“Some religions say there is only one God. Vedanta says there is only God.”
— Swami Dayananda
In order to grasp the essence of Vedanta, it’s necessary to have an understanding of what we call Ishvara.
Ishvara is the creative principle of the cosmos; both the intelligence that shapes the universe and its very substance.
The word Ishvara means ‘Lord’ and refers to Saguna Brahman; the Self associated with form, or maya. In contrast, Nirguna Brahman is the formless, undifferentiated absolute nature of reality; the source and ground of all existence.
The difference between the two is only incidental in the same way that clay is still clay whether it’s unmoulded or in the form of a pot.
The concept of Ishvara, which some call God, can initially be a challenging one, particularly for Westerners. Having refuted the Abrahamic notion of a dualistic personal God sitting in the heavens casting judgement upon His ‘children’, most people tend to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Instead of recognising that perhaps our concept of ‘God’ simply needs to be redefined, they reject the notion of a universal creative intelligence altogether. This is, I believe, one of the greatest failings of Western religion.
However, there’s no getting around the fact that you can’t get something out of nothing.
For anything to exist, there must be a creative principle with the knowledge, the power and the material necessary to create it.
If I show you my watch and ask you, “Do you believe that someone made this watch?” your response would have to be “yes”.
You didn’t see the watch-maker create the watch. You don’t know anything about him; his age, his name, what he looks like and where he lives — or, indeed, even if it was a man or woman. But that doesn’t negate the fact that the watch-maker clearly had to exist. You can’t have an effect without a cause. The very fact that the watch exists presupposes a creator of the watch.
This same logic applies to the world.
The world clearly exists and the mere existence of a thing necessitates a creative principle.
Religion and Science Both Have Their Limits
Now, clearly, no rational being on Earth can lay claim to being its creator.
This is where the idea of God comes in. Religions purport that God is the Creator of the universe and that He lives in heaven and can only be known by faith. This is the notion accepted by most religious people.
However, it’s an insufficient explanation for those with a questioning intellect.
For a start, it raises far more questions than answers — Where does this ‘God’ come from? Is there a Mrs God? Where is heaven, how did He create the world, and what does He do on his Sundays off?
Accordingly, those who find this notion unsatisfactory tend to reject the concept of God altogether. That’s why the topic of God can be a thorny subject. The very word has been abused by religion for so many centuries that it’s become something of a distasteful word for many.
In seeking to explain the nature of the cosmos and its creation, blind faith in theological doctrine is insufficient. One of the primary qualifications of Vedanta is to have a clear and discriminating mind. A certain degree of faith is necessary but it isn’t blind faith. It’s a provisional faith pending the results of your own inquiry.
We live in a scientific age, in which the physical sciences have helped us understand so much about the world and universe around us. Like anything, however, it does have its limits.
For decades, the most brilliant scientists on the planet have struggled to come up with a ‘theory of everything’; a way of understanding every aspect of creation. Unfortunately for them, their reach will forever exceed their grasp.
Physical science is a means of knowledge for understanding the physical world based on observation and inference. It isn’t, however, a means of knowledge for anything beyond what Vedanta terms prakriti, the material aspect of existence. Even today, science has no understanding of consciousness/awareness and can offer nothing other than competing theories based on assumption alone.
A means of knowledge is always specific to that knowledge. For example, your eyes are a means of knowledge for visual objects alone. You can’t use your eyes to know sound, touch or taste. It would be wrong to assume, however, that just because your eyes can’t smell an object and your nose is blocked up, that smell doesn’t exist.
Similarly, science is a valid means of knowledge for the physical and manifest, but not for the non-physical and unmanifest. Problems arise when science descends into scientism and people purport that if something can’t be measured or understood by our current scientific paradigm that it doesn’t exist. Such an ironically unscientific assertion is a great impediment to knowledge.
Both religion and science have clear limitations when it comes to understanding the higher, immaterial or noumenal aspect of reality. Whereas science by its nature can’t penetrate beyond the phenomenal, most religions fail to offer anything other than often deeply distorted dogma, mistaking subjective symbols for objective fact.
Like many, I was disenchanted by the failings of conventional religion and cast aside the notion of ‘God’ as I was growing up. But I was astonished to find that Vedanta provides a different, better and wholly more satisfactory explanation.
Vedanta is a means of knowledge for understanding the totality of creation; both the phenomenal and the noumenal.
According to Vedanta, all debate about whether God exists or not is erroneous.
Why?
Because God is ALL that exists.
A Lawful Universe
In the previous article in this series, we explored karma yoga as the primary means for preparing the mind for self-knowledge.
