On Arjuna's Vision of Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita

In chapter 11 of the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna reveals his real form to Arjuna. The chapter seems like a departure from the surrounding chapters, which focus on bhukti (i.e., devotion to Krishna). For example, in chapter 9, Krishna gives Arjuna the following imperative: “Always think of Me and become my devotee.” Unlike seeing the deity as he really is, sincere devotion to that which is based beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion is possible without being given “divine eyes.” The metaphysically, ontologically real is an attention-getter in the text, but it is the devotion, or bhukti, that is more important from a practical standpoint. Even theologically, the experience of transcendence, of which the human brain is capable, can be said to be more important than “seeing” divinity as it really is because the latter, unlike the former, lies beyond our grasp. In fact, seeing Krishna as he really exists is not necessary, for in chapter 10, Krishna says, “Here are some ways you can recognize and think of Me in the things around you [in the world].” This is yet another reason why the devotion rather than seeing Krishna as he really is, ontologically, should be the attention-getter in the Gita.

A movie focusing on chapter 11 would highlight special effects, and indeed at least one does this to gaudy excess, whereas a movie based on the compassion of Krishna and devotion of Arjuna would be a melodrama, at least if Ramakrishna, a Hindu mystic who lived in the nineteenth century, is any indication. His devotion was so intense that a guru allowed Ramakrishna to perform ritual as he intuited. I contend that this, rather than hoping to see the divine as it really is, ought to be the goal of a religious person.

Benkata Bhatta, speaking at a Bhakti Yoga Conference in 2025, asked why, given that Krishna tells Arjuna when he is seeing Krishna as the deity really is, “Now see for yourself how everything in creation is within Me,” why does Arjuna request to see Krishna as the deity really is? Bhatta’s answer was that we are visual creatures. Hence, Jesus says in the Gospels, blessed are those who do not see me yet believe. Yet even in the case of Jesus, the incarnated Logos, he is not seen by even his disciples as the Word itself, by which God created the world. In contrast, Krishna is giving Arjuna a way of accessing something that is already there in front of us, only Arjuna needs divine eyes to see Krishna as the deity really is. Just before revealing Himself, Krishna tells Arjuna, “but you cannot see Me with our present eyes. Therefore, I give you divine eyes.” Although Jesus’s disciples do not see Jesus as the Logos, they do not need divine eyes to see Jesus ascending to heaven as resurrected. The resurrected body is itself at least how the incarnated Logos really is, even if it does not show the Logos as it is before being incarnated by God’s self-emptying, or lowering, of itself. Paul’s vision of Jesus, as well as that of the disciples when they see Jesus next to Elijah and Moses, can also be said to be transcendent and thus as Jesus really is, as incarnated. Nevertheless, it can be argued that seeing the Logos as it really is, sans being incarnated, requires “divine eyes.”

In his talk, Bhatta said that vision defies enumeration, and is brighter than “hundreds of thousands of suns.” All living being. No beginning, middle or end; without limit or boundaries. How can this be encapsulated in the vision?  A person would need divine eyes, which Krishna gives to Arjuna to see Krishna as that Supreme Person is. Simultaneous unity and unending multiplicity. Innumerable arms, faces, mouths, bellies, and many terrible teeth. This is, I submit, intentionally overwhelming, and this can be treated as an indication that being provided such a vision goes too far for us mere mortals.

 In The Idea of the Holy, Rudolf Otto’s descriptors of terrifying, fancinating, mysterious pertaining to the human experience of the holy aptly describe Arjuna’s reaction to seeing Krishna. For instance, Arjuna says, “Oh great one, seeing this wondrous and terrible form. . . . Your many terrible teeth; and as they are disturbed, so am I. . . . my mind is perturbed by fear. I can no longer maintain my steadiness or equilibrium of mind.” Arjuna sees the soldiers on both sides, their heads smashed by Krishna’s teeth. He is bewildered, terrified, and humbled. “What are you?” Arjuna asks. Krishna answers, “Time (or death) I am, the great destroyer of all worlds.” This ontological basis of Krishna is the metaphysical basis of the Gita’s main ethical teaching for Arjuna, who is in a confused state ethically on whether to fight against some of his relatives on the battlefield in a civil war: death is already fated, so an instrument. Don’t worry about the ethics of killing your former teachers and even some of your relatives. Yet even as destiny exists, there is still space for free will. Arjuna can decide to walk away from the battlefield.

