CC daily 138 – M 6.202 – The bhakti conception of the divine is polymorphic mono-theism

Thank you Chaitanya Mahaprabhu chapter 6 text 202 so Chaitanya revealed his own form his intimate form gave him darshan of that form and at that time Chaturbhuja Chaitanya Mahaprabhu took the form of Chaturbhuja means at that time now how exactly did this happen Chaturbhuja rupa the lord is himself in Brahma Samhita when Brahmaji is glorifying the lord he states that he is in the devotional context the advaita refers to not the non-dual manifestation of Brahman but it refers to the non-duality between the lord's various manifestations he has not just two or three or four manifestations he has unlimited manifestations so now here Chaturbhuja rupa prabhu Chaturbhuja rupa prabhu so he manifested a four handed form now here it is important to understand how the conception of the absolute truth as revealed in the Vedic Tradition, the Bhakti Tradition is complex and often in the Western Tradition there are divisions such as Monotheism and Polytheism.

So Monotheism is there is one God, Polytheism there are many Gods and in the Abrahamic Religions often pride themselves we are monotheistic, rigidly monotheistic. In fact the Protestants they don't accept the conception of even quite often they don't accept the conception of Virgin Mary and they say that Catholics may sometimes worship Virgin Mary also, we don't worship, we worship only Jesus or only God who is manifesting as Jesus. Now Islam is even more rigidly monotheistic and that's why they say that even there should not be any depiction of Mohammed also, because then that will become an object of worship which may eventually replace the worship of God.

They claim that they are monotheistic and they worship only one God and when they look at the Hindu Tradition often they say you people are polytheists and they consider polytheism as a very primitive foolish belief system and that's ok at one level because their idea is that how can there be many Supremes, God is by definition the supreme one and the Supreme has to be only one. So how can there be many Supremes? So there will be competition, there will be war and there will be chaos, there are many people vying for supremacy. So from there Abrahamic categories of conceptualization they try to make sense of the Bhakti Tradition and they lump the Bhakti Tradition as polytheists but then the Bhakti Tradition's conception of God is far more secure.

So God can himself have many manifestations. Now Krishna, Ram, Vishnu, Jagannath, Narasimha, Vamana, these are all the same one God but manifesting at different times to perform different missions and manifesting in different forms. So it is the same one God manifesting in many forms.

Both are there. So now if you want to present the Bhagavan's conception of God in the contemporary academic language, probably the way we could say it is that we are not polytheists but our conception of God is that of polymorphic monotheism. Morpho means form, polymorphic means having many forms, monotheism means accepting one God.

Here the word God is used with G in the capital, that is in the sense of the supreme being. So polymorphic monotheism refers to how there is one God but he manifests in many forms. So monotheism means that we accept that not that there are many Gods, there is only one God but that one God can manifest in many different forms and now of course these forms are also not just contextual, they are transcendental.

That means as Narasimha they manifest in that particular form for a particular occasion or a particular purpose because Narasimha had a particular benediction by which he could not be killed by any member of any of the Brahma's creations. So then Narasimha manifested in a half man half lion form. Still that manifestation also is understood as eternal and now there are avatars who manifest, who reveal themselves at different times in different places and they teach the very word avatar.

Avatar means one who descends. So one who descends is considered to be avatar and the idea of descending indicates that that particular person existed before descending also. Somebody descended down a staircase so that means that person existed, maybe that person was not visible earlier to us and that person was an upper story but that was existing.

So similarly when we say descend that means that particular manifestation was existing before and that manifestation of the divine was existing before chose to reveal oneself at this particular point. So there is polymorphic monotheism has multiple meanings with respect to analyzing the Bhagavatam's conception. So there is the bhakti conception of the divine.

So here one is that the there are that God can not just God can manifest in multiple forms but also that God has multiple forms and in the spiritual world he manifests those forms, he reveals himself in those forms and he revels in those forms, delights in those forms eternally and interestingly there are also certain manifestations which are revealed according to time-place circumstance and which are not eternal. So for example here the Chaturbhuja manifestation going to be revealed but this Chaturbhuja is not a Vishnu Chaturbhuja. Vishnu is known to have a Chaturbhuja with Shankar, Jakar, Kadabhadra, four arms with four of the primary paraphernalia of Vishnu in the four hands but here Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is going to reveal a form which is extraordinary in the sense that who in reciprocation with the devotees desires, who in advancing his own endearing and enchanting and incomprehensible plans for performing pastimes, who reveals in multi-phase manifestations and that same Lord has manifested an extraordinary four-handed form here.

We will discuss about.