| Awaken Bharata |
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| Books By David Frawley |
| VEDIC DHARMA AND THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION | |
| Both
religions regard their scriptures, the Bible and the Koran,
as the Word of God, true for all history. Yet both books, if we
examine them, though inspired to different degrees, are clearly the
word of human beings and contain many human imperfections. The Bible
is mainly the religious record of the Jewish people, reflecting the
different levels and aspects of their interpretation of God, some
very exalted, important historically or beautiful on a literary
level, but the book is hardly relevant to everyone or unique or
final as a statement of religious truth.
The Christians add to this their accounts of the life of Jesus in the New Testament, which clearly date long after his life and are subject to modification. The Koran is more limited, being mainly the record of the inspirations of a single prophet, often based on particular events in Mohammed's personal life that cannot be relevant to everyone. However the main limitation of these two religions is their ignorance of the law of karma and rebirth, which they have rejected historically as a heresy (showing that at least some were inclined to it in the early days of these religions). They allow only one life for the soul followed by an eternal heaven (paradise) or hell, which are commonly regarded as physical worlds, requiring the resurrection of the physical body to achieve. Such reward or punishment for a single life violates the justice of the law of karma and turns God into little better than a tyrant dispensing the most cruel punishments or the most extreme rewards for those who either violate or follow his seemingly arbitrary laws. The idea of an eternal body, especially a physical one, violates the laws of nature in which what is born must die. Such heavens and paradises appear as glorified forms of sensory indulgences, not a transcendence of bodily limitations into a higher consciousness. |
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