Arjuna calls Krishna the god of gods. Arjuna begs forgiveness for having been so informally friendly with the supreme deity. “You are my dear friend, but simultaneously you are so much greater than I am,” Arjuna now realizes. Krishna forgives Arjuna, and thus treats the latter as a friend. Arjuna says, “I am gladdened, but at the same time my mind is disturbed with fear . . .” According to Bhatta, Arjuna is grateful for being shown the divine vision, but is also afraid—too much so, in fact. The fear is making it difficult for Arjuna to love Krishna. So, Arjuna asks to see the four-armed Narayana form of Krishna. The four-arms reminds him that Krishna is the Supreme Person and yet is less terrifying. Krishna grants this wish. To encourage Arjuna, Krishna further withdraws to a two-armed human-like form. This is divinity seen as human-like, just as Jesus is the Logos in human form. Just as seeing the Logos as it is may be too terrifying for mere mortls, Arjuna tells Krishna, “Seeing this beautiful human-like form, now I am myself . . .” Krishna sympathizes with the confused warrior, saying during the vision, “this form of Mine you are now seeing is very difficult to behold. The form you are seeing you’re your transcendental eyes cannot be understood simply by studying the Vedas, or by undergoing serious penances, nor by charity, nor by worship.” Lest this line be construed as privileging the ontological vision over bhukti, Krishna goes on to say, “only by undivided devotional service can I be understood as I am, standing before you, and thus be seen directly. Only in this way can you enter into the mysteries of My understanding . . .”  Krishna appears to be saying that only by bhukti can He not only be understood as he is, but also seen, thus in a way that does not require divine eyes. To be sure, Arjuna is able to see Krishna in human form (i.e., with only two arms) differently after having seen the deity as He really is, but, according to Bhatta, the source of divine power is coming down to a loving relationship with Arjuna. Even though there is admittedly a power to having a healthy kind of fear if it facilitates a fuller, personal, intimate relationship, for otherwise such a relationship may be taken for granted, seeing Krishna as He really exists is not necessary to be even intensely devoted to the deity and even understanding and seeing the deity as it really is.

Therefore, reading the Gita as if the vision in chapter 11 is the most important part may be a mistake borne in part from the sensationalism of how the vision is described in the text. The descriptors theorized by Otto, especially that of tremendum, can and should be tempered, and this can be done by focusing on loving devotion instead of a vision of a deity as it really is. It is not as if we have divine eyes, whereas devotion to a transcendent entity or object is within our purview.

Arjuna’s Vision of Krishna: On the Edge of Transcendence

In reading the Bhagavad-Gita from chapter four on, it may be tempting to collapse all of Hinduism into a monotheism in which Lord Krishna is God. Even in the context of bhukti being directed exclusively to Krishna, other deities are alluded to in the text. To claim that those other deities came out of Krishna, and even that Krishna surpasses even Brahman, which is infinite being that is imperishable awareness, thought (but not mind), power, and bliss, in terms of ultimacy does not mean that the Gita is a monotheist scriptural faith-narrative. Not even Krishna’s unmanifest form by which the deity’s creative energy gives rise to the cosmos transcends form itself, and thus reaches the unmanifest and formless brahman. To be sure, that Krishna, as the Supreme Person metaphysically and ontologically, is ultimately Self renders the deity identical to brahman, but this does not mean that Krishna transcends brahman. Regardless of where the Krishna-Brahman debate lands, and there are admittedly shlokas in the Gita that support the ultimacy of Krishna and shlokas that favor the ultimacy of Brahman, Krishna need not be more ultimate than brahman for a devotee of the deity to be able to experience a lot of transcendence from ordinary experience. In fact, because either referent that is the Absolute lies beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility (emotion), according to the Christian theologian Pseudo-Dionysius, the human experience of distinctly religious transcendence is where our attention can fruitfully be directed. This is not to say that a referent (i.e., a divine, transcendent object) is thereby relegated or even discarded in favor of the quality of experience as its own referent. Rather, it is to say that we can know a lot more than we do about distinctly religious, and thus transcending, experience, and that such knowledge is part of the human condition—part of being human as homo religios as distinct from being a political, economic, and social species. First I investigate the question of whether the Gita is monotheist, after which I argue that Arjuna’s vision of Krishna in chapter 11 of the Gita is can be viewed as the “event horizon” of sorts in terms of how much we can transcend as we approach the limits of our faculties.

