In plain words
Do all green birds speak like parrots? Do the grubs crawling over flowers become bees? Does a pig grown as fat as an elephant become an elephant, sir?
No. No. For, jantūnāṃ narajanma durlabham: where must we prove the humanness that is so rare? We must follow Dharma. This Dharma too we must follow as a Dharma joined with compassion. God is not selfish at any time. Selflessness. Selflessness. How can He appear selfless to the selfish? He can reflect back his own feelings. Yad bhāvaṃ tad bhavati. Each goes on imagining according to his own feelings.
That is why the Upaniṣads: 'muṇḍe muṇḍe matirbhinna'; because each head is different, the thoughts too are different. It is not enough for us merely to punish the body. We must punish the mind.
If one beats on the anthill, does the snake die? If one punishes one's own body, do the pleasures of the senses subside? Merely by leaving hunger and thirst, does one become an Ātma-jñānī? If one does not know who one is, how can tattva-Jñāna be attained?
First of all one must know who one is. That is the very first goal in humanness. Who am I? Am I the body? The mind? The Buddhi? The antaḥkaraṇa? No. No. The body is one thing, I am another. The body is not I. The body is a vehicle. It is a garment worn. One cannot call the vehicle oneself. For what we have done we punish the body, but there is no fault in the body. Whatever fault there is lies only in the mind. A man did a thing that should not be done. Knowing it was wrong, it gave the body the sentence of hanging. Did the body do wrong, or the mind? The body did it, urged on by the mind. The mind made it do it. Is the one that made it do it bad, or the one that did it? The one that made it do it is bad. You are not punishing the mind. You are punishing the body. Is this justice by Manu's śāstra? No. No.