The quality of your mind is pivotal when it comes to Vedanta. Only a mature, refined and discriminating mind is capable of grasping subtle truths. That’s why karma yoga is prescribed to purify and refine the extroverted, restless, desire-driven mind.
In order for karma yoga to work, however, knowledge of Ishvara is essential.
After all, if you’re expected to surrender the results of your actions and accept whatever comes as appropriate and legitimate, then you need to know that there’s an underlying order to the cosmos.
The belief that life is a random accident and that the universe is a disorganised chaos is a huge impediment to Self-knowledge.
This is a lawful universe. Precise and inviolable natural laws keep this unimaginably vast universe operating in clockwork precision.
That the universe even exists at all is a miracle in itself. In the words of the late Stephen Hawking:
“If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size.”
The odds of us even being here, then, are infinitesimally small. That the universe functions like a macrocosmic organism, with planets spinning around stars and solar systems around a galactic core much as electrons orbit an atomic nucleus, demonstrates a clear creative intelligence underlying life.
This is not a disordered universe. It is, in fact, the essence of order.
Though this intelligence pervades all creation — manifesting on both a universal, macrocosmic scale and on a microcosmic scale as the perfect functioning of the cells of your body — this intelligence is not available for direct objectification.
So how do we begin to understand this principle?
Science, stuck in the material aspect of existence, can’t begin to approach it and religion generally projects concepts onto it, then mistaking these crude symbols to be literal. A different line of inquiry is therefore necessary.
Who Created the World?
Through systematic analysis, Vedanta demonstrates that you, as the Self, are not the body, nor the mind, the senses, or the ego. These are all objects which belong to the phenomenal world of matter and form.
The Self is the noumenon at the root of all phenomena — an eternal, unchanging substratum of existence — and its nature is pure, unconditioned awareness.
The Self alone is satya (real), and the phenomenal world of objects is (mithya), apparently real.
Anything objectifiable — including your body, your thoughts, the outside world and the entire universe — is but an appearance in this substratum of awareness. It depends upon the Self for its existence just as a pot depends upon the clay out of which it is formed.
However, an important question then arises.
If I am the Self, and the entire universe appears in me, then who or what is responsible for its creation?
I certainly didn’t create the stars, the planets, trees, rivers, animals, and people. I’m not responsible for the laws that govern the universe: the cycles of birth and death, creation and dissolution, gravity, oxygen, respiration.
As a jiva, a person, I clearly had no part in this — I can barely change the batteries on my remote control! As the Self, non-dual awareness, I can’t have had a hand in it either. The Self, being limitless and beyond time and causation, is what we call akarta — it’s not a doer. It’s incapable of action because there’s nothing other than it.
So, where did this world come from? Who or what is responsible for this vast, intelligent, interconnected universe of form and experience?
The Subject Can Never Be Known As the Object
The Self, formless awareness, is all that actually exists. It is satyam; the ground of existence. Eternal and unbound by time, the Self is non-dual; an undivided whole unaffected by anything that happens in the phenomenal world.
Though the Self can’t be known as an object of experience, its existence is self-evident. To experience an object automatically presupposes a subject — otherwise, how would the object be known?
The problem is the Self can never experience itself as an object because it itself is forever the subject.
To use an analogy, a camera can take picture of any object within its range. The one thing the camera can never do is photograph itself. Without the use of a mirror, you’ll never see the camera in any photograph. Its existence, however, is self-evident. The very fact the photograph exists proves the existence of the camera.
The same logic applies to the Self. It isn’t available for perception as an object of knowledge because it is itself the subject; that by which all is known and experienced.
The World Appears in You
Our intuitive, common-sense assumption is that, because we take ourselves to be a body and our body is born at a certain place and time, we appear in the world.
But if you really examined your experience, you’d realise that the world actually appears in you.
The only place you can ever experience the world is your awareness. Awareness is your ‘carrier’ of reality; your medium for experiencing the world.
You will never experience anything outside of your own awareness. Everything that you see and perceive appears in this awareness — in you.
The entire world of form is, therefore, nothing but an appearance in the Self.
This Self is all-pervading, formless and nondual. Again, the technical term for it is Nirguna Brahman, meaning ‘the Self without form or attribute’. It is the eternal subject; the unchanging substratum from which all objects arise and into which they resolve.
In order for anything to be known, there has to be a changeless substratum upon which everything is experienced. Experience is constantly changing, but the knower of the experience, the Self, remains unchanged. If it did change and modify to each new experience, there would be no continuity between experiences.
