The Supreme One comes to this earth for our sake. One of the major differences between our birth on this earth and the Lord’s avataras is that the latter are never because of His karma. The Vedas celebrate Him as One without birth. A farmer works hard on his field, because he hopes to harvest good crops. God, too, is like a farmer. He, in fact, is the biggest farmer, for He hopes to harvest jivatmas. He wants to bring jivatmas closer to Him. That is why He comes to this earth, explained Akkarakkani Srinidhi in a discourse.
The Lord commands the utmost respect and is well looked after in His Divine Abode. He is seated on the serpent Adi Sesha, and the Sama Veda is recited. Adi Sesha is ready to spit poison on anyone who approaches Him with ill feeling, although no one in Paramapada has ill feelings towards the Lord. Given these ideal conditions in Paramapada, the question again arises as to why He comes to this earth. He is all powerful, and can save us easily, without leaving Paramapada.
He is like an affectionate mother, when it comes to looking after us. If a child falls into a well, will the mother wait for someone to come and rescue her child? Will she not jump into the well herself? Similarly, the Lord is anxious about us, and does not hesitate to come to our rescue.
In every avatara of the Lord, there is a lesson for us. The Narasimha avatara makes it clear to us that He will not tolerate ill treatment of His devotees. Lord Rama lived an exemplary life. In fact, we can learn a lot from the conduct of the other characters in the Ramayana too. Bharata shows the need for implicitly obeying the Lord, for when Rama asks him to go back to Ayodhya, Bharata obeys Rama. The Ramayana shows us the importance of the Lord’s sandals, which Bharata takes back with him. Urmila, the wife of Lakshmana, sends Lakshmana to the forest with Rama, unquestioningly. She was young too, and parting from her husband could not have been easy. She shows us the importance of selflessness. But Valmiki does not write much about Urmila. One may wonder why. Perhaps it was because if he had started to write about her, he would have had to dedicate an entire work to her!
