God Must Be - The All-Attractive Supreme Person
Śrīla Prabhupāda teaches that the definition of the Absolute Truth is not left to human imagination or democratic vote. The Vedic literatures provide exact, scientific criteria for understanding who the Supreme Lord is. To be accepted as the ultimate authority, God must possess specific transcendental qualifications. He must be the supreme controller, He must be a person, and He must be fully endowed with all opulences.
The Supreme Person
Because we exist as individuals with physical forms, it is illogical to conclude that our original source is formless. Śrīla Prabhupāda explains that the supreme living being must be the Supreme Person, complete with a transcendental form, name, and pastimes.
- Unless God has got form, two hands, two legs, like that, how man has got two hands, two legs? If we are imitation of God, then God must be person. This is natural conclusion.
- The supreme living being must also be the supreme person. In the Vedic literatures the supreme person is properly claimed to be Krsna.
- The Supreme Person must be present everywhere. His body existed before the creation; otherwise He could not be the creator. If the Supreme Person is a created being, there can be no question of a creator.
- If someone constructs a big building, this indicates that he must have existed before the building was constructed. The Supreme Lord, the creator of the universe, must be transcendental to the material modes of nature.
Full in All Opulences
Becoming God is not a cheap achievement, nor can it be attained by mystic meditation. Śrīla Prabhupāda establishes that God must be the supreme proprietor of everything, possessing the six primary opulences in unlimited quantities.
- To become God is not easy thing. There are some qualification, that He must be the richest, the most powerful, the most famous, He must be the most learned, He must be the most beautiful, and He must be the most renounced. This is the definition of God.
- How one becomes God? God is not manufactured by vote. There are definition who is God. God must be the proprietor of all the riches, aisvaryasya samagrasya. Samagra means all. Nobody can compete with Him.
- Everything. He must be very beautiful, He must be very wise, He must be very powerful, He must be very famous.
- As soon as you find there are equals, or as soon as find there is greater, then you are not God. God - the great. He must be greater than everyone.
Refuting Impersonal Misconceptions
Mundane philosophers attempt to measure the Absolute Truth with their limited intellects. Śrīla Prabhupāda defeats the Māyāvādī argument that because God is unlimited, He must lose His personal form and become an impersonal, pervasive energy.
- Because we are limited and God is unlimited, the Mayavadis, or impersonalists, with their poor fund of knowledge, think that God must be impersonal.
- Making a material comparison, they say that just as the sky, which we think of as unlimited, is impersonal, if God is unlimited He must also be impersonal.
- That is not the Vedic instruction. The Vedas instruct that God is a person. Krsna is a person, and we are also persons, but the difference is that He is to be worshiped whereas we are to be worshipers.
- The Mayavada conception that because the Absolute Truth is everything He must be formless is rejected here. Rather, it is confirmed that the Absolute Truth has form, and yet He is all-pervading. Nothing is independent of Him.
The All-Attractive Youth
Another common misconception is that because God is the oldest person, He must look like an elderly man with a long beard. Śrīla Prabhupāda clarifies that the Supreme Lord is eternally youthful and perfectly all-attractive.
- In the Brahma-samhita it is said that the Lord is the oldest person. Therefore a section of religionists imagine that God must be very old, and therefore they depict a form of God like a very old man. But in the same Brahma-samhita, that is contradicted.
- When we contemplate the form of God, we think that because God created millions and millions of years ago, He must be a very old man. Therefore God personally comes before us so that we can see what He is. This is His kindness.
- God may have many thousands of names, but the most perfect name which we can give to the Supreme Personality of Godhead is Krsna. Krsna means "All-attractive." God must be all-attractive. It is not that God is attractive for a certain class of men and not attractive for others.
- God must be attractive and attractive for all. Therefore, if God has any name, or if you want to give any name to God, only "Krsna" can be given.
Conclusion
To progress in spiritual life, one must abandon speculative theories and embrace the authorized definitions provided by the Vedic literature. Śrīla Prabhupāda systematically establishes what God must be: He must be the original, eternal Supreme Person. He is not our servant or order-supplier, bound to fulfill our material desires; rather, we are His eternal servants. Furthermore, He is not an impersonal void or an aged creator, but rather the eternally youthful, all-attractive Personality of Godhead, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. He must possess all wealth, strength, beauty, wisdom, fame, and renunciation in full. By accepting these indisputable qualifications of the Lord, a sincere soul can reject the false claims of mundane imposters and direct their unalloyed devotion toward the true, all-attractive Supreme Person.
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