Category:God Is A Person

Theme Analysis

The progressive realization of the Absolute Truth culminates in the understanding that God is ultimately a person. According to Śrīla Prabhupāda, spiritual realization begins with the impersonal Brahman (the objective of the jñānīs) and advances to the localized Paramātmā (the objective of the yogīs). However, the final, absolute understanding is Bhagavān—the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The Vedic instruction is clear: eko bahūnāṁ yo vidadhāti kāmān. There is one supreme eternal person supplying the necessities of life for all other eternal persons. Logic dictates that if we, the sons and fragmental parts of God, possess personality and individuality, the supreme father must inherently possess them in full.

The misconception that God is impersonal arises from a poor fund of knowledge. When less intelligent philosophers think of a person, they immediately picture a material body subject to birth, disease, old age, and death. Because they cannot accommodate the concept of a purely transcendental person, they enviously declare God to be a formless void. These Māyāvādīs fail to understand that God's form is sac-cid-ānanda-vigraha—eternal, full of knowledge, and full of bliss. He is prakṛteḥ param, entirely beyond this material creation, with absolutely no tinge of materiality in His person. Even the great impersonalist Śaṅkarācārya admitted in his later stages that Nārāyaṇa is a transcendental person existing beyond the cosmic manifestation.

Understanding that God is a person is not merely an academic exercise; it is the absolute foundation of real religion. Religion means to love God, and one can only have loving exchanges with a person. When Kṛṣṇa descends into the material world, He comes not as an impersonal energy, but as a person who speaks, plays the flute in Vṛndāvana, and establishes a direct, voluntary relationship with His devotees. By submissively hearing the Vedic literatures and chanting the holy name—which is non-different from the person of the Lord—one's vision is purified. Only through such unalloyed devotional service can one penetrate the mystery of transcendence and eternally associate with the Supreme Person.

• The Ultimate Realization: The Absolute Truth is realized in three phases: Brahman, Paramātmā, and ultimately Bhagavān, the Supreme Person.
• The Logic of Personality: Since all living entities are individual persons, the supreme source and father of all living entities must logically be a person as well.
• A Transcendental Body: God is a person, but not a person of this material world; His form is sac-cid-ānanda-vigraha, completely free from the material modes of nature.
• The Foundation of Religion: True religion requires loving exchanges, which are only possible if God is recognized and served as the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

• Explore the synthesized essence of this category in this Vanipedia article: God Is A Person - The Ultimate Realization of the Absolute Truth.