Existence of God

Given proof of God, would a materialist know how to read it?

People often ask us, “Can you prove the existence of God?” Proof indicates a conclusive demonstration that establishes the validity of an assertion, in this case the assertion that God exists.

But as soon as we speak of a demonstration, the next question is “To whom shall we demonstrate?” If we speak of evidence or data, we must know who will see and hear it. In other words, who will judge the results of a particular experiment, test, or trial.

Consider a hypothetical example. Doctor Waterport, the famous scientist, has just discovered a sophisticated formula that solves a technical mathematical problem. He proudly calls his colleagues together and presents them with thirty pages of ultra-technical symbols. His fellow scientists pore over the pages and conclude, “Yes, this is the answer we’re looking for.” If Dr. Waterport were to show the proof to an ordinary person on the street, the person wouldn’t even know how to hold the pages right side up. Because he’s not trained in mathematics, the proof would be meaningless to him. Conclusion: Proof demands a qualified audience.

Certainly, any valid proof must be logical. But how we apply logic depends on our previous experience. For example, suppose an apple tree is growing outside your window. One morning you hear a sound like that of an apple hitting the ground, and when you look outside you see a ripe apple lying beneath the tree. Logically, you conclude, the apple has just fallen from the tree.

Your logical statement rests on your previous observation that the apple tree produces apples, that the apples fall to the ground, and that they make a certain sound when this occurs. And your statement appears logical to those with similar experience.

So we apply logic in terms of our experience. Therefore, how can we expect to make God logical to a person who has had no spiritual experience? How can God appear logical to a person to whom the very terminology of the science of God is unintelligible? Thus it is ludicrous when those who are spiritually blind, deaf, and dumb demand that God be made “logical” to them and that His existence be “proved.”

In general, it is illogical for a person untrained in some field of knowledge to demand that a particular fact pertaining to that field of knowledge be logically demonstrated to him. For example, if someone who has no idea what a number is demands that I logically demonstrate that two plus two equals four, I can’t do it. Similarly, if a spiritual ignoramus demands that God be logically demonstrated to him, his very request is illogical. So how can the illogical demands of atheists be met?

We can easily provide innumerable proofs of God—provided we are free to stipulate that the judge of the data be a person who is spiritually trained. Devotees of the Lord who are advanced in Krishna consciousness can logically, evidentially, and demonstratively deal with the reality of the soul and God. But materialistic fools demand that God, a nonmaterial being, be reduced to a material formula.

It is patently absurd to demand material proof for a nonmaterial entity. Mathematical or physical laws describe predictable ways in which material things interact. God and the soul are not material and thus cannot be reduced to material descriptions.

This does not mean, however, that the soul is outside the jurisdiction of logical discussion. Consciousness itself is spiritual, not material, and thus the study of consciousness, or spirit, is not beyond the scope of human beings.

In fact, all fields of knowledge depend on tangible perception of the soul, since all sciences depend on a conscious scientist who works with consciousness, which is spiritual, not material. In other words, spiritual awareness is intrinsic to all types of awareness, although materialistic people do not recognize that consciousness is spiritual.

So there is no lack of data to prove the existence of spirit, since consciousness itself is spiritual. The problem is that foolish intellectuals whimsically designate consciousness a material, not a spiritual, entity. But as soon as we accept the simple truth that consciousness itself is spiritual, we find that in every stage of awareness and in every field of knowledge our perception of all manner of data is resting on a spiritual experience—the experience of being conscious. And when consciousness studies itself, it reaches the stage called spiritual consciousness, or self- realization. Ultimately, when the self-realized person fixes his consciousness on the source of all consciousness, he reaches the realization of Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

For one who has not perceived the superior pleasure of Krishna consciousness, it will seem illogical to restrict his material enjoyment. A Krishna conscious person, however, perceives that spiritual consciousness is far more pleasurable and satisfying than material consciousness. He further perceives that sinful activities—activities against the laws of God—harm that consciousness. Thus it is entirely logical for a Krishna conscious person to obey the laws of God, just as it is logical for an ordinary citizen to obey the laws of the state.

Ultimately, we must come to the stage of absolute logic, which refers to absolute perception, a perception of things with eternally recognizable properties and eternally established relationships. For example, God is the supreme master and enjoyer and we are His eternal servants. Thus it is absolutely logical for us to serve Him, for we are then situated in our natural, constitutional position. To serve a mundane employer may be logical, but it is not absolutely logical, since after the employer’s death, or upon his bankruptcy, serving him is illogical.

