By: Jayakrishna Nelamangala
One question may arise. If God is said to be without any gross body or subtle body, then, how can He be the Creator of this universe? If God has no limbs at all, then how can He create this universe? This question arises because, in this world, a potter who has no hands and has no legs simply can not create any pot.
The upanishat answers this question.
उपनिषत् upaniṣat
……… कविर्मनीषी परिभू स्वयम्भू याथातथ्यतोऽर्थान् व्यदधात् शाश्वतीभ्यस्समाभ्यः ॥ ८ ॥
kavirmanīṣī paribhūḥ svayambhūḥ yāthātathyatō’rthān vyadadhāt śāśvatībhyassamābhyaḥ ||8 ||
कविः kavi means sarvajnya – Knower of All, Omniscient
मनीषी manīṣī – The word ‘manīṣī’ means starting from cit-prakruti, because of His
Controllership over their minds, He has the name ‘manīṣī’
By describing Him like this, Parabrahman has a body not different from His knowledge, and in vedantic parlance this is termed as “avinābhūta dēhavān”. His Body is His Knowledge and His Knowledge is Body. In summary, His Body simply is jnyAna-svarUpa-deha. Such a Body of His, can it be praakritic? The answer is NO. For this reason, Veda describes Parabrahman as nirguNa i.e., His Body has nothing that is made out of praakritic elements. In certain philosophies, this Vedic concept of NirguNa is not presented properly. Positing a totally attributeless entity and calling such an entity as NirguNa Brahman, is not really the Vedic idea of Brahman. It is rather an impossibility, since even such a NirguNa Brahman will end up having one attribute called “attributelessness” and thus ends up in a bunch of self-contradictions.
As it has been stresses throughout this series, the father of Vedanta is Sri Vedavyaasa and what we need is the Vedanta as taught by Sri Vedavyaasa. What have we learnt so far? It has already been mentioned that, the Body of Parabrahman is aprAkrita indeed (not made out of prakrti) and because of this reason, absence of misery in Parabrahman etc is proper and befitting, only the body which is related to prakrti can be the cause of misery.
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