God Is Spiritual - The Supreme Transcendental Person
Śrīla Prabhupāda explains that the Absolute Truth is the supreme spirit whole. While the material world is temporary and full of ignorance, the Supreme Personality of Godhead is completely spiritual, eternal, and full of bliss. Understanding the purely spiritual nature of the Lord's form and activities is essential for distinguishing Him from ordinary living entities bound by the laws of karma.
The Supreme Spiritual Form
To comprehend the Supreme Lord, one must abandon the idea that He accepts a physical body. Śrīla Prabhupāda emphasizes that God's form is entirely spiritual and therefore free from the deteriorations of birth, disease, old age, and death.
- The body of the ordinary living being is made of material elements and is therefore subject to birth and death. But the Lord's body, being all spiritual and thus eternal, neither takes birth nor dies.
- Being an incarnation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Rsabhadeva was fully independent because His form was spiritual, eternal and full of transcendental bliss.
- In the Vedic literature we find that His whole embodiment is spiritual. He has His eternal form called sac-cid-ananda-vigraha. He is full of all opulence.
- Everything about the Supreme Personality of Godhead is spiritual, including His body, opulence and paraphernalia. Mayavada philosophy, however, covering His spiritual opulence, advocates the theory of impersonalism.
Free From Material Contamination
Because the Lord is one hundred percent spiritual, He is never affected by material illusion. Śrīla Prabhupāda clarifies that even when the Lord descends into the material cosmos, He remains infallible and completely aloof from material inebriety.
- Because the Supreme Personality of Godhead is all-spiritual, He can descend from the spiritual sky without changing His body, and thus He is known as acyuta, or infallible.
- Free from all material conceptions of existence and never wonder-struck by anything, the Lord is always jubilant and fully satisfied by His own spiritual perfection. He has no material designations, and therefore He is steady and unattached.
- Since He is full in all transcendental attributes, nothing abominable from the material world can exist in Him. He is transcendental and spiritual, and therefore conceptions of material happiness and distress do not apply to Him.
- He is completely free from false ego, for He is the full spiritual identity. It is absolutely impossible for Him to be subjected to ignorance and fall under the spell of a misconception.
The All-Spiritual Energies
The Supreme Lord is the energetic source of everything, and all His emanations are originally spiritual. Śrīla Prabhupāda notes that the all-pervading Brahman effulgence is simply the radiant light of the Lord's transcendental body.
- The original energy of the Supreme Lord is spiritual and nondifferent from the Supreme Absolute Personality of Godhead.
- Brahman means spiritual. The Lord is spiritual, and the rays of His transcendental body are called brahmajyoti, His spiritual effulgence.
- He cited a verse from the Sixth Chapter of Visnu Purana in which it is stated that all the energies of the Lord are spiritual.
- The one Absolute Truth, Bhagavan, pervades all by His material cosmic manifestation, the spiritual Brahman effulgence, and His personal existence as the Supreme Lord.
The Spiritual Unity with the Soul
By constitution, the living entity is a minute spark of the supreme spirit. Śrīla Prabhupāda teaches the philosophy of simultaneous oneness and difference, revealing that while we are qualitatively one with God as spirit, He remains the supreme infinite.
- Our philosophy, we, following the footsteps of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu: acintya bhedabheda-tattva. The difference is simultaneously we are one with God and different from God. One in quality. God is spirit, we are also spirit.
- Atma refers to the Supreme Lord or the living entities. Both of them are spiritual, free from birth and death, free from deterioration and free from material contamination.
- The Lord and the living entities are essentially all spiritual. Therefore both of them are eternal, and neither of them has birth and death. The difference is that the so-called births and disappearances of the Lord are unlike those of the living beings.
- By chanting the holy names of the Lord, which are innumerable, one can actually associate with the Lord personally, and by such constant personal touch with the all-spiritual Lord, one will become spiritually self-realized.
Conclusion
Understanding that God is completely spiritual frees one from the foolish tendency to judge Him by material standards. Śrīla Prabhupāda concludes that the Absolute Truth is a supreme spiritual person, possessing a transcendental form, name, and attributes. Unlike conditioned souls driven by karma, the Lord acts in pure spiritual bliss and independence. The ultimate goal of human life is to purify one's consciousness and revive the original spiritual relationship with Bhagavān. By unalloyed devotional service, the living entity cleanses away all material designations and re-enters the eternal, blissful spiritual sky to personally associate with the all-spiritual Supreme Lord.
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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 Is Spiritual. We invite you to visit this link to study the complete compilation and experience Śrīla Prabhupāda's teachings in their direct, verbatim form.