TLC 25 (1968)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Personal and Impersonal Realization
The Puranas are called the supplementary Vedic literature, because sometimes in the original Vedas the subject matter is too difficult to be understood by the common man. The Puranas, therefore, explain things nicely by different stories and historical incidents. So, in the Srimad Bhagwatam it is stated in the Tenth Canto, Fourteenh Chapter, that Maharaj Nanda and the cowherd men and inhabitants of Vrindaban generally are very fortunate because the Supreme Brahman, the Personality of Gobhead, full of bliss, is now engaged there in His eternal Pastimes as their Friend.
According to Svetasvatara Upanishad, the Mantra of Apanipado javano grahita comfirms that although Brahman has no materially created hands and legs, still He walks very stately, and He accepts everything offered to Him. These words suggest that He has transcendental limbs of the body, and therefore He is not impersonal. The person who does not understand the Vedic principles simply stresses the impersonal material features of the Supreme Absolute Truth, and thus unceremoniously calls the Absolute Truth impersonal. Although the impersonalist Mayavadi philosophers want to establish the Absolute Truth as impersonal, yet the Vedic literature itself does not confirm this. Vedic literature confirms that the Supreme Absolute has multiple energies, and still the Mayavadi impersonalists want to establish that the Absolute Truth has no energy. The Absolute Truth is therefore full of energy and He is a Person. He cannot be established as impersonal.
According to the Vishnu Purana, the living entities are considered as Kshetrajna energy. Although the living entity is part and parcel of the Supreme Lord, and is fully cognizant, still he becomes entrapped in the material contamination, and therefore suffers all the miseries therein. Such living entities live in different positions in proportion to their entanglement in material Nature. The purport is that the original energy of the Supreme Lord is spiritual and non-different from the Supreme Absolute Personality of Godhead. The living entity is called the marginal energy of the Supreme Lord, whereas the material energy is called inferior. On account of possessing inert and material inebriety, the living entity, although in the marginal position, becomes entangled with the inferior energy, matter. At that time he forgets his spiritual significance and identifies himself with the material energy and therefore becomes subjected to threefold miseries. When he is, however, free from that material contamination, he proportionately becomes situated in different standards of life.
According to the Vedic instruction, everyone should understand the constitutional position of the living entity, the Lord, and the material energy in their inter-relation. First of all, one should try to understand the constitutional position of the Supreme Lord, the Personality of Godhead. That Supreme Personality of Godhead has eternal, cognizant, blissful Body; His spiritual energy is distributed as eternity, knowledge, and bliss. In His blissful identity there is His pleasure potency, and in His eternal identity He is the Cause of everything, and in His cognizant identity He is the Supreme Knowledge. Krishna means that Supreme Knowledge. In other words, the Supreme Personality of Krishna is the Reservoir of all knowledge, all pleasure, and all eternity. That Supreme Knowledge of Krishna is exhibited in three different energies; they are called internal energy, marginal energy, and external energy. By internal energy, He exists in Himself with His spiritual paraphernalia, by marginal existence He exhibits Himself as the living entities, and by His external energy He exhibits Himself as the material energy. In each and every exhibition of His different energies there is the background of eternity, pleasure potency, and cognizance potency.
The conditioned soul is the marginal potency, overpowered by the external potency. When the marginal potency, however, comes under the spiritual potency, the marginal potency becomes eligible for love of Godhead. The Supreme Lord enjoys with six kinds of opulences and nobody can establish that He is Formless or that He is without energy. If somebody says that, it is completely against the Vedic instruction. Actually, the Supreme Personality of Godhead is the Master of all energies. The living entity, being an infinitesimal part and parcel, becomes overpowered by the material energy.
In the Mundaka Upanishad it is stated that two birds of the same feather are sitting on one tree. One of them is eating the fruit of the tree, and the other is not eating the fruit of the tree, but is witnessing the activities of the other bird. When the bird eating the fruit of the tree looks on the other bird, he becomes freed from all anxieties. This is the position of the infinitesimal living entity. So long as he is forgetful of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he is subjected to the threefold miseries; but when he looks to the Supreme Lord, or becomes a devotee of the Supreme Lord, he becomes free from all anxieties and miseries of material existence.
This position of the living entity means that he is eternally subordinate to the Supreme Lord. The Supreme Lord is always the Master of all energies, whereas the living entities are always under the energies of the Supreme Lord. The living entity, although qualitatively one with the Supreme Lord, has a tendency to lord it over the material Nature; but, being infinitesimal, the living entity has the tendency to be controlled by material Nature. This qualification of the living entity is called marginal potency. Because the living entity has a tendency for being controlled by the material Nature, he cannot at any stage of life become One with the Supreme Lord. If a living entity were equal to the Supreme Lord then there would be no chance of his being controlled by the material energy. In Bhagavad Gita, the living entity has been described as one of the energies of the Supreme Lord. Energy, although inseparable from the energetic, is still energy, and cannot be equal with the energetic. In other words, the living entity is simultaneously one and different from the Supreme Lord. The Bhagavad Gita, in the Seventh Chapter, verses 4-5, clearly states that earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence, and false ego are the eight different elementary energies of the Supreme Lord. All these energies are of inferior quality, whereas the living entity has energy of superior quality. Therefore Vedic instruction confirms the transcendental Form of the Supreme Lord as eternal, blissful, and full of knowledge.
