12 Sep 2020
[Shri Anil asked: Abraham, who is mentioned in the Bible, the Quran, and the Jewish scriptures prepared to kill his only son when the voice of God from the sky asked him to do so. It proved the value he gave to God and was prepared to kill his only son, even when God was invisible and spoke from the sky. If we consider Islam, they do not believe in God coming to this world, but only in prophets. They believe that Holy Muhammad was the last and final Prophet. In the absence of the acceptance of the contemporary human form of God and in the absence of practical service and sacrifice done to Him, can we say that all the generations of people following the Islamic faith and other faiths not accepting the contemporary Human Incarnation, before and after Prophet Muhammad, might only keep rotating in the cycle between earth, hell and heaven? This doubt has come to me because the concept of God coming in human form is not accepted by Islam so far and the instances of God speaking from the sky are very rare, as in case of Abraham. Kindly enlighten us.]
Swami replied: The concept of Human Incarnation has been rejected even in Hinduism since Swami Dayānanda Sarasvatī, the founder of Ārya Samāj opposed this concept. Outside of Hinduism, Prophet Mohammed opposed this concept. Swami Dayānanda opposed this concept due to the several atrocities done by devotees who worshipped God with a form. The devotees included idol-worshippers and the worshippers of the human form of God. Prophet Mohammed opposed the idea of a human form of God because Jesus, the immediately preceding Prophet had been brutally crucified by some devotees because Jesus claimed to be the son of God, addressing God as His father. Sometimes, Jesus even entered into the state of 100% monism with God such as when He declared “I am the truth and light”. Prophet Mohammed thought that such violence against Jesus would not have happened, had Jesus stuck to the basic level of claiming to be only a Prophet, servant or a messenger of God. Ego and jealousy are very common, even among mature devotees and these two qualities lead the devotees to oppose and criticise the contemporary Human Incarnation, in particular. By rejecting the very concept that God can have a form, the concept of human incarnation is eliminated from its root.
The concepts preached by divine Incarnations always depend upon the prevailing psychology of the people in their time. Śaṅkara was an Incarnation of God. But, in His time, almost all the people were atheists. If He had said that He alone was God, the atheists would have crucified Him too! The various Incarnations have presented concepts, after modifying them to suit the psychology and preferences of the public around them. They have brought a gradual, step-by-step transformation in the public. When the disciple is standing at the ground-level, the preacher only concentrates on making the disciple climb the first step. The preacher does not even reveal to the disciple that a second step also exists since it hurts the disciple, who is at that lowest level. The idea of these two divine preachers was just to remove the atrocities done by devotees in the name of worshipping some forms of God. In fact, both these divine preachers were Human Incarnations of God, themselves! The concepts of God change from time to time, in view of the psychological condition of people on the earth. The disciple, after climbing up to the first step from the ground-level, will be capable of digesting the fact that the second step also exists.
All this is the story of past. At present, people are well-educated and have matured scientific logic to understand and digest the description of all the hundred steps starting from the ground-level. Hence, Datta Swami has dared to describe even the ultimate step, which is the concept of the unimaginability of God.
Keywords:
| Shri Datta Swami |Why is the concept of the contemporary Human Incarnation of God not accepted by Islam? | Aarya Samaaj Dayaananda
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