In conclusion, logic is a secondary process that follows the primary process of consciousness. We are conscious, for example, that numbers have particular values and properties, and based on this perception, we can state that a particular mathematical equation is either logical or illogical. Similarly, by purifying our existence through the practice of Krishna consciousness, we can perceive the values and properties of God, and thus we can discern that a particular statement about God is either logical or illogical. By confirming our analysis with the Vedic literatures, which are standard reference works of spiritual science compiled by realized devotees, we can perfectly understand the science of God in Krishna consciousness.

Carl Jung’s descriptions of a “collective unconscious” are strikingly similar to ancient Vedic descriptions of the Supersoul.

O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home!

A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone.
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.

As a student at the Hawken School in Cleveland, Ohio. from 1956 to 1964, I sang this hymn many times. From fourth grade on we all had to attend morning and afternoon services in the school chapel. Grade by grade, in alphabetical order by name, we twice daily filled the pews, fourth graders up front by the stage and lecturn, eighth graders in back beneath the organ loft. In five years of chapel services I gradually progressed from low-man-on-the-totem-pole status in the front row to a position with far greater prestige and a much better view about thirty feet back, all the while sitting, alphabetically, between classmates Roland Crawford and Skip Fazio. As we rose again and again, opening our worn hymnals to sing verses hinting at peace and permanence. Skip’s peach fuzz turned into stubble, Roland’s voice dropped an octave, and I grew at least a foot.

I believed in God, the almighty white-haired patriarch in whose honor the chapel services were held, and I didn’t want to begrudge Him the daily offerings of hymns and prayers. But over the years the words “A thousand ages in Thy sight are like an evening gone” nourished in me an inkling that there was something higher and more powerful than even God-on-High. If God’s evenings lasted a thousand ages, that meant He lived a lot longer than I. But it also meant that His evenings—and therefore His days, years, and life—eventually ended. If He was enjoying Himself, maybe time passed too quickly, like it always does when you’re having a good time. And if He wasn’t enjoying Himself—if angelic harp music and schoolboy hymns bored Him—then what was the advantage of His longevity? In any case, time, the all-pervasive, impersonal force that was sweeping me through Hawken and through life, was apparently sweeping God too.

Coincidentally, while I was serving my pew term in Cleveland, Carl Gustav Jung, then in his eighties, was at home in Zurich, Switzerland, composing his autobiography. Writing of his own school days, Jung, the great psychologist who broke with Sigmund Freud to found the school of analytic psychology, revealed that he too had early-on developed an impersonal inkling. Jung recalled picking up a book in his father’s library and reading that God was a “personality to be conceived of after the analogy of the human ego: the unique, utterly supramundane ego who embraces the entire cosmos.”

God a personality? Jung wouldn’t buy it. Ego and personality, he reasoned, were by nature limited and fault- ridden. If God is unlimited, if He is everything and therefore spread out everywhere, then how can He have a personality? And if He is perfect, then how dare we endow Him with an ego? Schoolboy Jung had experienced that his own ego was “vain, self-seeking, defiant, in need of love, covetous, unjust, sensitive, lazy, irresponsible,” and subject to “errors, moods, emotions, passions, and sins.” Certainly, he thought, the Supreme must be egoless.

Thus two twentieth-century thinkers—one from Cleveland, one from Zurich—came to question the supremacy of God-the-person by way of experiencing the flaws of man-the-person. How could anyone propose, both Jung and I wondered, that personality and supreme perfection are compatible?

In answering this question, India’s time-honored Vedic literature discloses that Jung and I fell into the same impersonal trap.

I fell, I now realize, by mistakenly accepting the old- man conception of God and by consequently overlooking scriptural references to God’s immortality. If God ages, I figured. He must die also. To this inkling Vedic authorities reply that although the Supreme Person is the original being and therefore the oldest of all. He never ages. The Brahma- samhita states, adyam purana-purusham nava-yauvanam ca: God lives eternally not as a white-haired patriarch but as a fresh blooming youth. Time can neither age Him nor deteriorate His transcendental abode. He is time, the Bhagavad-gita says. And other Vedic texts corroborate: time is the energy of the Supreme Person that sweeps the entire cosmic manifestation along to ultimate destruction. Meanwhile the Supreme Person Himself remains aloof, enjoying transcendental pastimes with His pure devotees.

But although God is a person—an active enjoyer like us—we shouldn’t think that His character and personality are like ours in every respect. This was Jung’s mistake—or one of them, anyway. While Jung rightly observed that our personalities are always limited and our characters often unsavory, he wrongly concluded that God’s personality would have to be the same. To refute this notion, the Srimad-Bhagavatam, which is the topmost of the Vedic texts, describes at great length the unlimited attributes and activities of God-the-person. asserting that the spiritual character of God is spotlessly free from the negative qualities our own egos presently generate. Our personalities are sometimes repugnant, but God- the-person, or, to use Srila Prabhupada’s terminology, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is known as “Krishna,” or “the all-attractive one.”

