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personal experience of tlie seers who become directly aware of an Infinite Spiritual Presence beyond and within the range of the world of change and succession. The personal experience of union with Absolute Reality or God has been a common and continuous feature of all the faiths of mankind.”42
Once the distinction between the Absolute and God is eliminated, Radhakrishnan's metaphysical absolutism turns out to be a kind of Višistadvaitic theism comparable to that of Rāmānujachārya or of Sri Svāminārāyaṇa.
While appreciating Rāmānujāchārya's contribution to philosophy, Radhakrishnan has observed that, "Rāmānuja had the greatness of a religious genius. Ideas flowed in on hinn from various sources--the Upanişads and the Agamas, the purāṇas and the prabandham--and he responded to them all with some side of his religious nature. All their different elements are hell together in the indefinable unity of religious experince. The philosophic spirit was strong in Rāmānuja, so, too, was his religious need. He tries his best to reconcile the demands of the religious feeling with the claims of logical thinking. If he did not succeed in the attempt to give us a systematic and self-contained philosophy of religion, it should not surprise us. Much more remarkable is the deep earnestness and hard logic with which he conceived the problem and laboured to bridge the yawning gulf between the apparently conflicting claims of religion and philosophy. A thin intellect with no depth of soul may be blind to the wonders of God's ways, and may have offered as a seemingly simple solution. Not so Rāmānnja, who gives us the best type of monotheism conceivable inset with touches of immanentism."43
Radhakrishnan and others have pointed out that, Rāmānujācārya's višiştādvaita is involved in certain difficulties related to (i) the teleological character of the world, (ii) moral and inetaphysical status of individual souls and (iii) transcendental aspect of God. Sri Svāminārāyana's Visiştadvaita eliminates these difficulties by re-formulating the very concept of S'arira-S'ariri relation. 4 4 In the Višiştādvaita of Sri Svāminārāyaṇa, the individual souls and material world are said to be "body of God in the sense that (i) they are pervaded by God; (ii) they depend upon God; and (iii) they are incapable of doing anything without the s'akti of God.”4 5 Thus the philosophical position of Sri Svāminārāyaṇa preserves the organic view of the universe without damagiug its moral significance and God's