The conception of impersonalism is the opposite of the transformations of the material modes of Nature. The form beyond the modes of material Nature is not exactly like the form of this material world, but there is form, which is called spiritual form. That spiritual form cannot be compared with any one of these material forms. Anyone, therefore, who does not agree to accept the spiritual Form of the Supreme Lord, is counted among the atheists. Lord Buddha did not accept these Vedic principles, and therefore the Vedic teachers considered Him an atheist. Although Mayavadi philosophers do pretend to accept the Vedic principles, they indirectly preach the Buddhist philosophy or atheistic philosophy, without acceptance of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. This philosophy is inferior to Buddha's philosophy, which directly denies the Vedic authority; for the Mayavadi philosophy is disguised as Vedanta philosophy, and is thus more dangerous than Buddhism or atheism.
Vedanta Sutra is purely compiled by Vyasadeva for the benefit of all living entities in order to understand the philosophy of Bhakti Yoga. Unfortunately, the Mayavadi commentary, Sarirakabhasya, has practically defeated the purpose of the Vedanta Sutra. In the Mayavadi commentary, the spiritual, transcendental Form of the Supreme Personality of Godhead has been denied and the Supreme Brahman has been dragged down to a level equal with the individual Brahman, the living entity. Both of them have been denied the spiritual form of individuality, although it is clearly stated that the Supreme Lord is the One Supreme Living entity, and the living entities are many. Therefore, to consider the commentary of the Mayavadi philosophy on the Vedanta Sutra is always dangerous. The danger is in the false understanding of the living entity as equal to the Supreme Lord. A living entity can thus be falsely directed; and as a result he can never come to his actual position, his eternal activity in Bhakti Yoga. In other words, the Mayavadi philosophy has rendered the greatest disservice to humanity by promoting the impersonal view of the Supreme Lord. These philosophers are depriving human society of the real message of the Vedanta Sutra.
From the very beginning of the Vedanta Sutra it is accepted that the cosmic manifestation is a display of the energy of the Supreme Lord. In the very beginning, Janmadyasya, it is described that the Supreme Brahman is That from Whom everything is taking appearance. Everything is being maintained and everything is dissolved in Him. The Absolute Truth is the Cause of Creation, Maintenance, and Dissolution. The cause of the fruit is the tree. When the tree produces a fruit it does not mean that the tree is impersonal. The tree produces many hundreds and thousands of fruits but it remains as it is. The fruit is produced, developed, stays for some time, dwindles, and then vanishes. That does not mean that the tree has vanished. From the very beginning, therefore, the purpose of the Vedanta Sutra is the exposition of the doctrine of by-products. These activities of production, maintenance and dissolution are going on by the inconceivable energy of the Supreme Lord. The cosmic manifestation is a transformation of the energy of the Supreme Lord, although the energy of the Supreme Lord and the Supreme Lord Himself are non-different and inseparable. An example is the touchstone which produces great quantities of gold by contact with iron—but still the touchstone remains as it is. The Supreme Lord, therefore, in spite of His producing the huge material cosmic manifestation, is always in His transcendental Form.
Mayavadi philosophy has the audacity to decline acceptance of the purpose of Vyasadeva, as explained in the Vedanta Sutra, and has tried instead to establish transformation of the Supreme: a doctrine of transformation by imagination. According to Mayavadi philosophy, the cosmic manifestation is a transformation of the Absolute Truth, and the Absolute Truth has no separate existence. This is not the message of the Vedanta Sutra. This transformation has been explained by Mayavadi philosophers as false; but it is not false—it is temporary. Mayavadi philosophy says that the Absolute Truth is the only truth, and this manifestation of the world is false, Actually it is not so. The material contamination is not false; it is relative truth, and therefore it is temporary.
Pranava or Omkara is the chief indication of Vedic hymns, and Omkara is considered as the sound Form of the Supreme Lord. From Omkara, all Vedic hymns have emanated, and the world has also emanated from the Omkara sound. The world Tatvamasi, picked up from the Vedic hymns, is not the chief word, but it is an explanation of the constitutional position of the living entity. The meaning of this Tatvamasi is that the living entity is a spiritual particle of the Supreme spirit; but this is not the chief motif of the Vedanta or Vedic literature. The chief sound representation of the Supreme is Omkara.
All these faulty explanations of Vedanta Sutra are atheism. The Mayavadi philosophers do not agree to accept the eternal, transcendental Form of the Supreme Lord and they are therfore unable to be engaged in real devotional service. The Mayavadi philosopher is ever bereft of Krishna Consciousness and Krishna's devotional service. The pure devotee of the Personality of Godhead never accepts the Mayavadi philosophy as an actual path to transscendental realization. The Mayavadi philosophers are hovering on the moral and immoral material atmosphere of the cosmic world; they are always engaged in rejecting and accepting material enjoyment. They have falsely accepted the nonspiritual as the spiritual. As a result of this misconception they have forgotten the spiritual, eternal Form of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, His Name, Quality and Entourage. They consider the transcendental Pastimes, Name, Form and Quality of the Supreme as a product of material Nature, and so the Mayavadi is eternally subjected to the material miseries because of his acceptance or rejection of material pleasure and misery.
The actual devotees of the Lord are always different from the Mayavadi philosophers. lmpersonalism cannot be a representation of eternity, blissfulness, and knowledge. Being situated in imperfect knowledge of liberation, the Mayavadi decries eternity, knowledge, and blissfulness, under a misconception of materialism. They reject devotional service. Therefore they are less intelligent men. They are unable to understand the effect of devotional service. Their jugglery of words for amalgamating knowledge and the knowable and the knower into one has proved their very existence as a less intelligent class of men. The doctrine of by-product is the real purport of the beginning of Vedanta Sutra. The Lord is empowered with innumerable unlimited energies, and as such He displays the by-products of such energies in different ways. Everything is under His control. The Supreme Controller is called the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and He is manifested in innumerable energies and expansions.