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Sankara's distinction between levels of reality and his acceptance of the full functionality of the lower Brahman and the practical world enables him to regard all of the religious structures necessary for bhakti with utter seriousness and profound respect. While it is doubtful whether his analysis is finally adequate from the devotionalists' point of view, it is important to consider his presentation of theism carefully and appreciate its depth. It was not without reason that even a Christian theologian such as Otto was able to recognize this great Advaitin's relationship to the theistic worldview of the "17 Gita, the epics, and the puranas as an "inner one. Indeed, as P. Hacker has recently shown, it is almost certain that Sankara and his early followers came from strong Vaisnava backgrounds. 18 Despite his belief that both jiva and Isvara are ultimately identical in the supreme Brahman, Sankara is able to accept the difference between them on the phenomenal plane. "That the jiva has qualities opposite to that of isvara," he says, "is obvious."19 The jiva is Brahman in

62 association with the antahkarana, the "inner organ - " consisting of mind, ego, and understanding. As such, the jIva is the victim of avidya, is limited in all respects, and undergoes continual rebirth in the cycles of samsara. The Lord, however, is subject to none of these defects: There is a distinction between the Supreme Lord and the embodied [jtva]. One is the doer, the enjoyer, a bearer of merit and demerit, and subject to joy and sorrow. The other is the opposite of this and has qualities such as sinlessness and so on. 20 It is true [that isvara] dwells in the body, but he does not dwell only in the body, because we hear of his all-pervasiveness in scriptures such as "greater than the earth, greater than the heavens" [Chandogya Upanishad 3.14.3] and "all-pervasive and eternal like the ether." But the jiva dwells only in the body. 21 Isvara, like the jiva, is Brahman limited by a conditioning adjunct (upadhi). But His supremacy derives from the special nature of this adjunct, with which the likeness between the two ends. Isvara is Brahman associated, not with a limited mind and body, but with maya, the universal creative matrix, the divine energy (sakti) that projects the entire cosmos. Unlike the jiva, the Lord is not taken in by the delusive, concealing power of maya. On the contrary, the true nature of reality, including especially his identity with the highest Brahman, is eternally transparent to him. 22 While the jIva is controlled by maya, Isvara is the mayavin, the omnipotent, omniscient controller of maya. 23 The Lord has the power of manifesting, sustaining, and destroying the world. He is

63 thus the ruler of the universe and all in it. According to Sankara: "The Highest Lord arranged at the beginning of the present kalpa [cycle of the universe] the entire world with sun and moon, and so on, just as it had been arranged in the preceding kalpa."24 Moreover, "although the creation of this world appears to us a weighty and difficult undertaking, it is mere play to the Lord, whose power is unlimited."25 The jiva may gain certain super-normal yogic powers (siddhis) in the state of liberation, but it can never gain such universal power, which belongs only to God.26 Though the jivas may ultimately be "one with His [the Lord's] own Self," Samkara makes it clear that "He stands in the realm of the phenomenal in the relation of a ruler to the so-called jIvas."27 Indeed, the jiva is totally dependent upon the Lord's grace for both the experience of samsara and the knowledge that effects moksa. Samkara writes: For the soul which in the state of Nescience is blinded by the darkness of ignorance and hence unable to distinguish itself from the complex of effects and instruments, the samsara-state in which it appears as agent and enjoyer is brought about through the permission of the Lord who is the highest Self, the superintendent of all actions, the witness residing in all beings, the cause of all intelligence; and we must therefore assume that final release also is effected through knowledge caused by the grace of the Lord. 28 Isvara is the "inner controller" (antaryamin) of the jiva, causing it to act in accordance with its past deeds:

