Thursday, October 17, 2024

Taking God’s Perspective: Compassion

I contend that compassion is an automatic byproduct of having shut out the outside world for a time to experience transcendence in its religious sense (i.e., reaching beyond the limits of human conception, perception, and emotion). Such experience as prayer, for example, or meditation can result in a heightened sensitivity in perceiving the world, including things and other people who are in proximity. Such sensitivity where other people are being perceived can illicit compassion to them. It is the bracketing experience itself, away from our daily life, rather than what is being prayed about or meditated on that triggers the generalized sensitivity and thus the enhanced readiness or inclination to feel compassion where it applies. I submit furthermore that with some beliefs regarding how God in the Abrahamic religions views us creatures in Creation, we mere mortals can assume to some degree the perspective that, given how God is depicted in scriptures, God would or does have in watching us in our own little worlds.


The full essay is at "Taking God's Perspective: Compassion."

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

A Hindu Goddess Destroying and Recreating Other Hindu Deities: Contrasting the Christian Trinity

The Saundarya Lahari characterizes the Hindu goddess, Devi, as being the power behind the proverbial throne—meaning the thrones of the three main deities, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Without Devi bestowing her power on those (and all other) gods, they would “return to their primal, dormant state” until revived by the power that Devi wields as signified visually by the weapons that she holds.[1] Are those deities merely dormant, however, or are they destroyed when Devi withholds her power? For there is an appreciable difference between being rendered impotent or inactive, and being zerstört (i.e., destroyed). In Greek mythology, one thing that distinguishes the gods from morals is that of the two, only the gods cannot die. In Christianity, Jesus Christ survives the death of his corporeal body, which is transformed in the bodily resurrection on Easter in a way that would have perplexed Plato. Indeed, it is interesting to compare the Trinity with the relation of the foundational goddess Devi to the three main gods in the Saundarya Lahari, a poem doubtlessly written by a devotee of the goddess.

Verse 25 of the Hindu poem highlights the points that “Devi is supreme” and the other “divine beings . . . serve and praise Her. Devi provides the foundation for the gods and their worship.”[2] Francis Clooney’s translation goes as follows:

“Benevolent one, may the worship rendered to the three gods born of Your three qualities be as worship rendered to Your feet, for near the jeweled seat on which Your feet rest, they ever stand, folded hands adorning their crowns.”[3] 

Worshipping Brahma, who is the creator deity, Vishnu, who sustains the world by inhaling its pollution, and Shiva, the destroyer, is tantamount to worshipping the goddess, Devi, as the three gods stand at her feet, which in turn are associated with her power and thus protection. It is as if Devi is sitting on a throne, at the bottom of which the three main Hindu gods are standing. The image in Christianity of Jesus sitting on the right side of the Father may come to mind, though in that case, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not separate deities, but, rather, are three manifestations of one God. To be sure, in Hinduism, the deities are considered to be manifestations of Brahman, which is consciousness/awareness beyond that of sentient beings, existence/reality, and bliss, and is not thought of as a supreme personal deity as is the Abrahamic deity. The supremacy of Devi is that of one deity over others (in terms of power), and in Christianity the Father and Son are of one substance rather than one manifestation of the God being superior to the other. Even so, the Christian image is hardly disparate here in imagining the special relationships in verse 25 of the Saundarya Lahari.

Swami Tapasyananda’s translation of verse 25 can be approached as providing additional details, albeit at the expense of the poetic and linguistically literal qualities of Clooney’s more concise version:

“The worship done at Thy feet, O Consort of Siva, is also the worship of all the three Deities Brahma, Visnu and Siva, who have their origin in Thy three Gunas (Rajas, Sattva and Tamas). They require no special worship, because they are ever waiting with their joined palms held above their diademed heads in salutation to Thee by the side of the foot-stool of diamonds that bear Thy feet.”[4]

Tapasyananda does not provide a commentary on this verse; even so, we can visualize the three main Hindu gods standing next to the foot-stool that Devi, who is presumably sitting (on a throne), is using to rest her feet. Again, Jesus sitting at the right side of the Father may come to mind. But the three main Hindu gods—those of creation, sustaining the world, and destroying the world, respectively, don’t all align with the three Persons of the Christian Trinity.

God as creator or Jesus Christ as manifesting the Logos may be thought prime facie to resonate with Brahma as the creator deity in Hinduism, but the fact that Brahma draws on Devi’s rajas guna dispels any such likeness under the rubric of creating. In his commentary on verse 53, which I will draw on below to make another point, Tapasyananda claims that the rajas, sattva, and tamas are not only qualities found in nature, but are also Devi’s creative power and are thus the respective origins of the three main gods.[5] If the parallelism between listing the three gods and the three gunas means that the latter are respective to the order of the deities, then Brahma, the god who creates the world is characterized by Rajas: “activity, passion, desire, attachment, and energy.”[6] Rajas “embodies movement, expansion and upward flow.”[7] In Christian theology, the creative agent in God is the Logos, or “word” or “reason,” which is that which later incarnates as Jesus Christ. The nature of God as an intelligent being is highlighted in the Logos, whereas passion and desire are among the qualities in which the Hindu god Brahma has its origin, which, by the way, means that Brahma has his origin in Devi’s creative power. Also, whereas the Christian God can be reckoned as being the source of the energy that is in Creation, Brahma can be characterized in terms of the creative energy itself, which comes from Devi. In this sense, the transcendent Christian God is more like Brahman than the Hindu deities. All except for Devi, however, as the devotee writes of that goddess,

“You are mind, You are air, You are wind and the rider of wind, You are water, You are earth, beyond You as You evolve there is nothing higher, there is only You, and when You transform Yourself by every form, then You take the form of consciousness and bliss as a way of being, O Shiva’s youthful one!”[8]

Besides being the basic elements that make up creation (though the ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles included fire along with earth, air, and water), Devi is mind, and thus awareness/consciousness. In verse 30 the poet writes to Devi, “You are eternal” and “I am You.” Both verses describe Devi close to how Brahman is described elsewhere (awareness, existence itself, and bliss). Devi pervades creation and even beyond, as there is nothing higher; “there is only You.” Perhaps it could be said that Devi is beyond functionality—having also an ontological existence that renders the goddess qualitatively different than the other gods and goddesses because only Devi can be understood in terms that apply to Brahman. In this sense, Devi is more like the Christian deity than are the other Hindu gods and goddesses, for which particular functions are emphasized (e.g., Shiva is the destroyer). In other word, Devi (in assuming Brahman qualities) can be thought of as the awareness and reality within which the big deities exist and perform their functions. It follows that in destroying the world, Shiva cannot destroy Devi.

Whereas both Brahma and the Christian God are associated with creating the universe, the god Shiva bears little resemblance to the Christian God, which as Paul and Augustine wrote, is essentially love. Compassion and mercy outweigh the destructiveness of God’s wrath. Shiva having its origin in the tamas guna, which is associated with “inertia, ignorance, delusion, darkness, and heaviness,” and represents “sloth, dullness, and downward flow.”[9] None of these qualities pertains to the Christian God, even in its wrath.

