Does God incarnate or not?
Q- Does God incarnate or not?
A.- No; because it is said in the Yajur Veda. “He is unborn.” Again “He overspreads all.” He is pure, is never born and never takes on a human form.” It is clear from these quotations that God is never born.
Q. But Krishna says in the Gita, “Whenever there is decay of virtue, I take on a human form.” GITA 4: 7. What is your answer to this?
Being opposed to the Veda, it cannot be held to be an authority. Though it is possible that Krishna, being very virtuous and being extremely anxious to further the cause of righteousness, might have wished that he would like to be born again and again at different times to protect the good and punish the wicked. if such was the case, there is no harm in it; because ‘whatever the good and the great possess – their wealth, their bodies, aye eve their hearts – is at the service of humanity? In spite of all this Krishna could never be God.
Q. Why do people then believe in the twenty-four incarnations of God?
If this be the case, why do people then believe in the twenty-four incarnations of God?
A.- From want of knowledge of the Vedas, from being led astray by the sectarians and being themselves uneducated, people are involved in ignorance and, therefore, no wonder, believe in and say such false things.
Q. How could such wicked men as Raavana and Kansa be destroyed if God did not incarnate?
A- Firstly, whosoever is born, is sure to die. Secondly, what are Kansa and Raavana, when compared with the Almighty God, who without being incarnated has created this world, is sustaining it and can resolve it into its component elements? He being Omnipresent also pervaded the bodies of Kansa and Raavana and could at His will cut their vitals and instantaneously kill them. What shall we then call such a man but a fool who says that the Supreme Spirit possessed of Infinite Power, attributes and activity takes on a human form and becomes subject to births and deaths in order to kill an insignificant creature.
Were anyone to say that God incarnates for the salvation of his devotees, then too it could not be true, for, if the devotees conduct themselves according to the Will of God, He is powerful enough to save them. What! Is the destruction of a Kansa or a Raavana or the lifting of a mountain, such as Govardhan, even more difficult that the creation, sustenance and dissolution of the sun, the moon and the earth and other planets? Whosoever ponders over the great things that God has done in this universe, cannot but come to the conclusion that “There is no one like Him, nor shall ever be.”
Nor can the incarnation of God be demonstrated by reason, just as as the saying of a man, that space entered a womb or was put in a closed hand, can never be true, for space being Infinite and Omnipresent can neither go in, nor come out; similarly, God, being Infinite and All-pervading, it can never be predicated of him that He can go in or come out. Coming and going can be possible only if it be believed that there are places where He is not. Then was not God already present in the womb and was not He already present outside that He is said to have gone into and come out of it? Who but men devoid of intelligence, can believe in and say such things about God? Therefore, it should be understood that Christ and other were also not incarnations of the Deity, fear and grief, births and deaths, they were all men.