• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Brahman's Name

Firemorphic

Activist Membrane
I am myself a panentheist and I don't separate God from the universe (and for clarity, I believe God extends beyond the universe, timelessly and infinitely, putting the 'en' in 'panENtheism'). Here is some Gurbani that describes my beliefs. Does this fit your "monotheism/panentheism" overarching worldview category?

Essentially that is exactly what I believe, yes. I think the way of thinking about it, is that "God" is eXoterically distinct but eSoterically non-separate. This relates to the universe emanating out of "God".

Whatever name we give to The Ultimate Reality ("God" or not), I believe this to be the case but still don't see any large difference between Monotheism and PanENtheism :)

In the one and in the many, He is pervading and permeating; wherever I look, there He is.
The marvelous image of Maya is so fascinating; how few understand this. ||1||
God is everything, God is everything. Without God, there is nothing at all.
As one thread holds hundreds and thousands of beads, He is woven into His creation. ||1||Pause||
The waves of the water, the foam and bubbles, are not distinct from the water.
This manifested world is the playful game of the Supreme Lord God; reflecting upon it, we find that it is not different from Him. ||2||
False doubts and dream objects - man believes them to be true.
The Guru has instructed me to try to do good deeds, and my awakened mind has accepted this. ||3||
Says Naam Dayv, see the Creation of the Lord, and reflect upon it in your heart.
In each and every heart, and deep within the very nucleus of all, is the One Lord. ||4||1||
(SGGSJ ang 485)

Beautiful excerpt there.
 

Treks

Well-Known Member
vanity is to stroke one's ego. in other words if i claim to be the one and only brahman and claim you're not, then i take the name in vain.

self-aggrandizing as it were

Ooohh, I see. You weren't using the expression "take the Lord's name in vain" with the usual meaning. Well, if you go around calling yourself God I think you might end up in the funny farm!
 

The Anointed

Well-Known Member
The root to the word ‘Brahman’ originally meant ‘SPEECH,’ much the same as ‘The Logos’ means ‘WORD.”

Shabda Brahman From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ------ Shabda Brahman or Sabda-brahman or Nada brahmin means transcendental sound-----Shabda or sabda stands for word manifested by sound ('verbal') and such a word has innate power to convey a particular sense or meaning (Artha). According to the Nyaya and the Vaisheshika schools, Shabda means verbal testimony; to the Sanskrit grammarians, Yaska, Panini and Katyayana it meant a unit of language or speech or vac.

The term, “LOGOS” pertains to the very plan from the outset. [The creation of a universal body in which a Supreme mind or personality of Godhead to that body, develops.] In Sanskrit the similar meaning is given in the use of the word 'vach.' Vach means word. But in Sanskrit teachings of the Sanatana Dharma, vach has many levels. Including where the word is first considered as being in the mind as a thought, not as the spoken word or speech.

IMO Brahman and The Logos are one and the same being, the eternal energy, which has neither beginning or end and which has become this seemingly material universe and has developed a mind that is the compilation of all the information gathered by all the diverse life-forms that it [The Eternal Energy] or God has become. The collective consciousness of all that it has become.

In fact, it has now been revealed that matter is no more than an illusion. Quantum physicists discovered that so called physical atoms are made up of vortices of energy that are constantly spinning and vibrating, each one radiating its own unique energy signature.

If you observed the composition of an atom with a microscope you would see a small, invisible tornado-like vortex, with a number of infinitely small energy vortices called quarks and photons. These are what make up the structure of the atom. As you focused in closer and closer on the structure of the atom, you would see nothing, you would observe a physical void. The atom has no physical structure, we have no physical structure, physical things really don’t have any physical structure! Atoms are made out of invisible energy, not tangible matter.

Brahman and Logos are the essential divine reality of the universe: the eternal spirit from which all being originates and to which all must return.

Brahman and Logos are no respecters of man, they send their blessings on the righteous and the wicked alike, and send their disasters on the wicked and the righteous alike.

It is the Most High to develop within each successive generation of the universe, who enters into Brahman/Logos, as the Supreme Personality of Godhead to that particular universal body, with each body occupying it own particular position in Space-Time, and it is the Most High in the creation who is our God and warns, those who are prepared to listen, of any approaching disaster.

Our ancient ancestors expressed the belief that our scientists of today are just beginning to come to terms with, and that is, that following each “Big Bang” there comes the “Big Crunch,” when this universe is condensed once again, into the supposedly infinitely dense, infinitely hot, infinitesimally small singularity from which it originated.