One scholar argues that even though Krishna “is manifold in his appearances,” his form “is the one and only” in “relationship to the manifold character of the cosmos.”[1] In his “cosmic form all beings, including the Vedic gods, reside and find their place.”[2] This is not, however, to say that Krishna is the only deity referenced in the Gita, and, moreover, that Krishna is synonymous with brahman even though Krishna’s unmanifest form of fullness “is a product of the god’s yogic [creative] power and . . . expresses sovereignty” and is thus “not his highest state of being as the transcendent ‘self’ beyond the cosmos,” the latter being how brahman too is described.[3]  Krishna, unlike Brahman, is not just the transcendent “self,” and even a king is described, in The Law of Manu (7.4ff), as “consisting of and uniting different gods” and therefore should “be regarded as a ‘universal form’.”[4] Being the protector of a social, economic, and political order (i.e., a kingdom), a king embodies “the divine powers of the gods who contribute to his sovereignty,” hence “he is called ‘a mighty godhead that lives in the form (body) of a man.”[5] Indeed Krishna’s cosmic body, within which Arjuna sees the created realm, is explicitly related to human kingship in that the “cosmic and royal aspects of Krsna’s form converge not only at the moment of creation, but also in times of destruction, which serve the double purpose of punishment and purification, as well as re-establishing order and legitimate kings.”[6] Krishna’s relation to royal sovereignty and thus functionality inhibits the deity being synonymous with Brahman, and thus ultimately ultimate even though Arjuna needs “divine eyes” to see Krishna’s infinite overwhelming and terrifying form. Transcendence, like a Hindu temple, has more than one layer, and human “sight,” even with “divine eyes,” can only go so far. This is the idea.

In short, even if, as one scholar claims, Krishna “is the one and only encompassing cosmic god,”[7] and is thus the creator and destroyer of worlds in being the protector of the cosmic order, Brahman transcends cosmic functions because Brahman is not a doer, just as an individual atman is immutable (i.e., unchanging) too. My point is that not even Krishna as depicted as his cosmic form in the Gita can be regarded as the Absolute or Ultimate metaphysically, ontologically, and even theologically.

Even as a deity, Krishna is not exclusively so. In Gita 11.21, “Yonder, these hosts of deities enter into You. Some, terrified, praise (You) . . . ,” the very existence of those other deities is presupposed, for it would make no sense to claim that things that don’t exist enter into Krishna.[8] Also, Gita 11.54 states that the other deities would like to see the vision of Krishna. These two slokas are enough to refute the view that the other deities are merely imaginary and thus Krishna alone is God. That is, shlokas 11.21 and 11.54 are polytheist rather than monotheist statements.

Even so, Malinar claims that Gita, chapter 9, “and the subsequent chapters present the theological basis for Krsna’s revelation as the highest, the one and only god.”[9] That Krishna can be both the highest and yet the only deity is itself problematic unless the other gods are illusory, an interpretation that the two shlokas in Gita 11 contradict. To be sure, the other deities, in being formed, are not ultimate; unlike Krishna, they do not have an unmanifest form, but not even that form is ultimate ontologically. As manifested to Arjuna, Krishna’s “flaming many-colored, (with) gaping mouths and flaming vast eyes” is said to touch “the world-sky.”[10] Even though brahman creates space, Ramanuja identifies that sky “with the transcendental ‘space’ of the Ultimate Being beyond the world-ground.”[11] Feuerstein, however, objects to this interpretation by noting that the “transcendental Reality is formless and ‘beyond-the-three-primary-qualities’ (nirguna).”[12] The reality that is Brahman transcends even Krishna’s unmanifest form by which Krishna’s creative energy creates the cosmos. Hence the errancy of positing Krishna as more ultimate than Brahman. Even so, the extent of transcendence that Arjuna experiences when he beholds the vision of Krishna that that deity enables Arjuna to see “with divine eyes” is such that Arjuna’s cognitive, perceptual, and emotive capacities are reached as they start to buckle even though the Absolute or Ultimate transcends even that point. It is the buckling, or warping, of Arjuna’s faculties that is so indicative of what it is like to push oneself to one’s limits in transcendence. Whether Krishna or Brahman is the Absolute (i.e., personal or impersonal), the yearning to transcend more and more is itself significant and thus worthy of study and praxis.

