A six-party conversation on Concept of God in Hinduism - 3 of 3

[Guest guest]

Namaste

 

(Conversation continued from previous two posts)

 

76. PA: But instead of getting into those technicalities,

let me ask you all: How often have you asked God to provide

guidance in making your decisions? And what has been your

experience?

 

77. DD and OT (together): Almost all the time.

 

78. RNB: Frankly, I don’t remember to have ever asked God

to guide my decisions. And the reason is obvious. It never

struck me. I have no practice of going to God for every one

of my dilemmas. You may call it my ego, if you want to.

 

79. PP: Both of you, RNB on one side and DD and OT on the

other, have a point of view which is acceptable. It is no

use asking a non-beleiver of God whether he invokes God in

his decisions. The question should actually be posed in

another manner. “Have you ever had occasion to feel

helpless in making decisions? And in such times what do you

do?”

 

80. RNB: The answer is the same. Even when I felt helpless,

how would I go to a non-existent God?

 

81. SV: I think we are pursuing matters to a dead end.

 

82. AV: May I be permitted to shock you all at this

moment? The matter whether God exists or not is not

relevant from the absolute point of view. For, our advaita

teachers are very clear on this point. The necessity or

otherwise for a God, the existence or otherwise of a God

with superlative attributes all arise only in the mundane

world which is after all only relatively real. As far as

absolute truth is concerned only non-duality is true:

namely, Truth is One and only One. You may call it God.

But that God is not your God with superlative qualities. It

is Brahman, the unqualified Brahman, to which there can be

no attributes.

 

83. OT: Then why do all the scriptures say that everything

in the universe owe their existence to God?

 

84. AV: They say it in the sense that all the movie

pictures you see on the screen owe their existence to the

screen. If the screen were not there there would be no

pictures. This is the famous ‘anvaya’ logic. But the

screen alone is always there, before the projection of the

pictures on it, during the projection and after the

projection . So the screen is relatively more real than the

pictures on it. It is in this sense that the scriptures

including the Brahma Sutra say that Brahman is the source

of everything.

 

85. SV: That portion of Brahma sutra is usually quoted to

affirm that Brahman is the First Cause and is itself

uncaused.

 

86. OT: In fact almost all scriptures say this. Krishna

says: “aham Adirhi madhyam ca ...” in the tenth chapter of

his Gita.

 

87. SV: Let us look at it in another way. Man is conscious

of his limitations. It means he is capable of imagining or

conceiving the infinite and in comparison he knows he has

limitations that make him lack that infiniteness. It is

that infiniteness he renames as God. It is a vague

consciousness, no doubt. But it is that vague

consciousness, I think, that brings religion as a vital

need of man.

 

88. AV: The advaita teaching goes somewhat like this. It

says that man has to rise from his limitations which are

collectively termed as his avidyA. So long as he is subject

to these limitations or avidya, he cannot dispense with

religion or his belief in God.

 

89. PP: In other words advaita also tells you what to do in

your world of duality.

 

90. OT: Only through the Grace of God does the saving

knowledge of non-duality come to us. We have to resort to

prayer and meditation to make ourselves worthy of God’s

Grace. Adi Shankara emphasizes this in almost all his

devotional poems.

 

91. PP: Much research has been done to establish a strong

connection between prayerful or meditative states and

overall health as confirmed by physiological indicators.

 

92. DD: And that God to whom you do prayers can be your

ishta-devata (favourite deity). I don’t see anything wrong

in it provided it does not carry with it hatred of any

other God, either of Hinduism or of other religions.

 

93. PP: One can have preferences without exclusions.

Hinduism is a graded religious discipline. It takes man

step by step from the worship of the popular gods for

gaining material ends all the way up to the prayer of the

Jiva. This is the prayer which is keen on being led “from

unreality to reality, from darkness to light and from death

to immortality”. One has to observe all forms of worship

and go all the way with religion in order to arrive at a

point beyond religion.

 

94. AV: Reason is strongest when it accepts divine

guidance. This divine guidance does not necessarily have to

come from a personality called God. Whenever we say

‘personality’ we think of it only in human form. We are not

able to think of it as something which makes us think. This

something which makes us think is the consciousness within

us. This consciousness is actually what guides us. That is

divine guidance, not necessarily someone who is sitting

there in the distant heavens and guiding every one of us.

 

95. DD: But then all those descriptions of Kailasa (the

divine abode of Shiva) and Vaikuntha (the divine abode of

Vishnu) must be taken to be mere imaginations. I for one

would not want to accept it. The other schools of

philosophy like Dvaita and Vishishtadvaita have no problems

here, because for them the Ultimate God is personal and his

abode is a real place. How can you say that advaita is the

right view?

 

96. PP: As I have already said, there are levels of

evolution among us all. There are some of us for whom

nothing but the grossest form of a divinity has appeal.

There are others among us for whom the most impersonal

representation of that divinity is the only thing

acceptable. There is no right or wrong here.

 

97. AV: No. It cannot be made that simple. Different

presentations of the all-pervading divinity are true only

in their respective spheres . There is only one reality

from the transcendental point of view. For purposes of

worship various names and forms are superimposed upon it.