Krishna is everything and spread out everywhere in the sense that everything is His energy, as heat and light are energies of the sun. The elements that make up our bodies and the rest of the universe are Krishna’s material energy, while we ourselves—the individuals who animate these bodies—are eternally part of Krishna’s spiritual energy. Everything—within and beyond our experience—emanates from Krishna.

Despite the pervasiveness of His energies, however, Krishna remains a person. If you ripped this page from the magazine, tore it to pieces, and threw it all over the room, the page would no longer be available for your edification. That’s because the page is material. Krishna, however, distributes Himself all over by His “pieces” (His various energies) yet remains personally available, shining like the sun. That’s because Krishna is the perfect, omnipotent, completely spiritual Personality of Godhead. He is, as Jung should have gleaned while reading his father’s book, “unique” and “utterly supramundane.” The Vedic literatures warn us not to rely solely on our experience and logic to understand Him.

Our own personalities are always limited, as Jung correctly observed. But they are vain, self-seeking, and in so many other ways a pain in the neck only when we forget that we are eternal parts of Krishna, and that our natural function is consequently to cooperatively serve and satisfy Him. Satisfying Krishna results in our own satisfaction, just as feeding the stomach nourishes all parts of the body. But in forgetfulness of Krishna’s supremacy we vainly think ourselves supreme, falsely identify with our temporary material bodies, and seek only to satisfy our own bodily senses. This self-seeking mentality puts us at odds not only with each other but with Krishna Himself as well. In such an unnatural state of affairs our original Krishna conscious personalities show deformed and ugly faces. We should not, therefore, compare our present personalities to God’s personality point for point, since such a comparison will naturally lead us to doubt, as Jung and I doubted, that the Supreme has a personality at all.

I wouldn’t label Jung “impersonal” in the usual sense of that word. He was a jovial, affable man who gave full attention to the personal lives of his patients. In his writings he championed the cause of the individual over what he considered the mass-mindedness of modern societies, which reduce us individuals to a pile of statistics. Nor did Jung fail to acknowledge the important role ego plays in an individual’s psychic maturation. He even flatly refused to formulate a fixed theory to explain the human psyche, because he felt that a single theory could never do justice to everyone. Theories had to be chosen and adjusted to fiteach individual. What worked for you might be detrimental to me.

Jung’s adjustability makes it difficult not only to label him “impersonal” but to label him anything. Nevertheless, beginning with his childhood aversion to the idea of God-the-person, it is possible to trace an impersonalistic thread through the tapestry of his life’s work. That thread is particularly evident in one of Jung’s most intriguing and controversial concepts—something he called “the collective unconscious.”

It even sounds impersonal. And not so terribly intriguing either. “Collective” suggests the opposite of “private” or “individual.” And unconscious? While a person may sometimes fall unconscious, he or she is least interesting or personable that way. “Collective unconscious” could suitably describe the ambiance of an enormous one-room flophouse, or of a mass grave.

However, just as the Vedic literature warns us not to use mundane logic to judge the Personality of Godhead, so Jung cautions that the collective unconscious is beyond our ordinary sensual and intellectual experience. It is a powerful dynamic entity. In fact, although Jung never says that God and the collective unconscious are one and the same, he does closely identify them. Psychologically speaking, man’s experience of one is indistinguishable from his experience of the other.

To me that sounds unclear, and Jung is certainly hard to decipher at times. Some of his critics accuse him of obscurity, while Jung’s admirers express the same idea euphemistically when they say he is “mystical” or “rich in suggestion.” And Jung himself explains, “I have no definite convictions—not about anything, really… . [But] in spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence. ...”

So the collective unconscious is, for certain, a Godlike “solidity underlying all existence.” It is also—a little more tangibly, I’d say—our common heritage. Jung accepted the theory of evolution and felt that as a result of evolutionary development we all have a lot in common not only physically, but psychically as well. Evolution has given you and me a heart, a stomach, a head, a neck, ten fingers, etc. We also have egos, those conscious streams of “I am” that wend their way through our days and years from early childhood to old age. And we both have subconscious minds, whose depths harbor repressed or long- ignored desires and memories, and in whose shallows, just deep enough to keep our conscious shores litter-free, information more pertinent to our daily lives treads water, ready for quick recall.

To have these things in common doesn’t mean, of course, that we literally share them, as town dwellers, for instance, used to share the town commons to graze their livestock. Your stomach won’t digest what I eat, nor does my mind mull over your inner thoughts. Although our physical and psychic anatomies are identical, we have different stomachs and minds, different hearts, and, most important, different egos. We are distinct individuals.