As for Vishnu, in that his origin is in the qualities of sattva, this god can be characterized by “truth, goodness, harmony, balance, and spiritual essence,” as representing “light, intelligence, and consciousness.”[10] Whereas Shiva destroys, Vishnu sustains, or saves the world at least in the meantime, and, furthermore, as having the qualities of goodness, harmony (peace), a spiritual sense, light, intelligence, and consciousness, Vishnu can be viewed in terms similar to Jesus. The second “person” of the Trinity (i.e., Jesus) is the Logos, which in turn, as reason, can be associated with intelligence. Indeed, Vishnu’s incarnation or avatar as the god Krishna has been likened to Jesus Christ, as compassion is salient to both the Hindu god and the incarnated manifestation of the Christian God (i.e., Jesus Christ). Indeed, the Christian Incarnation can be thought of as the consciousness of God winnowed through a (finite) human body.

Even given these likenesses between Vishnu and Jesus, the latter is a manifestation or “Person” of a deity, whereas Vishnu is a deity (among others). Also, the relationship between Vishnu and Devi is not between two manifestations (or “Persons”) of one God (though admittedly of Brahman, though that is not a deity). Devi is a goddess and Vishnu is a god; both are Hindu deities to be worshipped even though worshipping Devi is sufficient because Vishnu has his origin in Devi’s creative power (sattva). To be sure, it could be said that Jesus gets his power from the Father, as for instance when Jesus calls on God the Father in bringing Lazarus back to life. “Jesus looked up and said, ‘Father, I thank you that you have heard me.’”[11] Whether Jesus’ Father could cut off Jesus’ power such that Jesus would be rendered inactive or even destroyed (beyond just the death of his body) may be similar to asking whether Devi could render the other Hindu deities merely dormant or actually destroy them by taking away their power.

Francis Clooney’s translation of verse 26 of the Saundarya Lahari is relevant:

“Virinci [Brahma] returns to the five elements, Hari [Vishnu] ceases His delight, the destroyer [Kinasa (Yama, the god of death)] meets destruction, the lord of wealth loses wealth, the untiring array of great Indras also close their eyes, and in that great dissolution, O good woman, Your Lord plays.”[12]

On the one hand, Brahma seems to be destroyed by Devi, who returns that god to the five basic elements in the world; Kinasa is destroyed because he himself meets destruction; and, moreover, the word “dissolution” implies more than the gods merely going inactive. On the other hand, Vishnu no longer being delighted, the lord of wealth losing wealth, and the Indra closing his eyes may be interpreted as Devi merely rendering those deities passive by taking away their respective powers. Yet in describing the whole verse in terms of “dissolution,” the poet may have meant destruction rather than inactivity, given that the word “dissolution” has been defined as the “dissolving” or “separation” of something “into component parts”, as in “disintegration” or “death,” or the “termination or destruction by breaking down, disrupting, or dispersing.”[13]

Tapasyananda’s translation of the verse might be helpful too:

“Virincill (Brahma) is reduced into elements: Hari (Visnu) retires into passivity; Kinasa (Yama the god of death) himself dies; Kubera the god of wealth meets with his end; and Indra with all his followers closes his eyes in destruction. When such, O Sati (chaste Consort of Siva), is the state of all beings at the time of the total dissolution (mahasamhara) of the universe, Thy husband Sadasiva [Shiva] alone is sporting.”[14] 

Even though Vishnu being passive resonates with that god no longer having delights rather than necessarily being destroyed, Kinasa, Kubera, and Indra are clearly destroyed, given the respective words, “dies,” “meets with his end,” and “destruction,” respectively. Vishnu too seems to be destroyed rather than merely rendered inoperative because Devi leaves only Shiva, her husband, around “at the time of the total dissolution (mahasamhara) of the universe.” Maha Samhara can in general mean “destruction, annihilation, or dissolution.”[15] None of these words are consistent with, or imply someone merely being rendered impassive. The destruction presumably includes the gods, as, according to the Rig Veda, they came out of purusa’s head rather than having existed prior to the primordial human body out of which the heavens and the earth were carved.

Devi only excepts Shiva because out of the loyalty or faithfulness that a consort has to her husband, the wife gains power, and Devi is all about power. In his commentary on the verse, Tapasyananda explains that the indestructability of the couple, Siva-Sakti (i.e., Shiva and Devi), is due to Devi’s “whole-hearted faithfulness” (pativratya) to her husband, “which according to Hindu belief, is supposed to generate great power in a woman.”[16] Perhaps as a result of if such an augmentation to her power, it is so great that she can bring the other deities back into existence, rather than merely allow them to be active again. This would indeed justify her claim that devotees need only worship her to worship the three main gods.

For we find later in the Saundarya Lahari, in the Flood of Beauty (verses 42-91), in verse 53 specifically, that the three main gods, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, “still play a part in the drama of beauty and pleasure surrounding Devi. To do so, they must exist after having been destroyed by Devi. They exist due to Her glance: “O beloved of the Lord, when Your eye shadow smears in play[,] Your triad of eyes displays three colors distinctly, and so recreates the three gods—Druhina, Hari, Rudra—after they’d ceased; Your eyes shine like the triad of qualities, sattva, rajas, and tamas.’”[17] In being recreated after they had ceased—being recreated means that ceased to exist rather than merely ceased to be active is the correct implication—the gods Druhina (i.e., Brahma), Hari (Vishnu) and seemingly inconsistently because Devi had not destroyed her husband, even Rudra (Shiva) are again existing. Tapasyananda’s translation of verse 53 fills in some of the details of Devi’s glance, which is enough to bring the main gods back into existence:

“O Consort of Isvara [Shiva]! Thy three eyes look tri-coloured when the black of the beautifying collyrium shines by the side of their natural white and reddish tinges, each keeping its distinctiveness. It looks as if these three colours represent the three Gunas of Rajas, Sattva, and Tamas, which Thou assumes with a view to revive Brahma, Visnu, and Rudra [Shiva] after their dissolution in the Pralaya, and start them once again on the creative activity.”[18]

In his commentary, Tapasyananda notes that the three colors represent the three gunas respectively, which Devi uses as the “creative power” with which to revive the three gods and enable them to be active.[19] By implication destroying them and rendering them inactive are distinct. Devi does both in destroying Brahma and Vishnu, as reviving rather than merely enabling activity are both done in verse 53.

Tapasyananda’s choice of the word, revive, is particularly interesting, as it may imply bringing back to life rather than merely existence. In Clooney’s translation of the verse, he uses “recreate” rather than “revive”:

“O beloved of the Lord, when Your eye shadow smears in play[,] Your triad of eyes displays three colors distinctly, and so recreates the three gods—Druhina, Hari, Rudra—after they’d ceased; Your eyes shine like the triad of qualities, sattva, rajas, and tamas.[20]

Clooney “opted for the more literal translation of punah srastum—the verb srj usually means ‘to create,’ whereas ‘revive’ is a weaker translation; it may be that [Tapasyananda] wanted to show that the deities were not dead, but only in a swoon.”[21] If so, then Clooney’s interpretation leaves Devi with more power, as more is needed to destroy and recreate than merely to render something (or someone) powerless. The poet’s point that a devotee of Vishnu or Shiva, for example, need only worship Devi, as the power behind those gods, rather than also worship them too, is stronger. In my own search, I found that punah srastum can also mean “to originate,” which bolster’s Clooney’s interpretation, which, by the way, is consistent with the inclusion in the verse of the word “cease.”