Note the word ‘superimposed’. Once this process of giving

a name and form to what in reality is nameless and formless

starts, there is no end to it. We lay down all forms of

worship and compose litanies in praise of Gods. We

undertake pilgrimages to distant places to offer worship to

deities in sacred shrines. All this is quite necessary in

the case of ordinary men who choose to live in a world

which takes multiplicity as real either as truth or as an

unavoidable come-down. The true advaitin belongs to the

latter category. He knows all this is maya but he cannot

but do it. He knows he is sinning against his own

enlightened state in doing all this. Appayya Dikshidar

said: “Oh Lord I have in my weakness committed three sins

and I beg forgiveness from you. To serve as a support for

meditation I have given a form to the Highest who is really

formless; I have tried to define the indefinable by

composing stotras and litanies and lastly I have confined

the omnipresent Lord to particular places of worship and

have journeyed to those places”. This is the attitude of a

true advaitin towards all forms of worship. Whether each

such form or for that matter the formless Ultimate was the

first Cause or not does not make any difference to this

attitude.

 

98. OT: I find it very difficult to accept that all the

myriad deities in the various temples are part of the

passing world of Maya. How come there have been so many

theological discussions and stories about different

manifestations and deities?

 

99. DD: I have always been confused about the relationships

among the different Gods and Goddesses. The deity called

ShAstA is the son of Shiva and Mohini, the feminine

manifestation of Vishnu. So Vishnu is ShAstA’s mother and

Shiva is his father. So what is the relation of Lakshmi,

the wife of Vishnu, to ShAstA? In fact this fact was raised

by the famous Appayya Dikshidar himself, whom you just

quoted.

 

100. PP: Yes, the mythological set-up is certainly

confusing if you take them all at their story-value. For

instance, Shiva and Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning are

brother and sister because they both emanated from the

Supreme Mother Goddess in her Mahalakshmi form. Like that

Vishnu and Parvati are brother and sister. Brahma and

Lakshmi are brother and sister. But Brahma himself emanated

from Lord Vishnu. So Lakshmi is also the mother of Brahma.

Can you take all these things literally in terms of our

worldly language, imagery and relationships?

 

101. AV: The Vedic tradition seems to be contradicting

itself if you look at it as if they were written by

successive generations to elaborate differing theories. At

one place it may say that the universe was created by God

in the way in which a carpenter creates or constructs a

work of art from his mind. At another place the same Vedas

will declare that the entire universe came just out of the

will-power of God. At another place it will raise the

question: ‘Who knows about this creation?’. Such writing if

at all, reflects only a questioning intellectual mind which

tries to present the truth to different levels of

understanding. For the discerning mind the last word is

that of the Upanishads. For example, to the question: Who

is this Self, whom we desire to worship? Is he the Self by

which we hear, see, etc.? Is he the heart and mind by which

we perceive? The answer comes, just to cite one instance,

in Aitareya Upanishad. No, these are only adjuncts of the

Self. The Self itself is Pure Consciousness. He is Brahman,

He is God. He is Creator BrahmA, He is Indra, He is all

Gods. The reality behind all the five elements, all that is

born, everything that breathes, is Brahman, who is pure

Consciousness. All creation and all the universe is

established in Consciousness, they exist only through

Consciousness, they work through Consciousness, their

foundation is Consciousness. Brahman is Consciousness and

Consciousness is Brahman. PrajnAnaM Brahma.

 

102. RNB: What appeals to me in all the scriptures is the

repeated appeals for the purification of our mind. Without

that basic requisite, everything else is only an academic

exercise.

 

 

103. SV: What appeals to me most is the theory of the

Causeless Cause of all causes. A cause and effect

relationship can be entertained only when there is a

feature that can clearly distinguish between the two and

there is no such distinguishing feature in the case of

Brahman. The maxim that says, as in the Mandukya-Karika,

That which does not exist in the beginning and the end is

equally so in the middle present, is the most wonderful

statement that appeals to me.

 

104. PP: What appeals to me most is the universal human

urge to be at all places at the same time, to know

everything and to be always happy. These three urges may be

summarized as ‘to be’, ‘to know’ and ‘to be happy’. They

are actual finite dim reflections of the essential infinite

nature of Brahman, namely, existence, consciousness and

bliss. These basic insitincts of man are also responsible

for producing an innate fear of death, fear of ignorance

and fear of misery.

 

105. OT: What appeals to me most is the fact that this

Ultimate Reality that is Brahman, though incomprehensible

to ordinary men like me, manifests itself as transcending

everything, as immanent in everything and as the supreme

perfection. All our stotras and sahasranamas with which we

propitiate our deities at temples and in homes repeatedly

affirm only this transcendence, immanence and perfection of

the ultimate God.

 

106. DD:The three qualities Transcendence, Immanence and

Perfection appeal to me most.

 

107. AV: What appeals to me most is that these three

qualities Transcendence, Immanence and Perfection

constitute only the TIP of the Iceberg that is God. T for

Transcendence, I for Immanence and P for Perfection. The

Reality is far far beyond the TIP.

 

108. PP: Transcendence points to Sat, Immanence to Chit

and Perfection to Ananda i.e., bliss. So the TIP is what

points to Sat-chid-ananda.

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Concluded.

 

Pranams to all advaitins

profvk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prof. V. Krishnamurthy

 

Ongoing new series of pages on my website: 'Bhagavatam and Advaita Bhakti'

starting with

http://www.geocities.com/profvk/VK2/Bhagavatam_Introduction.html