Nature of the Absolute

Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism offers a panen­the­is­tic the­ol­ogy. The per­sonal Absolute enfolds even the form­less, attribut­e­less Absolute, which we call Undif­fer­en­ti­ated One­ness. God-dess’ power to rec­on­cile the irrec­on­cil­able rec­on­ciles our imper­fect, con­tra­dic­tory ideas of qual­i­fied and unqual­i­fied Absolute in a higher synthesis.

We can­not fully express the infi­nite unbounded Absolute in words, but this does not mean we can­not express it at all. We reject the idea of the Absolute as ulti­mately pure, undif­fer­en­ti­ated being. The Absolute must exist as a pos­i­tive con­cept to be intel­li­gi­ble and real. Since noth­ing pos­i­tive exists with­out attrib­utes, the Absolute must be qual­i­fied. Being infi­nite, the Absolute must be deter­mined and qual­i­fied in end­less ways. It encom­passes all and lacks noth­ing. The idea of per­son­al­ity remains con­sis­tent and essen­tial to the infi­nite Absolute. God-dess pos­sesses char­ac­ter, which implies some­thing def­i­nite and lim­it­ing, but God-dess remains unlim­ited in the sense of being immea­sur­able and all encompassing.

Vedic writ­ings por­tray the Absolute as both qual­i­fied and unqual­i­fied, often clearly describ­ing the Absolute as both qual­i­fied and unqual­i­fied in the same breath. Those who wish to merge with the unqual­i­fied Absolute may do so. Those who wish a rela­tion­ship with the per­sonal Absolute, God-dess, may do so. The Absolute is both-and. God-dess rec­i­p­ro­cates accord­ing to our mode of approach.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 4th, 2009 at 10:01 and is filed under Steve's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.