TROTA | CHAPTER 4 | SEL0445 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

|| 4.05 | BRAHMAN AS GOD OR ISHVARA ||

The indeterminable BRAHMAN is only a subject of speculation for the individual which is bound by the limitations of the intellect caught up in the process of space , time and causation , which are the hard undeniable facts of life .

To one who is confined to the world , the Essential Reality will appear to be outside the ken of knowledge .

One's highest is only the highest of one's thinking .

The human mind cannot be said to comprehend Reality from its own standpoint .

TROTA | CHAPTER 4 | SEL0446 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

We cannot see through the Real and say , " thus is the Real " , for the Real as Real is known only in self-identical , non-objective experience .

The Absolute Truth cannot be expressed , or even thought ; else , thereby , it would lose its Truthhood and become untruth .

Our Absolute is the conceptual Absolute , and this highest conceptual is " GOD " or " Ishvara " , the determinate Real , the object of pious meditation and of the highest form of devotion , parabhakti , while BRAHMAN is the eternal subject of pure indeterminate knowledge .

TROTA | CHAPTER 4 | SEL0447 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

The relative intellect seeks to find a solution for the difficulties that are presented by the notion of the independence of the world and the individual's experiences therein .

The causal argument leads it to find support in a conceptual reality which would explain the world without abandoning the idea of causality .

The intellect , being inextricably bound by the causal chain , cannot comprehend that Reality which is beyond causation and its concomitants .

The pure Indivisible Being cannot be the object of the understanding working through the phenomenal categories .

TROTA | CHAPTER 4 | SEL0448 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

The general tendency among human beings is to feel the necessity for a Supreme Ruler who would dispense justice and apportion the fruits of their thoughts and actions .

The feeling demands a merciful and loving GOD who will respond to its expressions and liberate it from sorrow .

The religious mind protests that the world requires a GOD who cannot be dispensed with as a mere logical error .

It pays little heed to the laws of reason and subjects the same to the laws of the feelings of humans .

To it , knowledge which knows itself alone and not anything else cannot satisfy the aspirations of the individual .

TROTA | CHAPTER 4 | SEL0449 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

The constitution within is extended to the universe , and the result is the natural feeling that if manyness and oneness , death and immortality , are both shadows of Reality and form its complementary conceptual aspects , such a Reality shall ever remain unmanageable and unknowable to the individual existing in the universe of experience .

To take a whole view of the Real is to attempt what is beyond the finite intellect , and to take a partial view is to accept a defeat in knowing the Real .

This is how the limited human mind fares in solving the deepest problems of life and beyond .

The relative individual can read only relative facts even in the highest Truth , however magnified and grand its conceptions be .

TROTA | CHAPTER 4 | SEL0450 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

FOR THE INDIVIDUAL , GOD IS :

A magnified Self

The Cosmic Self who has all knowledge and all power

The Creator , the Preserver and the Destroyer of the universe , who , in unexcellable majesty , lords over the earth and the heaven , who fashions the sun , the moon and the stars , who extends far beyond the limitless space

The highest perfection and magnitude of the complete opposite of what the limited individual is

Unlimited in every sense

The Supreme Purusha , the Source of the entire creation

Excluding none , containing all within One Superhuman body

The Virat , the Universal Ruler , the absolute unifying form in which all beings are strung together like beads in a thread

The Hiranyagarbha , the inner animating life-principle of everything

Ishvara , the universal consciousness that sustains all manifestation

That which beside there is none

Triumphant and glorying in Greatness

The ocean of all that is best at any place or time

The immediate presupposition and presence of whatever can ever be

The Antaryamin , the Inner Controller

The Avyakrita , the Unmanifest , beyond sense perception

The Sutratma or the Thread Soul that connects all selfs

The Mahaprana , the Cosmic Vital Energy

Hailing as the supreme object of all adoration and worship

The manifested Form of Reality , Ishvara

The Saguna BRAHMAN , the Absolute endowed with all glorious attributes .

TROTA | CHAPTER 4 | SEL0451 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

This qualified Reality , though the highest open to any of us , is not the Highest in itself .

But , as long as the Real in itself is of no practical utility in our processes of thought , life and action , it is immaterial , so far as life is concerned , whether the Highest Reality is qualified or not .