As described both by Samjaya and Arjuna, the vision of Krishna is admittedly nothing short of inspiring of awe in its wholistic totality. Narrating the past event of the vision of Krishna to King Dhritarashtra, Samjaya describes Krishna as “infinite (and) omnipresent,” as the “Great Self” of greater “splendor” than were “a thousand suns were to arise at once in the sky,” as “the God of gods,” with “the whole universe . . . abiding in the One, there in [Krishna’s] body.”[13] Referring to that body, Arjuna says, “I behold the gods and all the (various) kinds of beings” enter. Moreover, Arjuna characterizes Krishna as being “of endless form,” even “All-Form!”[14]  Overwhelmed, Arjuna states his conviction as a devotee to Krishna: “You ought to be known as the supreme Imperishable. You are the supreme receptacle of all this. You are the Immutable, the Guardian of the eternal law. You are the everlasting Spirit.”[15] By the latter is mean purusha, which is Brahman’s creative energy, which brahman itself transcends.[16]

Even though bhukti to Krishna is all-encompassing for a devotee, the perception of Krishna as the Absolute and other deities as within Krishna’s body or illusory doesn’t necessarily translate into an ontological claim that those deities do not really exist whereas Krishna transcends. Moreover, the contention that since “it is Krsna’s body in which the whole world resides, he is not only the supreme lord of the universe (visva-isvara), but also its universal, encompassing form (visvarupa)”[17] actually situates Krishna behind brahman, which as inherently unmanifest transcends form itself and every conceivable form, even Krishna’s unmanifest cosmic form that contains the created realm and even the other deities, including Brahma.

Yet in terms of transcendental experience, Arjuna’s vision of Krishna pushes the envelope up to the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion. This is not to infer an ontological or metaphysical claim regarding Krishna; rather, I contend that the vision in this case comes up so close to the rim beyond which human thought, perception, and emotion cannot go that warping of their respective contours is evident.

In the Christian Gospels, the disciples’ vision of Jesus’s transformed resurrected body is perhaps not as close to the limits. To be sure, the nature of that body eclipses our understanding, at least so far, but it cannot be said, as Krishna tells Arjuna: “Very-difficult-to-see is this My form which you have seen. Even the gods are forever hankering after a glimpse of this form.”[18] Even the gods! Of course, in Christian theology, there are no other deities than the trinitarian deity, but unlike Arjuna, Jesus’s disciples have no difficulty in seeing the resurrected body. Whereas the vision of Krishna departs from that deity’s human form substantially, Jesus’s resurrected body does not. The greater anthropomorphism comes at the cost of not being able to approach the boundaries of the human faculties in terms of transcendence. This is the idea.

In short, in having to be given “divine eyes” to see Krishna as that deity really is, which other deities can only wish to see, and in seeing an infinite number of arms and heads, the vision warps the cognitive and perceptual framework that operates nonstop as the paradigmatic contours of our ordinary waking experience in life. We are not used to thinking that we can see what is refused to deities, and seeing the entire created realm in a deity’s body, which in turn is distended in heads and arms, in a golden radiance that is brighter than a thousand suns in the sky is not something we see in our daily lives.

In fact, not only is space warped in the world being shown in Krishna’s body, but time too is warped when Krishna, “in his appearance as time, shows those [warriors] whom Arjuna should kill as having been killed already.”[19] This warping of time is “based on a suspension of the otherwise chronological sequence of past, present, and future. . . . The future is presented as already past; conversely, the present appears as the moment in which this future is disclosed as an actual fact.”[20] The Kantian a priori impact of reason itself on the paradigmatic framework that structures and organizes our cognitions and perceptions of the empirical realm is thus warped, and the warping of the time-space fabric by gravity that Einstein theorized and has since been empirically verified (e.g., gravity waves in space; time differences between sea-level and Mt Washington in North America) can be thought of analogically in which gravity is like Krishna in that both are capable of warping space and time. To be sure, whereas gravity is an impersonal warping of time-space, it is the Supreme Person as Krishna really is that is presented “as time,” which “is regarded as a form of the cosmic god as sovereign who brings about a necessary and purifying destruction in order to re-establish order.”[21] In other words, “Arjuna’s task is to recognize Krsna as the agent in the form of time. Conversely, time has been given a form and even an agent.”[22] Being presented with time in a distinctly theological sense stretches Arjuna’s cognitive faculty to its limit.

