RELIGION AND RATIONALITY

[sridatta]

[A person claiming to be a true Christian said that he does not believe in human rationality and the introduction of God through the human body].

Let us begin by asking what is meant by denying human rationality? Does it mean:

Whatever the human being says, rational (reasonable) or irrational (reasonless), should not be accepted?
Or whatever is reasonably said by the human being should not be accepted? [Implying that only that which is irrational and said by a human being should be accepted].

If you take the first case, since you are a human being, whatever you say should not be accepted, whether what you say is reasonable or unreasonable. If it is the second case, you would be accepted only if whatever, you said were reasonless. In that case you should be a mad person because only mad people speak reasonless statements. If you say that you are not a mad person, then you should have spoken reasonably, in which case you should not be accepted, since, the reasonable saying of the human being should not be accepted according to the second version.

You say that God should not be introduced into a human being [God entering a human body; incarnation]. Then you are not a true Christian because Christians believe that God is introduced into the human being just like the blood of a father is introduced into the son. A Christian believes that Jesus is the Son of God (Father).

If you say that Jesus is only a messenger of God and not the Son of God, then you are not a Christian and you belong to Islam. Islam says that a messenger is not the Son of God but he is only a servant of God. At this point alone, Christianity separated from Islam. Originally both Islam and Christianity were one religion. Islam treats Jesus as a messenger like Mohammed. Christianity is different from Islam because they treat Jesus to be closely related to God like a son to his father. In fact Christians of a higher order believe that Jesus is directly God because Jesus said the same “Me and My Father are one and the same”. This clearly proves that God and the human incarnation are one and the same. Therefore, being a true Christian, you should accept that God enters the human being or even temporarily becomes the human being. In both the cases, God either enters or pervades all over the human being. In the case of a human incarnation, if you deny both these possibilities, then your Christianity becomes Islam and you are not at all a Christian because you are denying the very fundamental concept of Christianity.

Three views of human incarnation

In Hinduism all the three concepts are present:

Advaita (monism) of Shankara says that the Lord and the human being become one and the same in the case of human incarnation. The example is Rama. In this case God pervaded all over the human body of Rama.

Visishta Advaita (qualified monism) of Ramanuja says that the Lord is present in the heart of the human being as in the case of a [partial] human incarnation, such as Hanuman, who tore His heart and showed Rama in it.

Dwaita (dualism) of Madhvacharya says that the Lord is separate in heaven and sends His servant to this earth as a messenger. For example, Balarama is an incarnation of Adishesha, who is the servant of Lord Vishnu in heaven.

Thus, Hinduism contains all the three concepts. The first two concepts are called Christianity and the third concept is called Islam. The Mahayana branch of Buddhism worships Buddha in the form of statutes as God or as a devotee in whose heart God is present. In fact according to Hinduism Buddha is directly the Lord since He is treated as one of the ten human incarnations of the Lord. Just like Christianity arose from Islam, Buddhism arose from Hinduism. The Heenayana branch of Buddhism treats Buddha as a preacher of divine knowledge and treats Him as an ordinary human being. This concept is the concept of Islam or the concept of Madhvacharya in Hinduism. Thus, Hinduism is a mini model of all the world religions. Science represents atheism. Even this atheism is represented in Hinduism by the sect of Charvaka (Nastika Matam). All the sects of Hinduism are like the religions in the world. Whatever is there in the world is present in Hinduism. Universal Spirituality brings the unity of all religions in the world and thus it brings unity in all the sects in Hinduism too.

Necessity of reason

Rationality is the essence of science. The scientist will laugh if you speak anything irrational (reasonless). Even in the small matters of this world, we analyze with reason and logic before we follow it and we say that we should not be emotional in taking any decision. Then think how logical we should be in such a great spiritual effort, if you want to attain real success? In Christianity, Jesus is called as Emmanuel, which means the God who has come down from heaven to live with us. Only a human form can live with us and guide us by His knowledge. The Jewish priests at that time also did not believe in Jesus as God or the Son of God or even as a messenger of God. They did not like God to be introduced in a human being as you say now. They believed only in the dead messengers of the past and not in Jesus, who was the living messenger. The same logic applies today as well. You believe in the messenger who does not exist now. You do not believe in the messenger who exists before your eyes, now.

