God Cannot - The Transcendental Limitations of the Absolute
To understand the Supreme Personality of Godhead, one must abandon the tendency to measure the infinite with a finite mind. Śrīla Prabhupāda explains that while atheists foolishly try to dictate what God cannot do, the only true boundaries placed upon the Absolute Truth are those established by His own supreme perfection and His boundless love for His devotees.
Defeating Mundane Logic
Atheists and impersonalists constantly attempt to impose their own physical and mental limitations upon the Supreme Lord. Śrīla Prabhupāda exposes the foolishness of arguing that God cannot incarnate or possess a form, noting that such logic is simply a masked attempt to deny God's supreme authority.
- They say that God cannot come. But if I put the question: "Why God cannot come?" what is the answer? If God is all-powerful, why you are curtailing His power, that He cannot come? What kind of God is He? God is under your law, or you are under God's law?
- Sometimes people question that, "Why God should come?" So our answer is, "Why God should not come?" If He is all-powerful, who can check Him to come here? If we say that God cannot come, that means God becomes under our rules and regulation.
- It is foolish to try to impose the limits of an ordinary living being upon the unlimited potency of Godhead and obstinately maintain that the Supreme Lord cannot descend.
- Why you compare your silly intelligence with God's intelligence? "I cannot do it; therefore God cannot do it. I cannot see God; therefore God cannot see me." This rascaldom is going on.
The Infallibility of the Supreme
Because the Lord is completely spiritual and self-sufficient, He is immune to the conditioning that affects the living entities. Śrīla Prabhupāda clarifies that God cannot be overpowered by the illusory energy (māyā), nor can He be forced to accept a miserable material body.
- From the Vedanta-sutra we understand that Brahman is by nature joyful. He cannot, therefore, change Himself into a body which is subject to so many painful conditions.
- Because he is godless, he did not say, "Even God cannot kill me." That he forgot. In this way he took benediction that "I shall not die on the land." "Yes." "I shall not die on the water." - Yes.
- I shall not die in the air. - "Yes." "I shall not be killed by any animal." "Yes." In this way, whatever intelligence he got, but he forgot one thing, that "God cannot also kill me." Because maya is there, he forgot it.
- The Supreme Lord cannot have any enemy, nor can a so-called enemy harm Him because He is ajita, or unconquerable. But still He takes pleasure when His pure devotee beats Him like an enemy or rebukes Him from a superior position.
The Unlimited Potencies of God
The Supreme Lord is so vast and infinite that even He cannot fully measure His own glories. Śrīla Prabhupāda explains that even when the Lord incarnates as Anantadeva, continuously glorifying the Absolute Truth with thousands of mouths, He still cannot reach the end of His own pastimes and potencies.
- Although Lord Anantadeva is always describing the pastimes of the Lord with His thousands of mouths, He cannot reach the end of even one of the Lord's pastimes.
- Since Lord Ananta Himself cannot describe even a fragment of these pastimes, I (Krsnadasa Kaviraja Gosvami) am simply pointing out the direction.
- The potential expansions can never be calculated by anyone because even the Personality of God Himself, as the incarnation of Sesa, cannot estimate the potencies, although He has been describing them continuously with His one thousand faces.
- It is said in the scriptures, brahma-saukhyam tv anantam: spiritual happiness is unlimited. Here it is said that even the Lord cannot measure such happiness. This does not mean that the Lord cannot measure it and is therefore imperfect in that sense.
Bound by Pure Devotion
The most endearing limitation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead is His total subordination to the love of His devotees. Śrīla Prabhupāda highlights that the Lord cannot forget His surrendered servants, cannot tolerate offenses against them, and sometimes cannot even control His own ecstatic emotions.
- A pure devotee cannot forget the Supreme Lord for a moment, and similarly, the Supreme Lord cannot forget His pure devotee for a moment. This is the great blessing of the Krsna conscious process of chanting the mahamantra, Hare Krsna.
- Offenses at their lotus feet are so destructive that even the descendants of Yadu who were born in the family of Lord Krsna were destroyed due to offenses at their feet. The Supreme Personality of Godhead cannot tolerate any offense at the lotus feet of brahmanas and Vaisnavas.
- They (mother Yasoda and the other ladies) gave up the idea of binding Him (when they saw that Krsna could not be bound with all the ropes available in the house). But in competition between Krsna and His devotee, Krsna sometimes agrees to be defeated.
- "As a result of this chanting," the Lord (Caitanya) said, "I sometimes become very impatient and cannot restrain Myself from dancing and laughing or crying and singing. Indeed, I become just like a madman.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Śrīla Prabhupāda masterfully deconstructs the mundane arguments regarding what God "cannot" do, revealing that the true limitations of the Supreme Lord are exclusively rooted in His absolute perfection and His unparalleled love. When atheistic philosophers and Māyāvādīs argue that God cannot descend, cannot have a form, or cannot act within the material world, they are merely projecting their own pitifully restricted intelligence onto the unlimited Absolute Truth. Factually, the Supreme Lord cannot be subjected to material laws, cannot be overpowered by māyā, and cannot be harmed by any enemy. His potencies and blissful pastimes are so boundlessly infinite that even He, appearing as Lord Anantadeva, cannot reach the end of describing them. Yet, the most profound truth is found in the Lord's intimate relationship with His pure devotees. The invincible, all-powerful Supreme Personality of Godhead cannot forget His devotees even for a single moment, cannot tolerate any offense committed against them, and, in the ultimate display of transcendental sweetness, willingly accepts that He cannot defeat their pure, unalloyed love.
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Śrīla Prabhupāda lives within his instructions. This article is a summary of the profound truths found in the Vaniquotes category God Cannot. We invite you to visit this link to study the complete compilation and experience Śrīla Prabhupāda's teachings in their direct, verbatim form.