The situs of the vision of Krishna being at the “event horizon” is evident too in Arjuna’s emotional reaction, for he is, as it were, at the end of his tether. As one scholar describes this, “After confirming that Arjuna has indeed seen the whole world in the one body of Krsna (11.13) . . . , Samjaya describes the reaction: ‘Filled with amazement (awe) with his hair standing on end, and bowing his head and folding his hands to pay reverence, Arjuna spoke.’”[23]  Arjuna’s emotional condition is thus “highlighted” in the text.[24] Seeing Krishna’s “many formidable fangs,” Arjuna states that he, as well as the “worlds,” shudder” and that he can “find no shelter,” presumably from his fright.[25] Arjuna’s “inmost self quakes,” and he can “find no fortitude or tranquility.”[26] It is no wonder that he is suddenly petrified, for he sees his army’s leading warriors “swiftly enter [Krishna’s] mouths with formidable fear-instilling fangs. Some [of the warriors] are seen with pulverized heads sticking in between [Krishna’s] teeth.”[27] Arjuna is “trembling,” and “with stammering (voice), very frightened.”[28] Arjuna’s trembling “underscores the amazement and awe caused by the vision.”[29] In such a state, Arjuna’s praise of Krishna can be interpreted as being “indicative of Arjuna’s position as the composer of hymnic praise”, which is associated in the Rigveda with “poetic creativity,” which is an expression of “vibrant excitement.”[30] In other words, Arjuna’s praise is expressive of the extreme emotion of his “poetic-ecstatic state,”[31] rather than constituting religious belief-claims that reality is ultimately a Supreme Person rather than brahman and that the other deities are imaginary whereas Krishna is ontologically and metaphysically existent.

Out of incredible angst, Arjuna cannot say enough about Krishna, declaring that deity to be the unsurpassable Ultimate, “greater even than Brahman, the primordial creator,” “the Imperishable, existence and nonexistence and what is beyond that,” “the Primordial God, the ancient Spirit (purusha),” and again of being of all-consuming “infinite form.”[32] Because Arjuna is emotionally overwhelmed, these laudatory statements can be interpreted as being emotionally expressive rather than ontologically or metaphysical statements.

I totally disagree with the assertion that in Arjuna addressing Krishna as being the “all” (sarvah), rather than merely as being powerful in “bringing together ‘all’ as the cosmic ruler, a “monotheistic framework” applies.[33] For one thing, logically it does not follow from Arjuna’s praises of Krishna as being “of infinite strength, and immeasurable prowess,” such that Krishna has “brought together the all (sarvam),” that “therefore you are all (sarvo).”[34] Likewise, it does not follow logically that a king who brings together all of his kingdom is that kingdom, even if one were to exclaim, l’état est moi! Even if Krishna were “all,” it would still need to be argued how that is a monotheist claim, but Arjuna is not really asserting claims.

Rather, because his emotions are so intense that they, like the vision itself, are all-consuming, his over-the-top praises of Krishna can be reckoned as emotive expressions in “poetic and ritual language.”[35] To impose rationality on such language is to incur a category mistake. Reflecting the overwhelming vision, Arjuna’s praises are indicative of the warping effect of the sheer intensity of heightened emotions, as could be expected given the overwhelming tremendum (i.e., terror) that Arjuna feels as a reaction to seeing the bodies of his teachers, fellow warriors, and relatives in Krishna’s sharp, gnawing fangs. Therefore, in an emotive sense too, the vision can be reckoned as lying on the rim, or “event horizon,” of human faculties, beyond which they shut down or are otherwise incapable of experiencing in a coherent fashion. I submit that it is precisely because Arjuna is up against the rim of what he is capable of feeling without passing out that he experiences the flood of emotions as “all,” and his praises are expressions of emotion that project the all-consuming sense he has of his emotions and the vision itself.

My basic point is that the warping, or blurring, of each of the basic contours of cognition, perception, and emotion indicates that Arjuna is on the cusp of the boundary beyond which is like a black hole in outer space. Unlike Jesus’s resurrected body being visible to the disciples, the vision of Krishna is at the event-horizon, where the normal parameters for cognition, perception and emotion warp similar to how the intense gravity of a dense black hole warps the fabric of space-time at the rim beyond which not even light can escape.  Of course, this analogy breaks down in that revelation “gets out” of the theological “black hole,” albeit through a window darkened by centuries of candle-smoke as revelation passes through our human, all too human atmosphere. 