64 The Lord is a causal agent in all activity. For scripture says, 'He makes him whom he wishes to lead up from these worlds do a good deed; and the same makes him whom he wishes to lead down from these worlds, do a bad deed' (KauU. 3.8); and again, 'He who dwelling within the self pulls the self from within' [Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3.7.2-23].29 Although, like the Lord, the jiva is without beginning, it does have an end, attained when its individuality dissolves in the state of moksa. Isvara, however, is eternal. The cycles of creation go on forever, and so does the Lord who rules over them. Like time and the process of change, he is without beginning and without end.30 In Samkara's comments on Brahmasutras 1.1.5, we read: If, as the adherents of the Yoga-sastra assume, the Yogins have a perceptive knowledge of the past and the future through the favor of the Lord; in what terms shall we have to speak of the eternal cognition of the ever pure Lord himself, whose objects are the creation, subsistence, and dissolution of the world 131 Isvara may vanish for the individual who attains final liberation, but never for the world as a whole. Sankara advances several proofs for the existence of God of the sort that would be entirely acceptable in theistic circles, and he deals extensively with the problem of theodicity. 32 He also explicitly accepts that central element of Hindu devotional religion, the doctrine of periodic divine incarnation (avatara) on earth. "The "O highest Lord, he declares, "may, when he pleases, assume a bodily shape formed of maya, in order to gratify thereby his devout worshippers."33 He supports this statement by a

65 reference to a theistically oriented smrti. In his introduction to his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, Samkara provides, in addition to a classic statement of his conception of Isvara, a revealing explanation of the mystery of the avatara: The Blessed Lord is always possessed of knowledge, majesty, power, strength, might, and radiant energy. Controlling his own maya, the primal cause consisting of the three material qualities that belongs to him as Visnu, he appears, to work the welfare of the world, as if possessed of a body, as if born, though in reality he is unborn, imperishable, the Lord of all beings, in 34掳 nature eternally pure, free, and liberated. While rejecting, at Brahmasutras 2.2.42, certain doctrines on the origination of the soul held by teachers of the nonorthodox Bhagavata school, Samkara at the same time makes clear that he is sympathetic with much of their theology, including the idea that the Godhead assumes various manifest forms, and suggests further that he does not disapprove of their devotional spirituality: We do not controvert the doctrine that Narayana, who is known to be higher than the Unevolved, who is the Supreme Self and the Self of All, has multiplied himself through himself into single forms. . . Nor do we raise any objection if it is intended to worship the Bhagavan with unceasing concentration of mind by approaching him [in his temple] or by other means. 35 In a similar vein, Sankara writes at Brahmasutras 1.2.7: 鈥� 鈥� It is taught that God is perceptible, i.e. visible, in the lotus of the heart, just as Hari is in the salagrama stone. In this, it is a cognition of the Inner Sense [buddhivijnana] which apprehends him. God, though omnipresent, graciously allows himself to be reverently meditated upon there. 36

鈽� i 66 However inadequate his understanding may be from the devotionalists' point of view, it is clear that samkara accepts at least the provisional validity of personalized forms of God and devotional worship. Note that in the last quote but one Samkara is speaking of Narayana, a sectarian deity, as the equivalent of the "highest Self." While this may seem puzzling at first, an apparent transgression of the distinction between the higher and lower Brahman, usages like this are common in his writings. His tendency to employ such designations of the transpersonal Absolute as parabrahman, atman, and paramatman interchangeably with Isvara, paramesvara, and bhagavat, which are titles of the personal God, and even Narayana and Visnu, which are personal names derived from mythology, is one that has been well-documented. 37 This practice, which is continued by the great commentator's followers, should not, however, be a cause of perplexity. Isvara in Advaita is the highest conception of the Absolute accessible to the limitations of human thought and discourse. Hence, practically speaking, the Lord is the ultimate for all who remain in the grip of phenomenality. Once having made the distinction between para and apara, Brahman and Isvara, Samkara and his followers feel no need to dwell upon it. The Lord, we have seen, is nothing less than the supreme Reality itself in its aspect of relatedness

67 to the phenomenal world; as such, Isvara truly is Brahman. There is consequently no harm in speaking of him as the ultimate while one is discoursing within the limitations of phenomenality, where one is necessarily confined by the very act of speaking. Any attempt to maintain a constant and rigorous distinction between the paramarthika and vyavaharika standpoints in this respect would make the discussion unbearably cumbersome. Furthermore, by virtue of overemphasis, it would imply a devaluation of the personal God that is not intended. The foregoing exposition should be sufficient to establish that, despite the charge of "impersonalism" frequently leveled against Samkara, the concept of Isvara and the latter's distinction from the individual soul is richly articulated in his thought. 38 The Lord retains for him the full complement of power and grace attributed to God by more conventional thinkers, and the jiva as such its full degree of dependence.