The Concept of the Personal Absolute

God-dess has no sec­ond. God-dess is the only real­ity. God-dess’ form is pure self-luminous con­scious­ness. God-dess is the eter­nal prin­ci­ple, the high­est good and the high­est bliss.

God-dess is an essen­tial unity above cat­e­gor­i­cal dif­fer­ence. There is no other being with the same nature as God-dess. The Absolute is one, but dif­fer­ent reli­gions call God-dess by dif­fer­ent names. Judaism, Chris­tian­ity and Islam “aim at the same eter­nal, indi­vis­i­ble, immutable and per­fect Being, which is imma­nent in the hearts of all, but describe it dif­fer­ently in respect of its name, form and attrib­utes.” (90)

The phe­nom­e­nal world is cat­e­gor­i­cally dif­fer­ent from God-dess, but it is not self-existent. It depends on God-dess for its exis­tence. God-dess is the cause of his-her own exis­tence and every­thing else.

God-dess’ body and its owner are not two dif­fer­ent prin­ci­ples, like the dif­fer­ence between body and soul of liv­ing enti­ties in the phys­i­cal world. God-dess’ body and its owner are both con­sti­tuted of con­scious­ness and bliss. God-dess’ name, attrib­utes, activ­i­ties and abode are all man­i­fes­ta­tions of the same eter­nal spir­i­tual prin­ci­ple. God-dess “is devoid of all kinds of dif­fer­ence whether exter­nal or inter­nal.” (91)

God-dess has the incon­ceiv­able power to man­i­fest in dif­fer­ent forms with­out los­ing his-her one­ness. God-dess is one and indi­vis­i­ble yet has innu­mer­able forms and man­i­fests in infi­nite ways to devo­tees accord­ing to their dif­fer­ent capac­i­ties and the dif­fer­ent means of real­iza­tion adopted by them.

God-dess man­i­fests in three clear lev­els, as Undif­fer­en­ti­ated One­ness, Cos­mic Con­scious­ness and per­sonal God-dess accord­ing to the three paths of approach: knowl­edge, med­i­ta­tion and devo­tion. Of these three forms, each suc­ceed­ing one super­sedes and includes the pre­ced­ing. God-dess, the high­est man­i­fes­ta­tion, super­sedes and includes Undif­fer­en­ti­ated One­ness and Cos­mic Consciousness.

God-dess is iden­ti­fied with the supreme per­son­al­i­ties, Radha Krishna, the source of all incar­na­tions, the ulti­mate ground of all that exists, and in whom are cen­tered infi­nite grandeur, infi­nite pow­ers and infi­nite modes of divine bliss. All scrip­tures, explic­itly or implic­itly, speak of God-dess as the Ulti­mate Real­ity. God-dess is the only real­ity that exists with­out change before, dur­ing and after the end of creation.

God-dess, the high­est being, per­fectly man­i­fests all aus­pi­cious qual­i­ties. The incom­plete man­i­fes­ta­tion of God-dess, Undif­fer­en­ti­ated One­ness is that “in whom all the divine attrib­utes and poten­cies lie in a dor­mant state. It is pri­mor­dial same­ness, but not a bar­ren still­ness; it is inde­ter­mi­nate­ness, but not an inde­ter­mi­nate­ness that totally denies dis­tinc­tions and def­i­nite­ness; it has dis­tinc­tions, but the dis­tinc­tions are not clearly brought out; it is a cre­ative poten­tial­ity, but a poten­tial­ity that is eter­nally actu­al­ized in its most per­fect state as” God-dess. (92) God-dess’ attrib­utes and poten­cies inhere in him-her essen­tially and eter­nally and are not unreal or super­im­posed. God-dess and God-dess’ attrib­utes or ener­gies are inseparable.

God-dess indulges in spir­i­tual pas­times eter­nally. God-dess has a spir­i­tual body, an eter­nal abode and eter­nal com­pan­ions. God-dess’ body is real and con­sists of eter­nal con­scious­ness and bliss. God-dess’ high­est and most per­fect form can only be real­ized through devo­tion. Those who fol­low the path of knowl­edge real­ize Undif­fer­en­ti­ated One­ness, which is the out­ward glow or divine lus­ter of God-dess’ spir­i­tual body.

