By Deepa Majumdar
December, which celebrates not only the end of the Gregorian year, but also the birth anniversaries of two Incarnations of God– Christ and the Holy Mother, Sarada Devi – is unquestionably a holy month. The advent of the Incarnation puts History in a new light. That the Infinite enters the supreme finitude of immanence – implies that the chief purpose of History is karmic. Notwithstanding its innate finitude, History serves as a temporal curtain for the busy thoroughfare of transmigration. It is the stage that witnesses the fruition of our moral actions. Earth therefore becomes our Karma-Bhumi.
The Holy Mother, Sarada Devi, herself an Incarnation, once mused about how difficult it is for an Incarnation to take human birth. Indeed, how the Infinite stoops down to adopt the mantle of finitude, is part of the divine mysteries man cannot solve. Where Christianity accepts mainly the one Incarnation that was Christ, Hinduism subscribes to multiple historical appearances of the one Incarnation– sometimes simultaneous as was the case with Sri Ramakrishna and Holy Mother. In short, God being the lone Absolute Being from a monotheistic standpoint, there can be only one Incarnation of God. Butnothing limits the frequency with which this Incarnation appears in human History. Christianity and Hinduism have come to their respective conclusions about the Incarnation, based on their respective historical experiences – but in the case of western Christianity, perhaps also on dogma. For the notion that Christ is the only Son of God is the construct of theologians, who have not necessarily experienced mystical glory. The veracity of their claim therefore continues to be suspect. Christ Himself never claimed to be the only Son of God. Vedantic Hinduism – in contradistinction with caste Hinduism – claims that the Divine being the substratum of all immanence, cannot help but be “within” each being (not only human beings). We are therefore all not only children of God, but potentially divine. Unlike Christianity, we are not made merelyin the image of God.
Religions therefore differ greatly – not only in their conceptions of the Divine – but on other theological grounds as well. Some of these irreconcilable differences should be treated as genuine distinctions to suit the spiritual needs of different soul-types. This implies a particular theory of religion – one that perceives religions as different windows to the same lone Divinity, which has been defined by both Hindus and western Christians, as Truth per se. How can that which is Truth, generate anything untruthful? Inasmuch as the genuine religions of the world are inspired – sometimes created – directly by Incarnations of God, they cannot be untrue. How then do we reconcile these fundamental differences that arise – partly through the hand of man, partly through the innate theological construct of each religion? Perhaps by acknowledging the notion of partial truths – or the notion that what is fully true within one religion need not be fully true in another. Thus, even western Christianity’s claim – that Christ is the only Son of God – may be the truth for Christians of a certain ilk – nobody else. Nevertheless, despite these fundamental differences, all genuine religions, when practiced with sincerity, should lead to the same destination of the undiluted all-shining Divine. All differences should get reconciled in the mystical experience of direct contact with this Divine.
While religions may quibble over whether there is an Incarnation and how often It (this being the most appropriate gender for the Divine) visits us in the human garb– they may not disagree on the historical impact of the Incarnation – which, like an all-holy tidal wave of pure spirituality, churns the cauldron of History to yield the greatest karmic benefits for humanity as a whole and for individual souls – whether living or dead – redeeming them, setting them free. The Incarnation, I am sure, has a seismic impact on Time, Space, Causality and the Afterlife – affecting nature and all her denizens. The long illumination cast upon History by the advent of Christ has perhaps not yet been properly understood. Nor has the Golden Age recently unleashed by Sri Ramakrishna and the Holy Mother.
