A most priceless of knowledge: Brahman - the Highest God of Hinduism

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>

> I. Brahman : Brahman is the very space and the entire universe,

> with billions of galaxies and interstellar spaces and much more

> than that. The idea of Brahman probably entered the consciousness

> of ancient Hindu seers as they contemplated upon the vast

> expansive sky and the star studded mysterious night skies. The

> Upanishads present a grand view of this Absolute and highest god

> of Hinduism. Read the greatness and significance of Brahman from

> this article.

>

> http://www.hinduwebsite.com/brahman.asp

>

 

Brahman - the Highest God of Hinduism

 

Brahman is the central theme of almost all the Upanishads. Brahman

is the indescribable, inexhaustible, omniscient, omnipresent,

original, first, eternal and absolute principle who is without a

beginning, without an end , who is hidden in all and who is the

cause, source, material and effect of all creation known, unknown

and yet to happen in the entire universe.

 

He is the incomprehensible, unapproachable radiant being whom the

ordinary senses and ordinary intellect cannot fathom grasp or able

to describe even with partial success. He is the mysterious Being

totally out of the reach of all sensory activity, rationale effort

and mere intellectual, decorative and pompous endeavor.

 

The Upanishads describe Him as the One and indivisible, eternal

universal self, who is present in all and in whom all are present.

Generally unknown and mysterious to the ordinary masses, Brahman of

the Upanishads remained mostly confined to the meditative minds of

the ancient seers who considered Him to be too sacred and esoteric

to be brought out and dissected amidst public glare.

 

Though impassioned and above the ordinary feelings of the mind, the

masters of the Upanishads some times could not suppress the glory,

the emotion, the passion and the poetry that accompanied the vast

and utterly delightful , inner experience of His vast vision. In the

Mundaka Upanishad the mind explodes to reverberate with this verse, "

Imperishable is the Lord of love, as from a blazing fire thousands

of sparks leap forth, so millions of beings arise from Him and

return to Him. " Again in the Katha Upanishad we come across a very

poetic and emphatic expression, " In His robe are woven heaven and

earth, mind and body...He is the bridge from death to deathless

life. "

 

The Brahman of the Upanishads is not meant for the ordinary or the

ignorant souls, who are accustomed to seek spiritual solace through

ritualistic practices and rationalization of knowledge. Discipline,

determination, guidance form a self-realized soul, purity of mind,

mastery of the senses, self-control and desireless actions are some

of the pre-requisites needed to achieve even a semblance of success

on this path. Only the strong of the heart and pure of the mind can

think of dislodging layer after layer of illusion and ignorance that

surrounds him and see the golden light of Truth beckoning from

beyond.

 

He is not like the other gods either. He is incomprehensible even to

almost all the gods. And He chooses not to be worshipped in the

temples and other places of worship but in one's heart and mind as

the indweller of the material body and master of the senses, the

charioteer. He is too remote and incomprehensible to be revered and

approached with personal supplications although He is the deepest

and the highest vision mankind could ever conceive of or attain.

 

The weak and the timid stand no chance to approach Him even

remotely, except through some circuitous route. For the

materialistic and the otherworldly who excel in the art of

converting everything and anything into a source of personal gain,

He does not offer any attraction, solace or security as a personal

God.

 

That is why we do not see any temples or forms of ritualistic

worship existing for Brahman either at present or in the past. We

only hear of fire sacrifice, later to be called Nachiketa fire, to

attain Him, which was taught to the young Nachiketa by Lord of

Death, but lost in the course of time to us. Perhaps the sacrifice

was more a meditative or spiritual practice involving the sacrifice

of soul consciousness than a ritual worship.

 

Whatever it is, the fact is that Brahman of the Upanishads is more

appealing to the seekers of Truth and Knowledge than seekers of

material gains. Even during the Islamic rule when the principles of

monotheism challenged the very foundations of Hinduism , Brahman was

never brought into the glare of public debate to challenge the

invading and overwhelming ideas of the monotheistic foreign theology.

 

And even during the period of the Bhakti movement , when the path of

devotion assumed unparalleled importance in the medieval Hindu

society, Brahman was somehow not made the center of direct worship

in the form of Brahman as such. He became the personal God with a

name and form, but as Brahman remained out side the preview of the

Bhakti movement.

 

Perhaps the exclusion was so evident and seemingly so intentional

that even Lord Brahma, the first among the Trinity and the first

among the created, was also simultaneously excluded from the

ritualistic worship, probably for the similarity in names. Very few

temples exist for this god even today in India, probably as He is

seen more as a source of intelligence and creativity than of

material wealth.

 

Some Upanishads do describe Brahman as the Lord of Love. It is a

description born out of pure personal experience of a seeker of

truth, not from a devotee's imaginative and self-induced emotional

energy. The description and approach, therefore, is more

philosophical and impressionably revelatory in its approach than

feverishly emotional or reverently devotional. The reason was not

difficult to understand.

