Some people conceive of the Absolute Truth impersonally. As they associate personality with form and finiteness, they feel that the Absolute, being infinite, cannot be personal.

When such impersonlists read the Bhagavad-gita, they treat as nonliteral its references to Krishna as the Absolute Truth. They believe that he stands for the Absolute; he is a placeholder, meant especially for people not intelligent enough to conceive impersonal reality.

However, their characterization of Krishna as a placeholder is questionable both scripturally and logically. Scripturally speaking, the Gita emphasizes that Krishna is the Absolute Truth – no truth exists beyond him (07.07). Wise are those who understand him to be the supreme person, the highest manifestation of the Absolute Truth (15.19). In contrast, grievously misled are those who misunderstand his position, deeming him a material manifestation of the Absolute, or even a nonmaterial but transitional manifestation of the Absolute meant to be used and ultimately transcended (09.11-12).

Logically speaking, the impersonal conception makes the Absolute less endowed than the existence it has sourced. Personality is widely present within the world, yet it is conspicuously absent in the impersonal Absolute. Moreover, though impersonalists argue that form limits the Absolute, they fail to realize that they too limit the Absolute by insisting on its formlessness. Their reasoning is fatally flawed because it begins with a wrong reference point – they make worldly form and mundane personality their basis for analysis and see the Absolute from that faulty framework.

Gita wisdom stresses that the Absolute, being transcendental, transcends our conceptions of form and personality. Being wholly spiritual, he can have both form and personality – and still be unlimited. Such an inconceivably glorious Absolute is Krishna.

When we study open-mindedly the Gita’s explanation of spiritual reality, we appreciate the profundity and beauty of Krishna as the Absolute Truth.

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