A soul that merges into Brahman is inactive. Which world is it in, and what becomes of it?

The Brahman effulgence belongs to the spiritual world, not the material one, so the soul does go there. But because it is inactive, and the soul's nature is to act, it grows restless and can fall back into the material world to become active again and rediscover its lost relationship with the Lord. A soul in the effulgence may stay forever, or it may fall. And crossing from that effulgence directly into Vaikuntha is very hard, because no personal relationship was ever built. (This is a different case from the many souls who never reached the spiritual world at all. At the time of cosmic devastation they too grow inactive, withdrawing into the body of Maha Vishnu, then re-emerging with their material desires when the next creation begins, to continue their karma.)

Does the Supersoul give advice?

It has three functions, with a fourth in the tradition. It witnesses what we do, it guides us, and it protects us, and it also permits, for nothing we do happens without the Lord's sanction. That small voice in the head that says "don't do it" is usually the Paramatma. There is a Christian story that catches the protecting part. A man reviews his life as two sets of footprints along a beach, his own and God's, except in his hardest times, when only one set appears. He asks, "Where were you when I was suffering?" God answers, "Those single footprints are mine. That is where I carried you."

Can anyone fully understand the Lord?

No, and if you could, you would not need to ask. Not even the great yogis or devotees can, because God's qualities are forever expanding, so much so that he sometimes cannot fathom his own nature. Once in Dwarka, Krishna caught his own reflection in a mirror and wondered, "Who is this astonishingly beautiful person?", bewitched by himself. The one who comes closest is Radha Rani, the hladini shakti, the Lord's own internal pleasure potency. She understands him better than anyone, yet even Krishna cannot fully understand her, or rather, her love for him. That is the very reason he descends as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Wanting to taste Radha's love from the inside, he takes on her mood and her golden complexion, in place of his usual dark form, and comes as Chaitanya. (His appearance day, Gaura Purnima, falls on the full moon that is also Holi.)

Must the analogy be the sun? Could it be something else?

The sun is only chosen because it is easy to picture. A flower works just as well: you can see the flower and also smell its fragrance spreading through the room, the fragrance standing in for the effulgence.

Where do I fit, and what lies below Bhagavan?

If you worship the supreme Lord as a person, you are already in the Bhagavan conception, the very beginning of real spirituality. Below it lie the residents of the heavenly planets, Brahma Loka and Shiva Loka, which sit at the Brahman level. The yogis who have given up home and family to meditate fit into Paramatma; their destination is the spiritual world, but often without a one-to-one bond with the Lord, so in Vaikuntha they may appear as grass, enjoying his pastimes without joining them. As for famous storytellers and reciters, it depends on each one's private realisation, which no one else can judge, though anyone who fixes only on light, ignoring the personal Lord, is likely resting in Brahman.

Why does Maya exist at all?

Only because of us. This material world was built for us, and it works like a hospital, or a prison. A prison holds those who broke society's laws, and its purpose is to reform them and return them to society. We broke God's laws, growing envious of him and wishing to take his place, so we were placed in the prison of Maya to be reformed and sent home. Maya therefore has a dual role: she keeps us here, and she tests us, to make sure we are truly ready to return to Krishna. (In Kali Yuga, by the way, our austerity in this prison is simple: fasting on Ekadashi and chanting the holy name. The Pandava or Nirjala Ekadashi around June is the greatest of them, said to equal all the year's other twenty-three Ekadashis, a relief for anyone who missed some.)

The Three Aspects of Godhead: Brahman, Paramatma and Bhagavan

People realise God in three different ways, and the difference matters. One person meditates on a formless light. Another finds the Lord within their own heart. A third worships him as a person with a face and a name. All three are real, all three are the absolute truth, yet only one of them is the complete picture. This lesson lays out those three aspects, Brahman, Paramatma, and Bhagavan, using a single old analogy: the sun.

One God, many forms

A quick anchor first. Krishna is the absolute truth, and the name Krishna stands equally for Vishnu and Ram, one Lord in different forms. Brahma sings it in the Brahma Samhita (5.1): "Krishna, known as Govinda, is the supreme Godhead. He has an eternal, blissful, spiritual body. He is the origin of all, himself without origin, the prime cause of all causes." Some within Sanatana Dharma hold instead that Vishnu is the original from whom Krishna comes. There is no need to quarrel. Whether you call Krishna supreme or Vishnu supreme, both are the supreme. One God, many forms.

What are the three realisations of God?

Picture the sun. Three things come with it, and they map exactly onto the three aspects of God.

Aspect	In the sun analogy	What it is	How complete
Brahman	the sunshine	the formless effulgence of the Lord	a partial realisation
Paramatma	the sun's surface	the Lord localised in every heart	higher, still not complete
Bhagavan	the sun-god himself (Surya)	the full personal God	the complete realisation

Brahman: the light without a face

Brahman is the effulgence that streams from the Lord, the way sunshine streams from the sun. It is part of the absolute truth, but it is incomplete, because it is only the light, with no form behind it that you can see. Krishna says so himself in the Gita (14.27): "I am the basis of the impersonal Brahman, which is immortal, imperishable, eternal, and the constitutional position of ultimate happiness." Read that carefully. The Lord's personal form is the basis of the Brahman, just as the sun is the basis of its sunshine.

