If there is God He must ultimately be a person. This is the same like saying, “If there is a God, He must be God”. Of course, many people would not agree with this; some of them don’t believe in God at all; many, though accepting His existence, don’t think that He is actually a person.
There are various reasons to deny God as He is, but they can all be summed up as various degrees of impiety, which result in a lack of spiritual insight, or as Srila Prabhupada likes to put it, in “poor fund of knowledge”. Bhagavatam confirms that the same Supreme Personality of Godhead is perceived differently according to the level of advancement of the observer. The neophytes see Him only as Brahman, the all-pervading absolute, the more advanced see Him as Paramatma, the Controller and Witness in the hearts of all living beings; the most advanced see Him in full, as the Supreme Person, the source and shelter of Brahman and Paramatma.
To accept that God is a person means to accept that He is the Supreme Controller and Enjoyer and that we are meant to serve His enjoyment. This is a hard blow for the materialist because it strikes at the very core of his beliefs – the conviction that he is God. This is envious denial of reality. The materialist is not actually opposed to the idea that there could be a Personal God, in fact, as the example of Hiranyakasipu showed, he would very much appreciate to be such a God; what he doesn’t like is that God is someone other than him. Therefore the statement “There is no God” actually translates as “There is no other God than Me. You should not have other gods than Me, because I am an angry and jealous God”.
Of course, this envy towards a Personal God, and even to oneself as part of God, is usually cloaked in various seemingly lofty and logical arguments, for example the classical misconception that personhood would impose limitations on God. “God is all-powerful, all pervading, and all-knowing”, the argument goes, “therefore He does not suffer the confines of a form, name, body, activities; these are all material designations we impose on Him. God is absolute; therefore, He is beyond all such labels.” You see, our purva paksi wants us to believe that his motives are noble – he wants to save the transcendent dignity of God from being degraded to a mundane, trivial entity. It all sounds sound and logical, there is only one problem, however: it is not true. It is a falsehood in both the motivation behind the argument and in the argument itself.
Krsna explains in the Bhagavad-gita that the mode of ignorance turns everything upside down – irreligion is taken to be religion, and religion is considered irreligion. Actual imposition of limitations is precisely the insistence that God is impersonal. In fact, it is the ultimate limitation one could impose on somebody, because there is literarily nothing that this fictional “non-person” entity can do, besides existing as a theoretical construct in someone’s mental speculation. The devotees know that the transcendental qualities of the Lord are unlimited. The envious want to cancel them all. Being a “non-person” factually means to be non-existent; no wonder that the mayavadis are called covered Buddhists. In his purport to BG 16.8 Srila Prabhupada writes:
“According to them, everything is void, and whatever manifestation exists is due to our ignorance in perception. They take it for granted that all manifestation of diversity is a display of ignorance, just as in a dream we may create so many things which actually have no existence. Then when we are awake we shall see that everything is simply a dream. But factually, although the demons say that life is a dream, they are very expert in enjoying this dream. And so, instead of acquiring knowledge, they become more and more implicated in their dreamland.”
Envy of God – the Supreme Enjoyer and Controller – is so profound, that it denies to Him all the pleasures the envious materialists are hankering for. “God is not the Enjoyer and Controller; I am the Controller and Enjoyer, tat tvam asi.” Thus when all so-called noble considerations are put aside, what the mayavadis actually do, is trying to render God impotent. Our Acharyas compare their arguments to the arrows, which the demons shoot in an attempt to destroy Krsna’s body. The demons try to cut the Lord’s transcendental limbs in order to prove that He is simply a mortal like all of us; similarly, the mayavadi philosophers try to prove that Krsna’s body, name, entourage, and pastimes are simply an illusion. Therefore, Krsna calls them fools:
"Fools deride Me when I descend in the human form. They do not know My transcendental nature as the Supreme Lord of all that be." (BG 9.11)
Srila Prabhupada makes an interesting observation in this regard:
"His [Krsna’s] designation as kala in disguise is significant. He is not at all dangerous, but He is the transcendental form of eternity, knowledge and bliss. For the devotees His factual form is disclosed, and for the nondevotees He appears as kala-rupa, which is His causal form. This causal form of the Lord is not at all pleasing to the asuras, and therefore they think of the Lord as formless in order to feel secure that they will not be vanquished by the Lord."