God-dess has six majes­tic qual­i­ties: the power of sup­port­ing and pro­tect­ing the uni­verse, unfold­ing and sus­tain­ing the nat­ural func­tion of devo­tion in devo­tees, lead­ing devo­tees to the attain­ment of the tran­scen­den­tal realm, all beings lie within God-dess and God-dess lies within them.

Cos­mic Con­scious­ness is a step higher than Undif­fer­en­ti­ated One­ness in the hier­ar­chy of man­i­fes­ta­tions of the absolute, per­sonal God-dess. Undif­fer­en­ti­ated One­ness is the basic real­ity under­ly­ing all con­crete for­ma­tions. Cos­mic Con­scious­ness is the basic prin­ci­ple con­trol­ling and reg­u­lat­ing con­crete for­ma­tions. Cos­mic Con­scious­ness implies a dif­fer­en­ti­ated and qual­i­fied state of God-dess. Cos­mic Con­scious­ness is qual­i­fied in a lim­ited sense and is a par­tial man­i­fes­ta­tion of God-dess who is qual­i­fied in end­less ways. Cos­mic Con­scious­ness is imma­nent in the liv­ing beings and mate­r­ial nature and is “the con­scious reg­u­la­tive prin­ci­ple of all beings.” (94)

Cos­mic Con­scious­ness is God-dess in rela­tion to liv­ing beings and nature. God-dess cre­ates the world and enters into it as Cos­mic Con­scious­ness. Cos­mic Con­scious­ness is per­fect God-dess per­vad­ing, sus­tain­ing and reg­u­lat­ing the liv­ing enti­ties and the entire uni­verse col­lec­tively and individually.

God-dess has infi­nite ener­gies, but the most impor­tant are the spir­i­tual energy, mate­r­ial energy and the liv­ing enti­ties. They are inher­ent in the nature of God-dess. The spir­i­tual energy con­sti­tutes the essence or intrin­sic self of God-dess and is the sub­stra­tum of the entire tran­scen­den­tal world in which the tran­scen­den­tal activ­i­ties of God-dess are dis­played. The mate­r­ial energy is exter­nally related to God-dess and is the cause of the mate­r­ial world. It is related to God-dess in the sense that all ener­gies must ulti­mately inhere in God-dess. God-dess’ intrin­sic and per­fect self­hood tran­scends it and is totally free of its influence.

Mate­r­ial energy does not appear where God-dess is, but appears where God-dess is not. It appears out of God-dess, but not with­out God-dess, “like the reflec­tion of the sun, which appears in the pond on the earth, away from the sun, but not with­out the sun, which is its cause. Just as the reflec­tion of the sun does not touch the sun, even though it can­not exist with­out it.” (95) Mate­r­ial energy does not touch God-dess, even though it can­not exist with­out God-dess.

God-dess reg­u­lates and con­trols mate­r­ial energy from out­side. Mate­r­ial energy, being uncon­scious, can­not func­tion by itself. The three modes of mate­r­ial energy, good­ness, pas­sion and igno­rance, are in a state of equi­lib­rium before cre­ation. God-dess starts the process of cre­ation by glanc­ing at mate­r­ial nature, which dis­turbs its equi­lib­rium and ener­gizes it. This deludes the liv­ing enti­ties averse to ser­vice of God-dess, but it is pow­er­less over the liv­ing enti­ties devoted to God-dess. God-dess rules mate­r­ial nature, but the weak liv­ing enti­ties are sub­ject to its con­trol and ser­vice. The mate­r­ial cre­ation is nei­ther eter­nal nor unreal. It is real but sub­ject to change and anni­hi­la­tion, unlike the tran­scen­den­tal abode of God-dess.

The liv­ing enti­ties man­i­fest on the bor­der­line between the mate­r­ial and spir­i­tual ener­gies and are related to both. Thus, the liv­ing enti­ties have the choice of either serv­ing God-dess and dwelling in the spir­i­tual world or dwelling in the mate­r­ial world and enjoy­ing it.

