On Absolute Truth in Hinduism: Impersonal Energy or a Supreme Person?

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.

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1. A.C. Bhaktivedenta, Purport to Srimad Bhagavatam 1.2.11.
2. See the Bhagavad-gita, 14.21-27.
3. Vyasdeva, Srimad Bhagavatam (11.2.45-47).
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

Transcendence in Action in the Bhagavad-gita

Chaitanya Charan spoke at Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga Conference in 2025 about action and transcendence in the Bhagavad-gita. Arjuna faces adversity even though he is a good. That life is suffering is a Noble Truth in Buddhism. Why noble? Even suffering can be ennobling. That life can be unfair is a given in the Gita. Getting less than we think we deserve can be from our bad karma in a previous life. So, we can’t really know what we actually deserve, so it is important to accept results. They aren’t in our control anyway, whereas our present karma is. So, the advice is to be committed to doing your best in acting, but with detachment on whatever results from the action. I contend that detachment from pride and especially arrogance goes automatically with the transcendence of detachment from not only the results of one’s actions, but also from the created realm itself, which by analogy looks smaller and smaller as the planet Earth does from a spacecraft on the way to the Moon.

Acceptance and commitment to acting lead to transcendence, spirituality goes from being an anchor to being an airplane. In terms of bhukti devotion, Krishna is the higher reality. As a person grows spiritually, the deity becomes more important and the world’s importance becomes less. Transcendence is a matter of being more oriented to “another reality” than to the world, and thus such a person might seem to be not fully “here” in conversations with other people. Differing somewhat from Charan’s interpretation of the Gita, I contend that the higher “reality” in the Gita can be understood to be a deity itself, as in bhukti devotionalism, or, as Shankara claims in his commentary on the Gita, reaching the higher reality can be thought of as an ongoing realization that a person can have that one’s self (atman) is really the very same as brahman, which is conscious, limitless, powerful, and blissful being. In bhukti (i.e., devotion to a deity), according to Charan, a deity as a higher reality that is to be the primary focus even while the person is committed to actions in the world.  Charan pointed out that bhukti devotion does not mean that a person should not be fixed on a goal, for a goal is held before acting whereas results are afterward.

In the Gita, according to Charan, Arjuna is initially perplexed. If he does not fight, disaster on the battlefield would be likely because the other side, which has unjustly cast out Arjuna and his brothers from a share in rulership, would win. If Arjuna does fight, he might kill his teachers and even one of his grandfathers. The Gita is essentially a call to action; the philosophical basis for acting is not the point in the Gita. Act, but with detachment from whatever results. Act with wisdom; act with a higher consciousness, which, means transcending attachment to things of the world to a higher realization.

Whether in being oriented to Charan’s bhukti higher reality personified as Krishna or Shankara’s impersonal brahman, that the process of transcending the world shifts a person’s orientation such that the world looks smaller and the higher reality looks larger is decisive in Charan’s view of spirituality gained from having studied and meditated on the Gita text. He did not mention, however, the compatible idea that a natural or automatic sense of humility is an important inherent byproduct of shifting (and then holding) one’s primary focus to a reference-point that is by definition, according to the Christian theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius, beyond the limits of human thoughts, perception, and emotions. Even in the realization that one’s atman is identical to brahman, a person’s ego cannot be front and center if the reference point (i.e., brahman) is not sourced in and thus limited to the world in which we live (i.e., the created realm, whether it is created by brahman or Krishna). Being limitless is a quality of brahman. 

Human beings are so steeped in pride (i.e., the presumptions of ego, as if deserving to be on stilts during a flood) that the byproduct of having a qualitatively unique kind of orientation (i.e., in terms of religious transcendence) is crucial not only to being able to be at peace, but also for interpersonal relations to be so as well. A focus on Jesus or the kingdom of God can serve the same purpose for a Christian even without taking into account the leitmotif of humility in the Gospels. In fact, that humility is a byproduct of maintaining a transcendental orientation even while performing actions in the world and relating to other people is especially valuable precisely because intending to be humble can be such a weak motive in human nature. I suppose that relying more on a natural byproduct of a distinct kind of orientation than on an intention to have the byproduct itself as a quality may be Taoist in nature. In other words, it may be more natural to human nature to assume an orientation to a transcendent referent point or entity than it is to try to be humble, given the gravitas of the human ego.  This is not to say that valuing humility highly as a virtue is not another means by which a person can be naturally humble.

On Hindu Metaphysics

At Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga Conference in 2025, Anuttama spoke on metaphysics as a spiritual reality. He argued that the nature of that reality is a personality—that of the Hindu god Krishna. I contend that Vaishnavism also contains an alternative depiction of reality, which is impersonal rather than a deity. The difference may come down to whether compassion or being that is conscious, infinite, and blissful is primary.