In short, Devi destroys gods rather than merely renders them impotent (non potentia). In viewing the big gods as destroyed and then recreated along in the cyclical paradigm of the religion, Hinduism differs fundamentally from the Abrahamic religions, wherein Yahweh/God/Allah is not created or subject to creation, but, rather, like Brahma, creates the universe. Neither is the Abrahamic God subject to being destroyed, given the divine attribute of omnipotence; nothing has power over God.

Furthermore, interpreting Devi as reviving the big gods may imply that the gods are alive. In the Christian New Testament, Jesus revives Lazarus, who is not a god. Reviving a person is distinct from when God the Father resurrects Jesus. Devi does not resurrect, or much less bodily resurrect, Brahma and Vishnu (and perhaps Shiva).[22] So from a Christian standpoint, Devi reviving gods and goddesses simply does not make sense. This is yet another reason for going with Clooney’s translation. Also, the ancient Greeks would not have understood how a deity can be destroyed and then recreated later, because immortality is a major attribute of a Greek god or goddess (being a giant is the other main requirement).

To be sure, in a general sense, God manifesting as the Father brings the divine manifestation that is Jesus back from having been killed. This is vaguely akin to Devi bringing at least two major gods back to existence after having destroyed them because the leitmotif is that of something divine ending and being brought back by something else that is divine. In Christianity, this has been referred to as God “self-emptying” of itself first in allowing itself to be incarnated alongside a human nature (albeit still fully divine and fully human: comprising one essence and two distinct rather than blending natures) and then to allow the Christ to die, which is more than merely being made inactive. In Hinduism, the main gods are destroyed then revived by the creative powers of a goddess, Devi. Devi herself does not suffer any self-emptying; in fact, being able to destroy and revive even gods means that her power is so great that only she is truly worthy of being worshipped, whereas in Christianity, all three Trinitarian manifestations, or “Persons,” of God are worthy of being worshipped in their own terms; worship of God the Father does not mean that neither the Son or the Holy Spirit need be worshipped. In contrast, the Saundarya Lahari, a poem of devotion to the Hindu goddess that empowers, destroys, and recreates all of the other gods and goddesses, asserts that given those powers, worship directed solely to Devi is sufficient; other divine manifestations of Brahman stand below Devi’s throne. Omnipotentia is, in other words, a very important divine attribute.

Yet another implication for Christianity is whether the Father’s power is great than that of Jesus, as the latter calls on the Father to revive Lazarus. If so, then being consubstantial (i.e., being of the same substance) does not necessary mean having the same amount of power. As manifestations of Brahman, according to Shankara, who was a Hindu theologian, Hindu deities are consubstantial, yet as the Saundarya Lahari insists, they differ greatly in power—Devi’s being so much more that she can destroy and recreate the other gods and goddesses. God manifesting as the Father in the Trinity, whose three manifestations are eternal and thus the two others cannot be destroyed and recreated by the Father, does not have that much power over the Son and Holy Spirit. In fact, it is the Son as the eternal Logos that is the Christian God’s Word that is that God’s creative power.



1. The quoted text is from Francis X. Clooney, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 160.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Saundarya-Lahari of Sri Sankaracarya, trans. Swami Tapasyananda (Mylapore, Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math Printing Press, 1987), p. 72.
5. Ibid., p. 118.
6. Quoted text is from a search of the three names of the gunas at Brave.com (accessed October 14, 2024).
7. Ibid.
8. Verse 35 of the Saundarya Lahari. Francis X. Clooney, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
9. Quoted text is from a search of the three names of the gunas at Brave.com (accessed October 14, 2024).
10. Ibid.
11. The Gospel of John 11:41 (NIV).
12. Francis X. Clooney, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 160.
13. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary entry for “dissolution.” (Merriam-webster.com accessed on October 14, 2024).
14. Saundarya-Lahari of Sri Sankaracarya, trans. Swami Tapasyananda (Mylapore, Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math Printing Press, 1987),  p. 72.
15. Quoted words are from a search of the definition of Maha Samhara at Brave.com (accessed October 14, 2024).
16. Ramakrishna Math Printing Press, 1987), p. 73.
17. Francis X. Clooney, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 160.
18. Saundarya-Lahari of Sri Sankaracarya, trans. Swami Tapasyananda (Mylapore, Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math Printing Press, 1987), p. 117.
19. Ibid., p. 118.
20. Francis X. Clooney, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 160.
21. Francis X. Clooney, Personal correspondence, October 16, 2024.
22. I enclose “Shiva” in parentheses because of the contradiction in Devi having not destroyed Shiva and yet in verse 53, that god is included with the other two main Hindu gods as being revived by Devi. Although it is possible that another, prior verse has Devi destroy Shiva, which is unlikely because of the power that Devi (and the couple) gets for loyalty to her husband, I think it more likely that there is a contradiction in the text, which could indicate that it evolved over time, even after having been written, and perhaps more than one writer contributed to the poem. So it could be that in imposing unity on the poem, the error lies with the reader rather than the writer(s).

Wednesday, October 9, 2024

On Lord Krishna’s Self-Revealing in Hinduism’s Bhagavad-Gita

Even as much as divine entities reveal themselves to particular human beings, our finiteness cannot completely perceive or know such an entity as it really exists. Created as limited beings with limited perception and far from perfect knowledge, it is impossible for a deity’s self-revelation to be received by us mere mortals in its totality because we are not gods. Even if a divine eye were made available to us, as Lord Krishna does for Arjuna in the Hindu mythic tale, the Bhagavad Gita, our minds are finite and subjective rather than unlimited and objectively able to comprehend reality in itself.[1] Before discussing the Gita, I want to draw on a bhukti (devotional) poem very briefly to demonstrate that human perception and knowledge of the divine in the form of a personal deity only goes so far relative to a deity both not only in regard to it going beyond its form (or forms), but also just in terms of being able to grasp the form (or forms) in its completeness.

The Tantric Saundarya Lahari (Ocean of Beauty) “presents a goddess [Devi, Lord Shiva’s consort] who is unfathomably deep and of whom knowledge is precious and rare; yet She is nonetheless luminously visible . . . to those [worshippers who] are willing to gaze upon Her. Devi’s names and manifest form do not express adequately who She is, yet attention to appearances opens the way, now, to the deeper realities one seeks.”[2] One may seek them, but they must remain beyond; this is the religious instinct. The appearances merely open the way; they don’t get the devotee to the deeper reality of the deity. How could any visible appearance do justice to elucidating Devi, the goddess who is “Power itself, and the source of the power of other” deities?[3] Going further, ontologically, “She is the all-encompassing divine reality of which even [Shiva]—and even Herself in a smaller, imaginable form—are only parts.”[4] Hence, her existence itself can only even be imagined, as inhabiting a form, only so far. “She is transcendent and yet irresistibly approachable to devotees who wish to praise Her.”[5] Again, “She is transcendent and unimaginable, but She is also astonishingly nearby, a woman so beautiful that She satisfies those who behold Her.”[6] The unimaginability, which transcends forms, should not be minimized or overlooked even in the religious practitioner’s bhakti devotion of Shiva’s consort.

