Discovery of God: The Intellectual Process

If we take the authors of the Puranas such as the Bhagavata as the intellectual heirs of the original Samkhya school, then we will be looking at one unbroken intellectual tradition.

The doing of pure devotion to God, then, would be the culmination of a long intellectual process, comprising, broadly, the following stages:

1. The unconscious entity: Examining and understanding prakrti, its evolutive nature, character and limitations.
2. The conscious entity: Examining and understanding the body of man and its various organs and systems. Understanding especially the nature of the neural entities and the brain. Are they of the same essential characteristics as the external (unconscious) matter? Can the brain give rise to consciousness?
3. The pure personality: Understanding the nature of purusa, its interface with the brain (and, through it, the body), the capabilities of purusa.
4. The supreme pure personality: Relook at the programmed nature of the entities of the body such as the brain. Is their evolving out of prakrti possible in the absence of initiation and control by a superior conscious personality? Comparison with instances from the external world. The discovery of God, the supreme purusa.
5. The revelation of the highest philosophy: The reason behind purusa becoming endowed with a (prakrti-made) body. Motivations of the supreme purusa. Consideration and full accommodation of the higher aspects of consciousness like compassion, grace and joy. Devotion to God, the supreme purusa.

It perhaps needs no reiteration that each one of these stages is huge and could be broken up into several sub-stages and phases but this is only a general outline. The point sought to be made is this:

God may be discovered solely through a (long and exhaustive) intellectual investigation without there being any need of any external revelation.

The Concept of Pure Personality (Purusa) in the Philosophy of Sankaradeva

puruṣa uttama    parama puruṣa
parama ānanda sbāmī .
tayu pādapadma-    makaranda āśe
śaraṇa paśilo āmi .. (NG, 186)

The concept of a pure personality (purusa) is central to the philosophy of Sankaradeva. It is at the core of the Bhagavata's understanding of the form and nature of God (isvara) and the souls (jivas). In this blog post I attempt to lay down the foundational points for this concept and plan to discuss it in further detail later on.

First, by pure personality (purusa), a transcendental person is meant. A pure personality (purusa) is a pure person. Let us take up the conception of person given in Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person):

A person is a being, such as a human, that has certain capacities or attributes constituting personhood, which in turn is defined differently by different authors in different disciplines, and by different cultures in different times and places. In ancient Rome, the word persona (Latin) or prosopon (πρόσωπον; Greek) originally referred to the masks worn by actors on stage. The various masks represented the various "personae" in the stage play.

(Note how similar is the Greek term prosopon to the Sanskrit term purusa.)

After this definition, we lay down a few basic points relating to the conception of purusa or the transcendental pure person that will form the basis of any treatise that may be developed on this subject.


A pure person (purusa) is a separate ontological category; it is distinct from and superior to the category of matter (prakrti). It is sometimes referred to impersonally (and rather technically) as brahma (spirit). This sort of a substantial definition sometimes deludes us into thinking that it is substance. But, it is not substance. A pure person (purusa) is just that: a pure personality (purusa).

A pure person (purusa) is full of afferential (sense) and efferential (action) capacities or capabilities. Knowing and doing are features essential to its nature. It is the feeler. Memory and even language are native to it.



A pure person (purusa) is genderless: it is neither male nor female nor hermaphrodite. 'He' or 'it,' in whichever case they are used to refer to this entity, is used to indicate a pure transcendental person only.

A pure person (purusa) is endowed with a beauteous form. It (or he) is certainly not absolutely formless. But this form is not a prakrti-made one.

A pure person (purusa) exists forever. It is eternal (sanatana). It just is. And just was and will be. At no point of time did the purusas ever come into existence. They are never created, not even in Vaikuntha--their native, transcendental abode--; not even by Isvara.

A pure person (purusa) is not connected to any material mind-link (manas) or any physical frame or material body. When it is so connected, then, at that time, it is referred to as jiva. The pure person (purusa) has its own transcendental mind, its own faculty of consciousness (cit). This cit is different from the material manas by which term we might mean (material) entities like subtle mind, brain, cerebral cortex, etc.

The supreme pure person is the Lord (isvara) and the souls (jivas) are also, in their native forms, pure personalities (purusas) .

Self-Reproach (ātma nindā): A Translation of a Passage from the Nama Ghosa

ātma nindā


śānta cidānanda śuddha, ananta mahimā nitya [mahimānbita?]
nirmmala taraṅgacaẏa hīna .
henaẏa paramānanda, amṛtasāgare maji
ācānta nakari buddhikṣīṇa .. 98
he hari sāraśūṇya, mṛgatṛṣṇārṇawajale
śrānta huẏā mahāmoha pāño .
snāna pāna ācamana, karoho ramaṇa tāte
katoho upaṅgo tala yāño .. 99

Self-Reproach (ātma nindā)

Calm, full of blissful consciousness, pure, endowed with infinite transcendental power,
dirtless and free from waves;
sinking into such a nectar-ocean of the personality of supreme joy,
I do not purify myself, sipping this nectar; my intellect must surely be emaciated. 98

O Hari! Void of any substance, in the ocean of the water of mirages,
becoming wearied, we obtain great delusion.
Bathing, drinking, ‘purification’—we do our crude sports there;
sometimes we float on the surface, sometimes we sink down. 99

Sankaradeva’s Philosophy: A Bare Introduction

Sankaradeva’s philosophy is a very real philosophy. By ‘real’ we mean that, here, neither the world is figmental nor is the embodied personality, a mere emergent phenomenon. Both are real. But, there is discussion on the nature of this reality—specifically on what constitutes the essential nature of the entities (tattva) known as unconscious (jada) and conscious (caitanya).  The entities of the jada category are found to be wholly material; the caitanya is purely spiritual. And this difference between them is critical. It determines worship in Sankaradeva. 

