A final test for our model of nonduality uses it to interpret one of the most important and popular Advaitic texts. We are particularly concerned to see the implications of nonduality for the two main philosophical problems that the Bhagavad-gītā raises: the interrelations among the various yogas or margas (“paths to God”), and the relationship between personal God and impersonal Absolute. Neither issue is unique to the Gītā, but it does raise both in a particularly clear and inescapable way. Its widespread appeal must have been due to its apparent success in synthesizing what were previously perceived as distinct yogas and goals, but is this synthesis philosophically successful as well? Is the Gītā truly synthetic or merely syncretic? The question about the relation between God and Absolute is a problem that recurs in later Advaita, within other traditions such as Eckhart’s Christian mysticism, and more recently in the dialogue between Semitic and Asian religions. What may be unique to the Gītā, and what does not seem to have been noticed, is that it demonstrates a connection between these two apparently discrete problems. The second section of this chapter suggests that understanding how the yogas work may give us some insight into the relation between theism and nondualism.
Different commentators have extracted different numbers of yogas from the Gītā, but there seem to be three major ones: jñāna, the path of knowledge; bhakti, the path of devotion; and karma, the path of action or service.379 Which is the most important one? That centuries of textual and philosophical analysis — of what is, after all, a popular work — have not led to agreement about their priority implies that the question is misconceived. Later I argue for the unity of the yogas and show that ultimately they must be practiced together, but my first task is to demonstrate how and why the yogas work. All commentators try to explain what the various yogas involve — for example, pointing out that karma-yoga is not renunciation of action (naiṣkarmya) but in action (niṣkāma karma). But by themselves such explanations are incomplete because they take the yogas out of the context that makes them meaningful. My intention is to demonstrate with greater precision the relations among the yogas, the respective problematic aspects of our experience that each works on, and the transformed mode of experience that they lead to.
To do this requires a less ambiguous metaphysical infrastructure than we find in the Gītā, which incorporates several sets of philosophical categories usually understood to be inconsistent — most notably, Sāṅkhya and Vedānta. Our nondualistic approach is obviously incompatible with the radical dualism of Sāṅkhya, whose puruṣa and prakṛti play an important role in the Gītā. Following the critique of Sāṅkhya made in chapter 5, which concluded that its dualism fails, I reinterpret Sāṅkhya categories and presuppose that the goal of the spiritual path is a nondual way of experiencing the world in which there is no distinction between subject and object. Then the corresponding problem is dualism: experience, apparent or real, in which there is a polarity between my consciousness and the external world. What light does this shed upon the Gītā? We may see the three traditional yogas as types of spiritual practice that work to transform different dualistic modes of experience into their respective nondual mode. Jñāna-yoga transforms or “purifies” the dualistic intellect, karma-yoga the dualistic physical body, and bhakti-yoga dualistic emotions. Jñāna changes the way I perceive the world, karma changes the way I live and act in the world, and bhakti changes the “affective tone” of my being-in-the-world — all from a dualistic to a nondualistic mode.
There is an unmistakable parallel between these yogas and the “three roots of evil” or Buddhism’s “three unwholesome roots”: delusion and ignorance (moha), desire and greed (rāga or lobha), hatred and resentment (dveṣa or dosa). From the nondualist perspective, these “three evils” are what happen to the three above-mentioned nondual aspects of our being when they have been warped into a dualistic mode. Each aspect is liable to a particular type of distortion.
Moha is easily explicable as the mind deluded into a dualistic understanding of the world, the root delusion being that “my” mind is a consciousness separate from the pluralistic objective world. The Gītā states that this is because awareness has become fixated upon sense-objects. How this fixation began is not explained; as in Buddhism and Advaita no “first cause” is postulated. But we are told that dwelling on such objects produces attachment, which in turn causes desire, anger, bewilderment, loss of memory, and the destruction of intelligence. “When the mind runs after the roving senses, it carries away the understanding, even as a wind carries away a ship on the waters” (II 62–67).380 Once I identify with “my body,” I become preoccupied with the relation between that object and all the other objects in the world. Since my body is naturally the “gravitational center” of my world, I try to rearrange those objects into an alignment most satisfactory to its desires. Thus the implicit perspective used to evaluate each situation is dualistic: what do I want out of this? What can I get from these objects?