Moreover, symbol, myth and ritual can only go so far in bringing people to an experience or knowledge of the divine as it really is, ontologically speaking.[7] By implication, the notion in German idealist philosophy that reason can get us to things in themselves is farcical. After all, reason to Nietzsche is just another way in which instinctual urges manifest—reason and the passions being a false dichotomy.

There is more to a deity than meets the eye (source: Indiadivine.org)

That we can go only so far in religious transcendence is clear in the Hindu mythic tale, the Bhagavad-Gita, with which virtually every adult Hindu is familiar. In the myth, the deity Krishna under the guise of a charioteer reveals to Arguna, which means ignorance, not only the ethical teaching that a person should do the duty of one’s casted profession, but also how the deity really looks or is. Even in giving Arjuna a “divine eye,” however, Arjuna cannot “see” and know Krishna’s infinite existence in its completeness, both in terms of forms (suguna Brahman) and as reality and awareness themselves (nirguna Brahman).

To be sure, a religious practitioner can experience transcendence to some extent, and this can assuage suffering that we experience in our realm in our daily lives.  “For, the man whom these [pairs of opposites: heat and cold, pleasure and pain] do not distress, the wise one [for whom] pain and pleasure are the same, O Purusharshabha—he is fit for immortality.”[8] The translators of this passage of the Bhagavad-Gita point out in a footnote that immortality “here stands for spiritual liberation (moksha). As Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1948) remarks in his fine commentary on this verse: ‘Eternal life is different from survival of death which is given to every embodied being. It is the transcendence of life and death.’”[9] Indifference to whether pain or pleasure is being felt renders a person fit to transcend, and thus also be indifferent to life and death. Such a person is a seer-of-reality: that of “the nonexistent (asat) there is no coming-into-being; of the existent (sat) there is no disappearance.”[10] Such perception of the real paradoxically extends beyond the limits of regular human perception. Such a seer knows that no one “is able to accomplish the destruction” of “immutable (avyaya) [Reality].”[11] So, a person’s “eternal embodied [Self, atman]” can also be said to be “the Indestructible, the Incommensurable” in contrast to one’s finite body.[12] Therefore, the eternal Self (atman) “is not born nor [does it] ever die . . . This unborn, eternal, everlasting primordial [Self] is not slain when the body is slain.”[13] So it is but an illusion for Arjuna to think he is killing other Selves on the battlefield. Therefore, he should not be distraught, for as a person, after “discarding worn-out garments, seizes other, new ones, so does the embodied [Self], [after] discarding worn-out bodies, enter other, new ones.”[14] Hence, there is nothing immoral about helping a person along in this process on a battlefield. A transcendent perception gives rise to knowledge of the true nature of a person’s self, and both the perception and the cognition enable a person to view even civil war differently and thus not be distressed about being duty-bound to kill opposing soldiers. This transcendent-based rationale for doing one’s duty is qualitatively different than a justification that is wholly within our realm (i.e., not transcending it), such as, “You better kill the enemy before he kills you.” Such an appeal to self-love (and self-interest) is dependent on the illusion rather than seeing through it to grasp the real Self (atman) perceptually and cognitively.

However, if the real or true nature of a person’s eternal Self (atman) is actually beyond the limits of human perception and thought, as (pseudo) Dionysius might say, then a human “seer-of-reality” would not truly be able to perceive a person’s indestructible, and thus eternal, Self (atman). Lord Krishna, of course, tells Arjuna that it is possible for humans to perceive a person’s atman. We cannot conclude from this that human beings can see Vishnu as Krishna (and it is not vice versa) in the supreme Lord’s true existence.

For the “Blessed Lord” declares himself to be “unmanifest in form”[15] and to “move unrecognized in all beings.”[16] If the “omnipresent, whole, primordial, all-doing, all-seeing, all-knowing,” is indeed “the Seer-of-all, the Self-of-all, facing everywhere,” yet unmanifest in form and unrecognized in all beings, then the very notion of a “Seer-of-Reality” can only go so far.[17]  In other words, “the Blessed Lord” goes beyond the limits of human perception and cognition; only the Lord is the “Seer-of-all.”

Being embodied as Arjuna’s charioteer, Krishna tells the ignorant Arjuna, “Fools scorn Me in the human body [which I have] assumed, ignorant [as they are] of My higher state-of-existence: [as] the Great Lord of [all] beings.”[18] This is not to say that non-fools can see Krishna’s “higher state-of-existence,” for the infinite goes beyond the limits of finite beings. I submit that even people who, according to Krishna, can perceive the indestructability of all that exists, which includes a person’s Self (atman), and that that which does not exist cannot come into being, which the twentieth-century European philosopher Sartre also asserts, cannot perceive or know the god’s “higher state-of-existence” because it extends beyond the limits of human perception and cognition (i.e., ideas), as (pseudo) Dionysius claims of the Abrahamic deity.

So we can distinguish three levels of perception so far. A fool does not perceive the atman, or eternal Self, of another person, and thus is in distress about being duty-bound to kill a cousin on the field of battle. The seer of others’ respective Selves is not in such distress because the perception of the real nature of a person’s Self gives rise to the knowledge that the Selves of other people in an opposing army cannot be destroyed. Finally, there is perception of the Supreme Lord in its higher, or real, state-of-existence, which Krishna tells Arjuna is not possible for humans to have. This is not to leave Hindus with a negative theology wherein the deities are ineffable, which means that they cannot be perceived or known by humans.

Arjuna tells Krishna, “You are the Primordial God, the ancient Spirit (purusha).”[19] In the Rig Veda, most but not all of the primordial body of purusha is made into the world; there is thus more of that original human body writ large that is beyond our world and thus beyond our grasp.[20] So we can say that there is more of Krishna too than can be grasped in terms of stuff of our world.

Consider this distinction concerning what people can know of Krishna. “He who knows Me, the world’s Great Lord, as unborn and beginningless, is not bewildered among mortals, [but] is released from all sins.”[21] Yet not even “the hosts of gods nor the great seers know My origin. For I am the beginning of the gods and of the great seers (and of all other entities] everywhere.”[22] Even a seer faces a limit, beyond which knowledge on the Supreme Lord cannot go. It is one thing to know that the Great Lord does not have a beginning, and quite another thing to know the origin of that which is “the origin of all. From Me everything emerges.[23] Arjuna tells Krishna, “You are the supreme Brahman, supreme abode, supreme purifier, the eternal divine Spirit, primordial God, unborn, all-pervading.”[24] This does not mean that Arjuna can perceive the true or higher existence itself and the origin of Krishna as a bodily incarnation not only of Vishnu, but ultimately, when believed and worshipped as the Supreme God, of Brahman.

