Devotion and Grace
A lot of confusion (Call it Western thinking) surrounds the Hindu Faith and it's many colorful Gods. The simple truth is this: Hinduism teaches the spiritual aspirant how to fill themselves with love for God and eventually leads them to what is called God Realization. The final period in a Humans life, where he experiences God, attains complete and perfect peace, joy and humility. These rare qualities that only great Saints, Sages, and Yogi's achieve.
The truth of the Human Soul is revealed and explained in all of our great scriptures. Due to lack of knowledge, many people believe that Hindu's worship many different Gods. This is very untrue, There is only ONE God in the Hindu tradition. However, God takes many different forms dependant on the situation, circumstance, and action that He is carrying out. A wonderful way to understand God's limitless form is this: A man is a courtroom judge and wears his respected robes and carrys out his job in court with precise detail, and all those in his presence treat him with great respect and fear. Then the man goes home, puts on sweat pants, t-shirt and slumps down to watch TV. His 5 year old son runs in, and they laugh and play, and wrestle and are very relaxed, informal, and joyfull. The man is still the same, yet his appearce, and personality are quite different. God himself is diverse in this way too. Therefore the many God's in the Hindu religion are actually the same God, just expressed and presented differently, depending on what role and action God may be taking in that particular scripture or story.
To understand God is to understand that God has a personal form, like a human. In the Christian Bible, Genesis 1:27 it says "So God created humankind in His own Image, in the image of God He created them, both male and female." This is the same Divine truth taught by the ancient scriptures of India and therefore the Great Saints and Divine teachers have taught the true form of God from the beginning of time.
The Human soul is also a Divine power and that is why all souls (animals, plants, humans...) are unique and share their own personal & individual differences. The "person" is not the body, but the soul. The body in which our soul is born in is received on a progressive, deserving nature. Our actions and thoughts (Karma) of each life, determins our next body and state of that body, in our next life. Our souls are Divine essences, drops of life from the great Divine Power, which came from God himself, so therefore our souls are eternal, indestructable, and Divine in Nature.
So what is our souls relationship to God? Since our soul is Divine and of God, it's natural desire is to unite with God. Why? Because the Soul knows the truth of the Divine Blissfull experience that God's love gives. God, who is Complete happiness, peace, joy, love, fullfillment, and satisfaction. Humans continue to accumulate material things within their many lifetimes. Searching for instant happiness, constantly wanting more and more to keep themselves happy. We all know the feeling, we buy something we really want and soon we loose interest and want something else. This is all caused by the fact that our Soul desires that which is Divine (perfect), yet everything within our material world is less than Divine and can never fullfill us. So due to our Souls Divine Nature to find God we simple keep looking within the physical world. Yet, over countless lifetimes of sense gratification, physical persuits, and bad actions we loose site of the true nature and slowly slide down the spiritual hill. Moving farther and farther from the truth.
All things within this world come from God, they were created out of his love. However, since our mind's associated these things as being seperate from God, they become a blockage and a mind poision. All true Godley people who reach the point of not being attached to physical objects, realize and see God's divine presence within all things. This transcendental vision and God (omnipresent) Realization cleanses the human soul and makes all things Holy. Therefore it's not that the world is bad, but our improper association causes us our greatest suffering. Only when the soul is willing to renounce the the small meaningless physical pleasures of the Earth and absorb their minds and hearts in loving devotion to God, can they finally then see God within all things, ever present in every moment.
This brings us to reincarnation. Because of the brief teachings from the Bible, many people believe that one life time of perhaps 60 years can get you to heaven. Which is true, Jesus taught that the road to salvation could be achieved now. All great saints have also taught that one can reach God realization at any time, in any lifetime. However, the number of lifetimes we have to live to find that salvation, to take that ultimate step, is unknown. How can we honestly believe that we can dwell in eternal bliss with God, without having the full infatuational love and devotion for Him that our Great Saints reveal.
No the truth is that ALL souls must come to God. It is Divine nature, that all things will return to God in time because God is not bound by time, nor are the souls in which He loves. However, since our souls journey is on this physical planet, in these human bodies, we have countless lifetimes to attone for our sins, purge ourselves of improper thinking, achieve the statues of a great mystic, sage, devotee and eventually come to God in our own time and by our own devotional will.
Hell is life on this earth. Suffering comes everyday as we work our fingers to the bone, as we watch our loved ones die, as we constantly strive to eat, have shelter, find love, stay warm, stay cool, fight painfull and horrible diseases, and ultimately experience our own physical death, again and again and again, lifetime after lifetime. We watch as children are beaten, raped and molested, people die in the street from hunger. Entire races of people are slaughtered and tortured. Ofcourse this life is Hell and somewhere back in our lifetimes we have experienced terrible experiences such as these. However, our soul is eternal and will without conscious thought or choice, again be born into the world to achieve that unknown desire, to find eternal bliss, to complete the Divine Nature of the Soul. To reach enlightenment, discover God, devote ones physical, mental, and spiritual life to Godhead Realization, and ultimately join God in His heavenly abode.
It would seem that very few could reach this point in life. As we look around and notice the rat race we are all tangled up in, the billions of humans that are suffering and so far from the Path to God. However, at any time on this earth there are thousands upon thousands of spiritual leaders, private religious devotees, Rasik Saints, Sages, Mystics, Yogi's, and Devoted Religious people, who are all on the brink of reaching God Realization. So it does happen, year after year. We all can change now, we all can achieve this peace, And it is the Science of Devotion taught in the Vedic scriptures that teaches us in a simple, loving, and fantastic way how to achieve this. That is what the Hindu Religion is.