There is a search for the supreme entity. This entity is Isvara (God, the Lord). He is caitanya. He is termed as the supreme truth (satya). He is pure personality (purusa). The living beings (jiva) are also, in truth, pure personalities. They are entities in their own right, only they are not the supreme entity. The jivas, it may be mentioned here, although subject to affective influences, have a lot of free will and they can put this free will to whatever use they want. In fact, one of the main reasons behind the troubles of the jiva is that he puts his free will to bad use.  

It is only God, the supreme entity, who is the cause of the world. ‘World’ here refers to the entire material creation and not merely the earth (or even the universe). Perhaps ‘cosmos’ would be a better word than ‘world’ to serve as the analog for the jagat of the text which is also conceptualized as some sort of a ‘cosmic egg’ or, in more literal terms, ‘the egg formed by the supreme spirit’ (brahmanda). We have elaborate passages in the Bhagavata, particularly in the third book—and these are taken up for rendering by Sankaradeva and his community of renderers—, dealing specifically with the creation of this ‘cosmic egg.’ There is a process of material evolution there which would surely appear interesting to the members of the scientific community. What makes the study of this process more exciting is that it seems to have striking microcosmic, i.e. embryological, linkages. 

God is the initiator of this process of material evolution that rolls out to make the creation. The aim of this study is to make the learner aware of the nature of his surrounding reality—both internal as well as external. It is to awaken in him the realization that it is only the entities of the unconscious, jada category that are subject to this evolution and that, being spiritual, he is not subject to such an evolution at all. This paves the way for pure devotion to God, the head of the spiritual family. Naturally, one has to stop emulating the material units and take charge of the microcosm as a spiritual personality.

The Special Created Entity Known as the Mind

Suka said, “Please listen, O king, to this nomenclature of the mind.
Whatever is the name, at what time, of the mind-organ—I now tell you that.
When the embodied spiritual personality desires to do various works,
but is unable to decide on any of them, at that time, the mind-organ is known as ‘the mind’ (manas). 63
When the spiritual personality carefully considers the various alternatives and options and does resolution (niscaya) on one of them,
at that time, know, you call the mind-organ as the ‘intellect’ (buddhi).

When he regards all the works that he does with the feeling of ‘I,’ then, at that moment in time, know for sure, the mind-organ is referred to as ‘ego’ (ahankara). 64

When the spiritual personality—welded to the mind-organ—does several good works and acts regularly in a conscientious manner,

at those times, know certainly, O king, the name of the mind-organ is ‘conscience’ (citta).

Manas, translated as the ‘mind-organ’ (or, in keeping with its device-like functions, the ‘mind-device’), is the organ of the transcendental mind of the spiritual pure personality (purusa). It is connected directly to his faculty of consciousness (cit). It is through this organ that the purusa interfaces with the component-units of the psycho-physical frame such as the different organs of locomotion, grasping, etc.; and also gathers sense-data from the external material creation as well as from within the body. This mind-organ, therefore, is the organ that lies closest to the spiritual personality. It enables him to ‘intelligize,’ or to acquire knowledge from his environment and apply it in ways beneficial to him. The different manifestations of the mind-organ—‘mind,’ ‘intellect,’ ‘ego,’ and ‘conscience’—refer to the one mind-organ only. Sankaradeva has compared these different forms of the one and the same mind-organ with an actor who appears in different roles in different guises. These manifestations of the mind-organ may be seen as reflecting or representing the different manifestations of the consciousness of the spiritual personality immanent, as it were, within this organic-unit. It is the mental activity of the purusa only that is indicated by the different activities of the mind-organ.

Sole Refuge: A Translation of a Passage from the Nama Ghosa

Sole Refuge (sarana)

My Lord, I am of extremely devious conduct; I am solely your

offender, O Shelter of All Embodied Personalities!

Please forgive me, O Remover of All Faults, and take me as your servant!

Look, I enter into your refuge! 183

O Krsna, my master! At your feet, we

beg only for refuge.

Do favor on us, O my guardian, from the disfavor of primal matter,

only then would we be able to escape. 184

O the lord of the Yadus, I am of extremely dull intellect.

I do not know how to do your service.

Solely and exclusively at your lotus-feet,

I make sole refuge the only essential thing. 185

Best personality! Supreme pure personality!

Personality of pure transcendental joy! Lord!

In expectation of the honeyed juice of your lotus-like feet,

we enter into sole-refuge in you. 186

O my master, the possessor of all opulences! O the Lord whose end cannot be found by time and space!

O the savior of the ones taking shelter in you!

You only are my most beloved; only you are the supreme controlling entity.

Knowing this, we take refuge in you. 187