The Nature of God...

indriyebhyah para hyartha arthebhyashcha param manah

manasastu para buddhirbuddheratma mahanparah

(Katha. Up.1.3.10)

The Vedas declare that beyond the senses are the sense objects and beyond the sense objects is the mind. Beyond the mind is the intellect. Beyond the intellect is the soul. Beyond the soul is Maya and beyond Maya is God. The soul, being divine, is beyond the material mind and intellect.

God is divine. A material mind cannot conceive Gods true divine form. It is just not possible. You could make the greatest effort for millions of years but you would still not be able to meditate on God's actual divine forms even for a second. Even for the greatest intellectuals, with capabilities beyond Sarasvati and Brihaspati, it would be impossible. It is unnatural, because God is beyond the grasp of the material senses, mind and intellect. God is divine and the senses, mind and intellect are material. A material mind can only conceive and think about material things belonging to the material world and made of the five material elements. How could it meditate on God? God is the embodiment of eternal Existence, Bliss and Knowledge. How could an impure material mind meditate on Him? It is not even capable of meditating on the objects of the material world properly. You have seen a lot of beautiful sights in India. If you were asked, "Have you seen the Taj Mahal?" You would respond, "Yes." If you were further asked to visualize it, you will express your incapbility, though you have seen it many times. You would say, "I only have some vague idea." You see your mother, father, brother and other loved once every day. So try to visualize your father's ear. It is very difficult to do this! So if you cannot correctly visualize things that you see daily, how could you visualize God? This being the case, meditating on His divine form is out of the question.

The fact is that we have seen God innumerable times, not just a thousand or a million times. Whwnever God descended in this world, we were also present. God is eternal, and so are we. We are revolving in the endless cycle of birth and death in this world and this is where God repeatedly descends. He is only recognized by a very few forunate souls, Saints such as Vashishtha, Vishamitra, Durvasa and so on. At the time of descension of Shri Krishna when such saints declared Him to be God, we did not agree with them. we further misinterpreted His divine pastimes to be material and criticized them. However, now after Shri Krishna returned to His divine abode, we loudly sing, "Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!.."

Even if He were to descend now in His divine form we would be unable to see Him. what could we actually know about Him? What do we know? How could we confidently say that there is no descension of God present now? We would observe Him with our material intellect and pass judgement about Him being a good person with an attractive personality. we would never accept Him as God. Until you get divine vision, how could you conceive His divine form? And if you are repeatedly instructed to meditate on His divine form, this would be like having your feet bound by shackles and being told to do a quick march. How could you do the impossible? Now let us understand this situation through simple logic. There have been innumerable great saints who have seen God. Before attaining God, they must have also engaged in meditation. The meditation practised by them must ahve been absolutely on a material level. Then ho did they continue their practice? Their minds must ahve been material, like ours, and the material mind cannot conceive God. But they attained perfection, which indicates that rupdhyan can be practised even by a material mind.

jaki rahi bhavana jaisi, prabhu murati dekhi tin taisi

Lord Ram was also perceived differently by different people, during His descension, according to their individual sentiments towards Him.

The simple solution for the above problem of meditating on God is that proper remembrance and recollection of material objects in the world is very difficult, but the remembrance of Shri Krishna is very easy. The reason is that your mother, father, wife or brother has a specific fixed form on which you have to meditate and the slightest alteration you make, will turn them into a different person. Even a mother who constantly lives with her identical twins, sometimes makes a mistake in identifying them. However, meditating on the divine form of Shri Krishna is very easy beacuse He has not established one specific form for Himself. Therefore, the devotee can visualize any form that is most pleasing to him. He is even free to change it whenever he wants, and in whichever way he prefers. He can dress Shri Krishna as he likes and can use the ornaments of his choice. He can also visualize pastimes according to his own inclinations. This is because Shri Krishna has uncountable names, qualities, forms and pastimes.

ananta nama rupaya vishnave

The devotee is completely free in this regard. out of His causeless Grace, Shri Krishna made this simple rule to enable the most ignorant and illiterate devotees to practise His rupdhyan. Do not feel that because a learned person has visualized a very beautiful form in his meditation and an ignarant person has visualized something very ordinary, there will be a difference in their experience of the divine vision of the actual form of Shri Krishna. It is not so. The divine vision of Shri Krishna that everyone attains is always the same. The form of Shri Krishna that Radha Rani sees is the same form that Brahma and Shankara see. That very same form could be seen by an illiterate devotee like Dhannajata and others.....