Also, there is a limit to how much of Krishna’s form and how any forms that humans, including Arjuna, can grasp. Arjuna admits to Krishna, “neither the gods nor the demons know [this] manifest [form of] Yours.”[25] And yet Arjuna later asks Krishna, “If, Lord, You think it possible for me to see that [form of Yours], O Lord of Yoga, then do reveal to me [Your] immutable Self,” to which Krishna replied, “behold My forms, [which are] a hundredfold, a thousandfold, of various kinds, many-colored and many-shaped.”[26] Even though Krishna tells Arjuna, “you will not be able to see Me with this your own [physical] eye. I will give you the divine eye,”[27] Krishna tells Arjuna, “there is no end to My extent”[28] and “(t)here is no to My divine powers-of-manifestation.”[29] Arjuna addresses Krishna at one point as, “O, [You of] infinite form.”[30] Even a divine eye can only see so much of Krishna’s manifestations, for “Very-difficult-to-see is this My form which you have seen. Even the gods are forever hankering after a glimpse of this form,” Krishna tells Arjuna.[31]  So even though “sees” Krishna as “(t)ouching the world-sky, flaming many-colored, [with] gaping mouths and flaming vast eyes, . . . seeing Your [many] mouths [studded with] gaping mouths and flaming vast eyes,” which can be said to be a manifestation/form of Krishna as a personal deity, and thus being classifiable under suguna Brahman, as distinct from formless nirguna Brahman, Arjuna cannot grasp any infinite form in its totality.[32]

It follows that Arjuna and the gods inferior to Krishna cannot perceive or know Krishna as nirguna Brahman itself, which is formless. Krishna says, “By Me, unmanifest in form, this entire universe was spread out.”[33] Later, Arjuna tells Krishna, “You are the Imperishable, existence and nonexistence and what is beyond that.”[34] In this sense, Krishna is formless, which goes beyond what Arjuna can see even with a divine eye, since even the gods can barely grasp Krishna manifesting  as a form that can be classified as suguna Brahman.

Arjuna demanding to know Krishna in its all of its real existence is in ignorance. Krishna could ask Arjuna the rhetorical question that Yahweh gives to Job, who “darkens counsel by words without knowledge,” when he demands of the supreme deity of the Hebrews why the deity has made Job, an innocent and righteous man albeit ignorant of God’s ways, suffer so.  Yahweh turns the table on Job, by demanding, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”[35] Similarly, Krishna as the Supreme deity could say to Arjuna, who demands that Krishna talk “without reservation” and “extensively” about his “powers-of-manifestation,”[36] How dare you presume to make such a demand! How could you, with your finite mind, grasp all of my powers by which I manifest Myself in the world?  “I am the beginning, the middle, and the end of [all] creations.”[37] To expatiate “extensively” and “without reservation” would be to go beyond the limits of Arjuna’s finite brain. A supreme deity goes beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility (i.e., emotion).[38] Hence, Krishna points out that “(t)here is no end to My divine powers-of-manifestation,” so what he has “proclaimed about the extent of [His] powers-of-manifestation was by-way-of-example” rather than exhaustive.[39]

Also like Job, Arjuna repents to Krishna for having shown “disrespect”—in this case, in jest while Arjuna was “playing, reposing, sitting, or eating.”[40] Interestingly, when Arjuna says, “I beg Your pardon,” he also says that he has come to realize that the Supreme Lord (i.e., Krishna as Brahman) is “unfathomable.”[41] Arjuna has come to this realization because Krishna had just granted Arjuna’s request to see the Supreme Lord’s “lordly form” even though Arjuna addresses the deity as, “O Supreme Spirit,” as if spirit has a form.[42] In short, the lesson here is that even when the divine reveals itself completely (or in itself) to us, we cannot grasp that of the divine that lies beyond the finite limits of human perception and cognition (i.e., our ideas and ability to reason).



1. Kant uses the expression, “things in themselves,” in contrast to appearances. Shankara also distinguishes reality from appearances.
2. Francis X. Clooney, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and theVirgin Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 157. I question Clooney’s choice of luminous, which the Cambridge Dictionary defines as “producing or reflecting bright light, especially in the dark,” because it connotes being able to see the goddess well, even though She is “unfathomably deep.” Perhaps numinous is a more fitting description of the visibility of the goddess, as such a light connotes or implies that more of the deity is beyond the visible picture or diagram, and thus is inherently mysterious in a religious (i.e., transcendent) sense.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 164.
5. Ibid., p. 157.
6. Ibid.
7. Once at an Easter Vigil liturgy, just after all the activity of the long-running rituals suddenly ended, I had the sense of the space itself vibrating visually. I was seated in the front row in a large church, so the activity was close to me, and my eyes had been riveted for more than an hour. I know that my eyes were just readjusting to the sudden absence of movement; even so, I had a sense almost by analogy of the relationship between ritual as prep for experiencing existence itself even of space itself as the outer shell of what the divine is like as it really exists. Put in terms of Hinduism, it was as if the long temporal duration of concentrated intentionality in the activity of ritual directed to a personal deity enabled attention at the end of the liturgy to focus on Brahman itself, though only by analogy because reality and awareness themselves, of the whole, are beyond the limits of human perception, cognition, and sensibility (i.e., feeling).
8. The Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation, trans. Georg and Brenda Feuerstein (Boston: Shambhala, 2011), ch. 2.15, p. 97. 
9. Ibid., p. 97n22.
10. Ibid., ch. 2.16, p. 98. 
11. Ibid., ch. 2.17, p. 98. 
12. Ibid., ch. 2.18, p. 98. 
13. Ibid., ch. 2.20, p. 99.
14. Ibid., ch. 2.22, p. 99.
15. Ibid., ch. 9.4, p. 191.
16. Ibid., ch. 9.6, p. 193.
17. Ibid., ch. 9.5, p. 192
18. Ibid., ch. 9.11, p. 193.
19. Ibid., ch. 11.38, p. 237.
20. Francis X. Clooney relates purusa in the Rig Veda to Krishna extending beyond the world. Lecture, Harvard University, October 7, 2024. Cambridge, Massachusetts.
21. The Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation, trans. Georg and Brenda Feuerstein (Boston: Shambhala, 2011), ch. 10.3, p. 203.
22. Ibid., ch. 10.2, p. 203.
23. Ibid., ch. 10.8, p. 205.
24. Ibid., ch. 10.12, p. 205.
25. Ibid., ch. 10.1, p. 207.
26. Ibid., ch. 11.4-5, p. 221.
27. Ibid., ch. 11.8, p. 223.
28. Ibid., ch. 10.19, p. 207.
29. Ibid., ch. 10.40, p. 219.
30. Ibid., ch. 11.38, p. 237.
31. Ibid., ch. 11.52, p. 244.
32. Ibid., ch. 11.24, p. 229.
33. Ibid., ch. 9.2, p. 191.
34. Ibid., ch. 11.37, p. 236.
35. Book of Job 38:4.
36. The Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation, trans. Georg and Brenda Feuerstein (Boston: Shambhala, 2011), ch. 10.16 and 10:18, p. 207.
37. Ibid., ch. 10.32, p. 215.
38. Pseudo-Dionysius.
39. The Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation, trans. Georg and Brenda Feuerstein (Boston: Shambhala, 2011), ch. 10.40, p. 219.
40. Ibid., ch. 11.42, p. 239.
41. Ibid., ch. 11:42, p. 239.
42. Ibid., ch. 11.3, p. 221.

