PERTINENT QUESTIONS, POSSIBLE ANSWERS ... 1

Q. 1. What is the purpose of life?
A. 1. God-realisation.

Q. 2. Is there a God?
A. 2. Most certainly there is.

Q. 3. Who is God or what is God?
A. 3. God is the innermost essence of man, the substance and essence of phenomena, the creative, preservative and destructive principle governing phenomena and the transcendental reality behind and beyond it.

Q. 4. What is meant by phenomena?
A. 4. The sensory universe in all its phases, in all its dimensions is termed phenomena.

Q. 5. Does God have form or is He/She formless?
A. 5. God is both with form and without form, an apparent contradiction perhaps, but not really so.

Q. 6. How is the contradiction resolved?
A. 6. In the same way as water exists as ice with form, water without it and water vapour even more so without it, in the same manner God may also exist in as many states as He pleases, in as many forms He chooses to adopt.

Q. 7. Is God male or female?
A. 7. The Impersonal God is beyond all qualification and, therefore, beyond description of gender but the Personal God is beheld as either male or female or both by different religious traditions.

Q. 8. Is God then the product of our imagination and has no fixed form or attribute?

A. 8. Well, the whole universe, according to Vedanta, is the product of imagination, why alone God, but then imagination itself is in turn the product of finer imagination and the series extends indefinitely backwards or inwards and even the one who, so to say, imagines, is a derivative of such imagination. You could say that there is an imagined imagination by an imagined being who imagines and thus goes the series. It has no solution and goes in spirals inwards and outwards, so to say, and this is Maya. Now, wither God and wither man?

Q. 9. Is this universe unreal then?

A. 9. Unreal it is in the sense that its existence is experienced and ratified by our senses which are part and parcel of the same universal package. Hence, its existence is being self-certified when there is no proof that the self itself exists or not just like the universe. In other words, our notion that the universe exists and that we exist as well is a compelling belief not based on reason or evidence examined from an extra-universal standpoint and, hence, the argument that the universe exists because we cognise it to be so is flawed and, hence, invalid. However, it must be admitted that equally we may not also say that the universe does not exist for the very same reasons. Thus, the proposition is rather tricky and unsolvable either way. The Vedanta states that Reality is that which is unchangeable and unaffected by space, time and causality. As the universe is ever in a flux, eternally changing, transforming and evolving and perhaps, involving too, it cannot be said to be real in the highest sense. However, if mind be admitted as a reality, albeit a secondary, relative one, then it stands to reason to say that the universe is a reality as well, a phenomenal, ever-changing relative reality of the second order, a contradiction in terms, though, from the standpoint of the Vedanta.

Q. 10. What is real then?
A. 10. Brahman which transcends space, time and causality is the Absolute Reality. It is formless, without attributes and is the essence of existence, consciousness and bliss although these terms understood in the light of our universal experience will scarce reveal their true import. The self-revelation of Brahman alone carries home its truth for it is the inexpressible essence of truth.