Sambodhi 2013 Vol 36

Author(s): Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 58

50
Dyuti J. Yajnik
SAMBODHI
This, however, does not mean that God can do things that are intrinsically contradictory. As Augustine has shown, it is impossible for God to die. McTaggart, has argued that God is not omnipotent, because He cannot put aside the laws of identity, contradiction, and such other necessities of thought and action. (McTaggart J. M. E., 1906: 202) Against such argumentations Pringle Pattison has aptly remarked that "To affirm omnipotence in such a sense is unnecessary. (Pringle-Pattison A. S., 1917: 404) Thus, Ramakrishna would say that inability to perform absurdities does not have any bearing on the positive concept of God's omnipotence. God is omnipotent because He is capable of working out any possibility which is consistent with His nature as God.
God as Omnipresent
To express the Omnipresence of Reality, Ramakrishna says that everything is in the Reality. “The macrocosm and microcosm rest in the Mother's Womb." And "Whatever is in the microcosm is also in the macrocosm.” (GSR: 106,389) The Reality is all-pervading substance. As he says, “God exists everywhere as All-pervading Consciousness." (GSR: 567)
With regard to the attribute of omnipresence, it should be noted that for Ramakrishna God is not omnipresent in the pantheistic sense. That is, God is not omnipresent, in the sense that He is everything or just totality of all things, and nothing more. Thus, though he believes in the all-pervading Reality, Ramakrishna is not the believer of Pantheism. Because, unlike Pantheism Ramakrishna also accepts separately the form of Reality. He does not limit the realm of God only to the Universe but also accepts It as beyond the universe too. Ramakrishna and Sāṁkhya Philosophy
Similar to this, to explain the concept of Ultimate Reality Ramakrishna uses the concepts of Purusa and Prakrti which looks like the concepts of Purusa and Praksti of Sāmkhya Philosophy. But here also, he basically differs from the Sāmkhya tradition. He has his own concept of those. According to him the Reality is the one and the only one. According to him, Brahman and Its Primal Energy, both are the two aspects of the same Reality. The same Reality assumes different forms and performs different functions. He says, “Nothing exists except the one. That one is the supreme Brahman. That which is Brahman is also the Primal Energy. Brahman and the Primal Energy at first appears to be two. But after attaining the knowledge of Brahman one does not see the two. Then there is no differentiations, it is One, without a second." (GSR: 242)