“Universe after universe is like an interminable succession of wheels forever coming into view, forever rolling onwards, disappearing and reappearing; forever passing from being to non-being, and again from non-being to being. In short, the constant revolving of the wheel of life in one eternal cycle, according to fixed and immutable laws, is perhaps after all, the sum and substance of the philosophy of Buddhism. And this eternal wheel has so to speak, six spokes representing six forms of existence.” ---- Mon. Williams, Buddhism, pp. 229, 122.

The days and nights of Brahma are called Manvantara, or the cycle of manifestation, ‘The Great Day,’ which is a period of universal activity, that is preceded, and also followed by ‘Pralaya,’ a dark period, which to our finite minds would seem as an eternity, or but a moment in time.

‘Manvantara,’ is a creative day as seen in the six days of creation in Genesis, ‘Pralaya,’ is the evening that proceeds the next creative day. The six periods of Creation and the seventh day of rest in which we now exist are referred to in the book of Genesis as the “GENERATIONS OF THE UNIVERSE.”

The English word “Generation,” is translated from the Hebrew “toledoth” which is used in the Old Testament in every instance as ‘births,’ or ‘descendants,’ such as “These are the generations of Adam,” or “these are the generations of Abraham, and Genesis 2: 4; These are the generations of the Universe or the heavens and earth, etc. And the ‘Great Day’ in which the seven generations of the universe are eternally repeated, is the eternal cosmic period, or the eighth eternal day in which those who attain to perfection are allowed to enter, where they shall be surrounded by great light and they shall experience eternal peace, while those who do not attain to perfection are cast back into the refining fires of the seven physical cycles of endless rebirths that perpetually revolve within the eighth eternal cosmic cycle.

Enoch the righteous, wrote that God created an eighth day also, so that it should be the first after his works, and it is a day eternal with neither hours, days, weeks, months or years, for all time is stuck together in one eon, etc, etc, and all who enter into the generation of the Light beings, are able to visit all those worlds that still exist in Space-Time, but not in our time.

A series of worlds following one upon the other-- each world rising a step higher than the previous world, so that every later world brings to ripeness the seeds that were imbedded in the former, and itself then prepares the seed for the universe that will follow it. This is the true resurrection in which all from the previous cycle of universal activity, who still have the judgmental war raging within them, are born again into the endless cycles of physical manifestation, or rebirths.

“Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual” (1) – Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University (quote taken from “the mental universe)

A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the OBSERVER CREATES THE REALITY. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the UNIVERSE IS "MENTAL CONSTRUCTION" .

Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. (R. C. Henry, “The Mental Universe”; Nature 436:29, 2005)
 
Last edited:

ajay0

Well-Known Member
Discussion of Nirguna Brahman is hampered by the fact that it has no qualities to latch on to, nothing can really be said about it but "not this!" As soon as you ascribe any qualities to it, like love, consciousness or even the popular "sat-chit-ananda" you've ascribed it gunas.

Nirguna Brahman or impersonal Spirit is indeed distinct from Saguna Brahman or personal God.

But both are consciousness, all the same, and pure consciousness is considered to be pure love.

Prajñānam brahma - Brahman is pure consciousness (Aitareya Upanishad 3.3 of the Rig Veda)

Sat-Chit-Ananda as in Truth-Being-Bliss are equally the nature of Nirguna Brahman too.


Where Nirguna Brahman is different from Saguna Brahman is in that Nirguna Brahman is formless and omnipresent encompassing creator and creation while Saguna Brahman is considered distinct from creation, nature and souls.

There is a difference and distinct identity for both Saguna Brahman and the Jivatman/soul, to denote a difference between the creator and creation.
 

The Anointed

Well-Known Member
The creator is in itself the Creation, for all things are made through him, by him, and for him.

What can be known about him is plain to all, for he has made it plain in the creation, which is the physical manifestation of himself, who is all, and who is one..
 

Fool

ALL in all
Premium Member
The creator is in itself the Creation, for all things are made through him, by him, and for him.

What can be known about him is plain to all, for he has made it plain in the creation, which is the physical manifestation of himself, who is all, and who is one..


saguna brahman is the lord, or christ in all.

nirguna brahman is the absolute which negates all contrasts, there is nothing to compare it to.
 

ajay0

Well-Known Member
But even to call it nirguna is to give it a quality.

Nirguna means 'no qualities or distinction' . Nirguna Brahman is totally impersonal as opposed to Saguna Brahman which has personal attributes like will and form.

It is to Saguna Brahman that prayers are made for auspiciousness or grace. Nirguna Brahman does no confer grace due to its impersonal nature.
 
Top