Lessons on the Upanishads -2.3: Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday 08, June 2024. 07:40.
Upanishads
Chapter 2: The Problem in Understanding the Upanishads - 3.
Post-11.

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The concept of God, or the Ultimate Reality, that we encounter in the Upanishads is markedly different from our transcendent conception of God. We always look up to the skies, fold our palms and humbly offer a prayer to a divinity that is invisible to the eyes but considered as transcendent, above us—perhaps very far from us. None of us can escape this idea of God being a little far from us. Certainly, there is some distance between us and God. That distance frightens us. Sometimes the distance seems to be incalculable, especially when we are told that millions of births have to be taken in order to reach God. This has been told to us, and is being told to us, again and again. It is not a question of an effort in one birth only. Several incarnations may have to be undergone by way of purification and selfdiscipline in order that one may reach that Supreme Almighty. This brings us into the well-known idea of the distance between us and God.

Simultaneous with this concept of distance between us and God, there is also the concept of futurity of the attainment of God. It is not something that can be attained just now; it is a matter for tomorrow. “I will attain God one day.” This “one day” implies some time in the future. So, somehow the concept of time also comes in when we conceive God in the traditional pattern. Because of the space concept in our mind, we feel that God is far away from us; there is a distance. The concept of distance is the concept of space. It has entered our brains to such an extent that we cannot think anything except in terms of measurement—length, breadth, height, distance. So, God is away from us, measurably, by a distance. He is also a futurity in time, and He can be attained by hard effort. There is also a causative factor involved in the concept of the attainment of God. Space, time and cause—these are the conditioning factors of human thinking. Without these concepts, we can think nothing.

Hence, we are trying to cast God Himself into the mould, the crucible of this threefold determination of our thought—namely, space, time and cause. However, because the concept of space, time and cause involves objectivity, we cannot cast God into this mould. God is not external, not an object. You may ask me: “Why not? As God is the creator of the universe, the created beings like us may consider Him as the supreme object of adoration.” In fact, every religion considers God as the great supreme object of worship and possible attainment. But there is a lacuna even in this supreme concept of well-known religions. As God is, as you all know very well, the Final Reality, the Ultimate Existence beyond which there can be nothing, there cannot be even space, time and causation involved in Him in any manner whatsoever. So our ideas of distance between us and God, the futurity of God's attainment and some kind of personal effort that is required in the form of aspiration for God may also require emendation. They have to be completely transformed and a transvaluation may have to be effected.

If God is not spatially distant and temporally a futurity and He is not caused by some human effort, what sort of relation is there between us and God? Here is a point which will be before us like a hard nut to crack. What is our relationship with God? If we say we are a part of God, we again bring the concept of space and time. If we say we are created by God, then also we bring space, time and causation. If we say we are a reflection of God, then also we bring something external to God's universality. Whatever we may say about ourselves in relation to God, in that statement of ours we are delimiting God and denying the universality and the ultimacy of Reality that is His essential characteristic.

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Continued

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