As discussed in Of God and Self all religions have their canons of beliefs, theology, their way of understanding the Divine and the world we live in, and the relationship of humanity to God. And I repeat, I don’t think it matters particularly what God or understanding of ‘reality’ you have, although Eastern yogic and Hindu religions have evolved a far more sophisticated theological and cosmological system of understanding, and one that I am naturally drawn to. You do not have to decide between modern physics, natural laws and evolution, or belief in God, for example, since they are a part of the same thing, at least in the Prakriti aspect of the Divine, producing all the material manifestation complete with the laws of nature that any atheistic scientist would subscribe to, even whilst denying the existence of Purusha – the Unmanifest Spirit ultimately giving rise to all.
There are persuasive understandings of Divinity in Hinduism, mostly revolving around the more ancient concepts of Purusha and Prakriti as spirit and matter, the nature of Divinity being a mystical two in one, as with the highest manifestation of God in Shivaite temples: the Shivalinga (Siva-linga) which is an aniconic representation of the Divine as the balanced male/female aspects of Itself: Shiv/Shakti together making Shiva, depicted as a stylised phallus set within the yoni, a stylised vulva and uterus.
Kashmir or Trika Shaivaism has a highly evolved concept of the nature of Divinity that nevertheless affirms this:
“In Kashmir Shaivism, all things are a manifestation of this Consciousness, but the phenomenal world (Śakti) is real, existing and having its being in Consciousness (Chit) (1)”.
And:
“Kashmiri Shaivism describes all of reality, with all of its diversity and fluctuation, is the play of the single principle, Paramashiva. The two aspects of this single reality are inseparably united: Shiva and Shakti. Paramashiva appears as the world through his creative power, Shakti. The ontological nature of Paramashiva is beyond human knowledge and articulation, yet it can be experienced directly through mystical intuition (2).” [emphasis added]
The better known Advaita Vedanta taught in many contemporary yoga schools, and Kashmir Shivaism, which, although some 1,500 years old has only relatively recently been introduced into the domain of general Eastern spirituality, are the two most notable non dual schools. My own inclinations favour the Kashmir school and I have devoted more attention studying this more recently.
The problem ever lies in the reducing of complex ideas of mystical origin into mere words evolved to describe the ‘ordinary’ human experience of life. A lot if not most gets ‘lost in translation’. My own personal mystical experiences remain outside of ordinary human experience and mere words to try and describe them feel inadequate to the point of being violating. However ‘learned’ we are, we can never reduce ‘God’ into a set of conditions and descriptors that allow He/She/It to be understood in any way at all. The Self is beyond understanding. It is hardly as though there are not ample warnings against this in these same ancient scriptures. As noted elsewhere here, the Katha Upanishad cautions:
“The Self is not known through study of the scriptures, nor through subtlety of the intellect, nor through much learning; but by him who longs for him is he known.’ Verily unto him does the Self reveal his true being (3).”
In other words it is a gift of Grace, a Divine favour accorded by the Self that It reveals Itself to certain people. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says:
“Not by the Vedas, or an austere life, or gifts to the poor, or ritual offerings can I be seen as thou hast seen me. Only by love can men see me, and know me, and come unto me (4).”
Across the other side of the world in 14th century northern Europe, that renowned mystical work of anonymous authorship ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ counsels exactly the same:
“For He can well be loved, but he cannot be thought. By love he can be grasped and held, but by thought, neither grasped nor held. And therefore, though it may be good at times to think specifically of the kindness and excellence of God, and though this may be a light and a part of contemplation, all the same, in the work of contemplation itself, it must be cast down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. And you must step above it stoutly but deftly, with a devout and delightful stirring of love, and struggle to pierce that darkness above you; and beat on that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love, and do not give up, whatever happens (5).”
And from that great English mystic of the Middle Ages Julian of Norwich we are told:
“From the time these things were first revealed I had often wanted to know what was our Lord’s meaning. It was more than fifteen years after that I was answered in my spirit’s understanding. ‘You would know our Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well. Love was His meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did He show you? Love. Why did He show it? For love. Hold on to this and you will know and understand love more and more. But you will not know or learn anything else — ever (6).”
Therefore I feel the attempts of those different sages in India across the centuries, to ascribe a set of attributes and conditions to ‘God’ and our understanding of It seems superfluous at best and misleading at worst. For in this way description of the state of Reality as being ‘Brahman is Real’, ‘Brahman is All’, in the strict Advaitist sense seems to be reductionist: monism and pantheism at their most basic level. We are all God and that is that! It is unhelpful to the generality of ordinary folk caught up in a sense defined material universe and a experience of themselves as their ego consciousness.
The ‘God Realisation’ is a much more challenging process than simply telling yourself you are God. I have heard that some Advaitist schools of Yoga encourage the student to meditate from the position of their sense of ‘I’ (ie ego/conscious personality) being, in fact, God. I am not an authority of yoga or meditation, but endeavouring to trick the ego into experiencing itself as God seems dangerous to me. It is surely the most common of human failings, to act as though you are God, and the cause of much abuse of power, misery and suffering as a consequence. To counsel a person who has the normal prevailing ego consciousness to try to experience this as God, is what I would loosely describe as a ‘bottom up’ approach, whereas what ought to be required is a ‘top down’ one, wherein via temporary effacement and dissolution of the ego, the Self Itself is what is left. Your sense of ‘I’ is then experienced from the real perspective, as the sense of ‘I’ in fact originates from the Self (7).
(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir_Shaivism
(2) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parameshwara_(god)
(2) 108 Upanishads. Commentary on the Katha Upanishad–by Swami Nirmalananda Giri: 88/908
(3) Mascaro, Juan. 1962. The Bhagavad Gita. 11. 53-54. Penguin Classics, Random House: India. His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, in ‘The Bhagavad Gita As It Is’ glosses ‘Love’ as ‘undivided devotional service’. I prefer Love.
(5) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloud_of_Unknowing
(6) Julian of Norwich (with A.C. Spearing and Elizabeth Spearing).1998. Revelations of Divine Love.(Penguin Classics)
(7) This begs the question which methodologies to use in the process of ego effacement. Meditation and Zen/Jnana yoga style intellectual enquiry designed to identify and unpick one’s own conditionings and see that the ego, is, in fact a mere artifice of our human experience of the world, the ‘I’ consciousness of our daily lives, are the ones that, as far as I am aware, are those generally promoted and which I have employed myself.
Image of the Shiva linga (Siva-linga) is from Christopher Wallis. Tantra Illuminated THE PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY, AND PRACTICE OF A TIMELESS TRADITION Second (Kindle) Edition -Christopher D. Wallis- with illustrations by Ekabhūmi Ellik MATTAMAYŪRA PRESS