Printed in the Spring 2023 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Long, Jeffery D., "God: Personal, Impersonal, and Beyond: Vedantic Perspectives" Quest 111:2, pg 21-24
By Jeffery D. Long
Is God a person? Or is God an impersonal reality to which we human beings ascribe personhood in order to relate to it?
The first of these options would make the divine reality like ourselves in an important respect, whereas the second would suggest that divine personhood is a projection, which may or may not reflect the real nature of God. This would render the various stories of personal divinities found in the world’s religions mythic or symbolic rather than literal depictions of the divine nature. Finally, another option is that God is an ultimate mystery, beyond the ability of concepts such as personal and impersonal to describe.
The ancient Vedanta tradition of India has a good deal of light to shed on this issue. Over the centuries, a variety of answers to the question of divine personhood have been proposed by the various masters in this tradition. Its scholars have debated the issue, and sages have weighed in with their direct insights into the nature of the divine reality. Each of the options mentioned above has been advocated at various times by Vedantins. And as we shall see, each carries with it some measure of insight into the nature of the divine reality and can serve as a basis for spiritual practices which can draw their adherents ever nearer to God-realization.
Is the Supreme Being a Person?
First, we should establish what precisely we mean when we use the term God. If we do this, we may find that we have already defined this term in a way that predetermines the answer to our question.
The word God is ultimately derived from the Indo-European root gheu-e, from a root meaning to invoke. In the ancient Zoroastrian tradition of Iran, the Persian form, khuda, refers to Ahura Mazda, the supremely good and wise lord and creator of the world. This is a concept of the divine reality as a person, though one of vastly greater power and knowledge than can be claimed by a mere human being. We can find similar concepts within the Abrahamic traditions—the one God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—as well as in theistic Hindu traditions, such as the Vaishnava, Shaiva, and Shakta paths.
Although it can sometimes create confusion, the term God is conventionally utilized to refer generically to all these concepts of a Supreme Being. If we believe that such a being actually does exist, this is quite appropriate; for these concepts can then be seen as referring not to different “gods,” but as different ways of understanding and approaching the Supreme Being who really exists and who does have some definite nature, whatever it may be.
The being to which all of these concepts point is ostensibly a person, said to have a will as well as a desire to engage in the activities of creation, preservation, and, at times, destruction. But a current of thought in many traditions questions this concept of divine personhood. For does personhood not imply limitation?
The Jain tradition of India, for example, rejects the concept of God as a creator precisely because creation implies a desire to create, and desire implies a lack or a want which one needs to fulfill. A creator, therefore, according to the Jains, cannot be a perfect being, worthy of worship (Jaini, 89). In the Jain tradition, God does not refer to a singular supreme being, but is a collective term that refers to all of the souls who have realized their inherent perfection: the Jinas, or enlightened beings (Cort, 91‒93).
For those traditions that do affirm a singular Supreme Being, this being is understood to be infinite, and thus free from limitation. Yet the personal beings that we encounter in our lives—others as well as ourselves—are finite and limited in many ways. Some traditions ask if it is therefore really appropriate to attribute personhood, at least in a literal way, to a reality which is infinite, free from limitation, and ultimately beyond the ability of any of our limited, finite concepts to grasp.
In the Roman Catholic tradition, the theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225‒74) does not deny divine personhood, but does argue that all ascribing of attributes to God occurs by way of analogy. Thus, when we say that God is a person, we are actually saying that God is like a person in some significant way but without bearing all of the limitations which normally go with the idea of personhood.
The Vedantic Perspectives
The Vedanta traditions of Hinduism have extensively reflected upon and debated the question of divine personhood. They have staked out a variety of important positions that can shed light on this issue.
The first thing we should note in exploring Vedantic responses to this question is that, until the modern period, these traditions did not use the term God when talking about divine realities. This is not a trivial point. As we shall see, there are specific Sanskrit terms used in the Vedantic traditions that refer to different conceptions of divinity. Some of these terms imply personhood, and some do not (or rather, whether they do or not is precisely what adherents of these traditions debate). In the modern period, all of these terms have, at some point or another, been translated as God. This can create some confusion when we are trying to understand what Vedanta has to say about these matters. But if we are attentive to these differences, it can lead to insight into the nature of the higher realities that followers of all traditions are seeking to realize.
As we shall see, many Vedantic traditions affirm divine personhood; some affirm that the nature of the divine Reality is beyond concepts like personal and impersonal; and one very prominent tradition affirms that the divine Reality is, if not purely impersonal, well beyond the limitations that are inherent in the idea of personhood.
As the word Vedanta suggests, the roots of Vedanta can be traced to the Vedas: the sacred texts that form the historical fountainhead of the Hindu tradition as a whole. According to current scholarship, the Vedas are among the oldest extant sacred texts and the oldest to be used in a still living religious tradition. Their age is debated, but a widely held consensus places their compilation around 1500 BCE. Note the word compilation in contrast with composition. If these texts were put together as a collection around 1500 BCE, they must have been composed some time beforehand. They were handed down orally for many generations before being put into writing, and in traditional Vedic schools, or gurukulams, the tradition of committing these texts to memory continues unbroken even today.
