now this slaps

there needs to be a derogatory word for people who believe this crap about God having an essential form and thus they obsess over Gods body. God transcends form and all forms are His. and "see with His ears, hear with His eyes" is just fluff. God is all-perceiving with or without taking a body.

incorrect, and i'm not just talking about how He claims Brahma is higher than Shiva here. anyway, the only being which is VASTLY higher than all other beings is the Supreme Lord. but its convenient for a brahma sampradaya guy to say this.

also, this is what i mean when i say the account of the BP *reads* as being highly adulterated. this is like the puranic example of "and then the whole bus clapped" making an account immediately dubious of embellishment.

here's a good example. Him being astonished by the working of His own energy is no balm for this flaw in the text. it is remniscent of "taking refuge in yogamaya's powers", but of course, Brahman under the influence of maya (or yogamaya) is called a jiva.

erm actually, evil demons have their powers by birth or by sorcery or by horrible austerities (the latter only grants boons that are curses), not by yogic achievement. if they had success in yoga, they would quickly no longer be evil.

@Hyperhidrosis hmmm yes. clearly a jew in disguise. very sneaky.

honestly, fuck this guy. you aren't going to win anyone to krishna consciousness by being an asshole.

this book just gets more and more awful

hmmmmm

@Mr_NutterButter

he's big on saying "God never changes so we can't become God", but that's not the purport of true monists. we simply believe that everything is God aka all is pure consciousness, including us, and temporary conditioned existence in samsara is due to maya.

take that mimamsakan

man i forgot that the bhagavata purana is written like this

this author is so insufferable

what a silly thing to call a high blunder! he is overplaying his hand here regarding sankara. i haven't read enough sankara but yes sankara would have believed in an unmanifest material creation that precedes manifest material creation. this is just pradhana, the essential undifferentiated root of prakriti which is co-eternal with purusha (purusha and prakriti are one, but lets be a dualist for a bit. samkhya 101). and if he said krishna transcends the unmanifest (sankara believed that nirguna brahman, attributeless and non-dual, is the ultimate true form of Brahman but he did certainly believe in a personal God/Ishvara and wrote quite stirring hymns and stotrams to Vishnu, Shiva and Devi. he just viewed a personal God as God viewed through the influence of maya, hence the term "mayavada". i don't believe this, i don't believe God is ultimately impersonal, i believe He is both impersonal and personal and transcends the duality of both.) sankaras just stating the obvious here. imo Krishna is God, He is Lord of and transcends pradhana which still lies as a potency "within Him" when the universe ceases to exist. just because sankara viewed Ishvara (a personal God with qualities and with a role of creating, maintaining, and destroying the universe) as a product of mayas illusion upon the jiva doesn't mean he should have necessarily viewed the root of material nature (also a product of maya, but then everything except Para Brahman is seen as maya in advaita vedanta) as on par with Ishvara. in other, somewhat reductive words, krishnas form is made of the most good "matter", but his being transcends it, being Para Brahman (as seen through the lens of maya). to explain further, sankara believed that Krishna and other avataras have bodies made of sattva guna, the view criticized by the author. this is in line with his belief that Ishvara is an illusory view of nirguna brahman conditioned by sattva guna.

i honestly don't see why viewing Gods being as transcendent and his form when he descends as material is so offensive. in guna theory, Gods form is still very special, because all matter is either a combination of gunas or in the case of the flesh human body, mostly composed of tamas guna with some rajas and sattva. only akasha (ether/space/sky, often compared to Brahman, i can explain why if youre curious) is mostly sattvic, and Gods form is said to be entirely sattvic, despite it being physical and tangible (when He wants it to be). so clearly, Gods form is special! why the outrage???

this is so silly. "God LITERALLY is a cowherd boy dark like a beautiful monsoon cloud with a peacock feather on his head". God has no "true form!" He/She takes many forms, whether created by Himself to educate humanity about His nature or in forms approved by Him that are dear to His worshippers.

i find this view of final beatitude to be incoherent. "being fit for liberation means realizing identity with Brahman" (strange for a madhvavada, because madhva said only vishnu is Brahman). this is true. however, he goes on to say that after identity with Brahman is realized, through devotional service (bhakti/seva), one attains eternal residence in vaikuntha/goloka, where one merely "associates" with God, ie is separate from Him. so are we Brahman, or separate from Brahman? also, note how he says "they don't fall down" and also "if they fall down".