Why people love past human incarnation only not present human incarnation?
The direct worship of human incarnation gives satisfaction both to the subject and object. When you offer food to the human form of the Lord, you have the satisfaction of the offering and the Lord has satisfaction of enjoying that food. But when you offer the food to a statue of the past human incarnation you may have the satisfaction of offering the food but the satisfaction of taking the food is not in the statue. The angle of the worship of a statue differs from one devotee to the other. One angle is that you are so much attracted towards the past incarnation so that you want to serve it directly. But unfortunately you missed the opportunity because you are in the present human generation and the Lord is not in the present human generation in the same human form. You like the Lord in that particular dress only. But the dress is now destroyed and cannot be regenerated. Your liking to the Lord in that human form is a combined love on the Lord and that particular dress.
Therefore there is no alternative for you except to worship the statue or photo of the same human form. You are not recognizing the present human incarnation of the same Lord. You may like the present external dress of the Lord but you are not recognizing the internal Lord. Therefore your love on Him is the love on a co-human being only, which is just simply the external dress only. Even if you recognize the present human incarnation, you may like the inner Lord but not the external dress. In such case your love or devotion is not full. But if you analyse carefully, the statue or photo is only a representative of the past external dress of the Lord and not even the direct dress. The Lord is not in the photo or statue (Natasya pratima ? the Veda).
It is not even the exact external dress but your liking to that external dress is so fantastic that you treat the photo of that external dress as exactly the same external dress and also imagine that the Lord is present in this statue or photo. You further imagine that the food offered by you is taken by the Lord. Therefore your worship is just a net of imaginations only because neither the statue is the exact human form of the Lord, nor the Lord is present in the statue and nor the Lord has eaten your food. Therefore if you analyse your devotion, you are just mad of that particular external dress only and not of the internal Lord. This cannot be the real devotion to the Lord. There is another angle of greediness in the worship of statue in the case of some other type of devotees.
You have the love for the Lord, you are not mad of the external dress, you have recognized the Lord in the present human form (dress) and you like to serve the Lord and get His grace. Everything is alright with you. But you are very greedy. You want to get the grace of the Lord, but not even a single morsel of your food offered should be taken by anybody including the Lord other than yourself. You want to eat the entire food but at the same time you want to attain the grace of the Lord like others. Others are fools who offer food to the present human form of the Lord or to devotees in the name of the Lord for attaining the grace of the Lord. You are a genius. Therefore you are attaining the same grace of the Lord without loosing an iota of your food. The worship of statue or photo is the best path for such type of topmost greedy people. They go one step further and declare that they are the absolute God (Aham Brahmasmi).
While eating the food they offer the same to the Lord present inside them. By this the doors of sacrifice are completely closed from all sides. Thus there are these two types of devotees who worship statues and photos. The first type of devotees are ignorant or innocent and are not greedy. But they are mad of a particular external dress of the Lord that was destroyed in the past and worship a statue or photo of the same human form of the Lord imagining it directly as the Lord present in a living body. They treat the past human incarnation as the present human incarnation due to their madness. Their devotion is blind without analysis but they derive the happiness and satisfaction in their hearts which cannot be denied. A mother who is very fond of her dead child becomes mad and treats a photo or a doll as her child and lives with it as if it is alive. She is deriving all the satisfaction and pleasure in her madness. Such devotees are not greedy, they are generous and good but they are simply mad without the analysis of the truth and the divine knowledge.
Hanuman played a role of such mad devotee by not recognizing Lord Krishna. He was thinking of the past Rama only. He did not like the new name ?Krishna? and a new form of the Lord in the next human generation. But finally Hanuman recognized Krishna as the same Lord present in Rama. All these mad devotees should take the concluding part of this story. The story did not simply end with Hanuman not recognizing Krishna and leaving Him in the illusion of Rama only. Had the story ended there, the state of these mad devotees who worship the statues of previous human forms of Lord is really justified. You must recognize the concluding part of the story in which Hanuman left the illusion of the past external dress (Rama) and recognized the same Lord in the present existing dress (Krishna). This does not mean that Hanuman became ignorant and then realized the truth. He just acted in the role of the present mad devotees of statues and showed them the path.
All these mad devotees were present then also in different human bodies with different names. The same history repeats always. It is better to offer the food to the devotees of the Lord than to offer to the statue of previous incarnation of the Lord. The king feels happy if his son is honoured. Similarly a devotee is very dear to God and God feels happy, if His devotee is worshipped. The king will be more pleased with the worship of his son than the worship of his photo or statue.