As long as we live within the boundaries of the rational intellect , the Highest in itself cannot be taken as a part of life's considerations , and we are bound to be satisfied with what is highest from our own standpoint .

TROTA | CHAPTER 4 | SEL0452 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

The Cosmic Self , though not an independent existence from the standpoint of the BRAHMAN of intuition , is much more real than the universe and its individual contents .

Though below BRAHMAN , GOD is above the world , and controls the world as its perfect master .

So long as our personality is real , GOD also is real , and , if the personal GOD is to be rejected as unreal , we ourselves have no right to live as individuals .

The personal Ishvara is not opposed to the impersonal BRAHMAN , but is BRAHMAN only as we understand it .

TROTA | CHAPTER 4 | SEL0453 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

But we , as individuals , are relative , and our relative views are bound to be sublated and transcended in a higher experience .

The precision of the discriminative faculty is compelled to adopt an extreme of spiritual unworldliness , whether or not it is pleasing to our weaker human side .

Our inability to embrace the strictest Truth makes us demand a GOD who is relative to the empirical world .

Saner perception , however , does not condescend to accept the permanent reality of a cosmic objective GOD , as the form of objective existence is not independent of the processes of the subjective consciousness .

TROTA | CHAPTER 4 | SEL0454 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

If all appearances are unintelligible , Ishvara who can only be an appearance of the Real , is equally unintelligible .

It is not BRAHMAN that changes itself into GOD and the world , but the knowing subject that takes BRAHMAN as such .

When thought is no more , the individual is annulled , and together with it Ishvara and the world sink into Pure Being .

It is not possible to rest contented that a personal GOD is the ultimate Reality , however displeasing this may be to those who do not want to dispense with thinking in terms of the categories of the world .

TROTA | CHAPTER 4 | SEL0455 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

The philosopher aspirant who is possessed of a flaming passion for integrating oneself in Existence does not have the dull patience to linger on with the slow process of progressive self transcendence through the channels of the different degrees of reality .

The highest scientific mind always tries to cling to the Whole , and not to even the biggest part , for , according to it , partiteness in existence is illogical and an ignorant conception .

Truth , dependent on its own Self , transcends even the ideas of omniscience and omnipotence , for these involve relations which are a limitation on the Absolute .

Yet , we find the Vedas and the Upanishads giving intimations of a Personal Purusha , the Purushottama , the Source , Being and End of the universe , which gives us an idea of the impartial attitude which the ancient seers had towards the different conceptions of Reality , and of that magnificent vision of the One in the many which they possessed and articulated in sublime states of the Consciousness of the totality of creation .

TROTA | CHAPTER 4 | SEL0456 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

The first visualisation of the Cosmic Purusha is expressed in the celebrated hymn of the Rigveda , called the Purusha Sukta .

" Thousand headed was the Purusha , thousand-eyed and thousand-legged . Purusha , covering the earth on all sides , stretched beyond it by ten fingers' length . All this is the Purusha alone , whatever was and whatever shall be . . . One-fourth of Purusha all beings are , ( but ) three-fourths is immortal in the ( highest ) heaven . " ( Rigveda . X . 90 )

Here the word " thousand " is to be taken to mean " numberless " or " infinite " and not to denote any fixed number .

The description is to give an idea of the all-encompassing nature of the supreme Purusha .

TROTA | CHAPTER 4 | SEL0457 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

The Purusha does not completely manifest in the form of the universe ; only a small aspect is expressed as relativity — the larger aspect exists unmanifested and remains as the shining Immutable .

This does not suggest that GOD can be divided into aspects or cut into parts , but only means figuratively that GOD is not in any way limited but is above manifestation , though is also the Self of all that is manifested .

GOD is both immanent and transcendent , present in every speck of the universe , and yet transcends it to an inconceivable extent .

Truth is neither a pantheism nor a deism which consider GOD as either wholly exhausted in the world or existing wholly beyond the world .

The universe is one organic unity sustained by the single being of GOD , of whom everything is a part , and who is the inner and outer reality of everything .

Absolutism is the highest point , the culmination of all true philosophy , according to which the Absolute Spirit or the Absolute GOD is the only Reality .

SOURCE | SATYAVEDISM.ORG