Spiritual Forum. Org

Every human being should not declare that it is God

When sages told Rama that He is God, Rama denied it and declared Himself as an ordinary human being. Rama knows that He is God but He denied it since He acted in the role of an ordinary human being to preach the ideal behavior of a human being to humanity. His aim is that every human being should not declare that it is God. But, you may doubt about the philosophy of Shankara, which says that every human being is God. The reason for such concept of Shankara is quite different and should be understood in the context of the necessity to preach atheists in the time of Shankara. When this country was filled with atheists like Buddhists and purvamimamsakas, God came in the form of Shankara to bring them to the right path.

The atheist will never agree to the separate existence of God. But, he will agree to the existence of God if he is said to be God since the denial of existence of God results in the denial of self-existence.

 By this trick, Shankara made them agree the existence of God by declaring that the atheist himself is God. Shankara converted all the atheists into theists by single stroke. The atheists questioned Shankara regarding the absence of characteristics of God like omnipotence, etc. in them, if they were God. Then, Shankara replied that due to strong effect of ignorance (ajnana vikshepa), the achievement is not materialized even though the theoretical ignorance (ajnana avarana) is removed.