PAST HUMAN INCARNATION

Why people love past human incarnation


only not present human incarnation?

The direct worship of human incarnation gives satisfaction both to

the subject and object. When you offer food to the human form of the

Lord, you have the satisfaction of the offering and the Lord has

satisfaction of enjoying that food. But when you offer the food to a

statue of the past human incarnation you may have the satisfaction of

offering the food but the satisfaction of taking the food is not in the

statue. The angle of the worship of a statue differs from one devotee

to the other. One angle is that you are so much attracted towards the

past incarnation so that you want to serve it directly. But

unfortunately you missed the opportunity because you are in the

present human generation and the Lord is not in the present human

generation in the same human form. You like the Lord in that

particular dress only. But the dress is now destroyed and cannot be

regenerated. Your liking to the Lord in that human form is a combined

love on the Lord and that particular dress.

Therefore there is no alternative for you except to worship the statue

or photo of the same human form. You are not recognizing the

present human incarnation of the same Lord. You may like the

present external dress of the Lord but you are not recognizing the

internal Lord. Therefore your love on Him is the love on a co-human

being only, which is just simply the external dress only. Even if you

recognize the present human incarnation, you may like the inner Lord

but not the external dress. In such case your love or devotion is not

full. But if you analyse carefully, the statue or photo is only a

representative of the past external dress of the Lord and not even the

direct dress. The Lord is not in the photo or statue (Natasya pratima –

the Veda).

It is not even the exact external dress but your liking to that external

dress is so fantastic that you treat the photo of that external dress as

exactly the same external dress and also imagine that the Lord is

present in this statue or photo. You further imagine that the food

offered by you is taken by the Lord. Therefore your worship is just a

net of imaginations only because neither the statue is the exact

human form of the Lord, nor the Lord is present in the statue and nor

the Lord has eaten your food. Therefore if you analyse your devotion,

you are just mad of that particular external dress only and not of the

internal Lord. This cannot be the real devotion to the Lord. There is

another angle of greediness in the worship of statue in the case of

some other type of devotees.

2

You have the love for the Lord, you are not mad of the external dress,

you have recognized the Lord in the present human form (dress) and

you like to serve the Lord and get His grace. Everything is alright with

you. But you are very greedy. You want to get the grace of the Lord,

but not even a single morsel of your food offered should be taken by

anybody including the Lord other than yourself. You want to eat the

entire food but at the same time you want to attain the grace of the

Lord like others. Others are fools who offer food to the present

human form of the Lord or to devotees in the name of the Lord for

attaining the grace of the Lord. You are a genius. Therefore you are

attaining the same grace of the Lord without loosing an iota of your

food. The worship of statue or photo is the best path for such type of

topmost greedy people. They go one step further and declare that

they are the absolute God (Aham Brahmasmi).

While eating the food they offer the same to the Lord present inside

them. By this the doors of sacrifice are completely closed from all

sides. Thus there are these two types of devotees who worship

statues and photos. The first type of devotees are ignorant or

innocent and are not greedy. But they are mad of a particular

external dress of the Lord that was destroyed in the past and worship

a statue or photo of the same human form of the Lord imagining it

directly as the Lord present in a living body. They treat the past

human incarnation as the present human incarnation due to their

madness. Their devotion is blind without analysis but they derive the

happiness and satisfaction in their hearts which cannot be denied. A

mother who is very fond of her dead child becomes mad and treats a

photo or a doll as her child and lives with it as if it is alive. She is

deriving all the satisfaction and pleasure in her madness. Such

devotees are not greedy, they are generous and good but they are

simply mad without the analysis of the truth and the divine

knowledge.

Hanuman played a role of such mad devotee by not recognizing Lord

Krishna. He was thinking of the past Rama only. He did not like the

new name ‘Krishna’ and a new form of the Lord in the next human

generation. But finally Hanuman recognized Krishna as the same

Lord present in Rama. All these mad devotees should take the

concluding part of this story. The story did not simply end with

Hanuman not recognizing Krishna and leaving Him in the illusion of

Rama only. Had the story ended there, the state of these mad

devotees who worship the statues of previous human forms of Lord is

really justified. You must recognize the concluding part of the story in

which Hanuman left the illusion of the past external dress (Rama) and

recognized the same Lord in the present existing dress (Krishna).

3

This does not mean that Hanuman became ignorant and then realized

the truth. He just acted in the role of the present mad devotees of

statues and showed them the path.

All these mad devotees were present then also in different human

bodies with different names. The same history repeats always. It is

better to offer the food to the devotees of the Lord than to offer to the

statue of previous incarnation of the Lord. The king feels happy if his

son is honoured. Similarly a devotee is very dear to God and God

feels happy, if His devotee is worshipped. The king will be more

pleased with the worship of his son than the worship of his photo or

statue.