Vedanta explains that within this all-pervading universal awareness is a creative principle called maya.
Maya causes an apparent subject-object split — creating a world of duality out of non-duality.
Maya is the power that causes actionless, formless, non-dual awareness to apparently appear as an entire universe of gross and subtle forms. Avidya, ignorance, then causes awareness to identify with these forms; thus you take your body and mind to be your ‘self’.
Just Like a Dream
This world of multiplicity is projected in awareness in much the same way as a dream world appears in the mind of a dreamer.
When you’re dreaming at night, where does this dream world come from?
You yourself didn’t create it.
A power in your mind generates the dream state and your consciousness appears to take on different forms, shapes, and experiences. Neither real nor unreal, the dreamworld occupies a different order of reality to your waking world.
Your dreams can take you on the most incredible journeys. You might encounter all kinds of wondrous and terrible things and experience every conceivable emotion.
It’s not until you wake up that you realize the entire dream was just an appearance in your consciousness.
Your mind served as both the cause and the effect of the dream; its content and very substance.
When you’re dreaming, which part of the dream is your consciousness? Which part of it is you?
Actually, your consciousness pervades the entire dream. The dream appears within you — and IS you — but you are not the dream. You stand apart from it. When the dream goes and you wake up, you are still there.
In the same way, this phenomenal universe appears in the Self, awareness.
The Self pervades every aspect of this creation.
Just as the dream can’t exist without the dreaming consciousness, the creation can’t exist independently of the Self because it derives its entire existence from it.
While the Self without form or attribute is called Nirguna Brahman, the Self apparently limited and associated with form and attribute is called Saguna Brahman. Another name for Saguna Brahman is Ishvara, or God.
Any Creation Requires Two Factors
Any creation requires not just an intelligence to create it (the efficient cause) but also a material out of which it is made (the material cause).
In the case of a clay pot, the material cause is the clay and the efficient cause (the intelligence necessary to fashion the pot) is the potter.
Ishvara is the Self associated with the material universe at a macrocosmic level.
You might think of Ishvara as the universal potter; the impersonal cosmic intelligence which, wielding the power of maya, shapes and sustains the entire universe.
However, a problem arises. Out of what does Ishvara create the universe?
If the material is different from Ishvara, that would necessitate something outside of Ishvara. Where would such a material come from? If there was Ishvara plus a material, then which of the two qualifies as the actual creator? We’d end up with an infinite regress and, like Russian dolls, we’d have an endless number of Ishvaras.
It’s for this reason that Vedanta posits Ishvara as both the efficient and material cause of the objective universe:
Ishvara is not only the intelligence that shapes the universe, but also the very material out of which it is made.
In this way, Ishvara doesn’t stand apart from the creation. Ishvara is the very creation itself: the entirety of all things both seen and unseen.
Think of a spider. A spider not only creates its web but also provides the substance out of which the web is spun. Similarly, Ishvara is the creative principle that shapes and governs the laws of the universe and also the very material of out which it is formed.
Everything that exists in phenomenal existence is Ishvara. Everything is governed by Ishvara and everything belongs to Ishvara.
Unaffected By the Creation
Usually, the act of creation involves a change in the substance out of which it is created. If you want to make cheese, for instance, milk has to be processed a certain way. Once you get the cheese, you can never return the milk to its original state.
By contrast, the creative power of maya, as wielded by Ishvara to create the empirical universe, never affects the Self.
Maya creates the appearance of multiplicity, but the Self is never changed in any way. Like space, it remains unaffected by whatever happens within it.
By virtue of upadhis (limiting adjuncts), the Self can appear to take on certain forms and limitations.
We’ve already explored this on the microcosmic, individual level. When awareness is associated with the upadhi of a mind-body-sense complex, it seems to take on the qualities of that body and mind. Courtesy of the upadhi and ignorance, the Self appears to become a jiva (individual). Therefore, awareness ‘becomes’ Mike, Sandra, Fido the dog, a tadpole, or a tree.
On a macrocosmic, universal level, when awareness is associated with the upadhi of maya, with the entire creation, it appears as Ishvara, the Controller and wielder of maya.
Using the power of maya, Ishvara is the agent by which the entire creation is projected in awareness just as a person’s dreaming mind projects a dream world in awareness.
A Dream Appearing in the Cosmic Mind
Ishvara’s creation, the phenomenal universe, is not unlike a dream in many respects, but it’s a dream appearing in the cosmic mind of Ishvara. That’s why it’s experienced as the same by all the apparently separate jivas, which are indeed also part of Ishvara.
