Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7

GOD dons a human form. But often it is not possible for the common run of men to recognise Him. In good many cases not only do we fail to know or recognise Him but we disbelieve and despise Him. Where has man the vision to see the inner truth?

The human form is a unique thing. We have said that God makes it His own abode. But all kinds of non-divine existences too may appear in it. The Pishacha or Rakshasa or Asura can become manifest in the human form; so may the Gods. In man exist all the worlds and all the elements of these worlds. Therefore any being from any world may possess him and through him can establish and reveal itself. Why are beings of other planes so eager to have the human body? The reason is: this physical, inert world, this earth is, as it were, the centre of the world-play; it is a profound mystery, a unique fulfilment of creation. All beings have an irresistible urge to enjoy happiness in the physical, to lord it over the earth and here in this very form grow up into "His Imperial Majesty". And to fulfil this purpose, to gratify this desire there is no other vessel and instrument more perfect than man. All his limbs, well-formed and well-constituted, can reflect and harbour all the faculties beyond the power of any other being. Is it for this reason that in order to exorcize a man, Christ compelled the evil spirits to get into the animal body – the herd of swine – and put an end to them by getting them drowned in water?

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Creation originated from the urge of a descent – the descent, of the highest, the transcendent, the supreme consciousness on this dense, hard and solid earth of Matter in the form of a mass of atoms. The urge of this downward tendency continues also in the personalities and the beings that have appeared in the different stages of this descent. They or something in them wants to come down to the level of the earth. Again, in the upward movement as well, their urge is to come up to the status of man, or, it may be, ultimately to partake of the fulfilment that is in bloom or will bloom in the physical. However, we shall shortly deal with that mystery.

Now we were referring to the descent of God in human form. Why has God become man? For what purpose? Regarding this we find a fine principle, a subtle truth in the Christian way of spiritual practice. And it can be said even that it is a unique discovery, a speciality of the Christian sadhana. According to the Christian doctrine, God as such has not come down on the earth, but He has sent His own Son in the form of man – even then the Father and the Son are at bottom one: "I and my Father are one." What for? To take up the sins of man – that means man is a store-house of sin. By his own effort, by his spiritual practice to get rid of sin and to attain to the spiritual divine consciousness and life is not possible for him. Therefore, the supremely gracious God has come down in the human form to expiate the sin of man on his behalf and thus make him fit for receiving the Grace of God. This is the reality of what is called vicarious atonement and redemption.

Through the allegory of bread and wine, the Eucharist, it has been indicated that a true disciple of Christ turns his blood into that of Christ and his body into that of the Messiah; he makes the body of Christ a part and parcel of his own. As lime clarifies turbid water, so by drinking the physical consciousness of Christ his follower purifies his own physical consciousness. To confess one's sins is to accept the Cross:

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the tragic end of Christ signifies God's compassion for man, because the crucified Christ is the Life everlasting.

In India God has not been depicted in this way. God himself takes away the burden of sin: "I shall deliver thee from all sips" – this is the message of God in this land. So there is a difference between the two approaches.

That the preceptor takes upon himself the sins of his disciple, that is, his impurities and weaknesses, in order to help the disciple in his self-purification, is well known to us. The reaction that the Guru has to undergo as a result of accepting the impurity of the disciple and the consequences he has to suffer, such as disease, we can know from the example of Sri Ramakrishna. The origin of the malignant disease that had attacked him was the close contact and intimacy with his disciples. Sri Ramakrishna himself has said so. And it is because of the incidence of this disease that the atheist, the wiseacre foolishly say, "God incurs cancer! What a helpless and poor God!"¹

But herein lies the real mystery. God has become man; that means he has assumed the human nature and has accepted the human weakness not only in word or allegorically but in fact, in actual practice. That is why we see this human weakness in Christ on the last day of his life when he asks God to remove the vessel of deadly poison from his lips, so that he may not have to drink of it any more.

God having become a man shows by example how one can rise to a godly or divine nature from a human nature. God reveals this sadhana through his human life. Man knows himself as sinful, afflicted, weak and helpless. To him the spiritual realisation, the divine Life, the divine Consciousness may seem to be futile and hollow dreams, like the castle in the air. These are only luxurious idealisms which are not for all, at least for many. Only a few that are heroic, adventurous and self-confident can afford to spend time and labour in this direction. In order to drive away this error, this false

¹ Compare: "the stupid disown me..." The Gita.

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notion, this familiar and common disbelief, God has wanted to show, by way of a practical demonstration, as it were, how to rise above human weakness. In man, in spite of his numerous weaknesses, there abides a divine Power by virtue of which even the dumb can be endowed with eloquence.

