What Is Our Relation With God from the Points of View of Body, Individual Soul and Soul?

[Q. Can we say that we are servants of God in view of our bodies, we are part of God in view of our individual souls and that we are one and the same with God in view of our souls? (This question is part of a mahā satsaṅga or a great spiritual discussion between Swami and several devotees who had come from various places, seeking the clarification of their doubts.)]

Swami replied:- Such statement was given by Hanuman to Rama (Dehabuddhyaatu daasoham, Jiivabuddhyaa tvadamshakah, Aatma buddhyaa tvamevaaham, iti me nishchitaa matih.). Every soul is not Hanuman. Rama is the human incarnation of God Narayana and Hanuman is the human incarnation of God Sadaa Shiva. Both Narayana and Sadaa Shiva are alternative names of the same God, called Eshvara or Datta. Hence, both Rama and Hanuman are the incarnations of the same God. But, the role of Rama is to act as master and the role of Hanuman is to act as the servant of the master-human incarnation. But, Rama never agreed that He is the incarnation of God because His program is to act like an ideal human being hiding His divinity completely and hence, Rama acted as master to Hanuman only. The role of Rama is a double program, which is to act as an ideal human being to the general human world and simultaneously to act as human incarnation to Hanuman to preach spiritual devotion to human devotees with respect to a genuine human incarnation. The program of Hanuman is to act like an ideal servant of the human incarnation. From the point of the external body (role), Hanuman says that He is the servant of Rama and this represents the philosophy of Madhva. If you take the individual soul of Rama, it is divine on one side (of Narayana) and is Master on the other side of the role and hence, becomes the whole. If we take the individual soul of Hanuman, it is divine on one side (of Sadaa Shiva) and is servant on the other side of the role and hence, becomes the part of the whole. This is an intermediate policy of Ramanuja. If you take the soul of Rama (Narayana) and the soul of Hanuman (Sadaa Shiva), both are one and the same Datta and hence, the monism of Shankara is represented in this inner most level. Of course, the monism between Narayana and Sadaa Shiva is due to the same unimaginable God existing in both angles. In fact, both Narayana and Sadaa Shiva are alternative names of the same single energetic incarnation, called Datta. Datta entered another energetic form, called Brahma, entered another energetic form, called Vishnu and also entered another energetic form, called Shiva. Vishnu and Shiva are also one and the same because the same Datta containing the same unimaginable God exists in both Vishnu and Shiva. Monism results whether you take Narayana and Sadaa Shiva or you take Vishnu and Shiva.

If you take an ordinary human being as a servant of another human being as the master, the same above relationship can be uttered. The inner most soul is one and the same in both. The individual souls influenced by the feelings of Master and Servant attain the whole-part intermediate relationship. The external bodies in the external world show master-servant relationship. In this way, the above relationship of Rama and Hanuman as well as the relationship between a human-master and a human-servant are exactly similar.

But, the relationship between Rama and an ordinary human being can’t have this type of relationship. Hence, an ordinary human being shall not speak about such relationship to a genuine human incarnation. An ordinary human being shall say to Rama “As the inner most soul, as individual soul and as the external body I am your servant only”. You can‘t argue that the relative awareness of the human being-component of Rama and the relative awareness of the ordinary human being are one and the same. Even though this is true in the basic sense, the relative awareness of the human being-component of Rama has become the unimaginable God or absolute awareness since the relative awareness of Datta that has become the absolute awareness (due to merge with unimaginable God) made the relative awareness of human being component of Rama to become absolute awareness. Hence, in every level, difference is clearly maintained.

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