The Limitations Of Reason

[Ms Tercy Lonan]

The Limitations Of Reason
The true nature of God and His creation cannot be intellectually comprehended, for logic is
a proud child of the dualist prejudice. If God alone is all this world, the relation between Him and
the world no mortal can hope to know. Man’s idea of God is highly defective, for God, as man
understands Him, is relative to the appearance of the world. God is a pure subject opposed to a
world of creation set before Him as an object cannot be absolute; and if He is not thus opposed, He
ceases to have any external relation to the world. If God is a universal consciousness having the
universe as His object, He cannot be connected with it except by a spatio-temporal knowledge.
Such a knowing process, however, is inadmissible in the case of God, for He is said to be untouched
by the vitiating divisions of space and time. But without this division, God cannot be distinguished
from the Absolute which will not brook any objectivation of itself. The gulf between the infinite
Purusha of the Sankhya and the Prakriti which vies with the former in almost every respect is an
instance of the defeat which the human intellect has to suffer when it attempts to visualise a reality
which is non-mediately related to the universe and yet is not the same as the universe. The God who 

is in man’s mind cannot be freed from the difficulty of having to melt down to undifferentiated
being when His relation to the world is closely examined. Isvara’s existence happens to be relative
to the demands of His self-manifesting work. He is, as long as the universe is.
Further, we cannot say that God created the world at any period of time. If the creative act is
not in time, it being the condition even of time, there would be no creation of a temporal world.
Creation is a process, and all process is in time. There is no process that can be dovetailed with
eternity. To cause anything, God may have to descend into time, and a descent into time is a descent
into finitude, change and a veritable self-destruction. If God is to bear any relation to phenomena,
He has to shed His eternal nature first. But somehow He creates and sustains the world without
losing His eternality. This the human intellect cannot understand. The Absolute sports in the
relative. The individuals of the world arise as appearances participating in a relative
interdependence of existence and nature. If there is no child, there is no parent, too. Isvara becomes
an object of the notion of the Jiva, and a subject with the world as a predicate attached to it.
The logical character of truth and reality attributed to Isvara does not look consistent with
our ascribing to Him the ethical character of goodness, the aesthetic character of beauty and the
religious character of grace, all which carry an individualistic purport. If Isvara is the all, such
values turn to be different from what they mean to us here in this world. And why has Isvara created
the world? It cannot be for His satisfaction, for He has no wish or desire to fulfil. It cannot be with a
view to dispensing justice or showing mercy to others, for there are no others, as all beings are
subsequent to the creative act. It cannot be a play of Isvara, for play is normally supposed to be the
result of a need felt within to direct outside the excess of energy in the psycho-physical organism, to
overcome fatigue or boredom, or to replenish the system with fresh energy after an exhausting
work. Isvara can have no such needs, for He is not an individual organism. If Isvara is only a witness
of the sports of Prakriti which moves and acts at the inspiration received from His mere existence,
He would have a determining element outside Him, which would prevent Him from being an
absolute monarch. Isvara is Brahman envisaged by our experiential conditions in relation to a world
of change. The question of creation is restricted to the world of the senses and the intellect, and the
answer to it cannot but be empirically bound. There cannot be a correct answer to an erroneous
question. That the world is, is a belief of ours, and the whole problem of creation hinges on how we
react to our environment as dismembered bodies in a cosmic society.
The futility of the logical methods in determining the nature of Isvara does not imply,
however, that there is no Intelligence underlying the world and influencing it throughout. For a
denial of such a being would entail a denial of the world, and, consequently, our own selves as
individuals. Certain inherent defects in our faculties of knowing prevent us from comprehending
transcendent truths in a proper manner. It does not follow that the invisible is always non-existent.
If we are, the world is; and if the world is, Isvara also is. If Isvara is not, the world also is not; and we
as individuals, too, cannot be. There is reciprocal dependence of the existence of these three
principles always. Our concepts are relative; the absolutely real is only Brahman. But as long as we
accept our own existence as diversified elements in a world, a sovereign being giving meaning to
life cannot be doubted. Our own conscious powers within us urge us to accept that Isvara must be.
The scriptures corroborate our inner spiritual aspirations and extol an Isvara who is the creator of
this world. Swami Sivananda countenances the Lila theory of creation, not with a view to offering it
as any final explanation of the world, but to bringing out the idea that the creative act of Isvara is 

free from any taint of selfishness or ulterior motive, and to suggest that it is beyond the
purview of the human mind. It is the nature of Isvara to create, to manifest and unfold the world;
there is no other reason for it that is humanly conceivable. To show that Isvara has no personal
interest whatsoever, it is also added that He only helps creation, which is really a manifestation or
expression of the dormant potencies of the individuals who, not being liberated at the end of the
previous cycle, existed in a latent form during the dissolution of the universe after that cycle. Rain
may help the growth of a plant, but the nature of the plant depends on the seed from which it grows.
The sun may help the activities of the world, but he remains unaffected by the results of such
activities.
The theory of the creation of the world by Isvara is not to be taken as any statement of
ultimate fact, but is meant to serve as a working hypothesis introduced to bring out the idea of the
non-difference of the world from Brahman. Srishti or creation, and Pravesa or the entrance of Isvara
into the world in His immanence, are Arthavadas or eulogical concepts intended to bring home to
the mind of man the fact of the secondlessness of Brahman and the total dependence of the world on
Brahman. No explanation of the why or the how of creation, and no concept of Isvara as the
supreme Ruler of the world, can be finally satisfactory, for such statements and concepts are based
on a false faith in the individuality of the self and the variety of the world of experience. But they are
serviceable as a modus operandi in directing the individual from his ignorant prejudices of a bodily
existence to the splendour of the Absolute. Isvara is sometimes said to be supreme
Self-consciousness. But the Self-conscious Brahman would require something as an
other-than-itself, at least space, to make such a condition possible. Brahman does not stand in need
of knowing itself either as a subject or an object. But it has somehow to be related to the world. The
result is Isvara. How such a relation is possible, the intellect is not fortunate enough to know. It calls
this mystery ‘Maya’.