Jung conceived of the collective unconscious, however, as something we do literally share. It is a town commons of the psyche deep within our beings, a hidden primordial psychic field on which all humanity stands and from which we all receive guidance and inspiration. Conscious egos, Jung said, are relatively recent evolutionary arrivals. They arose from the collective unconscious as plants grow from a rhizome.

Jung gave the collective unconscious credit for the back stage control of almost everything we think and do. He maintained that while our egos, with their personal wills, have an important part to play in life, we have mistakenly crowned them monarchs of our psychic territories, unaware to what degree the ego is carried along by an impersonal force beyond its grasp. That force flows from our psychic commons, from “the one psyche which embraces us all.”

Which is not just intriguing, but pretty spooky, if you ask me. I have always thought of myself as an ego, as that little old stream of conscious “I am.” I’ll concede that my “I am” is carried along by another force—a force that back at Hawken I had identified as time. But time, however mysterious, is something external that acts upon me, whereas the collective unconscious, according to Jung, is me. It’s part of my own self, and of your self too. In fact, Jung defines “self “ as a union, an integration, of the conscious, personal realm and the unconscious, impersonal realm of the psyche.

That’s an awful lot of integration. First of all, we’re integrated with each other already in that we’re an outgrowth of the same “rhizome.” Secondly, since that rhizome is closely identified with God, we’re already integrated with Him too. And thirdly, the self itself, said Jung, is also nearly identical with God, or as Jung murkily puts it, with the God-image in the human psyche.

Follow? Let me summarize: our almost-God selves are an integration of the conscious/personal with our almost-God rhizome.

With all due respect, this is just plain mixed up. Take Jung’s adjustability, add a generous dollop of uncertainty, blend everything with a gallon or two of obscurity, and you’ve got an exasperatingly convoluted, richly-suggestive Jungian goo. Here a Jungian might remind me that Jung never claimed to have a clear theoretical framework. He called his work “a circumambulation of unknown factors.” A Jungian might also point out that the collective unconscious, being in many respects the opposite of consciousness, is by nature irrational and therefore difficult, even impossible, to define or describe. Upon introduction to our antithetical psychic partner, we chauvinistic egos are bound to feel befuddled and threatened.

I can’t swallow these explanations either. There’s something insidious about them. I haven’t yet accepted the collective unconscious as my psychic partner, and look at what Jung is asking me to do.He’s suggesting that I integrate my long-separated psychic neighborhood, making room for this total stranger, this foreigner from the other side—the unconscious side—of the psychic tracks. Jung even has the nerve to suggest that this spooky stranger was here first, that he’s God, and that the neighborhood really belongs to him. The newcomer is not only God, he’s me and you too. How can you say such things in public and not expect to encounter nasty backlash from upstanding, well-bred conscious egos like myself ? No wonder Jung’s idea of a collective unconscious, when understood at all, is controversial.

But vitriol aside, the idea of a collective unconscious has a unique charm and urgency. It is at least an attempt to provide a meeting ground for a world fractured by divergent social, political, and religious interests. It gives us an inkling of our primeval brotherhood, a brotherhood still much touted by religious leaders but buried for all practical purposes by sectarian feuding. It offers us a clue how to sublimate our selfish, ego-centered ambitions by recognizing a central collective entity, a greater impersonal self. Largely on the basis of the collective unconscious, Jung called for a potent, nonsectarian faith to counteract the pseudo religions and fanatical political ideologies of this age.

The big trouble with Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious is that his schoolboy mistrust of personality influences it so heavily. Otherwise, the Vedic literatures confirm that two selves dwell in our bodies. One self is the conscious ego, and the other is known to Vedic authorities as the Superself, or Supersoul. The Supersoul is collective in that “it” is within each and every body. But “it” is far from unconscious or impersonal. On the contrary, the Supersoul is a personal expansion of the eternal, all-cognizant, all-perfect Personality of Godhead, Krishna.

Here again we run into the same question Jung raised as a child: How can God be everywhere—in this case in everyone’s body—and still be a person? And again the answer is that Krishna, unlike us, is unlimited and omnipotent. He does as He likes. More specifically, the Vedic literature explains that Krishna expands Himself into an unlimited number of spiritual personalities identical with Him. The Supersoul is one such expansion. As the sun, shining down at noon, falls upon the heads of millions of people yet remains one, so Lord Krishna in His Supersoul expansion shines into the hearts of all living entities in all species of life yet remains one person. While both you and your body are Krishna’s energy, the Supersoul is Krishna’s very self.

The Supersoul could be called unconscious only in the sense that we are currently unconscious, or ignorant, of Him, and in the sense that His consciousness is not defective like ours. Forgetting the Supersoul, or Krishna, is in fact our greatest defect, because in so doing we also forget our own eternal, spiritual selves. Our forgetful friend Jung, for example, proposed that our conscious selves are Johnny-come-latelys on the psychic scene, outgrowths of the collective rhizome.

