Bhagavatam-daily 236 – 11.11.42 – Don’t see God as reduced to the world or as disconnected from the world

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Thank you Here in Krishna says that through all these manifestations bhatra puja padani me that he gives a list of various manifestations of sun, the cows, the Vaishnavas and through all these I can be worshipped puja me me means me now at first glance this verse may seem to be supporting impersonalism that the absolute truth is simply all pervading and technically speaking the idea that the absolute truth is all pervading is perfectly compatible with even a personalist conception of god because one of the defining conceptions of god is that he is omnipresent he is omniscient he is omnipotent, he is omnipresent and going further the specific idea that god is present in everything is different from god is everything and that is different from god is everything but nothing beyond everything that means that when god is reduced to just a vague amorphous sense of divinity that is said to permute everything and god does not have a personal self existence beyond everything then such a conception of god is erroneous it is called as pantheism so god is everything that a tree is god a wall is god, the floor is god the sky is god such a conception is often thought as pantheistic at the same time is the bhagavatam supporting this kind of idea of pantheism just as here various manifestations are named and said that these can be worshipped or all the absolute truth can be worshipped through these manifestations a similar suitably nuanced statement comes in the bhagavad gita in the vishwaroopa yoga, the eleventh chapter there it is stated ya patis tvam prapita mahasya namo namaste tu sahasra pratah punashya bhuyopi namo namaste there in krishna states or arjuna offers his prayers to krishna and in those prayers he states that that actually actually you are the wind, you are the moon, you are the sun like that he gives a list ya patis tvam prapita mahasya you are the prajapatis, you are brahma prapita mahasya and then he gives general principle after listing some specific manifestations vayur yamog nirvarvanah shashankah prajapatis tvam pratipita mahasya namo namaste tu sahasra pratah punashya bhuyopi namo namaste here he says that i offer my obeisances to you sarvam samapnosi tosi sarvah in just another word, joining verses, krishna states that sarvam samapnosi you pervade everything and therefore you are everything so now when krishna is displaying the universal form to arjuna at that time although at that time arjuna cannot see krishna explicitly but still there was krishna and krishna displayed a universal form and krishna withdrew the universal form and krishna became manifested that means krishna has his own self existence independent of the universal form and krishna exists in his own manifestation that is distinct from the various manifestations that we may see in this world so there is this understanding that the absolute truth is beyond everything and is yet accessible through everything so there are two extremes in this approach that to reduce god to everything where we deny god his independent self existence beyond whatever we see so everything here refers to all that we see in the material universe so that becomes pantheism wherein god is reduced to everything and then there is also the conception that god that god is so utterly beyond everything that he has got nothing to do with this world this conception that god is entirely beyond this world is also an erroneous conception because then god becomes so other so distinct from us so unapproachable by us that there is an unscalable chasm between us and him the bhagavatam and the bhagavad gita both they do not accept such a conception of god rather the conception they accept is a conception wherein it is understood that krishna is the all pervading krishna is the absolute truth, the person who has energies and he pervades everything in various ways one of them is energies so the energies are not diverse from the energetic we see the energies as connected with the energetic and yet the energies are not the energetic that means now one is to reduce the energy equate the energy and the energetic that means the energetic has no existence separate from the energy, the other is that was one extreme, the other extreme is to consider the energetic as having no connection with the energy and the bhagavatam understanding is that energetic manifests through energy because the two are connected so elsewhere in the same section in the bhagavatam krishna will also state that and not he also state that it is he who is to be worshipped and one should not misdirect oneself to the worship of devatas alone separate from him so here what krishna is saying is we should see the world also as sacred not in the sense as god but as manifestation of god’s energy and as a means for approaching god with this vision of the world as connected with supreme our whole existence and our perception of existence can become sacralized, it can become sanctified you can see even the world as holy and this is the vision that can help us move onwards in our journey towards the supreme lord, not just by thinking of him in his transcendental manifestations beyond the world and how he performs pastimes in the spiritual world but also in his manifestations in this world wherein he sees the manifestations as wherein we see that he himself is manifesting through his energies and is giving us access to him through his energies and thus with the connected vision of the cosmos we can respect nature and also it is a very eco-friendly vision of spirituality and theism and along with that we can also see nature as respectable and as a means for worshipping the supremely worshipable thank you