Sree Krishna, the Lord of Love

by Baba Premananda Bharati

SECTION I. THE CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT GOD.

See you that sun, Beloved Reader, shining radiant in the blue space above? Ancients worshipped it as a god, and the Hindoos, the most ancient of all peoples, worship the sun as a god still. With joined hands filled with flowers and water and trembling with homage, the Hindoos daily pray to this "Outer Eye of the Deity," this parent of all light and Nature. "O Thou Parent of the Three Worlds! I meditate upon thy power divine which directs my intelligence!" prays the Brāhman morning, noon and evening, as he bows in all reverence.

This sun is the physical expression of the Spiritual Sun, Krishna. As the sun (the orb) is the concrete centre of its abstract self, in its diffused manifestation of light and heat which pervades the universe, so this, the Spiritual Sun, Krishna, the Source of the sun, is the concrete centre of the diffused effulgence of His Body which pervades even the sunlight and its heat. Krishna has a Form, a Form of which the most exquisite human form is but a crude counterpart. The effulgence of Krishna's Body is the substance of all space and creation. This Effulgence-Krishna, with Form-Krishna for its centre, from which it radiates—is Love.

As the physical sun's effulgence embodies or is co-existent with heat, so the Spiritual Sun's effulgence embodies and is co-existent with Intelligence. This co-existent Absolute Love and Absolute Intelligence forms the Being of this Creation. Krishna is, therefore, called the embodiment of Being, Intelligence and Bliss, or Life, Truth and Love. Every particle of this radiance of Krishna's Form-Body is not only instinct with these three attributes in one, but has within it the germ of Krishna's Form and Power.

The belief that the First Cause of the universe has no form, is based partly on error of its conception and upon ignorance of the laws of Nature. It is a delusion to think that all forms are human, material, and finite, and that to acknowledge that this Supreme Being has a form is to take away from Him His absolute divinity, spirituality and infinity.

That which is not in the seed cannot appear in the tree which comes out of it, says an aphorism of the Vedānta philosophy. This being an undeniable truth, even from a common sense standpoint, it may be asked: If God is formless, and if that formless, abstract God be the source from which the universe has come, then how can that creation contain any form? If man's creator is formless, to put the question in another way, wherefrom has He His form? If God has no form, then He can have no idea of form, and having no idea of form, how can He then create form, for creation is but expansion of Idea.

Creation has sprung from God's will, says the Holy Bible, as also the Veda. These tell us—and both the Christians and the Hindoos are agreed on this point—that God has a Will. What is will? It is but the function or attribute of the mind. Just as where there is no fire there can be no smoke, so where there is no mind there can be no will. Once we admit that God has a will, we cannot escape admitting that He has a mind, the function of which—will—He exercised in order to create the universe.

Now then, it being established that God has a mind, the question may be asked: Is that mind encased in a body? If so, what sort of a body is it? Is it physical; that is to say, is it formed of the same material of which the human body is made? Or is it a body made of abstract spirit? This is not possible, for mind is defined by the Vedas to be that principle within us which has the power of willing and non-willing. Scientists and modern philosophers define mind with practically the same purport. This vibration of the mind, willing and non-willing, is brought about or induced by the reflections cast upon if by external or internal objects, through its channels of communication, the five cognizing senses, the physical counterparts of which are the Eye, the Ear, the Nose, the Palate and the Skin, which cognize respectively Form, Sound, Smell, Taste and Touch, under which five heads the Vedas have classified all forms of matter or objects. A mind without these five channels cannot exist, for, having no channels, it receives no impressions of objects, and has therefore no chance of either willing or non-willing, which is its attribute and its only substance and composition.