It is hardly necessary to point out that this also involves a distortion of emotional life, the “affective tone” of my being. To live in the world in such a self-centered way, as only one among a plurality of beings, means that I relate to others as means to my ends or as competitors for those same ends. To the degree that I have a sense of self, I will try to “use” others — if not directly to satisfy physical desires, then less directly to satisfy more subtle psychological ones, such as the need to be loved or respected. All of these desires feed the insatiable sense of self. When other objects resist such manipulation, I feel frustrated and resentful. In contrast with compassion and unattached love, in which we are more at one with that which is loved, the various “negative emotions” reinforce the dualistic sense of separation from others. I become more isolated in what may become the hell of my own private consciousness.
This description of the “three roots of evil” shows how they reinforce each other. Yet we know, for example, that some people are more emotional than intellectual (to the extent of “thinking with their feelings,” we sometimes say), and some vice versa. This suggests that the above problems afflict different people in different proportions, which in turn suggests that the “primary path” for each person may vary. For the emotional person it would be bhakti, for the intellectual jñāna, and for the man of action karma-yoga. But the above description, in its emphasis on the interdependence of these three aspects of being, also implies that the three yogas cannot be separated — a point to which we shall return.
Jñāna-yoga is described in the Gītā as the development of equanimity. The true yoga is that which brings about spiritual impartiality (samatvam) (II 48, VI 19–26). The liberated person is not interested in achieving or not achieving anything. Gold and pebbles, praise and blame, friends and foes, saints and sinners are all the same (XIV 24–25, VI 9). This is because one sees God in all beings and knows the indestructible in all that is destructible. Krishna pervades everything. “I am the taste in the waters . . . the lights in the moon and the sun . . . the sound in ether and manhood in men. I am the pure fragrance in earth and brightness in fire” — to quote part of a beautiful passage (VII 8–10). Whatsoever being there is has sprung from a fragment of Krishna’s splendor (X 41). So the sage regards all things with an equal eye (XIII 28).
This equanimity is not due merely to cultivating an attitude of indifference to the world — which would be incompatible with both bhakti- and karma-yoga — but is the result of a transformed way of perceiving the world. For this to occur, one must “draw away the senses from the objects of sense on every side as a tortoise draws in his limbs into his shell” (II 58). Through this, attachment to the various sense-objects can be attenuated. In the more systematic Yoga system of Patañjali, a “devolution” of prakṛti then occurs, purifying the buddhi-mind until it is able to realize its distinction from the omnipresent and unchanging puruṣa.
As we have seen, meditation is also important for the nondualistic paths of Advaita and Buddhism, where it also leads to equanimity from realizing an omnipresent and immutable “ground”: Brahman or the emptiness (śūnyatā) of all form. But in both these cases, unlike in Sāṅkhya-Yoga, no duality is accepted between this immutable ground and changing phenomena — despite the obvious contradiction this seems to involve.381 It is significant that we find this same paradox in the Gītā, where the omnipresence and immutability of Krishna — who is our true self — are similarly emphasized. Krishna claims, for example, that His lower nature is always engaged in work while His higher nature is incapable of work (III 22, IV 13) — in other words, that He is both immanent in the world and transcendentally indifferent to it (IX 4, 5). I have already argued that there is a phenomenological agreement beneath these various descriptions. One experiences an omnipresent “something” — not really a “thing,” since it has no characteristics in itself (nirguṇa) — which does not change at all although its phenomenal manifestations do, and this realization subrates phenomena so completely that all differences among them become insignificant in comparison. The most important point is that this “something” is realized to be me: my own mind, birthless, deathless, and blissful. That is why “he who knows the supreme Brahman truly becomes Brahman.” Jñāna-yoga — which stops the mind from seizing on sense-objects and reifying the sense of self — is able to lead to such an experience because our consciousness has always been nondual (Sāṅkhya equivalent: the puruṣa has never been in bondage), so that only the delusion of duality needs to be dispelled. The equanimity of the sage is due to the nondual experience of such an immutable ground, however variously characterized as puruṣa or Brahman or śūnyatā.
