11 Dec 2015
Shri Kishore asked following questions:
Padmanamaskaram Swami: Humble request to answer my queries.
From the recent discussion and queries from Nikhil Sir, I got some basic understanding about the differences between Imaginable and Unimaginable(God) domain’s. From God’s perspective, the Imaginary domain(unreal) was created for his entertainment, but for GOD this imaginable domain is a dream or virtual or unreal. My query is for any kind of entertainment, you can get the happiness or entertainment through another source/thing which is also real. God being real(absolute truth) gets entertainment through the unreal domain/world which is strange and cant digest this fact? If so, it is true then why God is fond of the unreal domain for his entertainment, why can’t he get entertainment in his domain(unimaginable) itself?
Shri Swami Replied: When you are alone, are you not entertained by some imaginary scenes? Even the cinema on the screen is not as real as yourself. The drama on the stage is as real as yourself. The entertainment exists in all the three cases, but, it increases as the scene gains more and more reality. You cannot say that the entertainment is totally absent in the first case. Something is better than nothing. Entertainment comes only when something other than you exists. God is unimaginable and there cannot be two unimaginable items since you cannot distinguish two unimaginable items. Therefore, a different unimaginable item other than God cannot exist. We speak all this from our view point only. For God, everything is imaginable including Himself. Unimaginable and imaginable exist in our view only. The difference existing in our view cannot be rubbed on God’s view. Since such difference does not exist in the view of God, this question is not tenable from the view point of God. We only call something as imaginable that can be understood by us and something as unimaginable that cannot be understood by us. Hence, this defect lies on our side only, which cannot be projected to God’s side.
God is the absolute reality and in such state, the unreal world looks like imaginary day-dream only as in our awaken state. The same day-dream appears to be real in our sleep. This means that the ignorance of self can make the unreal to appear as real. In the sleep-dream, the ignorance of self only exists and not total ignorance of everything. If total ignorance of everything comes, we cannot enjoy the dream since the dream itself disappears in such total ignorance called as deep sleep. This deep sleep exists in the case of souls only and not in the case of God. The disappearance of dream is common to both the state of fully awaken and the state of fully ignorance. In the case of God, the disappearance of the creation (dream) is possible only in the fully awaken state since deep sleep is impossible in His case.
If you are in fully awaken state being fully aware of yourself, even the day-dream cannot appear. Even in the day-dream, you have to forget yourself to the minimum extent so that your ignorance of yourself acts as the construction material of the dream. Of course, in the day-dream, you can enter into fully awaken state whenever you like. God is aware of His absolute reality in the fully awaken state and hence, is called as Absolute God (Brahman or strictly called as Parabrahman). When the day-dream appears due to minimum partial ignorance of self, the same Absolute God is called as the Lord (Eshwara). The difference between Absolute God and Lord is only very weak partial ignorance of self that can be ended at any time as per His wish. Therefore, you can see monism (Advaita) between Absolute God and Lord. The total ignorance of everything can never appear in God. The total ignorance of everything appears only in the case of the souls created by God. As we are under the control of power of sleep-dreams, the souls are controlled by this creation. The creation is under the control of the Lord (Vashikruta Maayah) as our day-dreams are under our control. The creation controls the soul (Maayaa vashikrutah) as the sleep-dream controls us, which proceeds in its own direction and not as per our wish. Here only, the philosophers of Monism got confused. As the Absolute God is extended to the state of Lord in the first step, the same Absolute God is extended to the second step and is named as the soul. This means that the Absolute God is controlled by the total ignorance of everything, which is impossible.