 

Brahman was too remote, indifferent, disinterested, too vast a

principle to be reduced into meaningful and intellectually

satisfying forms and shapes and worshipped as such. Existing beyond

all the surface activities of illusory life, he was like the remote

star, heard but rarely seen, seen but vaguely remembered, remembered

but rarely explicable, unlike the daily sun that traversed across

the sky spreading its splendor in all directions and appealing to

the common man with its intensity, visible luminosity and comforting

him with its assuring and predictable routine.

 

Hidden, however, in the practice of Bhakti was the inherent and

inviolable belief that the aim of all devotion was the attainment of

the Supreme Self, though the path chosen for the purpose was

circuitous and symbolic, rarely suggestive of any direct involvement

of the eternal Brahman Himself in His original formless condition.

Since the mind could only comprehend and derive inspiration in a

language that it can understand and interpret, the Saguna Brahman,

Iswara in the form of various manifestations became the object of

devotion and personal worship.

 

But the same was not true of the formless Nirguna Brahman, beyond

duality and activity. Ignoring the citadels of human civilization,

He, the Absolute, continued to remain in the hearts of His spiritual

aspirants, away from the din of materialistic life. He remained

confined even as of today, to a few illumined minds, guiding them in

His mysterious and invisible ways through the minds of self-realized

souls, who have been too spiritualistic and disinterested in worldly

life to consider any thing other than self as a matter of spiritual

interest.

 

The ancient seers described Brahman as the One eternal principle,

the unity behind all, the connecting principle, the light shining

through all. But at the same time they also referred to him

variously as almost every thing. He was thus One and the many, the

finite and the infinite, the center as well as the circumference,

the enjoyer as well the enjoyer, the hidden as well as the manifest,

in a nut shell, every thing and any thing that we can conceive of or

imagine or perhaps much more than that. Incomprehensible even to the

gods, as Kena Upanishad narrates, He stands above all, tall and

mysterious, almost incommunicable except through personal experience

and inner voyage.

 

As a formless Being He was the Nirguna Brahman, the unqualified

principle totally beyond the reach of all levels of intelligence.

Assuming myriad forms He becomes Saguna Brahman, the one with

attributes and qualifications. In this capacity as the formless and

the One with form, He becomes all the multiplicity in this vast

universe. He becomes everything and also nothing. Thus He is the day

and night, light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance, the river

and the ocean, the sky and the earth, the sound and the silence, the

smallest as well as biggest of all and also the abyss of the

mysterious nothingness.

 

The attributes are many and repetitively suggestive of His

universality and His unquestionable supremacy. This existence of the

duality and the myriad contradictions inherent in the creation of

life are the riddles which the minds of the disciples were expected

to understand and assimilate till all the confusion and

contradiction becomes reduced to one harmonious and meaningful mass

of Truth.

 

In the Katha Upanishad we come across this explanation of Brahman

being compared to the Aswaththa tree in reverse ,whose roots are

above and the branches spread down below. " Its pure root is Brahman

from whom the world draws nourishment and whom none can surpass. "

Actually this is an analogy drawn from the Sun whose base is above

and whose rays spread downwards in thousand directions.

 

Myriad are the ways in which Brahman is described in the Upanishads.

The verses strenuously struggle to explain the novice students of

spiritual practice the immensity of the object of their meditation.

Theirs is a feeling of respect and reverence mixed with fear and

awe. Even the gods seems to be not very comfortable with this

concept of an unknown, mysterious and unfathomable God. The Lord of

death explains to the young Nachiketa, " In fear of Him the fire

burns, the sun shines, the clouds rain and the winds blow. In fear

of Him death stalks about to kill. "

 

He is the creator, the life giver and also the reliever of the

devoted and determined from Bondage. The manifest universe is his

creation. He created it through Self-projection, out of Ananda, pure

Delight. The process of creation is not very explicitly mentioned

but one can draw some inferences from verses such as this, " The

deathless Self meditated upon Himself and projected the universe as

an evolutionary energy. From this energy developed life, the mind,

the elements, and the world of karma. "

 

This is not the God who can be supplicated with rituals and

sacrifices. The Upanishadic seers did not show much respect to the

outer aspects of religious practice. The rituals according to them

constituted the lower knowledge. " Such rituals, " declares Mundaka

Upanishad, " are unsafe rafts for crossing the sea of worldly life,

of birth and death. Doomed to shipwreck are they who try to cross

the sea of worldly life on these poor rafts. " The argument does not

end here. It goes on, " Ignorant of their ignorance, yet wise in

their estimate, these deluded men proud of their learning go round

and round like the blind, led by the blind. Living in darkness,

immature unaware of any higher good or goal, they fall again and

again into the sea. "

 

Brahman - the Highest God of Hinduism

http://www.hinduwebsite.com/brahman.asp