To realize that “my” actions are also empty, and to develop this way of acting in the world, is the goal of karma-yoga.
Perhaps in response to Buddhism, the Gītā transformed karma-yoga from the “orthopraxy” of early Vedic ritualism into a new way of doing all work: as a sacrifice (yājña) to Krishna. “Let not the fruits of action be thy motive, neither let there be any attachment to inaction” (II 47). This strikes at the heart of the self-centered dualistic attitude, which is preoccupied with obtaining such fruits and therefore with manipulating situations to one’s own advantage. Instead, we are told to “act with a view to the maintenance of the world” (III 9). Selfish habits are to be worn down by directing one’s physical activity into doing one’s duty (dharma-yoga) instead of trying to satisfy incessant cravings.
But, if the argument of chapter 3 is valid, there is much more to karma-yoga than this usual description. Our discussion of jñāna above followed chapter 2 in giving a nondualist interpretation of perception. Śaṅkara’s critique of karma-yoga (e.g., in his Gītā commentary on III.1) contrasts the nonduality of such jñāna, which is free from all distinctions and from any need to act, to karma-yoga, which presupposes plurality and assumes that the ātman is an agent. He fails to consider whether there might also be nondual action with nondifferentiation between agent and act. Because such action is empty it is also nonaction, which is how Krishna describes the acts of both himself and “the man of understanding”:
He who in action sees inaction and action in inaction — he is wise among men, he is a yogin, and he has accomplished all his work.
Having abandoned attachment to the fruit of works, ever content, without any kind of dependence, he does nothing though he is ever engaged in work. (IV 18, 20)
As we saw in chapter 3, the sense of duality occurs because action is done with reference to the fruit of action; intentions “superimpose” thoughts upon actions. Without such superimposition, the “true nature” of action becomes manifest: “I” do not perform an act, but it arises spontaneously from the empty, immutable ground described earlier. In the vocabulary of the Gītā, although the higher nature of Krishna is eternally inactive, His other nature is the source of all action that occurs in the world.382
The Gītā does not recommend avoiding all intentional activity. Krishna says that action to maintain the world should be performed with a mind fixed on Him, and as a sacrifice to Him (XII 8, III 9, IV 23, IX 27). But to fix one’s mind on Krishna and perform all action as a sacrifice to Him is an intention so unchanging (thus cutting through all selfish motivation) that in practice it is really equivalent to no intention at all — especially when Krishna’s higher nature is the transcendent nirguṇa ground of all phenomena, with no intention of Its own. When one’s physical energy is not preoccupied with trying to satisfy cravings, and thus the world is not approached as a set of situations to be manipulated to satisfy those cravings, then we experience great freedom and “the world is vast and wide,” as Ch’an master Yün-men said. When I am not preoccupied with going to some place, the going itself can become joyous. In Buddhist terms, life becomes a dance without a dancer; in terms of the Gītā, my body is realized to be Krishna’s body. Without the sense of duality, the same energy that moves my body activates everything else too. All the individual dances are part of His cosmic dance.
Bhakti “is clearly the most troublesome discipline for philosophy,”383 which reveals as much about philosophy as bhakti. Commentators from Schweitzer to Danto have claimed that complete surrender to the Divine seems inconsistent with the concept of socially meaningful action and jeopardizes the autonomy of the intellect.384 But this presupposes that we have understood what such “surrender to the Divine” means. Bhakti-yoga is devotion to Krishna — “on Me alone fix thy mind (XII 8) — but what is the phenomenology of such devotion when its object is not to be distinguished from worldly phenomena, since all is a fragment of His splendor? (X 41) If everything is a manifestation of Krishna’s lower nature (emptiness is form, and māyā too is not other than Brahman), then it is clearly impossible to love Krishna and not cherish His world. “Love gives rise to affection for all” (Kural, VIII, 4), especially if what is loved is the ground of all being. When one is thus fixed on God, single-mindedly devoted to Him, there is no room for any negativity toward anything. Krishna’s description of the true devotee in chapter 12 begins by emphasizing this: “He who has no ill-will to any being, who is friendly and compassionate, free from egotism and self-sense . . .” (XII 13). Then the worship of Krishna cannot be a matter of particular actions — prescribed offerings, and so on — instead, it becomes a way of performing all actions with a certain attitude. “Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer, whatever you give away, whatever austerities you practice — do that . . . as an offering to Me” (IX 27). Parallel with the Om (or other meditation-object) of jñāna-yoga and the dharma-duty of karma-yoga, God becomes a mantra for the emotions.
