At Harvard’s Bhakti Yoga
Conference in 2025, a man whose Hindu name is Kaustubha spoke on the three
phases of ultimate truth: Brahman, Paramatma, and Bhagavan. Is the absolute
truth an energy or a person? Is God a non-personal energy or a person. In
Vedanta Hinduism, this is a salient question. According to Kaustubha, absolute
truth is that which is not dependent on anything else; a truth from which
everything else comes. Kaustubha defined Brahman as being impersonal
energy, which is that from which everything else manifests. The Upanishads emphasize
the realization by a person that one’s true self is identical to the impersonal
energy of being itself that is infinite, aware, powerful, and blissful. Although the Bhagavad-Gita can be
interpreted thusly, as per Shankara’s commentary, but also as Krishna being the
Supreme Person, which is more ultimate than Brahman. What gives? Who, or what,
is on top in terms of ontological ultimacy (i.e., ultimately real)?
Vyasdeva wrote Srimad
Bhagavatam, in which divine love is emphasized. He was trying to clarify
the Hindu scriptures. For him, devotion includes knowledge of renunciation
(i.e., Brahman realization). Also, devotion is not oriented to getting earthly
things, such as wealth. Life should be used for enquiring into the nature of
absolute truth. Vyasdeva’s answer: “Learned transcendentalists who know the
absolute Truth call this nondual substance Brahman, Paramatma or Bhagavan.” These
are three features of the one absolute truth, which is the source of all
existence. We can know that truth in three ways. They are “qualitatively one
and the same. The same substance is realized as impersonal Brahman by the
students of the Upanisads, as localized Pramatma by the Hiranyagabhas or the
yogi, and as Bhagavan by the devotees.”[1]
Paramatma is a manifestation of
Vishnu in the human proverbial heart.
Bhagavan is in a personal form as the Supreme Person. Vyasdeva claims
that “Bhagavan, or the Personality of the Godhead, and impersonal Brahman is
the glowing effulgence of the Personality of Godhead. . . . (T)hose who are
perfect seers of the Absolute truth know well that the above three features of
the one Absolute Truth are different perspective views seen from different
angles of vision.” Yet Vyasdeva contends in his text that Bhagavan is superior
to Paramatma and Brahman. To be sure, he nestles realization of Brahman and
Paramatma within the realization of Bhagavan. A person does not have
realization of the Supreme Person (Bhagavan) without realizing Paramatma in one’s
heart and without Brahman being realized at identical to one’s innermost self (atman).
Kaustubha interpreted Brahman
realization as a person realizing that one is made of spiritual energy, and
thus is in reality eternal, immutable, and one with the universe. In saying, “I
am beyond desire,” a person has an evenness of mind. “I am spirit.” Paramatma
realization too can be achieved by a yogi in meditation. In
this realization, a person might say, “I am in constant contact with,
and under the shelter of the supreme consciousness, the cosmic intelligence,
the soul of the universe.” That Supreme Soul exists within a person because it
exists in one’s own heart. This divine Being is controlling the material
universe, and is the dear friend of everyone. Brahman realization is included
within this realization. In Bhagavan realization, a person might say, “I realize
and love the supreme form of Vishnu, which has all-attractive names, forms,
qualities and pastimes, and expands ultimately through its various energies and
reciprocates with my love.” The material realm consists of three gunas; each
one of these modes of energy, illumination, detachment, and destruction, has an
influence on a person.
In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna’s
recipe for not being attached to these gunas is devotion to the deity, Krishna.[2]
But aren’t forms the opposite of Brahman realization, such that seeing beyond forms
is necessary? Krishna answers that Brahman is one of that deity’s energies, so
if a person is lovingly devoted to Krishna as the Supreme Person (i.e., Bhagavan),
a person has Brahman realization too, so viewing Absolute Truth as personified
in a form does not violate the non-dual quality of Brahman as impersonal energy.