Jesus said that He will come again. It means that the human incarnation will come again and the same story repeats. The same Jesus is present today and the same people who were blind with egoism and jealousy are again present today. Therefore, I say, history repeats itself. As Jesus was insulted then, egoistic and jealous people will insult Jesus today as well. Jesus will come in every human generation to give His direct contact to the devotees. Otherwise, Lord Jesus becomes partial, because He gave direct contact to only one generation and not to other generations. He clarified the doubts of only one generation through His direct voice while in other human generations, He allows the immature human devotees to answer the doubts of other devotees. He provided the fortune of touching His feet to only one generation and other generations are deprived of that fortune. This makes Jesus totally partial and you say that God is impartial. All the religions also say the same. How can you justify this important statement that God is impartial?

Therefore, we have accepted that God comes in human form like Jesus in every human generation. In order to avoid answering this question, you are saying that reason should be avoided. When reasoning is discarded, you need not answer any question. Whatever you say that alone must be taken to be the truth. You are rigid without any logic and this is blind conservatism. This cancer is present in every religion and humanity is always is divided by this cancer. You are opposing the unity of humanity and want to disturb world peace. God will not tolerate you, and you will be thrown into permanent hell for misleading ignorant people.

Jesus used reason

If you read the Bible, Jesus gives reason everywhere in His concepts. For every statement He gives the reason. When the priests told Him that He should not have saved the animal, which had fallen in a pit on the festival day, He gave the reason for His effort to save that animal. He analyzed the Old Testament and gave logical interpretations. He did not mind cutting some irrational blind statements present in the Old Testament, by giving rational modifications. He fulfilled His duty as the true guide of humanity. Whenever He leaves the world, these rigid people twist and pollute the meanings of the scriptures. To rectify this, He comes again and again. When the teacher leaves for a few minutes the class becomes indisciplined. The teacher comes to the class again and again.

For teaching, the human form is essential. A statue can not teach you. If you think of Him as formless, He cannot speak to you from the sky or space or air. The human body is the most convenient medium for human beings to hear the preaching of God. The main goal of God is to preach to human beings, correct them and put them on the right spiritual path. For beginners, He does some miracles as signs for His presence in the human body. The realized souls will detect Him even without those signs. Sharp sheep see the shepherd and come near him by recognizing him with their eyes. Some duller sheep come near him by hearing his voice, which is like a miracle. The dullest sheep try to go away and are punished by the stick of shepherd, which is nothing but permanent hell.

Therefore, if you keep Jesus in the place of the present human incarnation and place the same blind priests in the place of present blind followers, you can understand the truth because the same story and the same cinema is repeated with different actors having different names. This is the best way of understanding the truth. Those priests also opposed Jesus, when He argued with wonderful reasoning. The duty of the teacher finishes by teaching clearly to the class. It is up to the student to grasp it and pass or twist it and fail, following the sweet emotional advice of bad blind friends. The Lord is not worried about the percentage of students passing because there is no fault in His teaching. He should not be blamed for the passing or failure of the students. The student himself is to be blamed. When the messenger comes to the earth, he delivers his duty so that God is pleased with him in the upper world. He is not bothered about getting fame in this world or the number of followers. God will not find fault with the messenger if the human beings do not pass. He finds fault with the messenger if the message is not properly delivered. Jesus never bothered about the propagation of His knowledge. His aim was only to sit on the right side of His pleased Father after doing the duty assigned by Him. He never cared even if people rejected, insulted and even crucified Him. His aim was God and not the world.

How to Worship Jesus?

For ignorant people, the personality of Jesus is a human being crying on the cross and shedding blood. This personality will kindle the heart of any human being. Initially this will be the attraction for the beginners. But if you stick to this personality only, that body has gone once and for all. Now you can only worship an imaginary statute of His form on the cross. That same human body will never appear again in the physical level. For such ignorant people, Jesus will never come again because the same physical body will never appear again. Only an energetic form can appear to the eyes for a few moments. Even if you say that you have seen the same physical body now, you still cannot show it to others. When Jesus was alive, if someone said, “He is the Jesus”, every visitor could see Him with his eyes. Now that same situation is not there.

