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.
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.