Fundamental Difference Between God & Soul: Unimaginable & Imaginable
All this means that the sleep-dream is impossible in the case of God, which involves total ignorance of self. A new state is evolved by God to get the benefit of total ignorance of self that gives full enjoyment and at the same time remains as the minimum partial ignorance of self. This means, God gets the benefit of total ignorance of self without actually getting the total ignorance of self. This new state is called as the human incarnation in which God gets identified with a human being and enjoys the world through its experience. This is like a cold iron rod becoming hot on association with another hot iron rod. The human being (the devotee) is also blessed and at the same time, God associated with the human being in human incarnation also gets the experience of full enjoyment of the total ignorance of self. God in association with the human being remains as the Lord only since God is not controlled by the total ignorance of self. There is no chance of God getting total ignorance of self since God always remains as the Lord only with minimum partial ignorance of self. The concept of monism between God and soul is now possible in the case of human incarnation since God identifies with the soul and here also neither God is soul nor soul is God. God will never become soul and soul will never become God since the fundamental deference is that God is unimaginable creator and soul is an item of His imaginable creation. This monism in human incarnation is also not real but can be treated as real. The electrified wire can be treated as electricity since you cannot isolate either electricity or wire from its partner. The doer and enjoyer is the human being only, but, God also shares its enjoyment without the doer ship. The Veda says that two birds (God and soul) share the same tree (body) and one bird (soul) eats the fruits (doer ship), naturally enjoys also, whereas the second bird (God) shines with enjoyment only (Dvaa suparnaa...). For this mutual facility given by the human being, God rewards it with fame here. In fact, the human being did not sacrifice anything to God since the enjoyment is not divided by sharing. If somebody sees and enjoys a picture along with a friend, the enjoyment is certainly shared by both, but, not divided at all. Your enjoyment is not reduced if somebody also sees the cinema along with you and enjoys it.
When God is in Absolute state with full awareness of Himself, it is the state of ‘no dream’. When the same God imparts minimum partial ignorance on Himself and sees the creation, it is the state of ‘day-dream’. When God is associated with the human being in human incarnation and sees the creation, it is like cinema to God and like drama to the human being associated with God. The day-dream involving partial ignorance of self can be changed as per your wish and hence the Lord can change anything in the creation. But, the cinema and drama cannot be changed, which are already proceeding with a fixed story. We have said that the creation is cinema for God in human incarnation because cinema gains more reality than the day-dream. Due to association and identification of God with the human being, the creation gains more reality in the view of God. Here, God does not interfere with the proceedings of the creation and hence the fixed story of cinema is applicable to God also. God behaves like the totally ignorant human being and hence follows the norms of the state of human being. However, God is the Lord in this state of human incarnation also and has the full power to change anything in the creation. This means that the cinema can become the day-dream at anytime if God wishes so. The reality of the cinema is better than the day-dream, but, lesser than the reality of drama. For the human being associated with God, the creation is like drama, which cannot be changed by it at any time and also has equal reality with the human being. The concept of human incarnation is complicated since it allows two mutually contradicting angles simultaneously. Monism between God and the soul associated with Him and Dualism between the same two exist simultaneously. This simultaneous existence of mutually contradicting concepts is logically possible since these two angles refer to two different perceiving references. The Monism is true with reference to God, who feels that He is one with the human being. This Monism must also be true with reference to the devotees of the human incarnation without which they cannot be blessed. The dualism is true in the same time with reference to the human being associated with God without which the human being will immediately loose God as seen in the case of Parashurama. We can also see that God is always maintained (Purna Avatara) in the case of Rama, who always felt that He is not God and is only the son of Dasharatha. The specific case of human incarnation (in which the specific human being must be treated as God by devotees only and not by that specific human being) should not be extended to the entire humanity. When, even in the case of human incarnation, the human being possessed by God is not allowed to think Itself as God, how do you allow any ordinary human being not possessed by God to think himself as God? When Krishna said the Gita, He told that He is God and this is to be understood as the direct speech of God in the human incarnation through the voice of the human being possessed by Him. This is the reason why it is called as the Bhgavat Gita and not Krishna Gita. God speaks directly through the human being possessed by Himself on certain occasions and we have to identify it. When Jesus told that He is the truth and light, it is the direct speech of God. When the same Jesus spoke that one can reach His father through Him only, it is the speech of Jesus, a devoted human being selected by God for incarnation. Such human being possessed by God is under the full control of God and hence the statements of such human being come out as per the wish of God only. Such full controller (God) and fully controlled (soul) bring an intermediate concept (niyaamaka-niyaamya) called as a special case of monism involving dualism also is the concept (Vishishta Advaita) of Ramanuja that stands between monism (Advaita) of Shankara and dualism (Dvaita) of Madhva. The concept of messenger stands for Dvaita, the concept of son of God stands for Vishishta Advaita and the concept of oneness with the Divine Father stands for Advaita. All these three concepts are simultaneously true with reference to the three types of perceiving devotees. The highest benefit can be achieved by the devotees only through the highest step (Monism) and Shankara propagated this concept with reference to the specific human incarnation like Himself and with reference to all the devotees of human incarnation. From the point of the absolute reality that the unimaginable God and the imaginable soul are totally different with impossible comparison, the Dualism is the highest step. Ramanuja stands always in the middle position though Shankara and Madhva exchange their positions with reference to different contexts.
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