The real inner personality of Jesus is His divine knowledge, which is the Holy Bible. That divine knowledge is the inseparable characteristic of the inner unimaginable God. Then that inner God comes in another human body. This divine knowledge appears again, as it is the inseparable sign of the God. Jesus is this inner personality for the realized scholars.

Similarly the beautiful Krishna with a flute attracts the beginners but His inner personality is His divine knowledge, which is the Bhagavad Gita. When Jesus said that He will come again and Krishna said that He will come again and again whenever there is a necessity, it refers to the inner personality. The unimaginable God along with His inseparable sign, which is the divine knowledge, is coming again and again. This interpretation is reasonable. The inner God by Himself is unimaginable and beyond reason. When this inner God wants to give His experience to human beings, He cannot follow irrational or unimaginable ways, in which case, He can not be experienced. The purpose fails. Therefore, the unimaginable God adopts rational procedures and enters a rational medium to give His experience to human beings. God is unimaginable but His experience should be imaginable. For this purpose He enters the reasonable medium i.e., human body that can be seen and touched.

Only the human body can live with us (Emmanuel) and we can clarify our doubts only with the human body. You blame Me that I am introducing God into the human body, but what have you done? You have blended God with the human body of Jesus and say that only Jesus is God. You say that Jesus became alive again since the dead body disappeared. I agree. He might have controlled His life for some more time. But it is against the rules of nature and science, if you say that the same physical body is alive even today. It is completely irrational unless you can show the physical body of Jesus even to a non-believer. Now to avoid My argument you say that rationality must be rejected. I apply the same argument even to the body of Krishna. It was cremated by Arjuna and the body cannot return back. Of course the Lord can use His special power to make it permanently alive. But that will violate the rules of His own administration. All the rules in the creation are His rules alone. No sensible administrator will violate his own rules, when an alternative is possible. The alternative is to come again in another human body.

The body is like a shirt as told in the Gita. The person is not the shirt and the shirt is not the person. The Gita says that God is not modified into the human body (Avyaktam Vyakti Mapannam…). The person did not become the shirt but He wears the shirt as said in the Gita (Manusheem Tanum…). The Lord wears the human body and does not become the human body. If you touch the shirt present on His body you are getting the experience of the inner body. Similarly the inner God gives His experience through the external body. You are blaming Me for introducing God into human body but you have made God turn into the human body itself. You have made another mistake by saying that God is only that particular human body, called as Jesus. It is a mistake because in such a case when the human body is destroyed, God is not destroyed. When the shirt is torn into pieces the person is not cut. Recognition of this inner personality in all the shirts of various religions, which are various human incarnations, is Universal Spirituality.

The House of Universal Spirituality

You may change any religion but you are in the house of Universal Spirituality. You have gone from one room to another room of the same house. If you go out of the house, then you have become an atheist and then only your case is miserable. As long as you remain a theist, you are in our house alone. In whatever room you may be, My advice to you is that you should recognize the same air, the same space and the same light present in every room. Also, all the walls and roof of every room are made of the same material. In whatever room you may be present you must realize the truth and awaken with divine knowledge; do not sleep with ignorance. The sleep and awakening are also common in every room. Every religion contains both the ignorance (sleep) and the divine knowledge (awakening). Every religion contains the same human incarnation having the same external physical body and the same internal unimaginable God. Change from the ignorance to awakening in whatever room you may be present. You are not Jesus, who is the judge and whose statement should be taken without any logic. Both of us are devotees of Jesus and the statements of both of us cannot be the judgments. We have to argue like advocates in the court, to find out the true version of the statement of Jesus. No human being has the right to reject logic in finding out the truth. The judge can say “No arguments. Here is my judgment”. But the advocate cannot say this to another advocate. When the truth is found out by the mutual arguments of both the advocates, both are benefited because the truth is now known to both.

