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Written by Swami Vivekananda |
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Who is Ishvara? Janmâdyasya yatah — “From
whom is the birth, continuation, and dissolution of the
universe,” — He is Ishvara — “the Eternal, the Pure,
the Ever–Free, the Almighty, the All–Knowing, the
All–Merciful, the Teacher of all teachers”; and above
all, Sa Ishvarah anirvachaniya–premasvarupah — “He
the Lord is, of His own nature, inexpressible Love.”
These certainly are the definitions of a Personal God.
Are there then two Gods — the “Not this, not this,”
the Sat–chit–ânanda, the Existence–Knowledge–Bliss
of the philosopher, and this God of Love of the
Bhakta? No, it is the same Sat–chit–ananda who is also
the God of Love, the impersonal and personal in one.
It has always to be understood that the Personal God
worshipped by the Bhakta is not separate or different
from the Brahman. All is Brahman, the One without a
second; only the Brahman, as unity or absolute, is too
much of an abstraction to be loved and worshipped; so
the Bhakta chooses the relative aspect of Brahman,
that is, Ishvara, the Supreme Ruler. To use a simile:
Brahman is as the clay or substance out of which an
infinite variety of articles are fashioned. As clay, they
are all one; but form or manifestation differentiates
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them. Before every one of them was made, they all
existed potentially in the clay, and, of course, they are
identical substantially; but when formed, and so long
as the form remains, they are separate and different;
the clay–mouse can never become a clay–elephant,
because, as manifestations, form alone makes them
what they are, though as unformed clay they are all
one. Ishvara is the highest manifestation of the
Absolute Reality, or in other words, the highest
possible reading of the Absolute by the human mind.
Creation is eternal, and so also is Ishvara.
In the fourth Pâda of the fourth chapter of his
Sutras, after stating the almost infinite power and
knowledge which will come to the liberated soul after
the attainment of Moksha, Vyâsa makes the remark,
in an aphorism, that none, however, will get the
power of creating, ruling, and dissolving the universe,
because that belongs to God alone. In explaining the
Sutra it is easy for the dualistic commentators to show
how it is ever impossible for a subordinate soul, Jiva,
to have the infinite power and total independence of
God. The thorough dualistic commentator
Madhvâchârya deals with this passage in his usual
summary method by quoting a verse from the Varâha
Purâna.
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In explaining this aphorism the commentator
Râmânuja says, “This doubt being raised, whether
among the powers of the liberated souls is included
that unique power of the Supreme One, that is, of
creation etc. of the universe and even the Lordship of
all, or whether, without that, the glory of the liberated
consists only in the direct perception of the Supreme
One, we get as an argument the following: It is
reasonable that the liberated get the Lordship of the
universe, because the scriptures say, ‘He attains to
extreme sameness with the Supreme One and all his
desires are realised.’ Now extreme sameness and
realisation of all desires cannot be attained without the
unique power of the Supreme Lord, namely, that of
governing the universe. Therefore, to attain the
realisation of all desires and the extreme sameness
with the Supreme, we must all admit that the
liberated get the power of ruling the whole universe.
To this we reply, that the liberated get all the powers
except that of ruling the universe. Ruling the universe
is guiding the form and the life and the desires of all
the sentient and the non–sentient beings. The
liberated ones from whom all that veils His true
nature has been removed, only enjoy the unobstructed
perception of the Brahman, but do not possess the
power of ruling the universe. This is proved from the
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scriptural text, “From whom all these things are born,
by which all that are born live, unto whom they,
departing, return — ask about it. That is Brahman.’ If
this quality of ruling the universe be a quality
common even to the liberated then this text would
not apply as a definition of Brahman defining Him
through His rulership of the universe. The uncommon
attributes alone define a thing; therefore in texts like
— ‘My beloved boy, alone, in the beginning there
existed the One without a second. That saw and felt,
“I will give birth to the many.” That projected heat.’ —
‘Brahman indeed alone existed in the beginning. That
One evolved. That projected a blessed form, the
Kshatra. All these gods are Kshatras: Varuna, Soma,
Rudra, Parjanya, Yama, Mrityu, Ishâna.’ — ‘Atman
indeed existed alone in the beginning; nothing else
vibrated; He thought of projecting the world; He
projected the world after.’ — ‘Alone Nârâyana existed;
neither Brahmâ, nor Ishana, nor the Dyâvâ–Prithivi,
nor the stars, nor water, nor fire, nor Soma, nor the
sun. He did not take pleasure alone. He after His
meditation had one daughter, the ten organs, etc.’ —
and in others as, ‘Who living in the earth is separate
from the earth, who living in the Atman, etc.’ — the
Shrutis speak of the Supreme One as the subject of
the work of ruling the universe. . . . Nor in these
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descriptions of the ruling of the universe is there any
position for the liberated soul, by which such a soul
may have the ruling of the universe ascribed to it.”
In explaining the next Sutra, Ramanuja says, “If you
say it is not so, because there are direct texts in the
Vedas in evidence to the contrary, these texts refer to
the glory of the liberated in the spheres of the
subordinate deities.” This also is an easy solution of the
difficulty. Although the system of Ramanuja admits
the unity of the total, within that totality of existence
there are, according to him, eternal differences.
