The real reason for God's descension

The reason for God's descension can only be attributed to His causeless merciful nature. God descends on Earth out of love and compassion for His children.

When God descends on Earth, He takes a name, has a form, spends time with His devotees, visits places, and performs delightful pastimes. However, only a few elevated souls are able to avail the benefit of His divine association during His descension.

Once He departs for His divine abode, His saints tell us all about His glories. Taking the support of these stories, numerous other souls increase their love for God and thus attain Him.

Many saints like Tulsi das, Meera bai, Nanak, Tukaram etc have attained God using these as aides to increase their love for Him.

One might however wonder, how does God leaving behind His name, form, attributes, pastimes, and abodes benefit us the mortal beings?

Good question. Let's examine how

First, if God were not to take a form and descend, we would have no choice but to worship God without a form, which is extremely difficult if not impossible. The path of jnan instructs us to worship formless God. The prerequisite to tread on the path of jnan is to be completely detached from the worldly matters.

So the question arises - what does completely detached mean? How do the people completely detached from the world behave?

The scriptures answer this question by declaring that one must be so detached that even if they were to lose everyone in their family, entire wealth, job and all their belongings, all at the same time they don't even bat an eyelid. They must remain completely unperturbed.

Only then, does a person qualify to tread on the path of gyan. As you can imagine, it is nearly impossible for any jeev, and that too before they start on the path of devotion!

Second, formless God has no name, form, attributes or pastimes. How can a living being with a form focus on the formless God? Lord Krishna says in the Gita 12.5, human beings have a form and hence it is natural for them to love things with a form. So, it is almost impossible for them to love a formless entity like the Impersonal form of God. 

​Third, during his descension, God exhibits His attractive attributes like his graciousness and subservience to his devotees. These divine attributes are so appealing that they captivate the minds of the devotees and give them hope.

For example, when Lord Krishna was just 6 days old, the demoness Pootna attempted to kill Him by feeding him poisoned milk, but considering Pootna to be His mother, Lord Krishna blessed her with a place in His divine abode Golok. Hearing of such extreme graciousness, one gets inspired and motivated, thinking if Pootna could be accepted, then I too have some hope.

So, God descends to bestow His ever-increasing divine love bliss, attaining which is the highest goal of human life. If it was not for God’s descension, how could one know about the personal form of God and how could the vast majority of humans, who do not qualify to follow the path of jnan, cross the ocean of Maya and attain God realization?  

In other words, God-realization appears impossible for an ordinary person. It is only because of His merciful nature, God descends in a human form, behaves like us to uplift us, imparts to us the knowledge that He is formless, yet reveals Himself in countless forms. All His forms are divine, exhibiting ever-new, ever-increasing bliss. He also tells us that constant remembrance of His divine names, pastimes and forms enables one to traverse the ocean of Maya. 

Tulsidas, Soordas, and Meera Bai are all examples of such people who were attracted by the leelas, and qualities of God.

They became deeply devoted to God and spent their lives singing His praises and narrating stories about his pastimes. People continue to use God’s names, form, pastimes, attributes and abodes as aides to realize Him.

So His descension is an act of grace and grace alone. While He is on Earth He does all those things described in the previous 2 articles. But those are secondary reasons. The primary reason is to grace the souls.

What next?

Now the question arises: Shri Krishna descended on Earth 5000 years ago. How did people attain God before His descension? We will explore this in the next edition.