Shri Datta Swami www.esnips.

com/user/dattaswami

DIFFERENT STAGES IN WORSHIP OF GOD

Vacant Space to Present Human Form

O Learned And Devoted Servants of God,
The atheist says that God does not exist. For him God is nothing
i.e., vacant space. This is the first stage. When he sees miracles he
becomes a believer in God. He accepts God as some power or energy.
The power or energy is also formless, like vacant space. So the concept
of God is very close to his previous concept and thus the atheist
(scientist) accepts the formless (Nirakara) God very easily. The third
stage is God with form (Sakara). In this stage, statues in human form are
introduced. The training is given to do the sixteen upacharas (services)
to these statues in human form. This training indicates that one has to
worship God in human form, in this way. The sixteen upacharas are
actually related to the human form only. For e.g.: the first upachara
‘Aavahanam’ means ‘invitation’ and is relevant to the human being only
and not to an inert statue. Now the statue in the temple is said to be
better than the statue in your house. Why? It is so because life initiation
(Prana Prathishtha) is done for the statue in the temple. This again
indicates that you have to worship the ‘statue with life’. The concept is
that the inert statue plus life is equal to the human being. Therefore
worshipping the statue in the temple indicates that you have to worship
the ‘statue with life’ i.e., the human form of God. Thus you are slowly
trained to worship the human form of God by the sixteen upacharas.
In this training, when your egoism and jealousy are completely
destroyed, the human form of God is introduced. Unless your egoism
and jealousy are completely destroyed you cannot accept the human
form directly. So the worship of the inert statue in human form,
introduces the concept of the human form, and the initiation of life
(Prana Pratishta) introduces the concept of the living human form. Thus,
it is a gradual transformation of you by reducing your egoism and
jealousy. When your egoism and jealousy are completely removed, the
final human form of God is introduced. Only a particular man like Lord
Krishna is God. This is different from the Advaita philosophy, which
extended the concept by claiming that every man is God, due to the
same jealousy and egoism. If every man is God, then nobody would
require salvation!
Shri Datta Swami www.esnips.com/user/dattaswami

Thus when you start from vacant space you first accept God as a
formless energy or power. Then you accept the human form but without
life, which is a statue or idol in your house. In the same stage you accept
the statue plus life in the temple, which only indicates a living human
form. Finally you catch God in the present living human form.
Whatever I have just preached here has the following best
practical proof. Hanuman, the greatest of human beings in this world,
worshipped Rama alone, who was a living human incarnation present in
Hanuman’s time. Hanuman did not go down to the lower levels of
worship i.e.; he never meditated upon the formless God or statues. In the
Valmiki Ramayana such things are not mentioned about Hanuman. He
never even worshipped previous human incarnations like Vamana. He
worshipped only the human incarnation (Rama) present in his
generation.
Similarly, Radha never worshipped Rama but worshipped only
Krishna, who was the human incarnation of her generation. According
to the Bhagavatam, Radha never worshipped statues or the formless
God. Hanuman became Brahma (the creator in the future cycle of
creation) and Radha became the queen of the 15th world called ‘Goloka’
(the highest heaven). Nobody in this world will attain a better position
than these two. So your spiritual journey must end in recognizing the
human incarnation of God present in your generation.
God is impartial and so He comes down in human form in every
generation. If you say that Lord Krishna was the latest incarnation, then
that generation alone was blessed by His presence and then God
becomes partial. Therefore God comes in human form in every human
generation. People do not recognize Him because after the incarnation
of Krishna, egoism and jealousy have been growing continuously in all
human beings. Men did not recognize God when He came in human
form after Krishna. After Krishna and before the final incarnation,
Kalki, is the Dark Age of Materialism (Kali Yuga). Due to the influence
of the Kali, people are full of egoism and jealousy and so they cannot
recognize the human form of God in the Kali Yuga’.
God even comes in different human forms at the same time in
various levels, for the sake of devotees who are in different levels. He
comes as a school teacher for the school students (devotees who are at a
low level of spiritual evolution, comparable to the school level in
education), as a lecturer for the college students and as a professor for
Shri Datta Swami www.esnips.com/user/dattaswami

the post graduate students. Since the school students and college
students are large in number he comes down as a number of school
teachers and college lecturers. Such incarnations are called as Amsha
Avataras, which mean the incarnations of a small portion of His power.
The incarnation of His radiation is called as Kala Avatara which is the
formless God like light worshipped by some believers. Light travels as
waves and the Shiva Linga in the temple represents this formless God.
Since the post graduate students are less in number, only one professor
is needed. God comes down in the highest form as the ‘Pari Poorna
Tama Avatara’ i.e., the most complete incarnation which reveals the
final true knowledge. He is called the Sadguru (Sat-Guru) or the original
Datta in the human form.
Datta exists in two forms:
1) The three headed form—Trimukha Datta.
2) One headed form—Eka Mukha Datta.
The three headed form indicates Parabrahma (God), who creates,
rules and destroys the universe by His three faces respectively. The
other single-headed form is the external human form, in which the three-
headed form exists as the internal form, but is not seen externally. This
is the essence of the Eka Mukha Datta and Trimukha Datta. The school
teacher shows miracles and converts the atheist into theist. The college
lecturer trains the theists in the worship of statues having human form to
remove their ego and jealousy and make them devotees. Lastly, the
university professor gives the final true knowledge that God comes
down in human form alone and that He (the professor) Himself is God.
Divine Knowledge
[Mr Anil Antony asked Swami “What is divine knowledge?”]
Swami replied: The Knowledge given by the Lord in human form
like the Bible, Gita etc is divine knowledge. If the concept of human
incarnation is realized, the divine knowledge is recognized. If people
can believe in Krishna, Jesus etc as the Lord in human form, the Gita,
Bible etc are recognized as the divine knowledge. But the problem is
that there are several interpretations of such divine scriptures. These
interpretations are contradicting each other. These interpretations are
given by different human beings and no human being can decide the
correct interpretation. You yourself cannot decide the correct
interpretation because you are also a human being. Therefore the
Shri Datta Swami www.esnips.com/user/dattaswami

original author of that sacred scripture alone can convince you with the
correct interpretation. Such correct interpretation is called as the real
divine knowledge. For this you have to recognize the human form of the
Lord present in your generation. The identity of such recognition is
revealed to your inner self, which gets convinced by such real
interpretation. The identification must be aided by your careful and
patient analytical faculty of the intelligence called as buddhi. Even an
illiterate person has this inner self and the analytical faculty even in the
absence of language.