Yes, the Vedic literature says, we are outgrowths of Krishna in that we are His energy, yet we are eternal—that is, without beginning or end. Krishna is eternal, and we are eternally individual fragments of Him. Krishna is the eternal sun, and we are the sunshine. Although the sun and the sunshine exist simultaneously, one is the origin of the other. According to the Bhagavad-gita, there was never a time when Krishna and ourselves did not exist, nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.

In the Gita Krishna also states that He (as Supersoul) is situated in our hearts, supplying us with memory, knowledge, and forgetfulness. In other words, Krishna, not the collective unconscious, directs all our psychic activities. Without memory and knowledge we can’t think or do anything, and without forgetfulness of our eternal life with Krishna we can’t strut about in this temporary world imagining ourselves supreme and independent. So, according to our particular desires, Krishna equips us with intelligence as He sees fit.

The Supersoul directs not only human beings but animals as well. Whenever even rudimentary intelligence is evident, the source is Krishna, and the receptacle, or secondary source, is one of His eternal, individual parts. For example, the Supersoul gives bees the intelligence to construct a hive, collect nectar from flowers, produce and store the honey, and so on. Bees, ants, whales, human beings—all get their instinctual, mental, or intellectual powers from Krishna, who is seated in our hearts (or, you could say, in the depths of our psyches) as the Supersoul.

Jung’s outstanding accomplishment was to understand that a higher authority governs our psychic activities. Phenomena such as the sudden inspiration of an artist or a scientist, the predictive powers of a psychic, as well as Jung’s own visions and premonitions, helped to convince him that this higher authority exists. In addition, recurrent themes in myths and ideologies throughout human history led Jung to conclude that unseen psychic molds and channels—which he called “archetypes of the collective unconscious”—have always directed man’s consciousness.

Equally outstanding, however, was Jung’s inability to grasp that this unseen authority is a person. The collective unconscious, Jung discovered, serves as a witness, a guide, a governor, a regulator, a knower—even as a friend. Are these not personal qualities? And if consciousness, intelligence, and rationality are the accouterments of ego in this world, then couldn’t Jung at least suspect that the director of intelligence and consciousness has an ego?

No, he couldn’t. Throughout Jung’s life his fear of personality and ego robbed him of a fuller understanding of the psyche.

Both psychic selves—the self and the Superself—are persons, Lord Krishna explains, and we can understand their respective positions only through devotional service:

To those who are constantly devoted to serving Me with love, I give the understanding by which they can come to Me. To show them special mercy, I, dwelling in their hearts, destroy with the shining lamp of knowledge the darkness born of ignorance.

People who fear personality are especially averse to the supreme personality. Krishna obliges such people by supplying them with forgetfulness of Him, or by revealing Himself to them only as “a solidity underlying all existence.”

On the other hand, those who have lent an impartial ear to the Vedic accounts of Krishna’s wonderful transcendental character have nothing to fear. They fully devote themselves to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, carefully following the direction of the Vedic literature and of Krishna’s representatives. To these devotees Krishna is eager to reveal Himself as the Supersoul in their hearts and to destroy with the brilliance of transcendental knowledge the darkness causing us to falsely identify our eternally perfect egos with our temporary and fault-ridden bodies.

As for little old vitriolic me, the Supersoul poses no threat. I am happy to recognize that He is in charge of my psychic neighborhood. After all, He is not a stranger but my long-forgotten friend and master from the other side—the supremely conscious side—of the psychic tracks. And yes, the Supersoul is God. He was in the neighborhood first. And the perfection of my self is to integrate with Him by constantly endeavoring to please Him with my service.

But no, Supersoul and I are not the same person. He is God; I am His servant. And there’s no threat of my being displaced, or replaced, or blended into some divinely obscure goo. The Supersoul and ourselves exist eternally, and the all- attractive opportunity we now have to awaken our loving relationships with Him is the true basis for the potent, nonsectarian faith Jung was seeking.

The collective unconscious, while intriguing, was not in the least bit lovable.

God exists, and God is light
For those poor souls who dwell in night.
But doth a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

—William Blake (1757-1827)

A major publisher recently approached me to write a book that would compare the more than one thousand existing English translations of the Bhagavad-gita. I replied to say I would consider their offer, and within a week I received, by special delivery, a box full of the decade’s most prominent Gita translations. Looking through each one carefully, I noticed that most translators misunderstood the basic teaching: that God is a person, Krishna, and that the goal of life is to develop love for Him. Instead, these “Gitas” claimed that God is an abstract force, an impersonal entity that lies beyond the purview of the senses. The commentators squeezed this out of the Sanskrit itself and often made it the focus of their analyses.