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1. Angelika Malinar, The Bhagavadgita: Doctrines and Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 166.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 170.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 171.
6. Ibid., p. 172.
7. Ibid.
8. Georg and Brenda Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation (Boston: Shambhala, 2011), p. 227.
9. Angelika Malinar, The Bhagavadgita: Doctrines and Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 144.
10. Gita 11.24 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 229.
11. Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 229.
12. Ibid.
13. Gita 11.11-13, in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 223.
14. Gita 11.15-16, in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 225.
15. Gita 11.18, in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 225.
16. Similarly, in Christian theology, God transcends the Logos (Word), by which God creates the world.  No theologian would state that God is a manifestation of Logos, and yet Krishna as the Supreme Person is said to be more ultimate than is brahman. David Hume would doubtlessly bring in the problem of anthropomorphism.
17. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 169.
18. Gita 11.52 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 245.
19. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita: Doctrines and Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 175.
20. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 175.
21. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 178.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 168.
24. Ibid.
25. Gita 11.24-25 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 229.
26. Gita 11.24 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 229.
27. Gita 11.27 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 231.
28. Gita 11.35 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 235.
29. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 180.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Gita 11.37-38 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 237.
33. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 183.
34. Gita 11.40, in Angelika Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 183.
35. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 181. The Gita “is similar to the original poetic situation described in Vedic texts, in which the hymns are said to have been composed in reaction to a vision, and then handed down and used by sacrificial priests as ritual liturgy.” Indeed, “poetic skill and expression remained part and parcel of the encounter (darsana) with the beloved god or goddess in many bhakti traditions” (Ibid., p. 182).

Sikh Ethics on Netanyahu

Israeli state officials met on August 7, 2025 to debate Prime Minister Netanyahu’s plan to expand the presence of the IDF, Israel’s military, to include all of the territory in Gaza, which had been under Israeli occupation anyway for many decades. With Gaza already under Israeli occupation, characterizing Netanyahu’s plan as being “to conquer all or parts of Gaza not yet under Israeli control” is strange.[1] Similarly, mischaracterizing the E.U. as a bloc even though that union has the three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial is odd. The media’s artful way of reporting is without doubt superficial relative to Netanyahu’s unvirtuous decisions and their respective consequences to which the labels of genocide and holocaust have justifiably been applied around the world. Behind the relevant vice lies an extreme egocentricity that the ethical theory of Sikhism describes quite well, even to the level of ontology or metaphysics.

Netanyahu’s office released a statement claiming that the prime minister’s plan to station armed Israeli troops throughout the occupied territory is a way to “further achieve Israel’s goals in Gaza.”[2] Excluded was any compassion or even thought for the well-being of the residents of Gaza, as if no such responsibilities are entailed in being an occupier. I contend that the vice of wrath lies behind the egocentricity of the statement, and that this vice in turn is predicated on the supposition that anyone opposing one’s self-interest or that of one’s side is merely an object and thus can be used to further one’s own aims. This duality flies in the face of a metaphysic of Oneness, wherein everyone is connected rather than separate. This is none other than the Sikh theory of the five vices being sourced in haumai.

That Netanyahu’s wrath is egocentric can be gleaned even from how he treated opposition within the IDF as being easily expendable, as if the Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir were merely a puppet for the prime minister to toss away the moment Zamir showed pushed back publicly on Netanyahu’s plan. Zamir suggested “that the plan would endanger the lives of the [Israeli] hostages and further stretch Israel’s military.”[3] “That prompted Netanyahu to say in a post on X that if [Zamir] objected to the plans, he could resign.”[4] Ouch! Zamir stated that the IDF would “continue to express our positions without fear, in a substantive, independent, and professional manner,” and puppets, which are mere objects, do not behave as such. In other words, Netanyahu’s hasty reaction evinces or points back to an egocentric perspective in which other people are objects rather than other human beings, whom, Kant wrote, should, as rational beings, be treated as ends in themselves rather than merely as means. This applies even to the starving, emaciated 2 million humans still alive in Gaza, whom the Israelis are puppeteering to fight like dogs over scant food-drops.

Kant’s ethic against treating other rational beings as mere objects is also in the Sikh religious ethic, which is useful here in describing Netanyahu’s mentality and what it implies metaphysically. The Sikh ethic actually focuses on five vices, each of which is sourced in haumai. “Fundamentally,” according to Keshav Singh, “haumai is a kind of false conception of oneself as singularly important, and correspondingly, a false conception of the world as revolving around oneself, as a world of objects there for one’s use.[5] At its extreme, haumai is “a kind of ethical solipsism: an inability to conceive of anyone or anything but oneself as an ethical subject.”[6] In other words, Haumai “is a kind of false conception of oneself as singularly important, and correspondingly, a false conception of the world as revolving around oneself, as a world of objects there for one’s use. Vice, then, comes down to the failure to recognize the importance of others. The corresponding picture of virtue is that virtue consists in a recognition of the importance of others.”[7] Whereas virtue is related to the “recognition of an ultimate reality on which all are One,”[8] haumai, and thus each of the five vices that are sourced in it, involve the illusion (maia) of separateness wherein only oneself (or one’s group) counts as significant.

