Bhagavagd Gita - Session 29- Track 2910

Buddha said that the world being what it is, it cannot be the creation of God. Therefore to say ‘God, the creator of this world, is a supreme Being’, He says ‘I don’t accept; I only see that the world is nothing but what it is: partly good, partly evil, full of suffering, pain, such cannot be the creation…if there is a God and if he is the creator, such cannot be the creation. So, he rejected totally this idea. And he said the whole world is nothing but Karma; there is only law of Karma and which is not a supreme creator, this criticism cannot be applied to Karma. Karma is simply a law which gives results of action according to the nature of actions and that is all. But Buddha could not answer was this question: if this is the nature of the world, how can you come out of it? And Buddha said: you can come out of it. If this is the very nature of the world, Karma is the only thing and nothing else, then, how can you come out of it? And yet Buddha said: you can come out of it that means there is something else also. Apart from Karma there must be something else also.

Comment: Because coming out of it, is also a Karma.

No, when you come out of Karma, Karma ceases, there is no further Karma: Nirvana is extinction of Karma. If there is extinction of Karma, then there is something which is no-Karma, then how does Karma come out, at all? This mystery… actually Buddha preferred not to answer this question. In fact Buddha even said: do not take down what I am saying because Buddha was opposed… He said the moment you write down my answers, people will take them to be dogmas and people will start saying ‘Buddha said this and Buddha said that’, therefore He said ‘I am making no metaphysical statements, I don’t make ultimate statements: metaphysical statement means ‘ultimate statement’.

These two verses that we read just now are called metaphysical statements, statements which are ultimate in regard to the ultimate Reality: that is metaphysical statement. So, Buddha said ‘I am not a metaphysician, I am not making any metaphysical statement, I am only saying: ‘you are suffering, this suffering is because of Karma, but I tell you, you can come out of Karma. Now, whether it gives you any metaphysical statement out of it or not, that is up to you, but I can only, like a doctor, I can only tell you that you can come out of suffering’. That ends Buddhistic teaching. It does not claim to be metaphysical, therefore, you cannot even go to Him and criticise Him, because it is not a metaphysical statement.

But in any case as far as ‘Deism’ is concerned, now you can see very clearly that there are some statements in Deism which seem to be very, very appropriate because it says ‘God is God’, incomparable; God is the creator, marvellous, supreme, superior, and you can see even in these statements of Sri Krishna something of this: mayā tatam-idaṁ, ‘all this, is created by Me’; then, ‘they are in Me but I am not in them, I am superior to them; I am not in them, I am superior’; even ‘they are not in Me, because how they can be in Me?’ Can men be in God? God is God: so, it is absolutely ‘Deistic’ you might say. To say that ‘all this, is from Me’ or ‘created by Me’. Second statement that ‘they are in Me but I am not in them’; and a further statement even ‘they are not in Me’. These statements seem to very much satisfy the ‘Deistic’ concept of God.

But as I told you, the moment you take this deistic concept to show the complete gulf between men and God, complete gulf between world and God, you have difficulties.

So, now you have ‘Pantheistic’ concept: there are pantheists which reject the idea of Deism. According to Pantheism, God is not above the world. According to Deism god is above the world, above man. According to Pantheism, God is not above the world: God is ‘the totality of the world’. The whole world is one unity; this totality of unity is God. The difference between man and God is only this: that whereas God is totality of all men and all things in the world, man is only one portion of it, one part of it, but he is a part of God. In Deism man is not a part of God: man is man, God is God. Whereas here man is a part of God, everything in the world is a part of God and the totality is God: all is God, (‘pan’ means ‘all’; ‘theos’ means ‘God’). All is god is Pantheism.