If God is complete and doesn’t desire anything, doesn’t he desire our deliverance?

Transcript

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Thank you. The question is, if we say the Lord does not have any desires, then doesn’t the Lord have the desire that all of us who have come back from him will come back, should come back to him? So, we have to understand that there is the God of philosophy and there is the God of religion.
The God of philosophy is primarily a philosophical conception, and the philosophical conception involves understanding that God is perfect, and that perfection means that God does not need anything, that He is eternally perfect and complete. And the Isopanishad talks about this in Om Poornamada Poornamidam, that the Lord is Poorn, is complete. So, He is self-satisfied, is Atmaram.
Atmaram means one who delights in oneself. So, that is from the philosophical perspective. So, the God is perfect, but the Vedic scriptures don’t just describe God from the philosophical perspective, they also describe it from the devotional perspective.
The devotional perspective means that God is not just an abstract conception, God is a living person. And as a living person, His perfection is not static, it is dynamic. In fact, it is ecstatic.
That means, He is perfect in not just as a stationary perfection, but He is a living, loving person. And that living, loving person has many desires. So, definitely, the Lord desires that all of us should come back to Him.
And that’s why He descends to the world. That’s why He speaks the Bhagavad Gita. That’s why He sends so many messengers to this world.
That’s why He establishes dharma in the world. So, definitely, the Lord desires that all of us should come back to Him. But we have to understand that just as there is tattva and there is leela.
So now, if Krishna is God, then how can Krishna be tied up by Yashodamayi? If Krishna is supreme, how can He be tied by Yashodamayi? If Krishna is all-powerful, then Krishna goes to try to seek for peace by persuading Duryodhana and He fails. So, I gave a lecture in Radha Gopinath, the Sunday Peace Program, when God fails. So, the bhakti message in Krishna’s peace messenger pastime.
So, God has some higher purpose than just proving His supremacy and that is demonstrating His love for His devotees. So, the Vedic understanding of God, it includes at a philosophical level, the conception of God’s perfection. But it goes beyond that.
God is supreme, but He subordinates His supremacy so that He can reciprocate love with His devotees. So, on this, scientists have written an article about how Krishna is a God who conceals His Godhood so that love can reign supreme. Krishna is the supreme, but He does not brag His supremacy.
He conceals His supremacy so that love can reign supreme and that is the nature of God. So, from the philosophical point of view, we do understand that and the Vedic scripture, the Vedanta Sutra does establish how God is complete, how God does not need anything. So, there is no philosophical incompleteness or inadequacy in the Vedic understanding of God.
But beyond that philosophical completeness, there is also a devotional or emotional completeness and that is that God loves, God cares and He cares not because He needs something. He is complete, but He wants to share that completeness with us. So, going back to the example of the dance, Krishna dances because He is ecstatic and He wants everyone to join in His dance of ecstasy and that’s why He also descends to the world and He desires that everyone come back.
So, it’s not that because all of us are suffering, are in the material world, are away from Krishna and are suffering, it is not that Krishna will stop performing His pastimes in the spiritual world with His pure devotees. No, Krishna will continue performing pastimes there. It is not that, say, if somebody starts blaspheming God over here, Krishna will tell Radharani, oh, this person blasphemed me, now I have lost my mood, I can’t dance with you now.
No, so we have to understand that God is infinite and God can have many emotions at the same time also. So, God as a philosophical conception is complete and perfect, but His completeness is not passive, it is dynamic and in the dynamic perfection, He subordinates the supremacy so that love can reign supreme and that supremacy of love is seen by how He acts and He functions, He does things. So, He acts in the spiritual world to reciprocate love and He functions in the material world to maintain the administration in this world and in this way, we can reconcile the understanding of how God is complete and perfect, not needing or doing anything and God who loves and cares and descends to deliver all living beings.