Owing to our naturally extroverted senses, we jivas are fascinated and enthralled by Ishvara’s creation, which we take to be reality by superimposing satya on what is ultimately mithya — ie, taking something to be real when it is only apparently real.
Ishvara and maya are essentially the same. Maya is the power to create and Ishvara is that which uses it to shape the creation out of its own form.
The creation is, as James Swartz says: “An orderly and intelligently designed matrix; a universe of physical, psychological and moral laws.” Furthermore, “the whole creation is made up of knowledge.”
Ishvara is the factory of knowledge which makes creation possible.
Forms are created according to certain templates. When you were born, for instance, the cells of your body didn’t have to struggle to figure out how to work. They are already programmed with the intelligence that allows them to function perfectly.
The entire universe operates according to this inbuilt intelligence.
When any form is created, it functions according to the pre-encoded template provided by Ishvara.
Ishvara, therefore, is a storehouse of knowledge, whether it is tree knowledge, animal knowledge, people knowledge, mind knowledge, or matter knowledge.
Ishvara creates out of itself and provides the intelligence for all life to flourish according to set patterns. As the creative principle of maya, Ishvara governs and manages everything, setting and upholding the laws of the creation.
These laws are universal and inviolable. They aren’t open to negotiation. Ishvara is an impersonal creative force. Just as the sun shines on all beings alike, the laws of the creation apply equally to all beings without a hint of reservation. If two men fall off a cliff, one a saint and the other a sinner, neither will be exempt from the snare of gravity. Ishvara shows no favouritism.
If the functioning of the universe were changeable and Ishvara’s will fickle, no meaningful action could take place. What use would fire be if some days it was hot and other days it was cold?
The laws of Ishvara remain constant because the creation is an ordered system and not a chaos.
Personalising God: A Convenient Danger
Most of the time, discourse and debates about God are pointless.
Both sides, whether staunchly theist or atheist, are simply arguing about a concept.
Throughout the ages, the most enduring concept of God is of some kind of all-powerful super-being. He is usually envisaged as an old man with a long white beard and flowing robes, sitting on a throne in the heavens looking down on the creation and casting judgement on his lowly creations.
The irony is that while theologians say that God created us in His image, we have essentially created God in our image. Because we humans consider ourselves the highest form of life on the planet, we conceptualize God as a more powerful version of ourselves, complete with a personality and human traits such as will, anger, love, and vengefulness.
This anthropomorphized conception of God can lead to problems, because, the human ego being what it is, we are then inclined to proclaim that “my God” is better than “your God”.
What we fail to realize is that my ‘personal God’ is just a symbol for the formless, impersonal, universal consciousness which, for lack of a better word, Vedanta calls Ishvara.
Because it’s hard for the mind to contemplate the formless, non-dual nature of the Self, religion creates symbols for the Self by personifying it in various forms.
In Hinduism alone, there are said to be 33 million gods! These are all simply facets of the one divinity; different faces of Ishvara, which is non-separate from the Self.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Ishvara appears in the form of Krishna, an avatar, or divine incarnation. Like many of the Vedic scriptures, the Gita takes the form of dialogue. To facilitate this, the divine must necessarily be represented in form, thus creating a provisional duality.
When literalists get stuck on the level of form, of personal Gods, sectarianism often arises.
This has been a problem with religion from the very start. It’s easier to worship a personal God than an impersonal, formless God, but one should never forget that all forms, whether mundane or divine, are still mithya.
Only the formless Self is satyam, the ultimate reality.
While Ishvara is the universal creative force that allows this entire universe to appear, it is still mithya. As the moon borrows its light from the sun, Ishvara borrows its existence from the Self, which alone is existent. In that, the jiva (microcosm) and Ishvara (macrocosm) are both the same.
This knowledge of satya and mithya alone leads to liberation.
Evil is a Product of Ignorance
Vedanta makes it clear that Ishvara is both the intelligence that shapes the creation and the very substance of the creation. If you want to know God, all you need do is look around you. Everything is Ishvara and everything belongs to Ishvara.
God is, therefore, in every form and aspect of the creation. There is no division. You don’t need to seek God. You simply need to understand that everything is God. Arguing over ‘your’ God and ‘my’ God is clearly ridiculous, as is the notion that God doesn’t exist, because God is everything existent. To deny it is to deny your own existence.
The idea that Ishvara is everything can pose a problem for some people.
People find it easy to accept Ishvara in pleasing forms; in sunsets, waterfalls, twinkling stars, kittens and chocolate cake. But if Ishvara is everything, that also must include the uglier things in life, such as disease, famine, greed, hatred and violence. If God is capable of evil, then how can one accept such a God?
