23 Jul 2023
[A question by Shri TV Sitarama Shastry]
Swami Replied:- Your idea is that non-violent sub-religions of Hinduism can be correlated, but, some violent world-religions can’t be correlated with non-violent world-religions. In Hinduism also, the history says that in the past, there was violence among some sub-religions. Extreme emotional souls exist in every region and religion in this world. Hence, violence is a common point in all the world-religions due to the presence of extreme emotion in certain human beings everywhere. Such violence is attributed to the mental setup and individual character of the human being, which shall not be attributed to the person’s religion.
Every quality has both good and bad faces. Any quality turned towards its good face is a good quality and any quality turned towards its bad face is a bad quality. There is no quality stamped as good or bad. The so-called good quality can become a bad quality if it is turned towards its bad face. Similarly, the so-called bad quality turned towards its good face, becomes a good quality. Otherwise, people put a question as to why God created bad qualities and when we are attracted to bad qualities, He is punishing us, which is His sadism! Such people are silenced by the reply that God created all qualities turned towards their good faces so that God created only good qualities in the beginning of creation. We, the souls, have turned some good qualities towards their bad faces and stamped them as permanent bad qualities. Hence, God cannot be blamed as a sadist.
Now, let us take the quality of violence, which is the present concerned topic in this subject. Violence has both good and bad faces. To condemn the rigid injustice, violence was used by God. Rama killed Ravana and Krishna killed all the Kauravas through the Pandavas. If the unjust soul is firm about its injustice, such unjust soul is to be killed to protect justified souls and this is protection of justice and destruction of injustice. Krishna told that He came down to earth to protect justified souls and to punish unjust souls thereby establishing justice (Paritrāṇāya sādhūnām…- Gita). This is the good side of violence. The bad side of violence is when bad people damage good people through violence. Hence, we need not exclude some religions based on violence because in every religion, violence by God towards sinners exists. Violence towards sinners is a divine quality since God Himself is maintaining such a policy. One should not argue that Christianity has no violence. This is not correct because Christianity also says that sinners will be thrown into the ever-lasting liquid fire of hell and is it not violence of God against sinners? The last resort to reform a rigid sinner is only violence called punishment of the sin in hell. Since this is the common policy in every religion, in fact, this point helps the unity of world-religions.
Apart from violence used against sinners, rewarding merit is also a common point in all world-religions and this rewarding of merit takes place in heaven. Both heaven and hell mean rewarding merit and punishing sin respectively. Both heaven and hell are common to all world-religions. Both these are very essential foundations for worldly life or pravrutti. God created both heaven and hell to encourage merit and discourage sin respectively. If these two are absent, creation will become a chaos and God being the creator, never wishes for such chaos to happen in His creation anywhere.
The next third item is God personally. In the above topic, there is no involvement of attraction towards the divine personality of God. If you are not attracted towards God, you will not be sent to hell. If you are attracted towards God, you will not be sent to heaven. Hence, voting for justice against injustice is mandatory in worldly life in which the attraction towards the divine personality of God is never touched. The attraction towards the divine personality of God is entirely a separate field called ‘spiritual life’ or ‘Nivrutti’. The fruit of Nivrutti is to go to the abode of God and is not related to heaven or hell.
All these three points (God, heaven and hell) are common in all theistic world-religions and hence, the basic unity is completely possible. The differences like culture, eating and dressing habits, language etc., are superficial only. The same medicine exists in different bottles even though, the shapes and colours of the bottles are different. We are concerned with the medicine present in the bottles and not with the bottles. The illness is cured by the medicine and not by the bottle. Similarly, the ignorance and attitude towards sin are cured by the common spiritual knowledge present in any world-religion or in any sub-religion of Hinduism. In the past, there was terrible violence due to quarrels between religions. At present, the debate-fights are becoming slowly serious and in the future, there is a threat to world-peace. Hence, the Father of heaven or the first energetic incarnation called as ‘God Datta’ in Hinduism has descended down as Shri Datta Swami to correlate all the theistic world-religions. Only atheism is to be opposed by all theistic world-religions. All the theistic world-religions must become close friends and avoid any type of quarrel among themselves and must become one family to fight against atheists.
When the core content in all world-religions is one and the same, there is no meaning in converting anybody from one religion into other religion. Anybody born in a religion must remain in the same religion till death. One should not find faults with other religions stating that one’s religion is without any fault. Every religion is having both merits and defects. The merits of any religion are due to the original establishers (Human Incarnations of God) and some good followers of that religion. The defects in any religion are due to some bad followers of that religion. Hence, it is climax of ignorance to say that any religion is having only merits without defects. When this is the case, what is the use of changing your own religion? If you filter all the defects of every religion, you will be leftover with all merits of every religion and you will be surprised that all leftover merits of all religions are exactly one and the same indicating the existence of one Universal Religion with one Universal Spirituality. Every human being shall register his/her name in Universal Religion, which is like the Central Government of India. You can continue in your own religion and the Universal Religion says to you that you shall not find faults with other religions since one God in different forms delivered the same core-syllabus in all the scriptures of different world-religions.