As Schopenhauer wrote, “Our passions become the axioms of our philosophies.” Nietzsche added that all theories are just unconscious self-diagnosis of a particular mental sickness. The nature of that sickness should be clear by now – it is the root cause of all other deceases – the perverted desire to kill God and to become God. One way to try to accomplish this is to proclaim that God is dead, as did Nietzsche. Another way is to say that He is not a person.
The truth on the matter is very simple: God does not suffer the defect of being impersonal. The fact that His transcendental qualities attract the liberated souls and enthuse them to assist in His blissful pastimes is the very proof that the He is the highest aspect of the Absolute Truth.
Why would you confuse the sweet tri-banga form of Syamasundara, His transcendental qualities, His intimate devotees, His pastimes which constitute the ultimate information of the Vedas, all of which are the very proof that Bhagavan is the highest aspect of the Absolute Truth, with an imposition of limitation on Him? It is hard to understand why someone would do that, especially taking in consideration that the personal relationships are considered the highest value even amongst the majority of materialists. One could argue that material relationships based on material qualities are temporary and imperfect, even painful; that may be, but should we deny to the all-powerful God the ability to have eternal and blissful spiritual relationships with all his parts and parcels? In order to find the answer to this mystery we should perhaps re-read Bhagavad-Gita 18.32 and 9.11. And remember the key word – envy. When Maya detects that the soul is envious of Krsna, she puts him in illusion and he starts to imagine, just as Paundraka did, that it is him who is the supreme controller and enjoyer.
But there is no other God than God. He is saktiman, the enjoyer and controller of all energies, which facilitate His pastimes. Not surprisingly, the Lord’s sakti becomes another target for the mayavadis’ assaults in their pursuit to become God by attesting that God is impersonal. It is a well-known fact that the mayavadis have become who they are because of frustration and deep resentment born of their utter failure to be the Enjoyer. And here is Krsna, the real enjoyer, eternally enjoying His internal potency, hladini sakti, experiencing ever fresh, ever increasing spiritual bliss. Following the perverted logic “If I can’t do it, it can’t be done”, the mayavadis reached the astounding conclusion that Krsna, the Supreme Energetic, the source of everything, janmadi asya yatah, cannot have energies, or if He has them, they are just a temporary, illusory appearance, Maya. Again, they would have us believe that this conclusion is a result of their commendable ambition to protect the absolute, unchanging nature of God against the ever-changing flow of His energies. The reality, as revealed by Srila Prabhupada, is quite different:
"A person can create many things by the transformation of his energy. For example, a businessman transforms his energy by establishing many big factories or business organizations, yet he remains a person although his energy has been transformed into these many factories or business concerns. The Mayavadi philosophers do not understand this simple fact. Their tiny brains and poor fund of knowledge cannot afford them sufficient enlightenment to realize that when a man’s energy is transformed, the man himself is not transformed but remains the same person." (CC Adi, 7.121, purport)
The Mayavadis are envious of Bhagavan, thus they are considered offenders: mayavadi Krsna aparadhi. Sri Isopanisad states that they are heading to the darkest regions of the Universe.
What is the position of those, who accept that God is a person, but only in theory, without real knowledge about His personality?
They might be considered a little more advanced than the staunch Mayavadis, because they accept a personal God, but since the whole purpose of accepting the Personal God is to reestablish our loving relationship with Him, and since attaining this objective is not actually possible without scientific knowledge about Him, the lack of such knowledge will permit only very meager advancement.
There are many such pious people who believe in God, offer prayers, and follow some of the rituals of their faith. However, to the proportion they don’t have access to the positive scientific knowledge of Bhagavan, they will perform their worship as a matter of social obligation and family tradition. This worship will inevitably be performed as a matter of duty rather than out of spontaneous inspiration, and as such it will lack the intensity required to deepen their relationship with God and thus break free from the shackles of material attachments.
Many of these pious people will agree in theory that the ultimate goal of life is to develop our natural love of God. But you can’t love somebody in theory, especially if you don’t really know Him. You can experience respect and reverence to such a person, or fear, but pure unalloyed love of God is quite a different matter. Love is very personal, at times even a painfully personal matter. If we want to fall in love with somebody we should first accept that he or she is truly a person and then we should come in contact with his lovable personal characteristics, which serve as udipana, a stimuli, for further development of our feelings.
