the sage Vyasa recognized Krishna as God and addressed Krishna as God (Bhagvaan) in this context only. In other contexts like doing miracles, Krishna was addressed as Krishna only. Sages and even demons can do miracles. The Veda says that the true identity mark of God in human form is only the extraordinary true knowledge. At the end of the Gita, Arjuna believed Krishna as God. The beginning of the Gita shows the ignorance of Arjuna regarding the divinity of the human incarnation and the end of the Gita shows the knowledge of Arjuna to realize the human incarnation as God. But, such realization vanished just after eighteen days, when the war was over. Krishna asked Arjuna to get down from the chariot before all the soldiers. Arjuna became egoistic to get down from the chariot treating Krishna as ordinary driver. Arjuna was born as a hunter in the next birth. The hunter was born as Swami Vivekananda in the subsequent birth, who could not believe Shri Rama Krishna as the human incarnation. Only in the end, he could realize the truth and got salvation. Even Arjuna could realize the truth about human incarnation in the third birth only. In such case, what about us, the ordinary human beings? The concept of human incarnation is very simple because you can see and talk with God directly. But, the concept is very difficult to retain the faith on the human incarnation. This concept of human incarnation is called as Brahma vidya, which means the knowledge of God. People often speak “Is it as difficult as Brahma vidya?” The whole difficulty is not in the concept of Brahma vidya but is in retaining the faith in Brahma vidya.
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