The impersonal or monistic conception of the Supreme—wherein one envisions God as an inconceivable force, without form—is clearly a legitimate part of what the Bhagavad-gita teaches. But that part is eclipsed by the idea of God as the Supreme Person. As Krishna Himself says in the Gita (7.24), “Unintelligent people, who do not know Me perfectly, think that I, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krishna, was impersonal before and have now assumed this personality. Due to their small knowledge, they do not know My higher nature, which is imperishable and supreme.”

And yet, despite the Gita’s emphasis on God’s personhood, the impersonalistic dimension of the Gita has become more popular. Teachers in the Krishna conscious tradition suggest that the desire to depersonalize God comes, on a subliminal level, from the desire to avoid surrender. After all, if God is a person, then questions of submission and subservience come into play. If God is a formless abstraction, we can philosophize about it without a sense of commitment, without the fear of having to acknowledge our duty to a higher being. Then again, maybe the popularity of the impersonal conception, at least in relation to the Gita, can be traced, plain and simple, to inadequate knowledge of Sanskrit.

Impersonalism really doesn’t even make sense. Form is everywhere, from mountain to snowflake. Everything has form. Even invisible things have shape. Consider the atom: Though we don’t see it, we know it occupies definite space, and with the proper equipment we can perceive it. Deep down we know that in this world a thing and its form are inseparable.

And this, of course, is where the theory of impersonalism comes in. Impersonalists reason that if everything in this world has form, everything in “that” world must be formless, for matter and spirit are seen as diametrically opposed. While the premise here may be true, the conclusion is illogical. The reasoning is like the thinking of a cow that has once run from a burning barn: whenever it sees red, it runs. Similarly, everyone in this world knows that material forms are temporary and limited. This truth is embedded in our consciousness, and we naturally (if sometimes subliminally) apply it to all form, never imagining that spiritual form may have different characteristics altogether. So we foist formlessness on God and on all spiritual phenomena, inadvertently following a tradition of impersonalism with the enthusiasm of a fire-fearing cow running from red.

If one studies the Gita in Krishna consciousness, however, one sees clearly that the person Krishna, also known as Bhagavan (the Lord), reigns Supreme. Nearly every verse stresses service to Him. There is much evidence that the Gita supports the personalistic doctrine. Krishna says, “I am at the basis of the impersonal Brahman [the formless Absolute].” (14.27) And when discussing the comparative value of the impersonal and the personal, He says, “Those who focus their minds on My personal form, always engaged in worshiping Me with intense spiritual faith, are considered by Me to be most perfect.” (12.2) In other words, according to the Gita the conception of God as a person, to whom one may become devoted, is prior to and superior to the conception of God as an impersonal force, into which one may merge.

And what exactly is meant by “merging”? Vaishnavas, worshipers of Krishna, shun this idea of becoming “one with God,” saying it is almost as repulsive as gross materialism. Srila Prabhupada says the idea is motivated by fear. In his purport to Bhagavad-gita 4.10 he writes:

It is difficult for a person who is too materially affected to understand the personal nature of the Supreme Absolute Truth… . Consequently, they consider the Supreme to be impersonal. And because they are too materially absorbed, the conception of retaining their personality after liberation from matter frightens them. When they are informed that spiritual life is also individual and personal, they become afraid of becoming persons again, and so they naturally prefer a kind of merging into the impersonal void.

So just as impersonalism stems from the fear that one will have to submit to a higher entity, as stated earlier, we now see that its concomitant “merging” is also a product of fear—the fear that one’s individual existence, with all its imperfections, will continue into eternity. But Vaishnavas promote a philosophy of fearlessness, for they know that spiritual personality is not beleaguered by the limitations of matter. Some scholars are wise to this too. Professor Huston Smith, a prominent author and teacher in the field of comparative religion, eloquently expresses the Vaishnavas’ distaste for merging with the Supreme. He does this with the help of a traditional bhakti poem written in sixteenth-century India:

As healthy love is out-going, the bhakta [devotee] will reject all suggestions that the God one loves is oneself, even one’s deepest Self, and insist on God’s otherness. As a devotional classic puts the point, “I want to taste sugar; I don’t want to be sugar.”

Can water quaff itself?
Can trees taste of the fruit they bear?
He who worships God must stand distinct from Him,
So only shall he know the joyful love of God;
For if he say that God and he are one,
That joy, that love, shall vanish instantly away.
Pray no more for utter oneness with God:
Where were the beauty if jewel and setting were one?
The heat and the shade are two,
If not, where were the comfort of shade?
Mother and child are two,
If not, where were the love?
When after being sundered, they meet,
What joy do they feel, the mother and child!
Where were joy, if the two were one?
Pray, then, no more for utter oneness with God.