In fact, Kaustubha implied that devotion to Absolute Truth as Krishna, the Supreme
Person (and thus the highest deity in the Hindu polytheistic pantheon), is better
in resulting in a person being compassionate to other people than is Brahman
realization, wherein a person’s true self (atman) is known to be
identical to the infinite impersonal energy that pervades (and is) reality.
In Srimad Bhagavatam, Vyasdeva
asserts, “The most advanced devotee sees within everything the soul of all
souls, the Supreme Person. Consequently, he sees everything in relation to the
Supreme Lord and understands that everything that exists is eternally situated
within the Lord.”[3] So,
a “devotee who faithfully engages in the worship of the Deity in the temple but
does not behave properly toward other devotees or people in general is called a
prakrta-bhakta, a materialistic devotee, and is considered to be in the
lowest position.”[4] Such
devotees, Kaustubha claimed, are not devotees because they do not recognize the
divine apart from the Supreme Person.
Hypocrisy comes with this. In contrast, a sincere devotee “shows mercy
to ignorant people who are innocent and disregards the enmity of those who are inimical
towards them.”[5] Compassion
toward all naturally emanates from having loving compassion in devotion to the
Supreme Person. That is, regular religious experience that is sincere
automatically renders one more compassionate to other finite beings. I submit
that such a mechanism is more efficacious than is intention to put a religious
teaching into practice by being compassionate to other people because we have
various inclinations that can eclipse any intention.
Is it the case, however, that
Bhagavan realization, in which the devotee’s love is directed to Krishna as the
Supreme Person qua ultimate reality, is better than Brahman realization
in resulting in people being compassionate to other people? I contend that
Bhagavan realization is indeed superior because the currency of compassion is
in a person’s bhakti relation to the deity already. In contrast, knowing Brahman—that
a person’s self is really the same as the impersonal being that supports
the created realm as a floor of sorts—does not in itself include compassion.
Rather, it is by realizing that we are all the same because we are all
basically the same “substance” as Brahman that the implication is
reached cognitively and through meditation that we should be compassionate
to other people. In other words, an experiential, extratextual realization of
the identity of individual and infinite being is not itself compassion;
rather, the exercise of compassion should follow from the realization. Even if
this happens automatically rather than by intention, which is admittedly possible,
compassion is not in the realization itself, whereas compassion is in
bhakti devotion to Absolute Truth in a personified form. This is the idea.
Such a conclusion is not
necessarily generalizable to reach Kaustubha’s claim that Bhagavan realization
is superior to Brahman realization, for it has not been shown that Absolute Truth
reduces to (or is epitomized by) compassion. For example, Brahman realization
may be superior to bhakti yoga in terms of not suffering from being attached to
the desire for objects in this world. Furthermore, Kaustubha’s hierarchy of
realizations flies in the face of his preachment on religious toleration. A
person who values compassion most may prefer Bhagavan realization, whereas another
person who is primarily concerned with not suffering may prefer identifying intellectually
and experientially with Brahman. Even if the latter is considered to be one of
Krishna’s energies (and thus that the Supreme Person is more real than even
Brahman), encapsulating the divine in a human form is, as David Hume points
out, highly anthropomorphic (i.e., positing human characteristics onto
non-human things or animals). As Nietzsche might say, it is human, all too human,
to view Absolute Truth in our own terms. It is much more difficult, Hume maintains,
to grasp divine simplicity without hanging recognizable forms on the
transcendent. Furthermore, that Brahman is one of Krishna’s energies may defy
the nature of Brahman itself as that which even the creation of the gods comes,
as Brahman is out of which everything that exists comes, is sustained, and ends.
It may be asked nonetheless if a better means of showing compassion as caritas
seu benevolentia universalis to everyone isn’t worth some anthropomorphism
if that is necessary to get compassion “up front” in the process of realization
itself such that compassion may more automatically flow out, with other people,
fellow devotees or not, as the referents.
2. See the Bhagavad-gita, 14.21-27.
3. Vyasdeva, Srimad Bhagavatam (11.2.45-47).
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