A chasmic difference separates the Incarnation from saints. The very advent of the Incarnation is a sign of the limitlessness of divine mercy. Stainless and ever-free, the Incarnation stands in no need of salvation whatsoever. Bereft therefore of all soteriological hunger, yet, She is the only Being who can induce (not just inspire) this deepest, most sacred hunger in all sentient beings. The Incarnation arrives, not only to create religion or cleanse an existing one – but to revive faith, restore hope, and cleanse our hearts. The Incarnation labors harder than all of us – to fulfill the gargantuan task of digesting the sins of humanity, redeeming it, and delivering it from immanence. The Incarnation therefore has a unique body – born of immaculate conception in women of exceptional caliber. The saint, by contrast is a former sinner, who has labored to reach his existential zenith of Self-knowledge, by recovering and reaching his potential and innate divinity. The saint too has unusual parentage – bornof immaculate-enough-conception (not immaculate conception) from lust-free parents. The long beam of pure Light that the Incarnation casts upon History churns the cycles of reincarnation to yield bouquets of pure souls who become saints. Each advent of a saint redeems this world of its burden of sin. Every Incarnation of God therefore ushers galaxies of shining saints and mystics – working through each to cleanse our hearts.
Below the saints of this world are those nuns and monks, who have understood the camouflage of the discursive and leapt beyond the chatter of the intellectual to the silence of the meditating sage. That meditation is a mode of receiving the Incarnation into our hearts and minds – a receptivity that demands prior inner silence – is something that nuns and monks understand as a basic prerequisite to their radical acts of renouncing the world for God.
At the bottom of this celestial ladder, often trailing far behind, we have scholars who labor discursively to understand and explicate the meaning of the Incarnation. Historians, writers, theologians, and philosophers of the finest caliber, labor intellectually to explain and expound on the simple words of Incarnations. Illumined intellectuals who have avoided the abyss of cynicism – but not the abyss of the allure of intellectualism – labor in grandiose prose and the deepest acrobatics of the discursive – to serve as exegetes of the humble words of Incarnations. The chasmic difference between the lexical sophistication and sometimes sophistry of theologically-oriented intellectuals – and the ardent simplicity, poetry, and universality of Incarnations should leave us speechless with wonder.Blinded by the vanity of the world of scholarship, and speaking from the podium of the ego,scholars often speak in torturous prose– while Incarnations speak in simple parables. Yet such scholars are better than others who may be so blinded by their fields of external knowledge that they have grown hardened by cynicism and loss of touch with their inner divinity.The Incarnation therefore not only labors harder than all of us, but inspires whole galaxies of saints, sages, and mystics. The Incarnation also inspires constellations of scholars who trail behind at the end of this august procession.
Through their timeless teachings Incarnations leave a stamp of the eternal upon time, affecting its entire duration. The two Incarnations we celebrate this month are each unique – Christ for His ultimate redemptive sacrifice of Himself upon the cross, and the Holy Mother for being the first female Incarnation of God, who digested the sins of thousands and continues to do so.Notwithstanding their external differences and historical uniqueness, there is a message common to both – namely, the timeless message of forgiveness. Like the Buddha, who taught that only love (not hatred) can quell hatred – so also Christ taught us to love our enemies and turn the other cheek. Not only did He preach thus, but He demonstrated these teachings on the cross, through His all-powerful exemplary meekness before His enemies – thereby verifying this truism – that non-resistance of evil– the only force capable of quelling evil – constitutes the highest of all spiritual powers. Like the Buddha and Christ, the Holy Mother taught us to be blind to faults in others and to be personally flawless. She taught us to serve others ceaselessly and to love the multitude. Saying, perhaps with infinite tenderness, that nobody in this world is a stranger, She taught us to learn to make the whole world our own. Through her own exemplary purity, She constituted the supreme ideal we should aspire towards in our feminisms. Incarnations may therefore repeat old truisms already uttered by a prior Incarnation. But this does not render them obsolete. For what matters more than the words themselves, is the Spirit behind the words – in this case, the grand omnipresence of the Incarnation.
To find revolutionaries to enact revolutions is not difficult. Far harder is the search for Living Ideals to serve as towering goals of revolutions. In this special sense, Incarnations unleash not only galaxies of saints and scholars – but also numberless silent revolutions of the heart and numberless numinous revolutionaries who stamp Time with their indelible mark of Eternity.