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

On God’s Holiness and Mystery in Judaism

In The Natural History of Religion, David Hume claims that the human mind has difficulty holding on to the pure (i.e., unencumbered) idea of divine simplicity, and thus tends to apply familiar (i.e., human) attributes or qualities onto that idea (i.e., anthropomorphism), as if hanging ornaments on a naked Christmas tree. Eclipsed or compromised, or even lost entirely, is the quality of God being wholly other, and thus being qualitatively different than us and anything in our world. The Christian theologian Dionysius grasped this idea in his claim that God goes beyond the limits of human conception, perception, and sensibility (i.e., human emotions). The Biblical claim in the Book of Job that God is angry with Job’s “friends” for making statements about God’s ways without knowing them can be analyzed with an eye towards both viewing anger as only going so far with respect to God and being critical of the “friends’” presumption in assuming that God’s ways are within the limits of human cognition (i.e., theories). Rather than go to a negative theology wherein God is thought to be ineffable, I want to stress the value of recognizing both distance and mystery as being indispensable with respect to our relation to God lest we reduce God to our various masks of eternity.

In the Book of Exodus, the anthropomorphism as a narrative device in myth is not problem-free, so it is important to emphasize the leitmotif of distance between God and humans. “Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.”[1] God remembers, which is an interesting anthropomorphism considering that omniscience is a divine attribute. That God remembers the covenant seems to imply that God had not been paying attention when the “Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites and made their lives bitter with hard service.”[2] So as to avoid the obvious incompatibility of omniscience and needing to remember, one commentator claims that the word, “’remember,’ when used with God as subject, typically means that God has determined to initiate action.”[3] But perhaps the two things—recalling and deciding—merely occur together (i.e., positively correlated) rather than mean the same thing even when applied to God as the subject. God is depicted nevertheless as being distant, moreover, looking upon the Israelites rather than being among them, and coming “down to deliver” the Israelites, which is a fundamental change from Genesis, where God is so close that God makes clothes for Adam and Eve once they realize they are naked.[4]

“What was God doing, during those years the Israelites suffered under the Egyptians?”[5] It is as if the hands-on deity had gone up to attend to other business, and turned back to the Israelites because their groans had reached a sufficient volume or intensity. Then God would be with Moses as he returns to Pharaoh to bring the Israelites out of Egypt. Alternatively, being omniscient and omnipotent, God may have been allowing the increased subjugation of the chosen people so they would experience their dependence on God, but the Israelites could not fathom this divine plan and thought instead that their god had been away. Such a divine plan is distinct from the infliction or permitting of suffering by God as punishment for the Israelites having violated the covenant. As one commentator admits, the Israelites in Egypt “are not accused of having done anything wrong.”[6] So the prophets’ association of the absence of God with “judgment for Israel’s sins” cannot apply here.[7] As in the Book of (righteous) Job, no “rationalization of the absence of God is ever attempted, but the issue,” according to one commentator, “is resolved by the coming of the God who saves.”[8] I disagree that the issue of God’s absence in the midst of undeserved suffering in the case of the Israelites in Egypt is resolved by the return of God, even if only in terms of God’s attention, for unlike Job, no wager calling for the slaves’ undeserved suffering to test their faith is mentioned in the text. In my view, the absence of God when the Israelites’ servitude was especially harsh is simply necessary for there to be the harshness, which in turn serves as the reason why leaving Egypt makes sense. God is anthropomorphized by the author here as God needing to remember, as a human does, for this narrative purpose. Were it the case as in Wisdom of Solomon that “the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them,”[9] then presumably there would be no need for the Israelites to leave Egypt, and thus for God to save them.

In Exodus 3, there is also distance, but here the reason is easily understood. God at the burning bush tells Moses, ”Come no closer! . . . for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”[10] Here it is not that God goes off as if on other business; rather, it is humanity that should maintain a distance from God out of respect for God’s inherent holiness. Indeed, as one commentator states, “’Holiness’ has been identified as the quality of divinity itself . . .”[11] The definitive quality in experiencing holiness as analyzed by Rudolf Otto in his book, The Idea of the Holy, can be understood to be the numinous quality in which a wholly other, or “supernatural,” presence is sensed or inferred in the immediate context of liminality, as if the person were momentarily suspended between two types of existence or fundamental modes of reality. This core of holiness goes beyond what we can grasp as rationality or moral goodness and even “defies language.”[12] To use the term, “supernatural,” for instance, does not do the phenomenon justice.

Furthermore, sensing of a numen in a liminal situation is more fundamental than are the qualities of being fascinated and terrified. The latter two can be considered to be reactions rather than as primary. Projected outwards, God can be said to be fascinating or angry, but more to the point is God’s transcendence tangent to our realm. Put another way, something holy has sufficient deep significance to be sensed as ontologically different, or “other,” in a fundamental way.  God is the very definition, referent, or epitome of holiness.

Mankind is already tainted by the original sin of Adam and Eve by Exodus. Therefore, in Exodus, “Moses said to the Lord, ‘The people are not permitted to come up to Mount Sinai; for you yourself warned us, saying, ‘Set limits around the mountain and keep it holy.’”[13] So even though “Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God,” they “took their stand at the foot of the mountain.”[14] Even the priests were to stand at that distance from God, who had “descended upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain.”[15] After God spoke to the people, who then said to Moses, “do not let God speak to us, or we will die.”[16] “Then the people stood at a distance, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.”[17] Although “God’s appearance on the mountain is . . . described as both frightening and attractive, daunting and fascinating,”[18] the thick darkness, itself ontologically significant next to daylight, as the experience of a full solar eclipse may intimate to a degree, suggests the liminal presence of a numen—that something that is fundamentally other than ordinary is now present in our world.

Drawing on Otto’s terminology, the mysterium experienced from the sense of a transcendent, numinous presence can be understood to be more fundamental than the tremendum (terrifying, as daunting, as distinct from simply being afraid[19]) and fascinans (fascinating) qualities of a religious experience of the holy. Including the presence of mystery is perhaps just another way of saying that a religious experience, unlike experiences in other domains such as science, politics, and even ethics, go beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion. In this way, Otto can be situated with the Christian theologian of the sixth century, (Pseudo) Dionysius.

One implication of the Otto-Dionysius “synthesis” or “nexus” is that even the wisdom tradition in the Hebrew Bible falls short, as evinced in the Book of Job. Job’s “friends,” who insist rather harshly that Job must have been impious to suffer so, invite Yahweh’s anger, for in the “repeated attempts to reinterpret Job’s situation against all appearances in accordance with [Wisdom] teaching, they demonstrate that the attempt to interpret human fate according to fixed rules can become deeply inhuman.”[20] Initially sympathetic, lying on the dirt with Job for seven days, the “friends” essentially kick the guy when he’s down because they think they know God by building “entirely on the [Wisdom] teaching and its infallibility.[21] Thus, “God’s wrath burns against [Job’s friends] because,” God says, they have “’not spoken of me what is right.’”[22] God says to Eliphaz the Temanite, “’My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.’”[23] Job’s three “friends” must “seek atonement” by performing a sacrifice to God; paradoxically, the “friends” “have to rely on Job’s petition on their behalf.”[24]

In contrast, Job does not try to “force God’s actions into any kind of theory,” then he recognizes the inappropriateness of his attitude after a dressing-down by God.[25] Job tells God, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in  dust and ashes.”[26] Job’s realization and repentance tells us that God’s initial claim that Job is a righteous man is correct after all. Job is blameless, not perfect, for he calls “God to account, indeed even accusing him” at one point, but he does so without the assumption of infallibility because, unlike his friends, questions the traditional human teaching that a “recognizable link” exists between what a person does and how much one suffers.[27] God rightly applies blame instead to Job’s self-righteous “friends,” for they have spoken of God without understanding, as they presumed that they could not be wrong about that which inherently goes beyond the limits of human thought and thus of theories. Humans cannot “understand God’s actions in terms of comprehensible and manageable rules.”[28] Faith seeking understanding should not put the cart before the horse, lest Aristotle’s notion of misordered concupiscence—putting a lower good above a higher one—apply.