Anuttama claimed that there are four primary views of reality, his favorite being the fourth. Firstly, there is the view that the universe has a material cause (rather than being created by a deity). This view can accommodate humanitarianism, though also hedonism. Another view holds that there is a deity, but then it can be asked, why is there so much suffering in the world? Thirdly is the view that the world is just an illusion, and we should realize this. The film, The Matrix, is based on this view. Also consistent with this view is the belief, “I am a deity and the universe,” and it is just an illusion that we are mortal, limited creatures.

The fourth view is that of Vaishnavism. There is a supreme reality, and that is the Supreme Person, which is the deity Krishna, and we are immortal. There is no death and ultimately no rebirth. Also, a person can have a relationship with that highest reality, and a person counts in that relationship. The idea is that there is a deity and a person can have a relationship with it, and the divine personality is with the person at every moment. There is reaction (karma), but hell does not exist. Suffering comes from the choice to have pleasure apart from that relationship. Also, suffering serves a purpose: to help us realize the importance of the relationship. The purpose of life is to reawaken that relationship.

Being oriented to a relationship with Krishna can make our relationships with other people less selfish, which means that even interpersonal interactions can be more spiritual than materialistic. Even in business, a proprietor can be less exploitative of labor and even customers by looking at the long-term rather than to make a quick profit. In short, we can spiritualize this world by recognizing how compassionate Krishna is, and in being oriented to that, we can infuse compassion in our relationships with other people.

Turning now to analysis of Anuttama’s theology, Shankara’s (8^th century, CE) Advaita Vedantism can be evoked by way of a contrast ironically to delve more deeply into Anuttama’s Vaishnavism. Whereas bhukti yoga, in being devotional, is based on there being a Supreme Person (i.e., Krishna) as the ultimate reality, Advaita (non-dualist) Vedanta posits the impersonal brahman as the ultimate reality, while Krishna (Vishnu) is a manifestation (i.e., an appearance created by brahman) rather than being itself real. "According to the Upanisads, brahman is the highest reality and reference point for all meaning, and ultimately for salvation as well."[1] Even in reaching liberation from the cycle of rebirths (and heaven), knowing brahman not only cognitively but also as realized experientially as a person focuses one’s consciousness on one’s being, understood to be one’s true self (atman) and also identical with brahman, which is being that is conscious and infinite (and Ramanuja adds “bliss”).

Even Vaishnavism has been characterized in a way that makes brahman seem more real than is Krishna. For example, Britannica describes Vaishnavism as the belief that “absolute reality (brahman) is manifested in Vishnu, who in turn is incarnated in Rama, Krishna, and other avatars.”[2] The verb, manifests, is what implies that Vishnu, and thus Krishna, come out of that reality rather than instantiate it. Putting brahman in parentheses is to state that it is absolute reality.

Anuttama would undoubtedly reject Britannica’s description of the relationship between Krishna and absolute reality (as brahman).  Anuttama would doubtlessly type the word, “Krishna,” in parentheses or even erase the word brahman to convey the idea that a deity, or Supreme Person,” is that which is absolutely real. Similarly, Ramanuja interprets chapter 7 of the Bhagavad-gita as affirming that Krishna is ontologically higher than brahman, whereas Shankara reverses the arrows in his commentary because in non-dualist philosophy (i.e, Advaita Vedanta), only brahman is real whereas both creation and deities are merely manifestations in the realm of appearance.

Furthermore, because Anuttama states that Krishna is known to be compassionate, and this is how a person’s relationship with the deity can rub off on interpersonal relations, the metaphysics of Vaishnavism may actually be that it is compassion itself that is ultimately real. In bhukti devotion to Krishna, a person may really be loving compassion itself, which manifests as a deity (i.e., personified). If so, then the disagreement between Vaishnavism theology and Advaita Vedanta philosophy boils down to the precipitate of either compassion or being (which is infinite, conscious, and powerful).[3] Which is more real than the other, and is the winner the ultimate or absolute reality such that no third candidate could possibly usurp the esteemed title?

Brahman is not just infinite being, for Shankara holds that it is conscious and powerful.[4] Can it be that being that is aware is compassion (or compassionate)? Creating the world could then be understood as an act of compassion; certainly, brahman cannot have a desire out of some lack. Rather, the power of unlimited being becomes kinetic in manifesting itself in creating. Differing from the Advaita philosophy, Ramanuja adds bliss as a quality of brahman. Can being itself that is infinite, aware, powerful, and blissful be innately compassion(ate)? We are closer, I think, by adding Ramanuja’s bhukti theology (i.e, that brahman is bliss, which not by accident is conducive to personifying ultimate reality as a deity) to reaching an identity relation between brahman and compassion (similar to how Shankara emphasizes the identity of atman and brahman).