—poem by Tukaram

Is God Really A Person?

Seeing the many impersonal translations and commentaries got my fire. God is, first and foremost, a person. Prabhupada is clear on this in his Gita commentary, incredulous that anyone could accept the impersonal idea of the Absolute:

We cannot understand how the Supreme Personality of Godhead could be impersonal; the imposition theory* of the impersonalist monist is false as far as the statements of the Gita are concerned. It is clear herein that the Supreme Absolute Truth, Lord Krishna, has both form and personality. (Bg. 7.24, Purport)

Even the findings of modern scientists support this personalistic view. Here is a particularly powerful statement by Dr. John C. Cotran, who before he retired was Professor of Chemistry and the Chairman of the Science and Mathematics Department at the University of Minnesota:

Chemistry discloses that matter is ceasing to exist, some varieties exceedingly slowly, others exceedingly swiftly. Therefore, the existence of matter is not eternal. Consequently, matter must have had a beginning. Evidence from Chemistry and other sciences indicates that this beginning was not slow and gradual; on the contrary, it was sudden, and the evidence even indicates the approximate time when it occurred. Thus at some rather definite time the material world was created and ever since has been obeying law, not the dictates of chance. Now, the material realm not being able to create itself and its governing laws, the act of creation must have been performed by some nonmaterial agent. The stupendous marvels accomplished in that act show that this agent must possess superlative intelligence, an attribute of mind. But to bring mind into action in the material realm as, for example, in the practice of medicine and the field of parapsychology, the exercise of will is required, and this can be exerted only by a person. Hence our logical and inescapable conclusion is not only that creation occurred but that it was brought about according to the plan and will of a person endowed with supreme intelligence and knowledge (omniscience), and the power to bring it about and keep it running according to plan (omnipotence) always and everywhere throughout the universe (omnipresence). That is to say, we accept unhesitatingly the fact of the existence of “the supreme spiritual being, God, the creator and director of the universe.”

It Gets Personal

Vaishnava devotees feel offended when their beautiful Lord is described as having no eyes, no mouth, no hair, no form, and as a result, no love. To deny God these distinct personal characteristics is the height of arrogance. Do humans have something that God does not? Would this not make us greater than He is—especially when it comes to loving exchanges? We can love, but God cannot?

To say that God is unlimited and then to say that He cannot have a form is contradictory. If He is unlimited, He can do whatever He likes. And if loving exchange is the highest thing in creation, as most will admit, then God would most definitely deign to be a person, for loving exchange loses meaning without personhood; it can exist only between people.

Ultimately, Vaishnava philosophy says that all conceptions of God are included in the personal form of Sri Krishna. The impersonal Brahman, according to the tenets of Vaishnavism, is but an aspect of the Absolute, which by its very nature is endlessly qualified and perfect in unlimited ways. Vaishnavas dismiss as absurd and meaningless the concept of the Absolute as merely impersonal, beyond all thought and speech. Such an Absolute cannot stand, for it would cancel itself out. Our very language disallows it: Even to say that Brahman is inexpressible or unthinkable is to say or think something about it.

Sankaracharya, an eighth-century Indian philosopher, was among the first to emphasize the impersonal Absolute. While he accepted the undifferentiated Brahman as the sole category of existence, he failed to give a satisfactory explanation of the world of appearance, which implies distinct qualities (vishesha) in Brahman. In other words, how can a variegated world, with such diverse attributes, come from an undifferentiated Absolute? Impersonalist philosophers say that all variety in the material world is false and only the Supreme Brahman, or Spirit, is real. Vaishnavas counter that because the world emanates from Brahman, if Brahman is real how can the world and its varieties be false? For example, if a tree bears fruits, can anyone realistically claim that the tree is real but its fruits are not?

The Logic of Personalism

The notion of personality is not only consistent with the infinite Godhead but essential to it. The whole impersonalistic enterprise leaves some very basic questions unanswered. Consider this: I’m a person. If my source is impersonal, then where do I come from and what am I in an ultimate sense? If my source is impersonal, how can I, a person, relate to it? Moreover, even if some kind of mystical, impersonal experience exists, such an experience always occurs to a person. It’s you and I—people—who have the “impersonal” exchange with God. In other words, even if you call the exchange impersonal, it must be considered a variety of personal experience because it happens to a person.

