Jiva

MIND, MATTER AND GOD : JIVA, JADA AND ISVARA
M.M.NINAN
Being and of every perfection, without origin and without end. All creatures receive all
that they are and have from him; but he alone is his very being, and he is of himself
everything that he is.
This Brahman can then transform and emanate and create. The Saguna Brahman has
to be a transform of Nirguna Brahman. This is Iswara. (Iso Paran = Jesus the Lord)
If God alone existed and exists, we need to explain the existence of good and evil
which can only be made with an additional assumption of freewill being which is created
by God whereby God relinquish some of his Sovereignity. We also need to explain the
inhomogenius universe with all its variety of animate and inanimate world and the
consciousness with all levels of hierarchy.
Buddhism does not have the concept of a Sovereign transcendant God in Buddha’s
original rational science. Buddhas are beings who have attained a higher level of
existence in the hierarchy of beings. Thus they they will speak of the compassion of the
Buddha. Just as a rich man can help a poor man with his richness, Buddhas can help
the other beings. This is a mental state and not anything spiritual. There are indeed
many dimensions of existence and beings in those dimensions. However all these
existence are under the laws of the dimension in which they exist. None transcends the
existing sphere.
There are two forms of monism that deny any transcendant consciousness. These are
Atheism and Pantheism. In both these forms the consciousness is included in the
cosmic entities and thus form part of the cosmos.God is immanent in the Universe and
does not transcend it. Once formed part of the cosmos, they themselves are under the
laws that govern the cosmos which cannot be violated. This is what we mean by saying
there are no transcendant being outside or beyond the reality of cosmos.
In fact before the Advaita of Sankara was formulated under the influence of semitic
religions, Vedic religion was indeed Pantheistic. Thus Early portions of Rig Veda written
before the Christian Era has no concept of a deity which is transcendant to the cosmos.
There is no Supreme being. There are hierarchies of gods. But not one god beyond
158