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XXXII] God and His Powers
409 It must, however, be maintained that the main interest of the Vaisnavas is not in these hair-splitting dialectical discussions; theirs is professedly a system of practical religious emotionalism, and this being so it matters very little to a Vaişnava whether the world is real or unreal. His chief interest lies in the delight of his devotion to Godl. It is further held that the ordinary experience of the world can well be explained by a reference to world-analogies; but the transcendental relation existing between God, the individual, the souls and the world can hardly be so explained. The Upanisad texts declare the identity of the jīva and parameśvara; but they only mean that parameśvara and the jīva alike are pure consciousness.
God and His Powers. Returning to the Șat-sandarbha, one stumbles over the problem how the Brahman, who is pure consciousness and unchangeable, can be associated with the ordinary guņas of prakşti. The ordinary analogy of play cannot apply to God; children find pleasure in play or are persuaded to play by their playmates; but God is selfrealized in Himself and His powers, He cannot be persuaded to act by anybody, He is always dissociated from everything, and is not swayed by passions of any kind. As He is above the guņas, they and their actions cannot be associated with Him. We may also ask how the jīva, who is identical with God, can be associated with the beginningless avidyā. He being of the nature of pure consciousness, there ought not to be any obscuration of His consciousness, either through time or through space or through conditions or through any internal or external cause. Moreover, since God exists in the form of the jīvas in all bodies, the jivas ought not to be under the bondage of afflictions or karma. The solution of such difficulties is to be found in the supra-rational nature of the māyā-sakti of God, which, being supra-logical, cannot be dealt with by the apparatus of ordinary logic. The fact that the power of God can be conceived as internal (antaranga) and external (bahiranga) explains why what happens in the region of God's external power cannot affect His own internal nature; thus, though God in the form of jīvas may be under the influence of māyā and the world-experience arising therefrom, He remains all the time unaffected in His own internal
satyam na satyam naḥ kysna-pādābjāmodam antara jagat satyam asatyam vā ko'yam tasmin durāgrahaḥ. Ibid. p. 269.