According to Vedic thought, it is not actually correct to speak in terms of the Vedas being composed at all. These texts are understood to be shruti: that is, “heard,” or directly revealed to the ancient sages, or rishis, to whom they are attributed. They are therefore said to be apaurusheya, or “not manmade.”
In the traditional Vedic curriculum, the final portion of the Vedas to be studied is a set of texts known as the Upanishads, which can be translated as “secret doctrine.” Many of these texts contain dialogues between students and teachers on the nature of ultimate reality, or brahman, and the Self, or atman. (Self is capitalized here because it refers not so much to the ego or selfhood as conventionally understood, but to the Supreme Being—the shared universal “Self” of all beings.)
The Upanishads form part of the prasthana-traya, or “triple foundation” of Vedanta. The second part is the Brahma Sutras, a set of aphoristic texts that summarize the teachings of the Upanishads in a fairly technical fashion. The Brahma Sutras are extremely difficult to comprehend without the aid of a living teacher or a commentarial tradition of masters who have grasped its meaning. Third is the Bhagavad Gita, which also summarizes the teachings of the Upanishads, but in a popular fashion that is comparatively easy for the average person to understand. The Bhagavad Gita, or the “Song of the Lord,” often called simply “the Gita,” or “the Song,” is itself part of the massive and beloved epic poem the Mahabharata. The Gita consists of a dialogue between Sri Krishna (who is himself an avatar, or divine incarnation, or, according to some interpreters, the Supreme Being himself) and the hero Arjuna. Like many of the Upanishads, it is a dialogue. Because of its authoritative content, it is regarded by many as itself an Upanishad, called the Gitopanishad, or Gita Upanishad.
As a philosophy, Vedanta can be seen as an attempt to interpret these three texts, taken in tandem to be an authoritative guide to the spiritual life. As a spiritual practice, Vedanta is an attempt to live the teachings which these texts reveal. This involves approaching a living teacher within an established Vedantic lineage, or sampradaya. Many such lineages exist, and the various schools of thought within Vedanta have emerged from within them. All accept the validity of the Vedic texts, but each has its own interpretation and understanding of what the Vedas teach.
Regarding divine personhood, one can find many views on this topic in the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras, and the Bhagavad Gita. For centuries—during what might be called the presectarian era of Vedanta—the teachings delivered by these texts were simply accepted as a totality. In time, however, various Vedantic thinkers began to differentiate between the portions of these texts that could be taken to be literally true (and thus as carrying the real import of these texts), and those that could be seen as illustrating the deeper truths by means of images and analogies. This was clearly an attempt to derive an internally consistent interpretation of reality from these texts: a viewpoint which could serve as an aid to contemplative practice.
The first such Vedantic system to develop was the Advaita, or nondualist Vedanta, taught by Shankara, who lived around the eighth or ninth century of the Common Era. According to this understanding, brahman, or ultimate reality, is finally all that can be truly said to be real. Brahman is often translated today as God, but, according to Advaita Vedanta, this is not God as a personal being. The true nature of brahman is nirguna: that is, God has no qualities, which can be seen as limitations. This means that personhood cannot literally be ascribed to God. To be sure, according to Advaita Vedanta, we can experience God as the personal Supreme Being described in many religious traditions. This Supreme Being is known in Advaita Vedanta, as in most Hindu traditions, as Ishvara, “the Lord,” or Bhagavan, “the Blessed One,” or “the Enjoyer” of the cosmos. In the Hindu traditions that are based on devotion to a specific deity, that deity is seen as identical to Ishvara. Thus, for Vaishnavas, Vishnu is Ishvara. For Shaivas, Shiva is Ishvara. For Shaktas, the Divine Mother, Shakti, is Ishvara (or rather, Ishvari).
From the perspective of Advaita Vedanta, it is possible to select any such divine manifestation as one’s ishtadevata, or “chosen deity,” and, on the basis of devotion, or bhakti, directed at that deity, one can purify one’s consciousness and progress toward jñana, which is direct knowledge or realization of the Supreme Reality, the “God beyond God,” which is nirguna brahman.
Many subsequent thinkers in the Vedanta tradition, however, objected to this way of seeing God. For many Hindus, as for many Christians, loving union with the personal Supreme Being is not merely a purificatory step in the direction of the “real” goal of knowledge of an impersonal (or better, transpersonal) Supreme Reality: it is the entire point of the spiritual life. After Shankara, therefore, Vedantic thinkers emerged who affirmed the personal nature of God (Ishvara, Bhagavan) as a literally concrete reality, irreducible to another principle seen as higher or beyond the limitations of personhood. Ramanuja, whose life overlapped the eleventh and twelfth centuries of the Common Era, developed Vishishtadvaita Vedanta, a term that means “nondualism with difference” (often translated as “qualified nondualism”). According to Ramanuja, brahman is, indeed, the Supreme Reality. But rather than being an undifferentiated consciousness beyond all difference, brahman is an organic reality that consists of both God and the cosmos, united in a manner analogous to the union of the soul and the body. The cosmos is the body of Ishvara.
