Nature of Divine Revelation and Understanding of
God
God reveals Himself to
the entire humanity. “One is the community of all peoples, one their origin,
for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth (cf. Acts
17:26). One also is their final goal, God. His Providence, his manifestations of goodness, his saving design
extend to all men…” (Nostra Aetate 1). Hinduism too has received
God’s revelation in a very unique way. Through the signs like people, nature,
events and personal experiences God reveals His divine will to the humankind.
There can be various media of divine revelation such as word, inspiration,
natural forces, scripture and signs of the time. There is a close connection
between the divine revelation and the understanding of God in Hinduism.
During the Vedic period, idea of god was in the worship
of natural forces i.e. God as consciousness arising from the experience of
natural forces, out of curiosity and sense of wonder, the people began to
question the natural powers and they discovered the presence and actions of the
divine. So they personified the powers of nature. Hence, we have some important
god-heads of Hinduism; Indra, Varuna, Agni, Soma, Surya, Rudra and Vishnu.
Here we see a polytheistic approach to the divine.
Monotheistic and monistic tendency also prevailed. Monotheism is a
tendency of identifying one god with the other gods because they have similar
features and characteristics. In monistic tendency we treat that all gods are
one.
In the Upanishads, we see that God is considered as Brahman i.e.
the ultimate reality. It is by which the world originates and is destroyed. He
is the cause of the origin, sustenance and destruction. He is the efficient,
material and instrumental cause. “As a spider sends forth and draws in (its
thread), as herbs grow on the earth, as the hair (grows) on the head and the
body of a living person, so from the Imperishable arises here the Universe” (Mundaka
Up. 7). Only the Brahman is real and all else is maya.
The nature of Brahman is sat (fullness of
existence), chit (pure consciousness) and aananth (pure
bliss). The other term of the ultimate reality is Atman which
is the inner self of man. It only shows that the Ultimate Reality is the
eternal source of the universe including nature as well as man which means it
is the identification of the outer reality with the inner.
There are also other schools of thought qualifying God in various ways.
In Vishistadveitha, the Brahman is attributed with
name and form (naama- rupa); saguna Brahman.
The world is the gross body of God. The God within me is called Antharyamin.
However in the nirguna Brahman, we cannot give adequate
qualifications to God.
Hence, the God in Hinduism has the following fundamental
characteristics; a) God is transcendent; the creative, sustaining and
destroying element b) God as immanent as Paramathman and Antharyamin; the
Supreme Self and inner ruler c) God as Isvara; manifested as Avatharas and
who become the supreme God for various sects and the istadevatha of
the individual faithful. It is possible because the Ultimate Truth, and thus
God, can manifest (be revealed) in multiple ways. (Ekam Sat Vipraha: Bahuda
Vadanthi)