Interpreted in this way, bhakti is the path of purifying my emotional response to the world — or, less dualistically, the “emotional tone” of my being-in-the-world. Such devotion cuts through the web of negativity that perpetuates my sense of separation from others. I do not permit myself to express or harbor any negative feelings such as hatred and resentment. There is a gradual transmutation of such dualistic emotions into feelings of love and compassion. Emotionally centered on God, my affective responses no longer reinforce the sense of self, so the emotional component of the self-delusion withers away.385
In contrast to the dualistic emotions of hatred and so forth, love is nondual in that it promotes a sense of oneness between lover and loved. But is it nondual to the extent of jñāna and karma, which work to deny any ontological duality between consciousness and its object, actor (mind) and action (body)? Evidently not: love seems to be the relation between lover and beloved, which requires their distinction. But perhaps the problem is again our dualistic way of understanding, which sees the emotions as transient moods that come upon us, a kind of “interior weather” or mental environment that I am in. If there is no self for the emotion to come upon, our emotional life too needs to be reinterpreted. Insofar as bhakti is understood dualistically, there is the danger of its degeneration into emotionalism — sentimentality, eroticism, or excess of enthusiasm, as in some Bengali Vaiṣnavism, for example. But if the parallel with jñāna and bhakti holds, perhaps the practice of bhakti leads us to the experience of some nondual emotional aspect to the empty ground of our being. Insofar as I realize my true nature, perhaps love becomes, not something that I have, but something that I participate in. Such love would necessarily be nondiscriminatory. In moving from the sense of myself as an alienated consciousness to an awareness that all phenomena are a manifestation of the same nondual ground, love and compassion would spontaneously arise for all beings. Understanding myself as a facet of the Whole, I would naturally identify with all other facets of the Whole.
This suggests that bhakti too may have an ontological basis, which has some interesting implications. If such an all-pervasive love is the nondual ground of the emotions, then (to complete the parallel with jñāna- and karma-yoga) negative emotions must be the result of its being dualistically warped. As long as there is the delusion of self apart from the world, then resentment will naturally arise from any perception of a threat to that self and its desires. But insofar as I realize my true Self to be the birthless and deathless ground of all phenomena — including that of any “other” who may want to injure “me” — then there will be no negativity. And, as all lovers know, love is blissful; then is this nondual love also the bliss associated with Brahman (Sacchidānanda)?386 If so, is romantic love, rather than being merely the epiphenomenon of sexual attraction, perhaps a glimpse of this emotional component of selflessness?
■ ■ ■ ■
The three yogas as described above have at least three common features. First, each of them leads to equanimity because the yogin gives up expectation. The purest bhakti is so completely devoted to God that it asks for nothing from him in return. Karma-yoga is simply doing one’s duty, giving up concern about the fruits of action. Expectation involves certain ways of thinking in which I project myself beyond the present situation, but the meditation of jñāna-yoga “lets go” of all such thoughts. In all three cases, learning not to be preoccupied with the future allows me to perceive something previously unnoticed about the present. Some existentialist interpretations of Indian sādhanā (the spiritual path) see self-realization as a necessarily unfinished process and man’s being as perpetual becoming.387 But this continual projection-beyond is precisely what the yogas counteract. It is the nature of the self to be restless, always ahead of itself. But in equanimity this flight from the present moment ends, and I am able to realize something about the here-and-now which does not change.