Sikhism makes the leap from ethics and ontology/metaphysics to theology in viewing the One as divinity and not just as real. “The Divine, in Sikhism, is conceived of as absolute and all-encompassing, and is often referred to as literally (the) One. . . . the Divine as a kind of all-encompassing unity.”[9] A unity that grounds everything, rather than everything being divine (i.e., pantheism), is not reality per se, but pertains to what is ultimately real. It is important, I submit, to distinguish ontology and metaphysics from the sui generis, or unique, domain of theology. In Sikhism, “enlightenment consists in experiencing ultimate reality, thereby merging with the Divine,” whereas “haumai creates a duality between self and other, cutting one off from ultimate reality and preventing enlightenment.”[10]

So if it seems like in going to such an extreme as committing a genocide and even a holocaust, Netanyahu and his cadre have lost touch with reality, Sikhist ethics would say yes because viewing and treating people as objects is inconsistent with the Oneness whose unity makes duality wherein only oneself is significant (and a human being) an illusion. In this regard, Sikhism is in line with Shakara’s non-dualist Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism wherein the soul of every people is in essence Brahman, which is infinite being.

It only remains for us to identify the specific Sikh vice that pertains to Netanyahu, for once known, it can be related back to raumai, which is predicated on the metaphysical illusion (or delusion) of duality between oneself and everyone else. That vice that is most salient in the dogmatic mentality and actions of Israel’s prime minister and his cadre of high officials is krodh, which, as appetitive wrath, is “a kind of vengeful, consuming anger” that is not righteous anger at injustice.[11] In the Sikh scripture, SGGS, is written, “O wrath, you are the root of strife; compassion never rises up in you.”[12] This definitely applies to the Israeli troops going ultimately from orders from Netanyahu. Instead, of any mercy and compassion, krodh is a“vengeful appetite that controls people like puppets.”[13] This can be seen even in how Netanyahu lashed out at Zamir when he resisted being merely a puppet. As for Netanyahu’s underlying motivation, meaning being even more motivating that his desire to make the Palestinians in Gaza suffer and even die, it is worth observing that krodh “manifests haumai” in that “the wrathful person wants to hurt others to improve his own status or make himself feel better. In this way, he views others as mere objects, and considers only the importance of his own inward-facing desires.”[14] 

Singh’s comment that self-interest is one way of understanding haumai is in my view too generous; selfishness, wherein benefits are intentionally excluded from other people (unless, as a byproduct, oneself benefits) is more apt. But even selfishness does not account for using other people as objects absent any compassion or mercy. Maimonides’ point that the Abrahamic deity, or “God,” can judge a mentality so bad in terms of sin that God removes even the possibility of such a person asking God for forgiveness. Hence Yahweh hardens Pharaoh’s heart in the Book of Exodus. So too, it seems, that deity has hardened Netanyahu’s heart. Divine wrath can be understood to be a reaction to krodh sourced in haumai and evinced so horrifically as by government officials persecuting a genocide or holocaust on millions of other human beings.

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1. Gavin Blackburn, “Israel’s Security Cabinet Debates Expanding Gaza Operation Despite Opposition,” Euronews.com, August 7, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Keshav Singh, “Vice and Virtue in Sikh Ethics,” The Monist, Vol. 104 (2021): 319-36, p. 320.
6. Ibid, p. 321.
7. Ibid, p. 319.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 321.
10. Ibid., p. 322.
11. Ibid., p. 326.
12. Ibid., p. 326 (1358 in SGGS).
13. Ibid. p. 326.
14. Ibid., p. 326.

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.

Interpreting Scriptures: On Referential Realities beyond the Text

In Christianity, Paul wrote that if the resurrection of Christ Jesus didn’t really take place, then faith is for naught, but he also wrote that faith without love is for naught. The assumption that if Jesus was killed and raised historically speaking, why be a Christian, has had much greater currency than the assumption that if a person is not kind and compassion in heart and deed to people who have been insulting or have damaged the person, that person is not really a Christian. In short, the value of the religious meaning in the New Testament has typically been assumed to depend on the extratextual (i.e., beyond the text of the Bible) existence of Jesus. Using Vedanta hermeneutics (i.e., method of interpreting a text) in Hinduism, I argue that the assumption is incorrect. This is not to make a historical claim one way or the other regarding Jesus or Krishna; rather, I want to claim that the religious meaning in a scriptural text does not depend on making the assumption that the reality described therein exists beyond the text. Although hermeneutically based, this argument may sway attention back to religious meaning itself as primary, including in regard to engaging in pious actions.

