Inquiries Into the Absolute: Digest 103, Identifying the Deity as Bha

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Digest 103, September 15th, 2004

Answers by His Holiness Romapada Swami Maharaja

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Identifying the Deity as Bhagavan

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Q: Kindly inform me on what basis we identify Krishna/Bhagavan Vigraha, which

is sat chit ananda, with deity/archa which is made up of matter. I want to know

the Gaudiya logic and appropriate scriptural backing.

 

Answer: The Personality of Godhead is the source of all energies, both material

and spiritual. Because He is full of inconceivable potencies, God can convert

His different potencies according to His own will, much as an expert

electrician can employ the same electric energy for both heating as well as

cooling purposes. For the Lord there is no difference between material and

spiritual energies; that He can transform His energies as He wills is Srila

Vyasadeva's sublime teaching of shakti-parinamavada. He is the controller of

both energies, and He cannot come under their influence at any time, as we do.

A fundamental and axiomatic principle in spiritual science is that unless one

accepts this inconceivable nature of God's potencies, there is no way of

understanding Him. The conclusion is that Krishna, being omnipotent, can

transform matter into spirit and spirit into matter as He desires, and He can

accept our service through any sort of medium.

 

The Supreme Lord is called 'adhoksaja', which means One Who is beyond the reach

of our mundane, imperfect senses. It is also stated that we can approach the

Lord only by engaging our senses in His service. How are we to serve and learn

to appreciate Him who cannot be perceived? Therefore, out of causeless

compassion for the conditioned souls, Krishna appears in a so-called material

form, just to become visible to and accept His devotees' service.

 

Just as the Supreme Personality of Godhead accepts various incarnations,

similarly He takes on forms made out of clay, wood, metal and jewels, which

according to shastra is known as archa-vigraha. By doing so this does not mean

that His sac-cid-ananda form has been touched by material influence. The

archa-vigraha is not fashioned from an artist's whimsical imagination but is

the eternal form of the Lord, confirming in exacting detail to scriptural

injunctions. The Lord Himself personally descends in the archa-murti at the

request of the acharyas, and invests all His spiritual potencies within the

Deity. Thus the devotees get an opportunity to easily approach Him and serve

Him even with their present material senses, thereby purifying and

spiritualizing their senses.

 

As Krishna explains in Bhagavad-gita, He is not visible to all (BG 7.25), but

reciprocates according to a devotee's degree of surrender to Him (BG 4.11).

Thus, to the degree of one's faith and devotion, one is able to perceive the

presence of the Supreme Lord in His Deity form. There are many historical

instances wherein the Deities have personal exchanges with the worshiper, talk

to them and accept their offerings. But for one who considers Him to be merely

stone or wood, He continues to remains so.

 

Therefore scriptures warn us to carefully avoid such mundane perception of the

archa-vigraha. (Isopanishad Mantras 5,8 purports, Padma purana, quoted in Cc

Madhya 5.95-97, etc)

 

 

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