This brings us to the second point. None of the three paths involves gaining something new, and it might even be argued that none of them involves removing anything (i.e., a hindrance). Rather, each yoga merely transforms what already is from a dualistic to a nondual mode. Chapter 4 argued that jñāna-yoga does not involve eliminating concepts or thoughts. The problem is not thoughts per se but that thinking usually functions dualistically, as prapañca or adhyāsa to obscure the empty nature of phenomena and perpetuate the delusion of self. Meditation works to break the mutually reinforcing pattern of thoughts, so their nondual nature can also be realized: thoughts too spring, not from my mind but from “the mind” — in terms of the Gītā, from Krishna. Karma-yoga implies that we need not withdraw from social responsibilities in order to follow the spiritual path and that the physical body is not necessarily a hindrance. The body too is a spiritual tool if one works to overcome its selfish craving by sacrificing it to the needs of the world, rather than vice versa. To act in this way leads to the realization that such actions are not mine but Krishna’s. Finally, the emotions do not need to be removed in order to achieve tranquility. Instead, dualistic negativity is to be distilled into love and compassion, which may be our point of entry into a blissful love that transcends the attraction we feel for any particular object. As tantra emphasizes, what needs to be changed is not the basic “energies” themselves — intellectual, physical, emotional — but how they manifest.
The third common feature, if my interpretation of the yogas is correct, is that it is obviously impossible to make much progress in one without practicing the others, at least to some degree. I may begin with one yoga because it corresponds to the type of person I am, but that alone will be insufficient. I could not practice bhakti very long without needing to overcome my self-centered physical habits; how can I love others as Krishna while trying to use them to satisfy my own desires? The converse is also true. I could not meditate well or be a karma-yogi while harboring hatred and resentment of others. While I might not sit in a cross-legged position, I would need to cultivate the ability to “let go” of such negative thoughts and self-centered intentions in order to practice both bhakti- and karma-yoga. The “three roots of evil” function together; what each particular yoga does is break that alliance by striking at one of the links, but the three roots mutually reinforce each other, which is why all of us have all three problems to some degree. Each needs to be transmuted, although the two subsidiary links should be relatively easy to cope with when the primary path is practiced assiduously.
Parallel to the problem of path priority has been the problem of goal priority. In the terms of the Gītā, is Krishna subordinate to the impersonal Absolute of puruṣa, or vice versa? In Vedāntic terms, is Saguṇa subordinate to Nirguṇa Brahman, as in Śaṅkara’s Advaita, or is Nirguṇa subordinate to Saguṇa Brahman, as in Rāmānuja’s Viśiṣṭādvaita? Later commentators transposed this philosophical issue into a textual one. Was there a pantheistic proto-Gītā with theistic passages added afterward, as the earliest Western scholars thought, or vice versa, as according to Garbe? But perhaps these controversies are as much pseudo-problems as the priority of the yogas. They are based upon the plausible yet questionable assumption that the two Absolutes, personal and impersonal, are incompatible. But they are not obviously inconsistent with each other in the Gītā as they are, for example, in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, where Īśvara is clearly an afterthought and has no essential function within the yogic system. Krishna and puruṣa are warp-and-woof in the Gītā; it is difficult to conceive of one without the other. Later (if not always contemporary)388 Advaita is also comfortable with both. The beautiful devotional hymns of Śaṅkara show that his inclusion of Saguṇa Brahman was not merely in deference to popular sentiment,389 and more recently Ramakrishna did not doubt the existence of his own deity Kālī. Modern interpretations of Indian philosophy have too often projected the Western model of how philosophy develops, drawing lines and finding the clash of disagreement where there is often (as in the history of Buddhism) only difference of emphasis. The parallel distinction that Eckhart made between deus and deitas (God and Godhead) suggests that we should attempt to reconcile the two by considering what possible relationship there might be between them.
Up to this point, this chapter has been hermeneutical in its effort to give an interpretation and defense of the Gītā by reconciling its teachings with the nondualist traditions of Advaita Vedānta and Buddhism. Now I need to speculate more freely on the Gītā’s implications. Regarding the yogas, the nondualist perspective led us to suggest that each yoga works to transform a particular type of experience from a dualistic to a nondualistic mode. Regarding the question of goal, this encourages us to reflect on the possibility of a nondual relationship between man and God.