You should not fall in the net of some conservative devoted scholars of a religion and believe them that their religion is having all merits whereas, other religions have defects alone. The conservatives of every religion are telling this same point to attract everybody into their own religion!
Every religion says that God of their religion only created this earth with the entire humanity. If there are many Gods differing from each other, how is every God the creator of this earth? If you say that your God alone created this earth, how is every religion saying that its God alone created this earth? In such a case, what is the actual truth that can be arrived through logical analysis? Such truth can be only that there is one God only, Who created this earth. To support this concept of one God and justify the existence of different Gods in different religions, logical analysis demands that the same one God is present in all the religions in different external forms. If you don’t agree with this conclusion, you have to justify the existence of different Gods of different religions showing more number of earths filled with human beings so that every God created His own earth! Since, you fail in this, you have to agree that the same one God is existing in different forms in different religions, Who alone created this earth. There is no other way.
Every religion is saying that its scripture alone can give salvation to any soul. Let us agree that your religion alone is correct. You say that the God of your religion alone is true and that your scripture alone is correct. Since you have agreed that we, the Hindus, belonging to India were also created by your God, your God must not have partial love on you alone since we are also His children. Your God appeared in your region and your religion on some date in the past and gave you the excellent scripture. At that time, our country was disconnected from your country and hence, your scripture could not reach our country as soon as you were blessed with that excellent scripture. About 1700 years have passed from that date of your contact with that divine scripture. About 17 human generations in our country passed away without contact with that excellent scripture. Had your excellent scripture come to our country on the same date of delivery to you, at least, some of the 17 human generations in our country could have got salvation. It is not the fault of our past 17 human generations and it is the fault of your God for not sending the same scripture to our country on the date of its first delivery. This means that your God is partial to you without any reason. He neglected our past 17 generations without any reason. If you say that your region alone contained good deserving devotees, it is also false because bad people existing in your region alone crucified your human form of God. It is an agreed fact that every human generation in any region of the world, always contains both good and bad people. Therefore, the partiality shown by your God (Who is also our God as per your argument) to you is meaningless. This bomb on your logic can be pacified if you agree that one God came in different forms in all religions from the beginning of the creation and delivered the same core-scripture in different languages. Hence, the one, original scripture is delivered by God to all the souls on the earth in the beginning of the creation itself. Those, who followed the divine scripture in any region or religion, got salvation and those who did not follow the divine scripture, could not get salvation. The point is that every soul has contact with the divine scripture from the beginning of the creation itself. Hence, your God is not partial at all.
Krishna followed the path of violence in establishing justice in worldly life or pravrutti. In Nivrutti, the fight shall be with logic and not with the sword. Prophet Mohammed fought with the sword in spiritual life also and this is an exceptional case because several religions started with their own individual Gods fighting with each other. Such fighting religions with swords can be pacified with sword only and finally, He brought unity by establishing one formless unimaginable God. The Jihad proposed by Him was also for fighting against injustice only and not for fighting against justice. The Islamic scripture never says to propagate its religion through violence. It only says that you should preach the spiritual knowledge of your religion peacefully and also provide protection if necessary. It says that you should preach your religion and come back peacefully so that the other person shall be given infinite time to think over about the spiritual knowledge of your religion.
Sometimes, we find certain absurd concepts in scriptures, which were inserted by bad followers in the past due to their ego and selfishness. Such insertions can be easily found out by sharp logical analysis. Such insertions can’t be argued as the sayings of God. Of course, rigid conservative-blind followers argue that every word of their scripture was spoken by their God only. He should produce the witness through a cassette taken while their God was dictating the scripture. In that cassette, their God shall be seen, and the voice of His speech must be clearly heard. In the absence of such proof, how can he show the proof of no insertions by bad followers? This proof belongs to the negation of a point and such a cassette can never be prepared by anybody. In such a case, the above positive proof (God dictating the scripture) must be at least submitted in argument. In the absence of both positive and negative proofs, the possibility of insertion cannot be negated. The only way leftover is to examine every statement of the scripture through very sharp logical analysis because God always speaks with logic and justice. The statements found in the scripture, which cannot stand through logic and which are not justified must be certainly insertions done by bad and selfish followers only. If you say that even though, the statement is against logic and justice, it is spoken by God, you are indirectly saying that God is illogical and unjust. Even though, God is beyond logic, it shall not mean that God speaks illogically!
Changing one’s own religion is utter foolishness. This applies to all religions. You must rise in your own religion upward and you must not move to other religion horizontally. When all religions have their individual paths towards the central one God with equal distance, is it not foolish to travel to another religion so that your travel makes you to walk more distance? Each class has the same syllabus in all schools and the language-media of the syllabus may be different. It is better to rise from your class to a higher class in your own school than to change schools in the same class. Vertical movement is always better than horizontal movement in this spiritual field.
Whenever, anybody attacks your religion, you also attack his religion with the same speed. If others criticise your religion about the defects in your religion, you also criticise their religions about their defects. You continue the fight since others attacked your religion. The only request from My side is that at the end of the fight, please give the contents of this message to others so that the enmity present in their hearts gets pacified. If you do not give this message to them, the enmity in their hearts will continue more and more, which may even affect world-peace.
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