The subject of God or, more generally, the concept of a supreme controller or an ultimate cause, has frequently intrigued the human mind. But what is infrequently recognized is that we need a dramatically different approach for understanding him.

Even in daily experience, different approaches are needed to know different things – a doctor can’t measure a patient’s weight with a stethoscope. And God differs consequentially from everything else in dimension and composition.

Dimension: He is infinite, whereas we are finite. So, we can’t study him using mechanistic science’s approach of conducting controlled experiments on the object of study, for we can’t control him.

Composition: God is different from not just any physical object, but also any intellectual concept. Because he is spiritual, whereas our intelligence is material, being a part of our subtle material body. By the ascending analysis of our intelligence, we can at best partially perceive the spiritual realm. But we can’t properly comprehend it – and we certainly can’t perceive the infinite spiritual reality, God.

For understanding him, we need his descending revelation by which he makes himself accessible to us. Gita wisdom explains that God in his highest manifestation is an all-attractive supreme person, Krishna, who loves us and wants us to love him. When he is pleased by our sincere devotional intention and endeavor, he reveals himself to us by his omnipotent grace. The Bhagavad-gita (11.54) declares that Krishna can be known only through devotion – and preludes this with an assertion of the inadequacy of alternative methods (11.53).

When we strive to love Krishna by practicing bhakti-yoga, he by his merciful revelation within our heart activates the latent spiritual faculties of our soul. By the resulting transcendental perception, we gain comprehension and illumination that supersedes the most zealous sensory or intellectual grasping.

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