Admittedly, it is tempting to stop at the anthropomorphist language of myth, or even to take that language literally, but God as wholly other necessitates mystery that goes with the inherent distance between us and a transcendent referent. Throughout the natural history of religion, the human proclivity to fixate on divine attributes at the expense of the distant mysterium of the divine, which relativizes even viewing it as a being (beings as entities being familiar to us in our realm), can at some point in a person’s experience of the divine compromise the sense of mystery and distance itself in yearning for that which inherently goes beyond the limits of human thought, senses, and feelings. It is thus important to keep in mind God’s command to stay off the mountain and the quality of mysterium in Otto’s theory, which, as a mere theory, does not exhaust God’s ways.


1. Ex 2:23-25
2. Ex 1:13-14
3. Donald E. Gowan, Theology in Exodus: Biblical Theology in the Form of a Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994):5.
4. The quoted text is from Exodus 3:8.
5. Donald E. Gowan, Theology in Exodus: Biblical Theology in the Form of a Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994):4.
6. Ibid., p. 7.
7. Ibid., p. 8.
8. Ibid., p. 10.
9. 3:1
10. Ex 3:5
11. Donald E. Gowan, Theology in Exodus: Biblical Theology in the Form of a Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994):26.
12. Ibid., p. 31.
13. Ex. 14:23
14. Ex. 14:17
15. Ex 14:20, italics added.
16. Ex 20:19
17. Ex 20:21
18. Donald E. Gowan, Theology in Exodus: Biblical Theology in the Form of a Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994):28.
19. Ibid., p. 32.
20. Rolf Rendtorff, The Canonical Hebrew Bible: A Theology of the Old Testament, David E. Orton, trans. (Leiden: Deo Publishers, 2005):356.
21. Ibid., italics added. Ignorance that presumes that it cannot be wrong evinces the arrogance of false entitlement, as if the creature were above its Creator.
22. Ibid., p. 354. God’s statement is in Job 42:7.
23. Job 42:7.
24. Rolf Rendtorff, The Canonical Hebrew Bible: A Theology of the Old Testament, David E. Orton, trans. (Leiden: Deo Publishers, 2005):356.
25. Ibid.
26. Job 42:5-6.
27. Rolf Rendtorff, The Canonical Hebrew Bible: A Theology of the Old Testament, David E. Orton, trans. (Leiden: Deo Publishers, 2005):356.
28. Ibid., p. 357.


Friday, September 27, 2024

Hinduism and Judaism on Deities and Transcendence

A basic tenet of the Advaita (non-dualist) Hindu philosophy of Shankara holds, “If saguna points to brahman’s immanence, nirguna points to brahman’s transcendence. . . . superiority should not be accorded to the nirguna mode of discourse.”[1] Being a non-dualist, Shankara held that brahman is one, since reality or existence is unitary, and thus brahman as existence and reality of all is indivisible ontologically. Applying David Hume’s separability thesis from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, the distinction between nirguna and saguna can be understood as one made only by human reason, which does not mean that nirguna and saguna are separate entities. In short, we make the distinction; it does not belong to brahman itself. Lest it be thought that nirguna brahman has no analogue in Western philosophy of religion, we need only bring in Spinoza, whose nirguna-like God is so different from the saguna-comparable Abrahamic personal deity that both Judaism and Christianity banished his texts; Judaism excommunicated him. The tremendous qualitative difference between saguna and nirguna brahman can be useful to anyone trying to understand why Judaism excommunicated Spinoza, which is not my task here. Rather, taking nirguna brahman as reality or existence of everything, which, like Spinoza’s notion of God, itself has awareness, I want to stress both how much this differs in kind (i.e., qualitatively) from both Hindu deities and the Abrahamic deity, and the more fundamental point that brahman is One. In spite of the qualitative difference, keeping the Hindu concept of nirguna brahman in mind while thinking about the personal deities that are consistent with saguna brahman is useful.

Nirguna brahman is simply unrecognizable as God in the Abrahamic religions (i.e., Judaism, Christianity and Islam), whose deity is personal (i.e., an intelligent being), and thus can be classified under saguna brahman. Yet as Hume points out in his Natural History of Religion, anthromorphism (i.e., applying human qualities onto non-human entities) applied to the original idea of divine simplicity says more about us than the divine. Hence saguna is not sufficient to account for transcendence. As Dionysius wrote, God (or the divine) goes beyond the limits of human conception, perception, and sensibility (emotion). Nirguna brahman is a concept that meets this need—if there is such a human instinct for transcendence as defined by Dionysius, while saguna satisfies the desire of the human mind, as postulated by Hume, to comprehend things that have at least some degree of likeness to ideas (from sense impressions, according to Hume) that are already in the human mind.  I first discuss the transcendence of nirguna brahman, which bringing in Spinoza will facilitate, after which I consider saguna brahman by looking at creation and, related, the word “God.”

The Taittiriya Upanishad twice (2.4.1 and 2.9.1) “describes brahman as that from which all words, with the mind, return, having failed to reach. Even the Vedas, in speaking about brahman, are constrained to use conventional words derived from everyday usage and, since these emerge from our experiences of finitude, they can never directly signify brahman. . . . Words are mere pointers to that which is beyond the meaning of all words and definitions.”[2] This is vintage Dionysius on God going beyond human ideas. The orientation is to beyond, or beyondness itself, rather than to what is familiar. As Hume writes, the human brain has a lot of trouble holding onto something like sheer beyondness, and it is difficult to yearn experientially for a naked beyond sans even the distinction between substance and attributes (or accidents). Hence the human need for saguna brahman in Hindu philosophy and a personal God in the Abrahamic religions. Nevertheless, nirguna brahman even as a transcendence-oriented concept can help us to keep saguna brahman and the Abrahamic deity from becoming human, all too human.

Reflecting on saguna brahman and the Abrahamic deity with nirguna brahman in mind can highlight the qualitative difference between gods and mere mortals. “To posit omnipotence as an attribute of brahman . . . does not mean that brahman possess (sic) the attribute of omnipotence in the same way that a lotus has the color blue as its attribute. The act of creation and being in relation to the creation does not alter the unity of brahman’s nature.”[3] Indeed, nirguna brahman transcends substance and attributes altogether. So rather than stipulating the law of karma from past lives as Shankara does to obviate the problem of evil, or limiting God’s omnipotence to that which is logically possible as Aquinas does, treating brahman’s omnipotence as qualitatively different than what it means for a human to have an attribute, and thus power in this case, may be sufficient to solve the problem of evil, at least in the case of Hinduism. Brahman’s holding of an attribute is, in other words, “wholly other,” and thus we cannot say using language that an all-powerful brahman is responsible for evil and thus is not good.