The second mystery is this that not only for the individual but for the collectivity the human form of God has a special significance. God comes down to the lower level. He abides by His own laws to transform them. He destroys whatever has to be destroyed. He purifies whatever has to be purified. He protects and enriches whatever has to be protected and enriched. This is His mission. That means a collision, a definite battle. Consequently the divine Body too has to undergo scars. That is the law of this plane, that is the rule of His game. But it is thus that God clears the road, makes the path easy. On behalf of man God conquers Nature so that it may be easy for man to reconquer it. A question may be raised here: "the conquest of nature or the transformation of nature – cannot God effect it from His own Self or the World-Self? What necessity is there to accept a human form in order to do the work?" First of all, if God were to do everything in a subtle way, then why was the physical created, for what purpose? We have said that this Matter, this world, this very earth, this earthly body itself, are the field for God's lila, the centre and knot of the mystery of the creation. All disembodied powers and personalities want to come down on earth and be embodied in order to have all the privileges of this place. The Asuras want this, the Gods want this, therefore God too has to come down. He has to experience the full expression of body by becoming an embodied being. Secondly, this body has its own purpose and fulfilment. The body has grown out of inconscient Matter, it is born here below to become purified and transformed into the divine substance. Moreover, from some other sphere, from a consciousness transcendent and immanent, to act on the earth or its Matter or on some particular receptacles, means to apply

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an alien force, an attempt to impose a different principle. There is a necessity for this process and the power does act in this way, but something else must accompany this process. On our part that something is more important. It is the body's own conscious will, the self-offering and the self-opening of Matter – not because of an influence, impulsion or pressure from elsewhere; the material body of its own accord, by a demand from within, has to seek the Reality beyond Matter and body. That is why the divine Body shows how even Matter can aspire for spirituality and proves that Matter is not absolutely inert, in it too abides a consciousness and a conscious aspiration.

There is a tradition that if the inhabitants of the other worlds – the Demons, the Giants, the Titans and even the Gods – want liberation or seek to be raised to a higher or to the highest status, then they have to come down to the earth and be born as men. In this human body alone the sadhana for ascension is possible. To use the language of the Puranas, the other worlds are the fields for enjoyment while this earth is the field for work. That means the other worlds are the regions for some definite and fixed qualities. They are typal existences. The inherent quality of any of them does not change. One's own nature or one's own accumulated actions find their manifestation. One spends and enjoys there. But to acquire new merit, to introduce a new trend in one's nature, to turn its course, one will have to accept this human body. For, as we have said at the outset, man is a combination of all the planes of creation. Therefore, the consciousness can go up and come down and can stay on any level. It can be said that in man there is, like his very spine, a stair of consciousness – the Vedic seer has spoken of the possibilities of going up as on a bamboo ladder. But the most secret mystery is this that in man there is that unique part – the divine heart-cave – which is the fount of a new sight and a new creation and which guides and gives sanction for the change and the return, and which is the open and illumined

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gate towards the supreme fulfilment, the highest consciousness, an immortal bridge between this world and the other worlds. All want to possess and enjoy the plenitude of the earth, and want to establish themselves in an embodied existence here on the earth. Men as well as the denizens of the other worlds – all of them are given one more and a greater opportunity. Many of them accept, some consciously, some unconsciously so that they may evolve without remaining confined to their own characteristic qualities for all time, may gain a footing on the ascending levels of consciousness and thus make a constant progress, nirarata (Rig Veda), may accept other qualities and transformation and thereby achieve the higher and the nobler existence. The human receptacle acts as a unique catalytic agent in this chemical progress.

A benediction, a divine Grace reposes on this apparently weak and perishable human body.

God accepts this human body burdened with diseases and afflictions, because there is no other way of accepting the world and humanity. This indeed is the work of God: to accept the creation as it is and to purify and transform it gradually from within. If God comes down to stand before us with an immortal embodied consciousness free from decay and disease, then we shall keep at a distance from Him. We shall not be able to receive Him as our own. How close to Arjuna was Krishna in his human way! All on a sudden one day Arjuna happened to see this mystery through the divinely gifted vision and, being overwhelmed, he exclaimed, "Thou art my father, Thou art my friend, Thou art my Beloved; in what rash vehemence have I not spoken to Thee? What disrespect was not shown by me to Thee at play and in the banquet! O Lord! do forgive those errors of mine." If God brings to life the dead by His mere touch and endows the blind with sight and heals the diseased, then that is a miracle, no doubt, but a greater miracle of His is to accept the troubles of diseases and affliction in spite of being above

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them all in order to make the body free from them and to fill it with immortality.

Matchless is the description of the glory of the human body of God found in the Vaishnava cult of Bengal. Goloka, the abode of the eternal sport of Radha and Krishna, which is far above the world of Brahma, is the supreme truth. And Radha and Krishna are meaningless without their human forms – rather all secrets of the dual personalities consist in the human form. The human form is not just one among the hundreds and thousands of forms in Nature; it is not merely a perishable receptacle manifested in the process of the evolution and confined to time and space. The Vaishnava philosophy teaches us that there is an eternal truth of the human form and it has an intimate connection with the divine Body. To look upon God as a man is not mere anthropomorphism. But in the Vaishnava doctrine prominence, almost an exclusive stress, has been given to the supraphysical conscious form of the body, cinmaya deha. We go further and bring to the fore even this earthly material human body and have faith in its divine fulfilment.

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