Therefore, for all practical purposes, this system also
being dualistic, it was easy for Ramanuja to keep the
distinction between the personal soul and the Personal
God very clear.
We shall now try to understand what the great
representative of the Advaita School has to say on the
point. We shall see how the Advaita system maintains
all the hopes and aspirations of the dualist intact, and
at the same time propounds its own solution of the
problem in consonance with the high destiny of divine
humanity. Those who aspire to retain their individual
mind even after liberation and to remain distinct will
have ample opportunity of realising their aspirations
and enjoying the blessing of the qualified Brahman.
These are they who have been spoken of in the
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Bhâgavata Purâna thus: “O king, such are the, glorious
qualities of the Lord that the sages whose only
pleasure is in the Self, and from whom all fetters have
fallen off, even they love the Omnipresent with the
love that is for love’s sake.” These are they who are
spoken of by the Sânkhyas as getting merged in nature
in this cycle, so that, after attaining perfection, they
may come out in the next as lords of world–systems.
But none of these ever becomes equal to God
(Ishvara). Those who attain to that state where there
is neither creation, nor created, nor creator, where
there is neither knower, nor knowable, nor
knowledge, where there is neither I, nor thou, nor he,
where there is neither subject, nor object, nor relation,
“there, who is seen by whom?” — such persons have
gone beyond everything to “where words cannot go
nor mind”, gone to that which the Shrutis declare as
“Not this, not this”; but for those who cannot, or will
not reach this state, there will inevitably remain the
triune vision of the one undifferentiated Brahman as
nature, soul, and the interpenetrating sustainer of both
— Ishvara. So, when Prahlâda forgot himself, he found
neither the universe nor its cause; all was to him one
Infinite, undifferentiated by name and form; but as
soon as he remembered that he was Prahlada, there
was the universe before him and with it the Lord of
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the universe — “the Repository of an infinite number
of blessed qualities”. So it was with the blessed Gopis.
So long as they had lost sense of their own personal
identity and individuality, they were all Krishnas, and
when they began again to think of Him as the One to
be worshipped, then they were Gopis again, and
immediately:
(Bhagavata) — “Unto them appeared Krishna with
a smile on His lotus face, clad in yellow robes and
having garlands on, the embodied conqueror (in
beauty) of the god of love.”
Now to go back to our Acharya Shankara: “Those”,
he says, “who by worshipping the qualified Brahman
attain conjunction with the Supreme Ruler, preserving
their own mind — is their glory limited or unlimited?
This doubt arising, we get as an argument: Their glory
should be unlimited because of the scriptural texts,
‘They attain their own kingdom’, ‘To him all the gods
offer worship’, ‘Their desires are fulfilled in all the
worlds’. As an answer to this, Vyasa writes, ‘Without
the power of ruling the universe.’ Barring the power of
creation etc. of the universe, the other powers such as
Animâ etc. are acquired by the liberated. As to ruling
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the universe, that belongs to the eternally perfect
Ishvara. Why? Because He is the subject of all the
scriptural texts as regards creation etc., and the
liberated souls are not mentioned therein in any
connection whatsoever. The Supreme Lord indeed is
alone engaged in ruling the universe. The texts as to
creation etc. all point to Him. Besides, there is given
the adjective ‘ever–perfect’. Also the scriptures say
that the powers Anima etc. of the others are from the
search after and the worship of God. Therefore they
have no place in the ruling of the universe. Again, on
account of their possessing their own minds, it is
possible that their wills may differ, and that, whilst
one desires creation, another may desire destruction.
The only way of avoiding this conflict is to make all
wills subordinate to some one will. Therefore the
conclusion is that the wills of the liberated are
dependent on the will of the Supreme Ruler.”
Bhakti, then, can be directed towards Brahman, only
in His personal aspect. —
“The way is more difficult for those whose mind is
attached to the Absolute!” Bhakti has to float on
smoothly with the current of our nature. True it is
that we cannot have; any idea of the Brahman which is
not anthropomorphic, but is it not equally true of
everything we know? The greatest psychologist the
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world has ever known, Bhagavan Kapila, demonstrated
ages ago that human consciousness is one of the
elements in the make–up of all the objects of our
perception and conception, internal as well as external.
Beginning with our bodies and going up to Ishvara, we
may see that every object of our perception is this
consciousness plus something else, whatever that may
be; and this unavoidable mixture is what we ordinarily
think of as reality. Indeed it is, and ever will be, all of
the reality that is possible for the human mind to
know. Therefore to say that Ishvara is unreal, because
He is anthropomorphic, is sheer nonsense. It sounds
very much like the occidentals squabble on idealism
and realism, which fearful–looking quarrel has for its
foundation a mere play on the word “real”. The idea of
Ishvara covers all the ground ever denoted and
connoted by the word real, and Ishvara is as real as
anything else in the universe; and after all, the word
real means nothing more than what has now been
pointed out. Such is our philosophical conception of
Ishvara. |
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