The spir­i­tual energy is sub­di­vided into three other ener­gies cor­re­spond­ing to exis­tence, con­scious­ness and bliss. By the exis­ten­tial energy, God-dess main­tains his-her own exis­tence and the exis­tence of other beings. By means of this energy, God-dess exists as an inde­pen­dent sub­stance and forms the ground or sup­port of all other things, which derive their exis­tence from God-dess. The con­scious energy makes God-dess omni­scient and enables God-dess to impart knowl­edge to others.

The bliss­ful energy allows God-dess to enjoy bliss and infuses bliss into the hearts of devo­tees. The essence of the bliss­ful energy is divine love. The fullest man­i­fes­ta­tion of divine love is Radha, the divine con­sort or counter-whole of Krishna, the per­sonal absolute. Just as Krishna pos­sesses infi­nite divine ener­gies in their high­est per­fec­tion, Radha embod­ies those divine ener­gies in their most devel­oped form.

“Krishna is the ulti­mate source of the infi­nite parti
al man­i­fes­ta­tions of the divine per­son­al­ity and Radha is the ulti­mate source of the end­less divine ener­gies of…Krishna. The rela­tion­ship between Krishna and Radha is that of incon­ceiv­able iden­tity in dif­fer­ence. They are, in essence, one and the same entity, which assumes two dif­fer­ent forms to enjoy the bliss of divine sports…The body of Radha, like that of Krishna, is made of bliss and con­scious­ness and the love between the two is spir­i­tual.” (98) To max­i­mize Krishna’s bliss, Radha expands into innu­mer­able par­tial man­i­fes­ta­tions as her con­fi­dants, the sen­su­ous women of the spir­i­tual abode, who join in Radha Krishna’s amorous pas­times increas­ing their bliss unlimitedly.

The bliss­ful energy is above all oth­ers and is iden­ti­fied with the intrin­sic and per­fect self of God-dess. The other ener­gies are regarded as sub­servient to it and are asso­ci­ated with the par­tial aspects of God-dess. The con­scious energy is iden­ti­fied with Cos­mic Con­scious­ness and the exis­ten­tial energy with Undif­fer­en­ti­ated One­ness. The gra­da­tion of ener­gies closely cor­re­sponds with the gra­da­tion of the three aspects of God-dess. Just as God-dess is the high­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Absolute and includes Cos­mic Con­scious­ness, and Cos­mic Con­scious­ness includes Undif­fer­en­ti­ated One­ness, the bliss­ful energy, which is the high­est and most per­fect energy, includes the con­scious energy, and the con­scious energy includes the exis­ten­tial energy.

The supreme bliss of the divine sports of Radha Krishna attracts even lib­er­ated souls. The high­est form of bliss known as “the sweet taste” is enjoyed only by the women of Braj, Radha Krishna’s tran­scen­den­tal abode. They engage in the most con­fi­den­tial, lov­ing ser­vice of Radha Krishna. Indeed, the sweet taste is the very essence of Radha Krishna.

Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha Krish­naism is based on a dynamic con­cep­tion of real­ity, which is why I described it in terms of process the­ol­ogy in a pre­vi­ous essay. Since the ener­gies are related either exter­nally or inter­nally to God-dess, God-dess is essen­tially cre­ative on both the mate­r­ial and spir­i­tual planes. The spir­i­tual energy man­i­fests the eter­nal sport of God-dess. The eter­nal sport “is the move­ment of the absolute spirit within itself. It super­sedes the order of val­ues in tran­scen­dent beauty and sub­lim­ity of spir­i­tual life, in beat­i­tude and in the ease and grace of move­ment.” (99)

“Since there is no move­ment, which is not related directly or indi­rectly to the inte­grat­ing cen­tre, this intro­duc­tion of dynamism in the absolute calls for a reori­en­ta­tion of the entire view of life. It leads to an aesthetico-teleological con­cep­tion of real­ity, which makes our knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence con­crete and mean­ing­ful at every stage.” (100)

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