Bhakti was earlier interpreted as the yoga that purifies our emotional life, transforming dualistic negativity into emotions such as love and compassion in which there is more oneness between lover and beloved. It was suggested that this might lead to the experience of an “affective aspect” to the nondual ground of our being, an all-pervasive ānanda in which our personal feelings “participate.” But whether or not this occurs, love as ordinarily experienced and understood is undeniably dualistic in that the lover is distinct from the beloved. Love, as much as hate, seems to be the relation between two things and in order to sustain that as a relation they must remain distinct. Comparing the traditional dualistic bhakti of theism with the meditative jñāna emphasized in the nondualist traditions thus raises a question. Can we attribute the difference between personal and impersonal Absolutes to the difference in function between the emotions and the intellect? As we have seen, the emotions require a “personalized Other” on which to focus in order to be purified. The intellect, in contrast, requires an empty, qualityless (nirguṇa) impersonality because jñāna works by “letting go” of all mental phenomena, emotions as well as concepts.
This possibility seems important, but by itself it does not take us very far. It suggests that the relation between Krishna and Brahman, for example, cannot be separated from the issue of the relation between emotion and intellect. But this does no more than relate both personal and impersonal Absolutes equally to us, rather than explaining what we most want to know: what is the relation between them?
What is the nondualist objection to God? Part of the problem is the notion that God is a person in some sense similar to us (or vice versa, according to the Semitic religions). How much of a problem this is depends upon how this personhood is understood. If the concept of God’s personality is taken as metaphorical, there may be no problem at all. If belief in the personality of God is sustained by the view that we are made in his image, then we should extrapolate one main concern of contemporary philosophy — overcoming mind–body dualism — to overcoming the duality between God and the universe. Rāmānuja’s analogy between them (God is to the created universe as mind is to body) suggests that the parallel between these dualisms is no coincidence.
That God is a person may be a useful metaphor, especially if he (she) is further metaphorized as a parent — although this natural image is fraught with dangers that we are now well aware of: parental love and forgiveness may be overshadowed by a possessiveness and vanity that demands acknowledgement and obedience with the threat of punishment. But the double-aspect of the Absolute, as both transcendent and immanent, is poorly expressed in the notion that God is a person who, like us, plans, creates, expects, commands, is pleased or angry, rewards and punishes — and perhaps discriminates between peoples, choosing some of them for a privileged destiny. Well-known philosophical problems arise — for example, the “inconsistent triad” — if we try to think of God in such a way.390
If the intention behind the metaphor of God’s personhood is to capture the beliefs that there is a moral order intrinsic to the universe and that there is a transcendental meaning to our lives that makes them incalculably valuable (compare the moral order and meaning provided for children by parents), then nondualistic systems such as Buddhism and Vedānta express both of these in a more sophisticated way. The first is embodied in the doctrine of karma, which is not the predestined fate of Greek moira (which dualistically happens to me) but the notion that the universe is ordered in such a way that cause-and-effect relationships apply not only in the physical world but also in the mind. Perhaps Newton’s third law of motion — for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction — is valid for acts of consciousness (intentions) as well. The supreme importance of life is better captured (if one avoids the world-negation that arises from bifurcating transcendental ground and phenomena) in the possibility of a liberation that occurs with the realization of our true nondual nature, that I am the universe.
One apparent problem with these processes, and the general impersonality of such an Absolute, is that they seem to imply the universe is indifferent to our fate. In particular, the elimination of God-as-judge seems to eliminate morality as well, substituting a mechanical cause-and-effect which is amoral in that we are free to do anything as long as we are prepared to bear the consequences. However, such freedom eliminates not morality but the fact–value dichotomy (another corollary of the mind–body, spirit–matter distinction): morality is no longer a second-order evaluation of events but is “built into” them. The effect of an impersonal Absolute is not indifference, for God is not really eliminated but, as it were, integrated into the universe — just as the negation of mind–body dualism implies not behaviorism but a “spiritualized body.” That God is not other than the universe, as Spinoza argued, does not diminish God but rather elevates the universe. The universe is spiritual because it is ordered in such a way that there is moral as well as physical order, and because those who choose to make an attempt to overcome their egoism find their efforts aided by forces outside their conscious control. Modern Advaitins such as Aurobindo have claimed that the movement toward self-realization is inherent to the structure of the universe. The Buddhist sotapanna is literally a “stream-enterer,” an inspired image. He or she has been drawn into a current that carries one along to nirvāṇa — according to tradition, within seven lifetimes. Like the watershed system of a river valley, is there a natural “gravitational” tendency for all of us to become pulled in, resisted only by our attachments? The Mahāyāna Dharmakāya radiates love and compassion to all, impersonally like the sun, but many are not receptive to it.391 In reaction to Platonic dualism, Aristotle speculated that the Form of a thing is its function. Extrapolating from that, may we say that God is the function of the universe?