When all else fails, impersonalistic philosophers generally grasp at one well-worn argument: A qualified and personal Absolute must be limited, they say, because to attribute certain qualities to it is to deny their opposites. But impersonalists must understand that it is not personification or the attribution of character or qualities to the infinite that limits it, but it’s these things not carried to their fullest extent. Chandogya Upanishad (7.14.4) says that Brahman is not only endowed with characteristics but displays such characteristics in endless ways. For example, Krishna’s form may seem limited in size, but it is described as inconceivably “all-pervading” as well. He has innumerable expansions and incarnations, and He is endlessly beautiful. His wisdom knows no bounds, and He experiences unending bliss. In short, His form is not like ours—it is entirely spiritual. Countless scriptural verses support this view, showing how He is, in fact, unlimited.

Lord Caitanya argued that the impersonalistic view of unqualified Brahman derives mainly from the indirect meaning of Sanskrit words. He says that the indirect meaning of words (lakshana vritti) is justified only where the direct meaning (mukhya vritti) doesn’t make sense. Sankaracarya’s exclusive emphasis on unqualified Brahman conceals the direct and real meaning of the scriptures, which more often than not describes Brahman as qualified.

How, then, can impersonalists who accept the Vedic texts make any case at all for a formless Absolute? To be fair, we must admit that many texts describe Brahman as unqualified. Katha Upanishad (1.3.15), for example, describes Brahman as being without sound, touch, or form. This idea is echoed in the Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad (1.4.10), where Brahman is said to be without eyes, ears, speech, mouth, or mind. But what does this really mean?

The celebrated philosopher Jiva Gosvami, in the line of Lord Caitanya, partly resolves the question by showing that the word nirvishesha (“without distinction or qualities”), for example, is often used by the scriptures to deny all prakrita (material) qualities of Brahman and not to deny qualities as such. If nirvishesha were used to deny qualities as such, it would not be possible to attribute to Brahman the qualities of nityatva (eternity) and vibhutva (all- pervasiveness), which even the followers of Sankaracarya accept as undeniable qualities of the Absolute. Jiva Gosvami also quotes from the Vishnu Purana to prove that although Brahman does not have any ordinary, or material, qualities, it has infinite transcendental qualities.

Thus, Brahman, or God, cannot be described as merely impersonal or unqualified. Jiva Gosvami writes that such a “Brahman” is like a subject apart from its predicates or a substance apart from its attributes. Since the complete (samyak) form of an object includes both its substance and its attributes, the unqualified Brahman is only an incomplete (asamyak) manifestation of the Absolute. Jiva Gosvami insists that the personal Brahman includes the impersonal Brahman as the formless luster of His divine form (anga-kanti). In Prabhupada’s words, the impersonal Brahman is merely Krishna’s effulgence.

Implicit in these arguments is the understanding that God is inconceivable and, ultimately, both personal and impersonal. His impersonal aspect depends upon His personal form, which is prior. The arguments are logical enough, and yet our minds revolt against the idea of an Absolute being at once personal and impersonal. We want to choose one or the other, because we are inclined to think of the Absolute in human terms. Therefore, I should reiterate that the form of the Absolute is different from our own. We have to be careful not to limit the infinite with our human thoughts and terms—the fallacy that impersonalists attribute to the doctrine of a personal God. When dealing with any problem relating to the infinite, we have to use the laws of our understanding with reservation and caution, not allowing them to impair the perfection of the infinite or impoverish our notion of divinity.

Henry L. Mansel, a nineteenth-century English philosopher, who was Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, expressed the same idea in this way:

It is our duty, then, to think of God as personal; and it is our duty to believe that He is infinite. It is true that we cannot reconcile these two representations with each other, as our conception of personality involves attributes apparently contradictory to the notion of infinity. But it does not follow that this contradiction exists anywhere but in our own minds; it does not follow that it implies any impossibility in the absolute nature of God. The apparent contradiction, in this case, as in those previously noticed, is the necessary consequence of an attempt on the part of the human thinker to transcend the boundaries of his own consciousness. It proves that there are limits to man’s power of thought, and it proves no more.

Conclusion

To describe the Absolute as merely nirvishesha, or without distinct qualities and attributes, is to make Him imperfect by “amputating” His divine limbs. Once we recognize the absolute, complete, and perfect nature of the Divine Being, we move beyond the philosophy of impersonalism. We can reconcile conflicting statements of the Vedas and the Puranas when we understand the Absolute as both personal and impersonal, or rather, as possessing in- finite attributes and forms, including an impersonal dimension. But according to the primary and general sense of the scriptures, the Absolute is essentially personal, because only in a personal Absolute, possessing infinite and inconceivable potencies, can the infinite forms of Godhead, including the impersonal Brahman, have their place.

Will I write the requested book about the many editions of the Gita? Probably not. Srila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gita As It Is is clear enough about what the Gita teaches and includes the best of all the versions I looked through. In terms of design, clarity, scholarship, and accessibility, no other Gita comes close. So I may just have to send all those books back to that publisher. But if they would like me to do a book on personalism versus impersonalism …