In Hinduism, Mimamsa and Vedanta commentators “’restain’ extra-textual reference within the overarching frame of the text, which is not replaced by knowledge, even if the object of knowledge remains ‘outside the text.’”[1] To be sure, the Brahma-sutras “could lend itself to the idea that the Upanisads communicate various authors’ intentions and point to a reality beyond the text.”[2] This is problematic because “external reference to impermanent realities threatened ultimately to undercut the posited eternity and permanence of the sacred text itself. The system had to be nonreferential, meaningful in itself, and expressive in that meaning, in order to be protected from a changing and unpredictable world.”[3]

What about positing of imperishable, and thus permanent realities as existing outside the text? Doing so would not undercut the posited eternity and permanence of a sacred text itself, but it would mean that such a text is referential and thus not meaningful as a system within itself. Also, is not such a positing of something existent outside of the text necessary for the extra-textual component of the hermeneutic (or else the meditation is just on abstract knowledge)?  Both the Mimamsa and Vedanta schools presuppose that “text and performance—meditational or sacrificial—imply, reflect, and instigate one another.”[4] Perhaps it can be said that the meaning in the text is primary in the textual hermeneutic, whereas the extra-textuality reality is primary in the extratextual portion of the Vedanta hermeneutic. Hans Frei, who wrote in his Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative that neither form nor historical criticism should eclipse the religious meaning of a religious text. In other words, Frei holds that asking about “the historical Jesus” and whether different authors, each having their own agenda, contributed to a text gets in the way of giving the meaning of a religious story enough air to breath in a reader’s heart and mind.

 I wonder if questions concerning reality beyond a text and being referred to textually should also be bracketed so not to eclipse the meaning that is in the text. And yet, the Vedanta project “is permanently about the reading and use of texts, and about brahman as an extratextual reality communicated through texts, without either the text or the reality being thereby rendered superfluous.”[v] Perhaps the question is whether a text alone (bracketing extratextual praxis) can only allow for the nominalist rather than a realist assumption as regards the reality being described or discussed textually.

It may be that making the realist assumption—that the reality described in a text really exists outside the text—makes sense, for why would an author claim writing a text that a reality has meaning if that reality doesn’t really exist outside of the text. On the other hand, making a nominalist assumption keeps the focus on the text itself, whose religious meaning is primary in a hermeneutic. Put another way, even if brahman or Krishna do not exist beyond the meaning in a text, the textual religious meaning can still have value. As Victor Frankl discovered, the human need for meaning can be felt in even very dire circumstances. Distinctly theological or religious meaning can sooth a troubled heart or mind even if God doesn’t exist beyond the text. The textual meaning is real in that it is hardly illusory and can have an effect on people without having to approach a text as a realist rather than as a nominalist. This is not to say that the realist assumption is never the correct assumption to make; rather, it is to say that the validity and usefulness of religious meaning in a scriptural text does not depend on making that assumption. If so, and because we mere mortals cannot be certain whether an extratextual reality exists as it extends beyond the limits of our thoughts, perceptions, and emotions, religious meaning gleamed from a religious text ought to be primary in interpreting one and the basis upon which a religious practitioner acts, whether in worship or interpersonally in daily life.

In Christianity, for example, being compassionate to people whom the Christian doesn’t like or who don’t like the Christian should not depend on whether the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus occurred historically and even metaphysically. Even as a textual illustration, the Passion Narrative has meaning and thus value, which can be put into practice regardless of historical and metaphysical questions. Selfless love as to a detractor or even a hated or hateful enemy as a means to entering a different spiritual condition (e.g., the kingdom of God) has its own meaningfulness and value both in itself and as put into practice. Both Paul and Augustine wrote that God is such love. In Vedanta Hinduism, brahman itself can be grasped as identical to an person's self (atman) in experientially meditation, which, though extra-textual, is based on concentrating on the meaning of a scriptural passage. 

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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. 56.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 58.
5. Ibid., p. 61.

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.

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).

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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.