Posted on: 03 Jun 2024
1. What is the reason for the different scriptures for Jews, Christians and Muslims even though their lineage is the same?
[Shri Anil asked: Jews do not accept any Prophet after Moses and their scripture is Torah. Christians accept Jesus as God in human form and the scripture they follow is the Bible. Islam accepts all the prophets till Muhammad and their scripture is the Quran. Even though all 3 are from the same lineage of Adam and eve, what is the reason for this difference? Kindly elaborate.]
Swami replied:- Minor external points may differ because creation is a plurality. But, in the fundamental spiritual concepts, unity is seen in every theistic religion, which is that every theistic religion deals positively about God, heaven and hell. When there is 99.9% unity, why do you care about the 0.1% difference?
2. Why was Jesus tempted by satan at the end of Jesus’s 40 days penance in the desert?
Swami replied:- Jesus did not yield to the temptation of Satan. You should not take this as the success of Jesus because who is Satan to test God? It is only a message given to the devotees that a true devotee shall not yield to the temptation of Satan.
3. Do Jesus on the cross and God Shiva residing in the burial ground have any commonality?
Swami replied:- The creation is a relative reality and God is the absolute reality. For God, this creation is just like a daydream (daydream means not the dream appearing in the sleep of daytime). Daydream means the dream that is imagined as imaginary world by the person in the awaken state. In such daydream, how does it matter whether you have drunk gold spot drink or ordinary soda drink? Hence, for God, every part of the creation is just one and the same.
4. Please elaborate on essence of the following statement from the Bible.
[Swami, please elaborate on essence of the following statements from the Bible. “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces (Mathew. 7:6).]
Swami replied:- This means that you should not do charity to an undeserving receiver (apaatra daanam). Bhishma and Drona supported the undeserving Kauravas by donating their valor through their support in the war. What happened finally? Bhishma was pierced by hundreds of arrows undergoing the agony for a long time. The head of Drona was cut by knife. This is the result of undeserving donation of help to undeserving souls.
5. “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own”. (Mathew 6:34).
Swami replied:- This indicates about your attention on the present time. Tomorrow means future in implied sense. You should not worry about the past by which there is no use. You shall not build imaginary castles about the future. A bee was blocked by the closed lotus flower in the evening due to sun set (lotus flower blossoms in the morning and closes in the evening). The bee is dreaming about the future in this way – ‘the night will go and the morning will come. The sun will shine and this lotus flower will open’. As the bee is dreaming like this, an elephant came and swallowed the lotus flower along with the bee! This is told by a Sanskrit verse regarding people dreaming about the future (Rātri rgamiṣyati bhaviṣyati suprabhātam, bhāsvānudeṣyati hasiṣyati paṅkajaśrīḥ, itthaṃ vicintayati kośagate dvirephe, hā hanta! Hanta! Nalinīṃ gaja ujjhāra).
6. Please elaborate on the essence of the following statement from the Bible.
[“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”. (Mathew 6:19-21).]
Swami replied:- In Hinduism, the heaven is the world of pleasures to be rewarded to good people by God and His abode (Brahmaloka) is very much different from heaven. In foreign religions, the word ‘heaven’ denotes the abode of God. Therefore, this statement says that if you preserve your wealth in the abode of God by spending it in the spiritual mission on the earth, you will be eternally happy near God. If you spend your wealth for other purposes on this earth, you will not get such eternal happiness and moreover, your wealth will be destroyed by sinners and you will also go to hell. This is the meaning of this statement.
7. Please elaborate on essence of the following statement from the Bible.
[“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. (Mathew 6:24).]
Swami replied:- Here, the two items mean i) Two forms of God and ii) God and world. Since God is only one, there cannot be two real forms and hence, you must concentrate on one God in one form or the unimaginable God without form (since God without form can’t be concentrated upon by any soul, you must concentrate on God in one original form, which is the first energetic incarnation called God Datta or Father of heaven). Similarly, you shall concentrate on God only and not on the world because God alone is the absolute reality and world is the relative reality.
8. Please elaborate on essence of the following statement from the Bible.
[Then a teacher of the law came to Him and said, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.” (Mathew 8:19-20).]
Swami replied:- The animals are not aware of the relative reality of the world and the absolute reality of God. Hence, the animals go to their residing places thinking them to be eternal due to solidified illusion. But, man is always having very sharp intelligence to realize the difference between absolute and relative realities. The human being clearly knows that it cannot have a permanent residence in this relative world. It recognizes that the absolute reality or God alone is its permanent residence. Hence, the human devotee told that he will follow God and this statement cannot be told by animals. This means that humanity is very fortunate compared to other zoological living beings!
9. Please elaborate on the essence of the following statement from the Bible.
[Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field.” (Mathew 8:19-20). Was Jesus referring to the propagation of divine knowledge here?]
Swami replied:- What you thought is exactly correct here. The ripened crop of the divine preacher is His true spiritual knowledge. Cutting the crop and collecting the grains can be treated as receiving the spiritual knowledge by receivers. Distributing these grains to poor hungry people is the propagation of spiritual knowledge.