Ramanuja and Shankara thus agree that brahman is the all-encompassing reality beyond both God and the cosmos. For Shankara, however, this means that brahman alone is real and that God and the cosmos are a mere appearance, eventually to be transcended. For Ramanuja, it means that God and the cosmos are both real, and that they together constitute brahman.
Madhva, who lived from the thirteenth to the fourteenth century of the Common Era, saw even Ramanuja’s approach as insufficient in affirming a genuine difference between God and the cosmos. He taught Dvaita, or dualistic Vedanta.
Subsequent thinkers in the Vedanta tradition sought to affirm both sides of the Vedantic equation regarding divine personhood and divine transcendence of all limiting qualities. Nimbarka, whose precise dates are disputed, affirmed Dvaitadvaita Vedanta, or “dualism and nondualism.” Chaitanya, who lived in the fifteenth century, taught Achintya Bhedabheda, or “inconceivable difference and nondifference”: the idea that God’s personal and transpersonal nature are both real and are united in a way that cannot be grasped by the human mind without the aid of divine grace.
More recently, the Hindu sage Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa (1836‒86) taught that both the personal and the impersonal or transpersonal facets of brahman are real. The Supreme Being and the Supreme Reality are both valid and effective ways of conceptualizing that ultimate mystery toward which, according to Ramakrishna, all the world’s religions ultimately point. This sage is famous for his practice of many paths and his experience in all of them of a state of deep realization, or samadhi. This convinced him that each was a way to access an infinite Reality with infinite aspects, and to which, or to whom, correspondingly infinite paths can lead. He once proclaimed:
“I have practiced all religions—Hinduism, Islam, Christianity—and I have also followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. I have found that it is the same God toward whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. He who is called Krishna is also called Shiva, and bears the name of the Primal Energy, Jesus, and Allah as well—the same Rama with a thousand names” (Nikhilananda, 35).
In his book Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion, Swami Medhananda, a scholar and monk of the Ramakrishna Order, has coined the term Vijñana Vedanta to refer to Ramakrishna’s distinctive view of God. Vijñana is state of awareness which goes even beyond the jñana, or knowledge of nirguna brahman, that is the goal of Advaita Vedanta:
That which is realized as Brahman through the eliminating process of “Not this, not this” is then found to have become the universe and all its living beings. The vijñani sees that the Reality which is nirguna is also saguna . . .Those who realize Brahman in samadhi . . . find that it is Brahman that has become the universe and its living beings . . . This is known as vijñāna. (Nikhilananda, 103‒04).
According to Sri Ramakrishna’s understanding, the nonpersonal or transpersonal nirguna brahman of Advaita Vedanta is the same reality as the realm made up of the personal God and the world as taught by Ramanuja’s Vishishtadvaita. This view holds that there is a coalescence of the relative and the absolute, the temporal and the eternal, the personal and the impersonal. They are one, but they are viewed differently by adherents of different worldviews.
What is significant about this is that one view is not reduced to another, as is done in most traditional Vedanta schools. It is not that one must ultimately see beyond the personal Supreme Being in order to realize the transpersonal Supreme Reality, as in Advaita Vedanta. Nor must one focus solely upon the personal Supreme Being, whose impersonal nature yields an experience that is of lesser value than the actual loving union with the Supreme Being, as in the many Vedanta schools which emphasize bhakti over jñana, devotion over knowledge. In the view of Ramakrishna, each path is valid and effective for those who walk it.
This is, in many ways, a return to the presectarian Vedanta of the prasthana traya, in which one finds both personal and impersonal approaches to ultimate reality endorsed (Maharaj, 15‒16). It is not that one of these is correct and the other a mere preparatory step toward it. God’s reality includes both of these aspects, and both are available for realization.
Currently there is some debate within the Vedanta tradition of Ramakrishna over whether to see Vijñana Vedanta as something distinct from Advaita Vedanta or as a further unpacking of its deep implications (since Advaita Vedanta has long seen itself as part of the stream of nondualist thought). In either case, it is a view that allows for the mystery of the Infinite to unfold in myriad ways, as found in the world’s many religions and philosophies. Both personalist and impersonalist views of the nature of ultimate reality can coexist and flourish within it. It would seem to be precisely the kind of open-minded and open-hearted approach to diverse worldviews that we need in our current era of polarization and conflict across humanity’s many systems of belief.
Sources
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Benziger, 1948.
Cort, John E. Jains in the World: Religious Values and Ideology in India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Jaini, Padmanabh S. The Jaina Path of Purification. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
Maharaj, Ayon (Swami Medhananda). Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Nikhilananda, Swami, trans. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1942.
Jeffery D. Long is professor of religion, philosophy, and Asian studies at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, where he has been teaching since receiving his doctoral degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School in the year 2000. He is the author of a variety of books and articles, including Hinduism in America: A Convergence of Worlds and Jainism: An Introduction. He has spoken in a variety of national and international venues, including three talks given at the United Nations.