A person who has bliss is more likely to be compassionate than is an unhappy miser. Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol illustrates this point. When Scrooge is blissful on Christmas morning after being visited by three ghosts, he is suddenly compassionate to his employee and his nephew, whose Tiny Tim would die otherwise. By virtue of being blissful, Scrooge has become an avatar or personification of compassion in the story. Jesus in the Gospels is also a personification of compassion, whose root there is love (i.e., agape seu benevolentia universalis). Perhaps in his philosophical theology, Shankara meant to say, Don’t get too carried away with the personification; it’s what’s inside—the essence—that counts. Christians could take a lesson in this respect.

Therefore, by using Ramanuja as a bridge of sorts, Krishna as being essentially compassion itself can be understood be blissful brahman exercising its unmanifest power. This is not to say, however, that being itself is compassion. Rather, in attempting a reconciliation of the metaphysics of bhukti Vaishnavism and Advaita Vedanta, compassion can be reckoned to be implied as a quality of brahman. It is infinite, conscious, powerful, blissful, and compassionate, but this is not to say that the essence of brahman is compassion.

That the Advaita Vedanta philosophy claims that brahman has a few specific positive qualities is crucial to being able to construe brahman as compassion. To put this another way, the essence or “substance” of brahman must be compassion for the reconciliation to be complete. To contend that being itself, which is everywhere that exists, absent the qualities of consciousness, power, and bliss, is essentially compassion is a much more difficult claim to argue; the positive qualities that being has in Advaita Vedanta make the job easier. Also, to want existence to be compassion is not to say that existence is compassion. Thirdly, to claim that brahman compassionately creates the world is not to say that brahman is (in essence) compassion. Even saying that being blissful, brahman is naturally compassionate does not get us to an identity relation between brahman and compassion, but we’re getting closer. The argument needs to be that being that has the Advaitan positive qualities (as well as the negative qualities, such as imperishable) is compassion. I’m not there yet. Perhaps the key is recognizing that the realization of brahman is not only by studying a text such as the Upanisads, but also in an extratextual [i.e., experiential] process of realization, such as by meditation on positive and negative qualities of brahman. It is not so “that brahman can be thought about in general, under a composite form constructed by harmonizing all Upanisadic texts. Rather, it [i.e., the nature of brahman] presumes an irreducible, ongoing act of reading, remembering, and combining texts, in which the extratextual and full nature of brahman modifies how we read texts with their many distinctions.”[5] Translated into Christian terms, the extratextual element can be thought of as praying on a biblical passage rather than just studying it.

For example, in meditating on certain qualities of brahman, a person might feel compassion generally but intensely, meaning not directed to a particular deity or person. Not having directionality, the compassion would be experienced as compassion itself. Because the experiential context is the experience of the identity-relation of one’s own true self (atman) and brahman, the meditator might conclude that compassion naturally falls out from the experiential realization of identity of individual and infinite being, or is integral to it, and thus is the very essence of brahman, or at least quality thereof.

Assuming the relation of identity between brahman and compassion can be established, the two Hindu schools of thought might then want to argue over whether knowing or loving compassion (as brahman) is better, and more particularly, which is more conducive to a person being compassionate. Is being a brahman-knower or a bhukti devotee a better way to instantiate compassion in the very being of an individual self (atman)? Furthermore, perhaps it is in a person being compassionate to the extent that one can know or love one’s own essence/self as compassion that brahman, which is unmanifest, manifests its conscious bliss as power, all this being otherwise known to us as compassion. Maybe the beingness of conscious, empowered bliss is essentially compassion.

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1. Francis X. Clooney, “Binding the Text: Vedanta as Philosophy and Commentary,” in Texts in Context: Traditional Hermeneutics in South Asia, ed., Jeffrey R. Timm (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press), p. 47.
2. Britannica entry for “Vaishnavism”. Britannica.com (accessed March 21, 2025).
3. That these are primary qualities of brahman can be found at Francis X. Clooney, “Binding the Text,” p. 54.
4. That the vacuum of outer space can hold energy is one way of conceptualizing the latent power of being itself. Einstein’s famous formula relating energy to mass postulates that energy in space can spontaneously become mass, and possibility revert back to energy. That out of brahman, creation manifests, is sustained, and ends is consistence with the science. To my knowledge, no science backs up the idea that brahman, qua being, is conscious. Besides, positing awareness and a will, such that the creation of the world (and deities) is an act of will of impersonal reality is anthropomorphic; Hume would have a fit.
5. Francis X. Clooney, “Binding the Text,” p. 54.