Pariprasna

Srimat Swami Tapasyananda Ji (1904 – 1991) was one of the Vice-Presidents of the

Ramakrishna Order. His deeply convincing answers to devotees’ questions raised in spiritual retreats and in personal letters have been published in book form as Spiritual Quest: Questions & Answers. Pariprasna is a selection from this book. Pariprasna

QUESTION: What is meant by a ‘conception of God?’

MAHARAJ: An organised notion or idea about anything may be called a conception of it. The notion may originate from perception, be influenced by the nature of the organs through which perception takes place and be subjected to the interpretative activity of the mind. While this is true with regard to conceptions about things of this world, the question of perception with the senses does not arise at all with regard to God. But we have various vague intuitive and also inferential apprehensions of God: our experience of finiteness necessarily implies an infinite background. The world, which is of the nature of combination and movements, must have had a first cause and a prime mover. The intelligence and the design seen in the universe imply a supreme intelligence behind it as the designer. Our moral and aesthetic experiences demand a ground for all values. These are supported and substantiated by scriptures and by the experience of men of higher vision. Their authoritative statements on these notions invest them with greater certainty and with a wealth of detail. With all these aids the human mind formulates the idea of an infinite and absolute Being which is the source, controller and sustainer of everything.

Granting that there is such an infinite and absolute Being, what sort of understanding can the human mind have of Him? It can only be partial, ie only as much as one could understand of Him in human terms. Some religions, especially those of Semitic origin, do not understand this and speak of their God as true and that of others as false. This arises out of the background notion in the crude mind that God is an individual. To think of God as personal is one thing but to consider Him as an individual is quite different. To think of Him, however remotely, as an individual separated from everything else is true idolatry, though this derogatory term is applied to, and sometimes strangely accepted by, religions like Hinduism which have a much more enlightened view of Him. A person who speaks of one’s own ‘true God’ and the ‘false God’ of others, must necessarily think of Him only as an individual.

As against this, Hindu thinkers speak of the ‘conception of God’. They do so from an understanding of Him as the infinite and all-comprehensive Being, of whom the human mind can take only as much as it can grasp, just as man going for water to the sea takes only as a much of it as his vessel can contain. So in Hinduism we speak of various ‘conceptions of God’. All these conceptions are true because they are segments, as it were, of the Infinite and through all these He has revealed Himself to His devotees. So long as we have a body and mind, we can have only such conceptions of Him. But if we can transcend our mind and by that our humanity and be established as pure Spirit, then He is apprehended in His fullness through at-one-ment. All others can have only ‘conceptions of God’. Those who, without understanding this, talk of their ‘true God’ and the ‘false God’ of others are the worst idolaters, as they violate the infinitude of the Supreme Being.