A Perfect God
In most mainstream religious traditions, it is customary to imagine the divine as a great being (usually male) who is omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good — in other words, a perfect God. This raises the question of how we can explain the presence of evil under a perfect God. This is not the question I explore here, for I wish to consider another implications of there being a perfect God. If we follow the Vedantic precept of every one of us having an inherent divinity at the core of our consciousness (a belief shared by the mystical branches of all major faith traditions), and if the divine is perfect, the question arises as to how our ego appears to so easily overwhelm this inherent divinity, to the point that so many of us fail to recognise it, and even when we accept it is there, we struggle to truly know it.
In his book ‘New Seeds of Contemplation’, the Christian mystic, Thomas Merton, writes, “Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. This is the man I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.” Even though Merton recognises this as a privacy that is too great to bear for it hides divine reality behind an illusion, he recognises the ego’s power to construct such a privacy. If the ego can construct a privacy from God, if the ego can suppress the recognition of God, then it is the ego that appears to be the more powerful one. How can one reconcile that with our expectation of a perfect God?
Indian epics often do not present a strict adherence to this ideal of a perfect God. In Valmiki’s Ramayana, although Rama is considered a maryada purushottam, he does carry out some morally dubious actions, such as the manner in which he kills Vali. And during the agnipariksha, while Sita is still in the fire, the gods descend on Lanka and ask Rama why he, of all beings, is doing such a thing. Rama appears puzzled by the phrasing of this question and responds that he only knows himself as a human being, Rama, the son of Dasharatha, and says if he is meant to be something else, then this should be told to him. Brahma speaks to Rama about who he really is, that he is Narayana, the ultimate being, an avatar of Vishnu. In this passage, Valmiki presents Rama as a parable for all human beings, where we get distracted by our humanity to forget our inherent divinity, and need to be reminded of it.
One finds similar ambiguities regarding Krishna in the Mahabharata. On multiple occasions, he propagates actions that would be considered deceitful and violative of a warrior’s dharma: the encouragement to Yudhisthira to render Drona vulnerable by lying about the death of his son Ashvattaman, his persuasion of Arjuna to slay Karna while the latter is trying to extricate his chariot-wheel from mud, his advice to Arjuna to place Sikhandin in front when attacking Bhisma knowing the grandsire would not fight Sikhandin and could thus be mortally wounded without resistance. And while Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita, does reveal to Arjuna an overwhelming and seemingly omnipotent divine form, and speaks of being ‘time grown old’ and ‘a destroyer of worlds’; there is a contradictory episode later in the Mahabharata in his encounter with the great hermit Utanka. This takes place after the Battle of Kurukshetra; Krishna is on his way from Hastinapura to Dvaraka, and breaks journey for a day, accepting Utanka’s hospitality. Utanka is an evolved being who is well aware of Krishna’s divine identity, but is not up to date on events, unaware that this great battle has taken place, finding out only when he quizzes Krishna on the status of the conflict between the two great families. When he learns of the battle and the extent of carnage it has caused, Utanka is furious, berating Krishna for allowing it to happen. Krishna responds that he is not omnipotent, the battle was the unavoidable sequel of a chain of events that had begun long before, setting up consequences under the laws of karma and dharma that were beyond his power to prevent.
From all this, one is driven to conclude that God is not omniscient, omnipotent or perfectly good, and we are left wrestling with the dilemma that this seems to contradict the very nature of who we think God to be. Some clues to resolve this dilemma come to hand when we look at the Mahabharata to assess the question of whether the Battle of Kurukshetra was a just war — a dharmayuddha. Given that Krishna has chosen the side of the eventual victors, one might be tempted to facilely conclude that there is a clear divide that casts the Pandavas as good and the Kauravas as evil. But when you get into the details of the narrative, you find there is no clear black-and-white division into good and evil, and the situation is far more complex and nuanced. There is greatness on both sides in the drive to maintain a set of moral principles, values, virtues and mastery. But one also finds deceit and lapses of character on both sides. Perhaps, in calculating the balance sheet, one can attribute more evil deeds to the Kauravas than to the Pandavas and conclude that the Pandava side is the preferred side, but one is forced to also concede that this balance sheet does not cast the Pandavas as paragons of pure virtue. The question is not unambiguously resolved by the epic’s text, and to assess it one is forced to bring one’s own consciousness, critical faculties, and discernment to bear on the question — one is forced to embody viveka (discernment) in order to appreciate what true dharma is. The fact that the Mahabharata is an ambiguous, layered and complex text is the point; if it were clear and direct, the moral conclusions would be explicit within the text, and one need not do anything to perceive them. But the epic clearly foregrounds questions of morality and dharma, to the point that one is forced to reflect on them, provoked into a state of viveka — one has to make a conscious and aware choice to be in this state.
If the divine within us acted omniscient and omnipotent, the ego would be immediately rendered redundant, reducing us to automatons, puppets jerked around by the strings of divine will. But when the ego acts on its own volition, our bodies are rendered alive by a life force within us. The question, therefore, is not whether the ego is more or less powerful than the divine; it is whether the ego chooses to live in resonance with the divine within, or to chart its own self-absorbed path.
We tend to get seduced by the self-absorbed path because it is clearly visible, immediately apparent to the senses, and seductive. In contrast, the divine, while powerful, is subtle and ambiguous, requiring the cultivation of viveka, demanding the discipline of sadhana (rigorous contemplative practice). Yet, it is more real than the self-absorbed path which at some stage reveals itself to be an illusion. As Thomas Merton points out, “But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasure and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am my own mistake.”
The divine is real because it can be known only when we are fully alive, rigorous in our practice, consciously aware and discerning. The self-absorbed path proves to be an illusion because it turns away from the inherent life force within to surrender its agency to external objects and beings.
Joseph Campbell, the scholar of myth, argues that we make a mistake in thinking we seek the meaning of life, whereas what we truly seek is the rapture of being alive; and the reason why we are drawn to myths is because they resonate with our innermost being through a narrative that cloaks perennial questions of ethics and divinity within a rich and ambiguous narrative that permeates and provokes our bodies.
We adhere to our inherent divinity when we consciously choose to do so, a choice enabled by viveka cultivated through sadhana, for it is that choice that makes us fully alive and within the rapture of being alive. We are not fully alive when we surrender our autonomy to external agency. The paradox of divinity that one must accept is that God is far too wise to only present a face of omniscience, omnipotence and perfect goodness.