Many sincere spiritualists meditate on exactly this, on light, or on om, on the brahma-jyoti that pours from the Lord. They are genuine seekers, and what they touch is real. But it is a partial understanding of God, not the whole.

Paramatma: the Lord seated in the heart

The second aspect is Paramatma, the Lord localised in the heart of every living being. Vishnu expands himself to sit beside each one of us. In this material world it is Paramatma who keeps us company, which means every body holds two souls: you, the jiva, and the Paramatma, the Supersoul, traditionally measured at about the length of a thumb. In the sun analogy, if Brahman is the sunshine, Paramatma is the surface of the sun itself.

A meditating person with two small radiant souls glowing in the region of the heart, the jiva and the Supersoul

This too is the absolute truth, and a higher realisation than Brahman, because here a person focuses on the Lord himself rather than on his light. The yogis who meditate on the Lord within reach this. Yet it is still not the complete picture, and Paramatma is a feature for this material world, not the form we engage with in the spiritual one.

Bhagavan: the complete, personal God

Bhagavan is the full realisation, the personal feature of the Lord, the sun-god Surya himself in the analogy. Everything else flows from him. When people object, "you are shrinking God down to a person by giving him a form," the answer is the opposite: his forms are not one but unlimited, millions upon billions upon trillions, and though he is one, he expands without limit. This is not our invention. It rests on three principal scriptures, the Brahma Samhita, the Srimad Bhagavatam, and the Bhagavad Gita, with the Bhagavatam, the highest Purana and the natural commentary on the Vedas, the most authoritative of all.

Why is merging with God the wrong goal?

Here is where many paths go astray. Those who fix on Brahman usually want to merge with God, to become one with him, to become God. About 1,200 years ago Shankaracharya taught exactly this: that through meditation the soul can dissolve into the Lord's effulgence and become one with him.

But becoming one with God is not the highest realisation. There is a ladder, and Brahman is its lowest rung. Paramatma stands above Brahman, and Bhagavan above both. We do not want to become God, because we never can. God is always God, and we are always the jiva. Merging means dissolving into the effulgence and losing your individuality. It is not a void, it is part of the absolute truth, but there the soul is inactive, doing nothing. And that is not who we are. The soul is active by nature, always wanting to act, and when it is pure it wants to serve God, not to become him.

For this reason, meditating on light to merge with the Lord is called the last snare of Maya: the subtle wish to be God ourselves. And because the soul cannot stay inactive forever, a soul resting in that effulgence may simply fall back into the material world to be active again.

How does the one Lord expand?

The personal Bhagavan unfolds through a chain of forms.

Notice the two fourfold steps in that chain. Balaram expands into a first quadruple form, the chatur-vyuha of Vasudeva, Sankarshan, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha, and from Narayana a second quadruple expansion unfolds for the material creation. From its Sankarshan come the three Vishnus who oversee the cosmos, the universes streaming from the very pores of Maha Vishnu's skin. All of this is the Bhagavan conception. So one devotee may be drawn to Krishna, another to Balaram, another to Ramachandra, Vamanadev, or Nrisingha. Every one of these is part of the Bhagavan realisation, and a person devoted to a form other than Krishna falls short of nothing. (The avatars themselves come in many classes, the Lila, Purusha, Guna, Saktyavesa, Manvantara, and Yuga avatars, all rising from Sri Krishna, a subject for a later lesson.)

What relationships can you have with each aspect?

This is the deepest reason Bhagavan stands highest. With a person you can have a relationship, and through Bhagavan you can love and serve the Lord in one of five ways (rasas): as a neutral witness, like grass or a tree; as a friend; as a servant; as a parent; or as a lover. With Brahman, the bare effulgence, there is no relationship at all, which is why the formless absolute is so hard to relate to. With Paramatma the bond stays very formal. Only with Bhagavan does the relationship turn sweet.

Lord Krishna gazing in wonder at his own reflection in a mirror in the palace of Dwarka

Key terms from this lesson

Term	Meaning
Brahman	The impersonal, formless effulgence of the Lord; the sunshine
Paramatma	The Supersoul, the Lord localised in every heart; the sun's surface
Bhagavan	The complete, personal God; the sun-god himself
Brahma-jyoti	The bodily effulgence of the Lord that is the Brahman
Jiva	The individual soul, distinct from the Supersoul beside it
Hladini shakti	The Lord's internal pleasure potency, embodied as Radha Rani
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu	Krishna in golden form, come to taste Radha's love
Last snare of Maya	The subtle wish to become God by merging into Brahman
Rasa	A relationship of love with Bhagavan: neutral, friend, servant, parent, lover

What to carry forward

God is realised three ways: Brahman (light), Paramatma (the Lord in the heart), Bhagavan (the full person).
The sun analogy: sunshine, the sun's surface, and the sun-god himself.
Brahman and Paramatma are real but partial; Bhagavan is the complete picture.
Do not aim to merge and become God. The soul is meant to serve, not dissolve.
The Supersoul witnesses, guides, protects, and sanctions all you do, and carries you in your hardest hours.
No one fully understands the Lord, not even himself; Radha comes closest.
Only with the personal Bhagavan can love ripen into a sweet relationship.

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