Brahman

• energy-divinity principle activating Vedic pantheon

94:1.4Def­i­nite henothe­is­tic de­vel­op­ments were pav­ing the way for an evolved mono­the­ism. Agni, the most an­cient de­ity, was of­ten ex­alted as the fa­ther-head of the en­tire pan­theon. The de­ity-fa­ther prin­ci­ple, some­times called Pra­jap­ati, some­times termed Brahma, was sub­merged in the the­o­logic bat­tle which the Brah­man priests later fought with the Salem teach­ers. The Brah­man was con­ceived as the en­ergy-di­vin­ity prin­ci­ple ac­ti­vat­ing the en­tire Vedic pan­theon.

• India left helpless by impersonal hypothesis of
• Vedic oversoul of all creation

94:2.4This phil­o­soph­i­cally de­bil­i­tat­ing teach­ing was soon fol­lowed by the in­ven­tion of the doc­trine of the eter­nal es­cape from self by sub­mer­gence in the uni­ver­sal rest and peace of ab­so­lute union with Brah­man, the over­soul of all cre­ation. Mor­tal de­sire and hu­man am­bi­tion were ef­fec­tu­ally rav­ished and vir­tu­ally de­stroyed. For more than two thou­sand years the bet­ter minds of In­dia have sought to es­cape from all de­sire, and thus was opened wide the door for the en­trance of those later cults and teach­ings which have vir­tu­ally shack­led the souls of many Hindu peo­ples in the chains of spir­i­tual hope­less­ness. Of all civ­i­liza­tions, the Vedic-Aryan paid the most ter­ri­ble price for its re­jec­tion of the Salem gospel.

• distant idea of all-encompassing Absolute

94:2.6These were the times of the com­pi­la­tion of the later scrip­tures of the Hindu faith, the Brah­manas and the Up­an­ishads. Hav­ing re­jected the teach­ings of per­sonal re­li­gion through the per­sonal faith ex­pe­ri­ence with the one God, and hav­ing be­come con­tam­i­nated with the flood of de­bas­ing and de­bil­i­tat­ing cults and creeds from the Dec­can, with their an­thro­po­mor­phisms and rein­car­na­tions, the Brah­manic priest­hood ex­pe­ri­enced a vi­o­lent re­ac­tion against these vi­ti­at­ing be­liefs; there was a def­i­nite ef­fort to seek and to find true re­al­ity. The Brah­mans set out to dean­thro­po­mor­phize the In­dian con­cept of de­ity, but in so do­ing they stum­bled into the griev­ous er­ror of de­per­son­al­iz­ing the con­cept of God, and they emerged, not with a lofty and spir­i­tual ideal of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, but with a dis­tant and meta­phys­i­cal idea of an all-en­com­pass­ing Ab­so­lute.

• India left helpless by impersonal hypothesis of

94:2.7In their ef­forts at self-preser­va­tion the Brah­mans had re­jected the one God of Mel­chiz­e­dek, and now they found them­selves with the hy­poth­e­sis of Brah­man, that in­def­i­nite and il­lu­sive philo­sophic self, that im­per­sonal and im­po­tent it which has left the spir­i­tual life of In­dia help­less and pros­trate from that un­for­tu­nate day to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury.

• creative energy, cosmic reaction; beyond all definition
• Infinite One, IT IS; no personality attributes

94:3.2In the con­cept of Brah­man the minds of those days truly grasped at the idea of some all-per­vad­ing Ab­so­lute, for this pos­tu­late was at one and the same time iden­ti­fied as cre­ative en­ergy and cos­mic re­ac­tion. Brah­man was con­ceived to be be­yond all def­i­ni­tion, ca­pa­ble of be­ing com­pre­hended only by the suc­ces­sive nega­tion of all fi­nite qual­i­ties. It was def­i­nitely a be­lief in an ab­so­lute, even an in­fi­nite, be­ing, but this con­cept was largely de­void of per­son­al­ity at­tri­butes and was there­fore not ex­pe­ri­en­ci­ble by in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ists.

• Brahman-Narayana is Universal Self existing static and potential throughout all eternity

94:3.3Brah­man-Narayana was con­ceived as the Ab­so­lute, the in­fi­nite IT IS, the pri­mor­dial cre­ative po­tency of the po­ten­tial cos­mos, the Uni­ver­sal Self ex­ist­ing static and po­ten­tial through­out all eter­nity. Had the philoso­phers of those days been able to make the next ad­vance in de­ity con­cep­tion, had they been able to con­ceive of the Brah­man as as­so­cia­tive and cre­ative, as a per­son­al­ity ap­proach­able by cre­ated and evolv­ing be­ings, then might such a teach­ing have be­come the most ad­vanced por­trai­ture of De­ity on Uran­tia since it would have en­com­passed the first five lev­els of to­tal de­ity func­tion and might pos­si­bly have en­vi­sioned the re­main­ing two.

94:3.4In cer­tain phases the con­cept of the One Uni­ver­sal Over­soul as the to­tal­ity of the sum­ma­tion of all crea­ture ex­is­tence led the In­dian philoso­phers very close to the truth of the Su­preme Be­ing, but this truth availed them naught be­cause they failed to evolve any rea­son­able or ra­tio­nal per­sonal ap­proach to the at­tain­ment of their the­o­retic mono­the­is­tic goal of Brah­man-Narayana.

• Infinite One, IT IS; no personality attributes

94:4.31. The Brah­man, the Ab­so­lute, the In­fi­nite One, the IT IS.