The Mayavadis argue that such personal qualities of God are actually Maya, illusion. The pious adherents to different faiths accept them nominally, but God’s personality is ultimately shrouded in mystery and any attempts to unveil it are often seen as a blasphemy. God is not just Brahman or Paramatma, He is ultimately Bhagavan, the source of Brahman and Paramatma. Similarly, Bhagavan is not just the Lord all-mighty who is to be served in the mood of owe and reverence. He not only exists and controls everything; He is, above all else, the Supreme Enjoyer. His greatest enjoinment is to serve His pure devotees. In His highest spiritual mood in His most intimate abode God becomes a disciple and devotee of His devotees. Thus when Krsna says in the Bhagavad-gita sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam saranam vraja, abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me, He does not demand a surrender as a tyrant does; rather, Krsna urges us to come up to the real standard of personal relationships where alone we can be happy, a standard of selfless love expressed through service, which He has maintained all along. Krsna invites us to become qualified to be His close associates.
When the devotee becomes fully aware of Krsna’s enchanting qualities, amongst which His mercy for His devotees is foremost, he melts in love for Him. All insignificant material desires are removed from the heart just as a strong wind sweeps away dry leaves. Then the devotee’s pure love attracts Krsna:
“The profuse release of fragrance of the flower of bhava invites Madhusudhana to appear there…Scented by the fragrance of bhava, all the emotions of the heart become like the oil of liquefied bunches of sesame seeds, at once fit to smear on all the limbs of the Lord.” (Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura, Madhurya Kadambini)
On that advanced level of devotional service the devotee is spontaneously attracted to Krsna, just as “iron attracted by a magnetic stone moves automatically toward the magnet”. Such impulsive, natural affection for the Lord is possible neither for the mayavadis, nor for the so-called pious mundane religionists. The only way that leads beyond this dry, materialistic approach toward God, is the process of vaidhi bhakti, regulated devotional service. But in order to accept this process one has to have a sufficient credit of spiritual piety, which will allow him to truly accept a Personal God. If he doesn’t have such credit he will think that any suggestion of personal traits in the Supreme is offensive. Such a person will be forced to follow certain type of kaitava dharma, or cheating religion. He will necessarily lack strong spiritual taste and will perform his worship thinking not about God but about the material rewards that the worship provides. He will want to go to heaven not to serve God, but to enjoy heavenly pleasures, and he will be convinced that this is the final goal of religion.
What is the final goal of religion, the ultimate need of the soul?
"The need of the spirit soul is that he wants to get out of the limited sphere of material bondage and fulfil his desire for complete freedom. He wants to get out of the covered walls of the greater universe. He wants to see the free light and the spirit. That complete freedom is achieved when he meets the complete spirit, the Personality of Godhead. There is a dormant affection for God within everyone; spiritual existence is manifested through the gross body and mind in the form of perverted affection for gross and subtle matter. Therefore we have to engage ourselves in occupational engagements that will evoke our divine consciousness. This is possible only by hearing and chanting the divine activities of the Supreme Lord, and any occupational activity which does not help one to achieve attachment for hearing and chanting the transcendental message of Godhead is said herein to be simply a waste of time." (SB 1.2.8, purport)
Thus the inherent need of the soul is to love and serve God unconditionally; as long as that need is not met we will never be happy. Therefore, we should not deprive God of His personal qualities, otherwise there will be nobody to love and serve and we will have to resort to the cheap material substitute of love, or, even worse, will become mayavadis. In both cases we will be stuck either as open offenders, or as boring so-called pious people who use God as a provider for material possessions and a doorman to heaven.
We crave for happiness and we naturally seek it in personal relationships. The problem is that on the material plane all such relationships are temporary, unfulfilling, and are ultimately a source of misery. However, we cannot give up our quest for happiness through relationships, because it is our inherent nature, it defines who we are. We have to reawaken our eternal loving relationship with Krishna and reclaim our own spontaneous affection for Him. Then only will we be able to break free from our material attachments.