Firstly, this phenomenal universe is a duality. There can never be up without down, heat without cold, pleasure without pain and birth without death. A certain amount of suffering is inevitable and inescapable as is the fact that all forms are finite and perishable.
Furthermore, Ishvara governs the entire creation through a set of natural laws, including the law of dharma, which is woven into the very fabric of the creation. Dharma is, in fact, Ishvara functioning in form.
The greatest tragedies in human history (and today, sadly), such as war, genocide, violence and ecological destruction are not caused by Ishvara, but the human mind’s ignorance of Ishvara.
Because human beings are the only species on Earth bestowed with free will, we are also the only species capable of using that free will to violate dharma.
Violating dharma, usually for the sake of satisfying one’s personal desires and aversions, always results in suffering.
The root of our suffering on a personal and global scale, and the true cause of man’s inhumanity to man, is ignorance of our true nature and the nature of reality.
This ignorance, avidya, is a result of maya. The jiva fails to apprehend the true nature of the Self and thus buys into the delusion of duality and separation.
The Two Powers of Maya
Maya has two predominant powers: the power to conceal (vikshepa shakti) and the power to project (avarana shakti).
The power of concealment renders us unable to apprehend the true nature of the Self. The mind and senses are our primary means of knowledge. The upadhi of maya makes us seem to be limited to flesh and bones and the thoughts and beliefs streaming through our mind. Until we learn to practice self-inquiry, we are therefore inclined to identify with the body-mind-sense complex.
Maya’s power of projection causes us to superimpose meaning and value onto objects, overwriting objective reality with an entirely subjective interpretation.
The power of maya to delude is so immense that self-ignorance is near universal.
The Upanishads state that the moment we perceive duality, fear is born. From fear comes the need to acquire and protect, and so we are pulled into the seemingly inescapable vortex of suffering that is samsara.
Fear, desire, and an endless stream of likes and dislikes become the engine of the jiva’s psyche, and in order to attain our desires, we become willing to contravene dharma. Evil is born, therefore, not from Ishvara, but from ignorance of Ishvara.
Everything is Ishvara
Indeed, if everyone knew that duality was simply a trick of maya — what Einstein called an “optical delusion of consciousness” — that we are all the same Self, and that God is everything that exists around us, the human race would change in an instant.
With this knowledge, everything becomes sacred. This entire creation is a blessing and everything in your life is a gift from Ishvara.
You’ve been given a body on loan, along with enough oxygen to last a lifetime, and all the resources you need to survive and hopefully thrive.
You realise that Ishvara doesn’t owe you anything, for all of this has been freely given to you.
When you receive a gift, the appropriate response is to express gratitude and to give something in return. That’s why everything in life ought to be seen as a blessing and every action should be a form of worship.
This understanding is essential in order for karma yoga to work. It’s not until you know that everything is divine that you can truly surrender the results of your actions to Ishvara.
You gracefully accept whatever comes as both right and proper, even if it doesn’t adhere to your personal likes and dislikes.
You know there’s a higher order operant at all times; an order that may or may not deliver what you want, but which always delivers what is ultimately appropriate for the totality.
The results of your actions aren’t delivered by random chance. They are apportioned by Ishvara, as controller of the laws of creation. Ishvara is, therefore, what Vedanta calls karma phala data: the giver of the results of your actions.
Again, this is a lawful universe. Because Ishvara controls and maintains these natural laws and dispenses the fruits of all actions, it’s only appropriate to have an attitude of devotion and worshipful reverence to Ishvara, because Ishvara is life.
Only when you understand that this is an intelligent and benign creation can you relax and accept life as it unfolds, while continuing to follow your dharma and play your part in the tapestry of creation.
The articles in this Essence of Vedanta series are excerpts from my commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, which systematically unfolds the entire teaching of Advaita Vedanta. Be sure to get your copy and enjoy the series and much more in its entirety. “Bhagavad Gita – The Divine Song” by Rory B Mackay is available on the Unbrokenself shop here, and also on Amazon and all other good booksellers.
Other Articles in this series:
Limitation, The Quest for Liberation and the Four Human Pursuits
Samsara and How to Escape the Wheel of Suffering
Who Are You? How to Practice Vedantic Self-Inquiry
What is the Self? Vedanta and the Power of Self-Knowledge
Vedanta, Spiritual Practice and the Necessity of a Qualified Mind
Karma Yoga: Vedanta’s Secret Weapon For Purifying the Mind