The Search for the Truth

Therefore, you should take My knowledge in the search of the truth and should not take it as personal defeat or personal success. We both are colleagues having a common aim, which is finding out the truth. Without a medium no fruit can be achieved. Without the wire, you can not move the fan with the help of the electrons (electricity) flowing in the atmosphere. Even for an abstract thing, a physical medium of expression is needed. When you love somebody, you give a gift to him. The gift is the physical medium through which the abstract love is experienced. Abstract means that which imaginable but unseen. God is unimaginable and also unseen. Therefore, the physical medium is very essential for experiencing God. Even if you treat the messenger as an ordinary human being, he brought the message to you from God and He is the only person who can take your prayer to God.

The sun is in the sky and the lens is on the earth. The power of sun enters the lens. Both the sun and the illuminated lens are the sources of the solar energy. Both can be treated as one and the same. If you insult a policeman, the I.G. [Inspector General] feels insulted. Thus, God identifies Himself with the servant. Adishesha was the servant of Lord Vishnu and came as the human incarnation called as Balarama. Balarama is considered as one of the ten incarnations of the Lord. When the divine power (Holy Spirit) dawned on Jesus, He became God throughout His life. By this, God pervaded all over the body of the Jesus. God lived in His body and so He said that He and His Father were one and the same. When the body was ready for destruction on the cross, God left that human body and so He cried “O Lord, why did you leave Me?” Therefore, the eternal God leaves one human incarnation and enters another human body for the next generation. Without the physical medium, one cannot directly approach the unimaginable God and so He said “One can approach My Father through Me only”. Here the word Me means the human body of the incarnation and not only that particular human body. If God is only that particular body, then that body which was God, got crucified and so God was destroyed then itself. Then “Jesus will come again” would become false. Here the word Jesus indicates the internal eternal God, who was experienced through the body of Jesus. If you have blind faith and follow someone, who exploits you by kindling your ignorance and emotion, one day or another, your inner consciousness will repel and rebel. Jesus never said “Follow Me blindly. Ask Me no reason”. The priests said like that, and the blind people followed them and discarded Lord Jesus. But the preaching of Lord Jesus convinced a few people. They always addressed Him as preacher. A preacher will always teach the subject with logic and analysis. Only a military officer will say “No arguments; just follow orders”. God is fully capable of preaching to you through logic and analysis with fine reasoning. What is the necessity for Him to stoop down to the level of a layman or a madman to avoid reasoning?

Logic and faith

In catching the Lord, you must analyze thoroughly. Otherwise there is a danger of catching a false blind preacher. Once you are sure of the Lord, your faith should start, which should be above analysis and logic. The reason is that He is above logic. But to filter out the fraud preachers, analysis is essential. Your faith should not contain logic, but it should stand on the base firm logic. You must achieve the faith through logic and stop the logic after attaining faith. The human incarnation is never accepted in the past, present and future because the egoism and jealousy of human beings are never crucified. When God is fully revealed in the human incarnation, people reject Him due to egoism and jealousy. If God is completely hidden in the human incarnation, then also they will reject Him with negligence by treating Him as an ordinary human being.

Therefore, the human incarnation should neither express God fully nor should He hide the God in Him completely. He should express God only to the extent that can remove the negligence of people but should hide God to the extent, that it does not raise egoism and jealousy in the hearts of the devotees. The behavior of the human incarnation is thus a perfect balance of these two points. The human incarnation Himself is a balanced mixture of the unimaginable God and the physically perceivable human body. The unimaginability or inexplicability of God, called as Brahman, Jehovah or Allah, is expressed through the silence of Buddha. Buddha kept silent about God to indicate that God is beyond words and imagination. Some followers immediately misunderstood Buddha as an atheist and the most pitiable point is that He Himself was one of the ten incarnations of the Lord. You can neither reach God directly due to His unimaginable nature, nor can you recognize Him when He comes to you in human form due to your negligence. The final result is only a total loss in any case. I pity this unfortunate humanity in this ultimate spiritual point. This makes the souls rotate in the cycle of creation continuously for the eternal entertainment of the Lord and perhaps that is the intrinsic wish of the Lord!