The nondualist difficulty with theism is not just that God is a person, but that this person is an other to us — “Wholly Other!” as the early Barth stressed and later repudiated. Of course, the two concepts are closely related. My awareness of being a person is dependent on there being other persons; a sense of self arises only in dialectical relation to other selves. Then is God a person only in relation to ourselves? If so, what will happen if I “merge with” God — which is the goal of most theistic mystics, just as nondualists wish to realize their oneness with Brahman, and so on. In this union with God, I am of course transformed — but then won’t God be transformed too? Into what?
In samādhi the meditator seems to merge with the object of his concentration; my awareness of the object (physical or mental) is no longer distinguishable from the object. Usually this is only a temporary trance state, for the mind later becomes preoccupied with thoughts again. But the nondualist claims that this is not a delusion. On the contrary, it is a glimpse of the true nondual nature of phenomena: they are not other than “my” mind. Because he was able to let his individual mind and body “drop away,” Dōgen realized that “mind is nothing other than mountains and rivers and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars” — the essential Mahāyāna claim that is equally crucial to Advaita. But unlike Buddhism, Advaita finds a role for God in Śaṅkara’s distinction between Saguṇa (with attributes — i.e., Īśvara) and Nirguṇa (without attributes — i.e., completely empty of any phenomenal characteristics) Brahman. The transcendental latter, like Eckhart’s Godhead, is inactive and immutable, whereas the former is not immanent in the world but is the world as the totality of Brahman’s self-luminous manifestations. Yet how is this description of Saguṇa Brahman equivalent to God? And, more generally, how can we understand the relation between these two Brahmans?
Śaṅkara says that Brahman reflected in māyā is Īśvara (God), whereas Brahman reflected in avidyā is the jīva (ego-self). Given that Śaṅkara (unlike Gauḍapāda) generally seems to identify māyā with avidyā, this seminal statement must mean that the mystical experience of God as the true nature of the phenomenal world is still somewhat illusory (māyā), the “other side” of the delusion (avidyā) of myself as still other than the world. A bit of māyā persists if I perceive Brahman (Eckhart’s deitas) as God, but only because I experience him as other than myself. God is the Absolute viewed from outside, as it were: still a bit dualistically. Then the Impersonal Absolute is the true nature of God — nondual because completely incorporating “my” consciousness as well. In other words, to experience God is to forget oneself to the extent that one becomes aware of a consciousness pervading everywhere and everything. To experience the Godhead/Absolute is to “let go” completely and realize that consciousness is nothing other than me, fully becoming what I have always been. The sense of “holiness” (Otto’s “the numinous”) is not something added onto the phenomenal world in such mystical experiences but is an inherent characteristic of “my” self-luminous mind, although realized only when its true nature is experienced.
Contrary to some of Krishna’s own statements in the Gītā,392 such a nondualist explanation subordinates the Personal to the Impersonal — or does it? Certainly the concept of God as a person is preferable to a Buddhist śūnyatā misunderstood as static or nihilistic, or to a Brahman so abstract and otherworldly that it has no relation to our lives. And even a nondualist might point out that the theist who sincerely tries to love all God’s creatures might well make more spiritual progress toward selflessness than the meditator who greedily desires enlightenment. But the danger of these errors is clearly indicated within the nondualist traditions themselves.
Ramakrishna said that he preferred to taste sugar than become sugar. The above interpretation implies that, before we become completely enlightened, we shall experience the operation of the Absolute upon us as God. God is the Absolute seen from “outside,” but that is the only way the Absolute can be seen, since in itself it is so devoid of characteristics that it is literally a nothing. God is God only in relation to me, but when there is no longer a “me” then the spiritual quest is over.