Transcendental Nectar of Sadhu-Sanga

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

REALITY IS PERSONAL FOR RELIGION–SUBJECT, NOT MERELY SUBSTANCE

This personal feature of reality must be clearly understood in religion. Consciousness implies thought or cognition, and where there is thought, there is personality. The Absolute Truth is therefore the Supreme Personality or Godhead, as the source of consciousness and thought in all its particularity and universality wherever it is found. This is intrinsic and intuitive to all consciousness, therefore, religion is found all over the world, in every civilization and culture, modified according to the mentality and nature of the different peoples, but always including a supreme personal being.

This must be the conclusion of a conscious reality - consciousness comes from consciousness only. Personality comes from personality only. The higher principle cannot come a lower one. The lower one is only the higher principle covered over. Evolution from a lower system to a higher one is impossible because there is no driving force or potency in purely random events to promote any systematic development. Aristotle's conclusion that there are two principle features of any developmental process, potentiality and actuality, remains as valid today as ever, but Darwinian evolutionary ideology denies any such potentiality. Therefore it fails and must continue to fail to explain actuality.

REVELATORY EPISTEMOLOGY

When the Absolute Truth or Ultimate Reality is considered personal, then the revelation of scripture becomes self-evident. vedanta krid veda vid eva caham – “I am the compiler and knower of Veda.”(Bhagavad-gita 15.15) Knowledge is received through a descending process, so that access to knowledge is granted only to those who have merit. This is a different process of knowledge than is ordinarily conceived, since it is manifested in one according to the degree they are purified or situated in goodness (sattva), and not merely by the amount of study or research they do.

Plato also conceived epistemology to be an uncovering or revelation of what was already present in the individual. In fact, the word “education” is from the Latin e-ducare which means “to draw out” apparently referring to what was already there to begin with. So this idea has very ancient roots, and yet is quite contrary to the modern idea of feeding information into the student.

THE SOUL, ATMA OR FINITE CONSCIOUSNESS

Vedanta-sutra begins with the aphorism, athatho brahma jijnasa -- "Know thyself as Brahman (consciousness)." A similar aphorism appears about 2500 years later over the forecourt of the Apollo temple at Delphi, gnothi seauton, "Know thyself." And about 2000 years after that Descartes, in 17th century France, announces, cogito ergo sum - "I think, therefore I am."

A hundred years earlier, in 16th century Bengal, India, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was asked by a learned scholar, "Ke ami?" - who am I?  And Mahaprabhup answered: jivera swarupa haya, krsnera nitya dasa, identifying the nature of the jiva (sou) as the eternal servant of Krishna.

This centrality of knowing the true nature of the self or soul, unfortunately became thrust aside by Francis Bacon who wrote, de nobis ipsis silemus - "of ourselves we must be silent" in his treatise circa 1620 on the scientific study of Nature. Out of humility or ignorance or both, modern science took this turn and for those who followed this path, knowledge became outwardly directed, while Man became a hollow filled only with darkness, and the truth of religion became the worship of the empty name of an unknown God.

It is important to study the history of ideas, to know where we came from, what our present position is, and where we are going. This is the purpose of philosophy, and, as we maintain, it is therefore the purpose of Religion. Great truths always appear first in religion before they are articulated by philosophy, but they are not divergent. Religion, philosophy, science and art are all branches of the same tree of knowledge that seek truth in various ways. Apparent diversions from this harmony are only half-seen truths that have yet to come to full fruition.

Religion contains the condensed form of the highest truth of philosophy, and it must teach its adherents the nature of our present condition, the goal of life and the means to achieve it.

THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH

God or the absolute truth is the comprehension of Reality as Personal. This means it is not only our comprehension, but the Truth itself, or Himself, knows Himself as Truth. This is Spirit, the truth that knows itself as truth. Consequently, that knowledge which targets the Absolute Truth is above the conception of God - the supreme controller and creator, and is more properly conceived as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, a far more inclusive conception than God.

I am sure there are those who can tell you far more details than have been outlined here, but the essential thing in religion is to actualize our life of devotion to Him in Whom we live and move and have our being.