Book Title: World of Philosophy
Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan
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divine-human relationship is eternal and indissoluble. He bases his intuition on the statement in the Madhuvidya of the Brihadaraṇyaka Upanisad (II.5.19), which in turn is based on the Ṛgvedic utterance:
Rūpam rūpam pratirupo babhūva, tadasya rūpam praticakṣaṇāya Indro māyābhiḥ pururupa iyate, yukta hi asya harayaḥ śata dasa iti (VI. 47.18)
[Every being remains the image of the divine being which enables it to realize itself; this Lord, by his power, is known to be the original of all the infinite beings. His forms are infinite: tens, hundreds, etc. are the forms of Hari].
This is echoed in the Kathopaniṣad (II.2.9-10). This phenomenon of self-multiplication harmonises with the entire process of creation itself:
So' kāmayata, bahusyām prajayeyeti. Sa' tapo 'tapyata. So' tapastaptva. Idam sarvamasṛajata. Yadidam kim ca. Tat sṛstvā tadevānuprāvīśat...
[He desired to create the many. He thought. Having thought, He created all this Whatever exists here. Having created, He entered into the [manifold] creation itself. Taittiriya Upanisad (II.6.1)
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It is significant to note that the above passages reveal the primal umbilical cord which eternally binds the creator and the created. It is necessary to realize that all action of the individual is inevitably rooted in this divine-human relationship. God first brings the creation into being, and then enters into everything to sustain it. He creates and supports, and rules, as its eternal archetype. The intuition of Madhvacharya, from the passages cited above, is as epoch-making as Plato's theory of archetypes which posits the existence of a ruling archetype for every copy, or as the Christian conception of God making man in his own image and likeness. An illusionist model has no opportunity or concern to conceive an archetypal relationship between God and man or God and creation, since in such a world-view man himself is a misnomer, a God in bondage, shackled in/by ajnana/māyā.4 The Visiṣṭādvaita view stops short of fashioning the concept of a God assuming a unique divine form for each individual and controlling each form from within, from the initial moment of creation to the final moment of consummation. The intimate mutuality of the divine-human relationship is maintained to the perfect extent of seeing the individual's salvation as a unique possession of his own archetypal God, the bimbaparokṣa. The God is supremely independent, sarvatantra svatantra, chooses to be inalienably wedded to an abjectly dependent, asvatantra jīva in a unity of relationship which celebrates divine love. This voluntary and spontaneous interlocking of God
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