Once we acknowledge that God has a mind, we cannot help acknowledging these channels of that mind, the five senses. God has therefore not only a mind, but the Power of Seeing (eye), the Power of Hearing (ear), the Power of Smelling (nose), the Power of Tasting (palate), and the Power of Feeling (skin). The mind has also five other powers called its working senses; viz., the Power of Speaking, the Power of Holding, the Power of Moving, the Power of Excreting and the Power of Generating, otherwise called the vocal organs, the hands, the feet, the excretory organ and the generating organ. Thus God, possessing a mind, is bound to possess the ten senses, without which the mind cannot act, and inaction of the mind is its destruction or non-existence. God, having a mind, has to have an Ego, too, for mind is but a product or channel of the Ego, which means I-ness or Self-Consciousness. So that God has all the principles of which man is formed, once it is admitted that God has a mind. And there is no sane man who can deny to God the possession of a mind of which the universe is the design and creation of which man is but a tiny part.

The Christian Bible says that God has made man in His own image, which means that man is the reflection, more or less imperfect, of God. Is it then possible that what is not in the original is present in the reflection? If the human soul, according to this scriptural saying, is a reflection (image) of the Deity, has not that Deity a mind and body, as Its reflection, the human soul, has?

The answer is: It has, only the Divine Mind, being consummately pure in its state and perfect in its working, is absolutely powerful to create, preserve and destroy; and the Body in which the Divine Mind is encased is composed of a substance not of any material make.

But what does this Body of God look like? Is it like a human body? The answer is: Yes, but of a perfection of shape, symmetry and beauty, with which no human body can be compared; it is the Original Body, of which the human body is a poor imitation.

The question will be asked: Has God then as good a finite body as any of us? The answer is; NO, in capital letters. God's Body is no more finite than the human body is. There is nothing in Nature which is finite, not even a blade of grass, or the tiniest speck of earth.

All is infinite—all that you see around you, or perceive within you. There is no such word as finite in the dictionary of Nature, in the lexicon of Creation. All, all that looks ever so small and circumscribed to the fleshly eye of ignorance, is vast and endless to the eye of spiritual wisdom. All that to the physical sight is limited in shape and life is before the vision of the soulful student of Creation's mysterious laws limitless beyond grasp.

Take a grain of earth, and try to trace its origin by the light of the discoveries made by sages who probed into the inmost depths of Nature with the needle of pure spiritual concentration, and you will find that that grain of earth has sprung from Water, Water from Fire, Fire from Air, Air from Ether, and Ether from Sound, Sound from Mind in its effort to cognize outside of it objects projecting from within itself, Mind from Ego, Ego from Consciousness, and Consciousness from the Infinite Love-ocean, the basic principle of Creation.

Can you call this grain of earth finite by any means or chance, especially when you come to know the mysterious laws by which that grain of earth develops into a blade of grass, and then, through myriads of reincarnations of different life-forms, goes back and merges into the Ocean of Love, from which it had originally sprung?

From Love to earth and from earth to Love, thus is made up the circle of creation, and every point in its circumference is but a moving phase of the Infinite in manifestation, Man being but a stage in the upward evolution of the atom or a particle of earth, and his soul being a part of the Universal Soul—a wavelet of the Love-Ocean—he is as immense in every way as the universe itself, as infinite as the Essense of Infinity. His form is but the centre of his abstract Self, called Soul. This form is concrete-looking, but it is so only to the circumscribed vision of the fleshly eye of ignorance.

The body of the Supreme Deity, Krishna's Body, is concrete-looking like man's, but infinite in the expansion of its Radiance or Real Self, just as, to repeat the simile, the orb of the sun is the concrete-looking centre of its abstract Self in the manifestation of its light and heat. The orb, its radiance and its heat must altogether be called the sun, and not the orb alone. Krishna, the spiritual Soul of the sun as well as of the Universe, has likewise a Form-centre, from which radiates to limitless Infinity His effulgence called Absolute Love, which pervades all creation and space.

This body of Krishna, the Parent Cause of the universe, is made up of concentrated Absolute Love, and is the Home of the Very Finest Ideas (potencies) of the sense-principles and the Ego, Mind and Intellect, which form the main factors of Creation.

The Beauty of the Body of Krishna changes, like the shifting colors in a kaleidoscope, into more and more soul-entrancing loveliness at every second, for it reflects the concentrated Beauty and Sweetness of the whole universe, charms warring with charms for supremacy—bubbling foam and froth of the Sweetness of the Nectar of Love.