Divine Teachers Of The World

By our present constitution we are limited and bound to see God as man. If, for instance, the buffaloes want to worship God, they will, in keeping with their own nature, see Him as a huge buffalo; if a fish wants to worship God, it will have to form an idea of Him as a big fish; and man has to think of Him as a man. And these various conceptions are not due to morbidly active imagination. Man, the buffalo, and the fish, all may be supposed to represent so many different vessels, so to say. All these vessels go to the sea of God to get filled with water, each according to its own shape and capacity; in the man, the water takes the shape of man, in buffalo, the shape of a buffalo and in the fish, the shape of a fish. In each of these vessels there is the same water of the sea of God. When men see Him, they see Him as man, and the animals, if they have any conception of God at all, must see Him as animal, each according to its own ideal. So we cannot help seeing God as man, and therefore, we are bound to worship Him as man. There is no other way.

God understands human failings and becomes man to do good to humanity. "Whenever virtue subsides and wickedness prevails I manifest myself. To establish virtue, to destroy evil, to save the good I come from Yuga (age) to Yuga." "Fools deride Me who have assumed a human form, without knowing My real nature as the Lord of the Universe." Such is Shri Krishna's declaration in the Gita on Incarnation. "When a huge tidal wave come,s" says Bhagavan Shri Ramakrishna, "all the little brooks and ditches become full to the brim without any effort or consciousness on their own part. So, when an Incarnation comes, a tidal wave of spirituality breaks upon the world, and people feel spirituality almost in the air."

[Atmanivedana Page38] (to be continued)