Posted on: 03 Feb 2016
Padanamaskarams Swamiji,
I would like to submit two questions to You.
At Your Divine Feet.
Nikhil
1) Why does God warn Adam and Eve to not eat the fruits of the tree of knowledge of good and evil?
[Detailed Question: The Bible (Genesis 2:16-17) says: And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree in the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
This seems odd. On the contrary, in the Hindu religion, we are told that God created man and He gave the Veda (spiritual knowledge) and the dharma shastras (knowledge of good and evil) to man.]
Shri Swami Replied: If you bring the contents of one of My previous messages, I told that God created human beings in the beginning of the first phase of creation (Kruta Yuga), in which all the human beings were just following the instructions of God like the robots following the programme fed in to the machine heads. In such stage, there is no freedom of soul. All the instructions from God were always exceptionally good and there is no bad information. There is no need of knowing good and bad when the brain is totally surrendered to God (Tameva sharanam gachcha... Gita). Once you have full faith in God, your idea will be that whatever is said by God must be good. You will not verify the word of God through your analysis and examine whether it is good or bad. God takes the total responsibility of soul in such total surrender (Yogakshemam... Gita). This Adam and Eve represent the males and females of the humanity existing in Krutayuga, in which total surrender from one side and total responsibility from the other side exists. They must abide to the word of God whatever it may be. The concept of God here is that a totally surrendered soul need not have the knowledge of good and bad when the soul is simply following the word of God without any trace of freedom. When freedom is given to the soul, then, there is a need of exposure of good and bad through exposure of scripture and the soul has freedom to decide to choose good or bad. When this situation comes, the responsibility of God goes away and this is said by God to them.
The tree of knowledge of good and bad was created by God since the time has come to give freedom to the soul. Adam and Eve violated the word of God based on the freedom of soul only. Change from continuous trend is inevitable in the nature. The change from the trend of continuous total surrender has already come in the minds of the souls and hence God wants to give freedom to the souls to relieve them from the stress of continuous specific trend. It is the will of the divine Father only to give freedom to His children on one side and on the other side is also warning them to be careful about the bad. Giving freedom is inevitable and at the same time, the warning of God withdrawing His responsibility to protect them is also paining the heart of the divine Father. Do not forget that such tension also gives entertainment to God and do not misunderstand God as the unfortunate victim of the tension! Full freedom and total responsibility of protection do not go hand in hand. Since freedom is decided by God, the warning is given so that human beings read the ethical scripture of God and be careful in selecting good. In the stage of freedom, the additional problem is the pollution of scripture and deep analysis is to be done to isolate the word of God from the insertions done by human beings affected by Satan. Adam and Eve were also affected by Satan. Satan appeared as sweet and good like the insertion in the divine scripture. They followed the advice of Satan as the word of God due to incapability in the analysis.
2) Why were some of the greatest devotees and servants of God subjected to extreme torture and public execution? If they suffered for their sins, could their punishment not be postponed indefinitely, as per the ‘Kali Yuga Special Offer’ for followers of the Nivritti path, mentioned by You recently?
[Detailed Question: As it is, it is extremely difficult to digest why Lord Jesus’, the embodiment of mercy and universal love, had to undergo terrible torture and crucifixion. But at least in His case, one can argue that He was an Incarnation of God and He willingly suffered for the sins of His dearest devotees. But what is even more shocking is that all of the twelve Apostles of Jesus, except Judas Iscariot were also tortured in inhuman ways. Ten of them were killed by various brutal means such as crucifixion, beheading, stabbing with a spear, attacking with a sword, throwing off a cliff and bashing the head with a club, and dragging around with horses. John alone escaped death due to a miracle (like Prahlada), but he too had to face a lot of torture. Judas, of course was the first to die. He had already committed suicide in repentance of his betrayal of the Lord. Many more of Lord Jesus’s seventy or so disciples also had to face a torturous death.
Similarly, the Gopikas also met with a tragic end, being captured and raped by barbarians. And we are well aware of Sita’s tragic last days of being abandonment and entering the earth. Perhaps Sita and the Gopikas did not belong to kali yuga, so they had to compulsorily suffer for their sins. But the apostles were certainly in kali yuga. So why was the offer of indefinite postponement of their sins not extended to them?]
Shri Swami Replied: The crucifixion of Jesus was the will of God, which was the divine programme of suffering the sins of the deserving devotees, called as “His people”. This concept is preached to the human beings present in that specific region. This concept is misinterpreted as that God has taken away all the sins of all the people. This is not correct because the word “His people” means the closest devotees of His inner most circle. Jesus Himself mentioned that this is the will of God, which is to be done. He has all the miraculous power to escape from it and He underwent the suffering due to the will of God and this was mentioned by Him in advance. It is not an unnoticed accidental suffering in the case of which the sympathy has genuine place.
Regarding the suffering of the true devotees, the certification of their true devotion should be given by the God, who is the omniscient Judge based on which the applicability of the special offer is also to be decided by the same Judge only. How much we know about those devotees? We cannot observe anybody in every second. Even if we observe, we do not know the internal thoughts. We were given some information about them by some observers and we do not know whether these observers are genuine or not. Even if they are genuine, they did not observe them every second. Even if they observed so, they are incapable of knowing their internal thoughts like us. Hence, we should know the limitation of our capabilities before drawing drastic conclusions. We do not know whether the sufferings were the tests conducted by God in the final stage of Nivrutti. The judgement is done by the omniscient God and the punishment is implemented by the omnipotent God. Even in the case of Sita, the punishments were for the crime done by her in suspecting and abusing Lakshmana, the greatest devotee. Till this sin is exposed by the Lord through Me, recently, everybody misunderstood the Lord for being harsh in sending her to forest while she was pregnant. The analysis of deeds and fruits is very complicated and beyond the scope of limited capabilities of human beings as said by God (Gahanaa karmano gatih— Gita). It is a three dimensional network involving several parameters and several future visions of God. If we recognize one point, that is—God is the Father of the souls, we are only the brothers and sisters of souls and Father has higher love towards the children than brothers and sisters, all our analysis towards God disappears! The divine Father is always more concerned about the souls than us. He will always do the best to the children and shows the maximum consideration evolving the best way to give the highest possible fruit to His child. Fruits given by God are always correct and good even though these fruits sometimes appear as incorrect and bad due to our inefficient analysis of all the factors related to the soul. Our analysis should be only to isolate the false insertions from the scriptures and not to analyze God. Our analysis is only to isolate the word of God from the false words of some wrong human beings. Once we isolate the word of God, our analysis is totally incapable to judge not only His nature but also His actions.