We can draw on the notion of nirguna brahman even in the West because the notion exists in Western philosophy of religion, even if in apparent opposition to the dominant conception of the divine as a personal deity. “The essential nature of brahman is indicated by the words satyam (reality), jnanam (awareness), and anantam (infinite).”[4] This is how Spinoza describes God as “reality or nature,” by which he means everything that exists. As God is a mode, according to Spinoza’s philosophy, God has awareness, but God is not a personal deity, as that would reek of anthropomorphism, and Spinoza was no fan of humanism in spite of the fact that his Jewish congregation and the Catholic Church excoriated him for being an atheist. Similarly, Nietzsche has been wrongfully accused of the same thing, even though he was pointing out the internal contradiction in a particular conception of God (i.e., Abrahamic). At any rate, Spinoza’s conception of God is in sync with distinguishing nirguna brahman from saguna brahman, in that the latter represents specific deities but without any doctrine of creation. Spinoza would agree that “the attribution of creatorship to brahman is limiting and defective. The world is also devalued when it is regarded as the product of a nonessential nature of brahman.”[5]

For Spinoza, God is not apart from the world (i.e., all that exists/nature), but is the entire world. Thus, he has been said to be a pantheist. Similarly, the original body, prior to the creation even of the gods, of purusa merges pre-creation materiality with the divine, though later Shiva and Vishnu were said to be purusa (i.e., the original body, out of which the multiplicity in the world comes).   Spinoza’s God is of course not a personal deity, as such a conception of the divine is anthropomorphic.  

Spinoza’s claim that redemption from suffering is like a person realizing, by reasoning, that one is not a specific wave, but instead the entire ocean, which analogously represents the whole of nature, or reality, and thus God. This is very similar to saying that atman is essentially brahman. The entire ocean has awareness, and is everything, and is not created, so Spinoza can once again be interpreted as viewing the God as being like nirguna brahman.

Keeping nirguna brahman in mind, we can hedge against excessive likeness of even saguna brahman to us. The suggestion in the Taittiriya Upanishad (3.6.1) is that brahman chooses to create the world from the limitless bliss-nature (ananda) of brahman, an “outpouring of the fullness of brahman and not an act motivated by any sense of incompleteness.”[6] Shankara “does admit the fact of desire on the part of brahman.”[7] But the desire does not presuppose or come out of a lack of something in brahman. Shankara writes, “What then are these (desires of brahman)? They are by nature truth and knowledge, and they are pure by virtue of their identity with brahman.”[8] Thus, the desires are not like ours, as that which we desire is not identical with us, but, rather, is external and extrinsic to us. Even the notion of the purpose or telos of brahman is qualitatively different than what it is for a human being to have a purpose. “While being cognizant of the limits of reasoning and the inadequacies of analogies, it is not impossible, with the aid of the Upanishads, to glimpse the significance of brahman’s desire to share its plenitude through self-multiplication. The desire for meaning, as numerous personal stories in the Upanishads reveal, is fundamental to the human being. The meaning of human existence, however, cannot be understood apart from the purpose of the one who brought all things into being.”[9] The one here must be saguna brahman, whose purposes include creation.

Unlike in the Abrahamic religions, the world is not “fallen” in the Hindu creation myths. “If the world . . . is seen positively as the outcome of the intentional creativity of brahman, expressing and sharing the fullness of brahman, the world does not have to be negated or rejected.”[10] Christianity comes to this only by the sacrificial atonement of Jesus Christ on the Cross; creation is redeemed, or restored, to a right relationship with God.

Also unlike case of the Abrahamic deity, God, Hindu creation is not ex nihilo (i.e., from nothing), for purusa already exists to be cut up as a sacrifice that gives rise to the world and the gods as we know and experience them. However, the fact that the repeated phrase, “And God said,” which immediately precedes God distinguishing or separating things, does not precede the earth as “a formless void,” which is not empty but is of “waters,”[11] may suggest that Yahweh distinguishes things rather than creates ontologically ex nihilo. That is, the message may be like that of Wittgenstein, wherein naming or stating is crucial to classifying something as something (and as distinct, or separate ontologically) from something else. It follows that the name of God is very important, even ontologically. That is to say, the word, “God,” is, according to Karl Rahner, “itself a reality” because the word “asks about reality as a whole and in its original ground.”[12] By implication, the word and its unique reality are qualitatively different from all other words and the sort of reality that they have. Just look at the salience of God’s name in the following passages from the Hebrew Bible:

“(A)ll the people of the earth will know your name.” (1 Kgs 8.43) According to Rendtorff, this means that “(t)o know the name of God means to acknowledge God himself.”[13] “Swearing by the name of YHWH is also an act of confession: ‘Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name’ (Deut 6:13; 10.20).”[14] In Deuteronomy, “there is repeated discussion of the ‘place which the LORD will choose to let his name dwell.’”[15] “Here God will be present in his name.”[16] Deuteronomy “makes it clear that the prime concern is not with where God ‘lives,’ but with the presence of the divine name.”[17] I submit that this takes the significance of language too far, which I think Wittgenstein does too in claiming that there is no pre-classification awareness of something as a something prior to it having a name. I submit that God’s attributes, such as omnibenevolence and omnipotence, are more critical than God’s name, for, as Rendtorff points out, there are four names for God in the Hebrew Bible, and the name of something simply points to it, whereas the qualities and character of something are interior and inherent. Again, recalling nirsuna brahman is helpful; that brahman transcends and thus relativizes substance and attribute (or, peripatetically, accident) suggests just how integral the attributes of any personal deity that can be classified under saguna brahman are to the divine nature. Bringing in Dionysius, if God goes beyond the limits of human cognition, then God goes beyond words, and thus names. In other words, transcendent reality transcends the unique reality of the Abrahamic God’s name.

So, we can and should go beyond the Biblical statements, “We trust in your holy name” (Ps 106.21) “whose name is holy.” (Isa 57.15) Rendtorff makes the crucial point that, “But above all it is God himself who hallows his name.”[18] God’s name is holy because God is holy, not vice versa. Holiness is not based on the name of a god, and ultimately not even in a god’s qualities or attributes, but, rather, on that which any word for “God” (as per saguna brahman) points to, which in turn is ontologically not limited to human experience, cognition, perception, and emotion. If there is a human instinctual urge, or even attraction, to think beyond thought and yearn or reach beyond even reality or existence, then the momentum of secularity in modernity must be more a rejection of hollow or worn-out institutional religion than a permanent shift away from religion per se. Even the atheist David Hume posited such an enduring urge of the mind to behold divine simplicity, which our minds muck up by anthropomorphizing that which is transcendent into something familiar, and thus, human, all too human.


1. Anantanand Rambachan, The Advaita Worldview: God, World, and Humanity (New York: State University of New York Press, 2006), p. 90.
2. Ibid., p. 89.
3. Ibid., p. 90.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., pp. 92-3.
7. Ibid., p. 93. See Taittiriya Upanishad (2.6.1).
8. Anantanand Rambachan, The Advaita Worldview: God, World, and Humanity (New York: State University of New York Press, 2006), p. 95. 
9. Ibid., p. 97.
10. Ibid.
11. Gen. 1:1-3.
12. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, William V. Dych, trans. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1978): 49-50.
13. Rolf Rendtorff, The Canonical Hebrew Bible: A Theology of the Old Testament, David E. Orton, trans. (Leiden: Deo Publishers, 2005): 592.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 594.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., p. 593.