Dialectical Spiritualism: Benedict Spinoza, Part 3

BY: SUN STAFF - 9.2 2017

Conversations wtih HDG A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, excerpted from  Dialectical Spiritualism: A Vedic View of Western Philosophy.

V – RATIONALISM 
Benedict Spinoza (1632 - 1677)

Hayagriva dasa: Spinoza's God is basically not personal. His love for God is more intellectual or philosophical than religious. He takes the typical impersonalist stand in his belief in the identity of the individual soul with God. This is not to say that he believed that the individual soul is infinite but that it is not distinct from God. He writes: "Thus that love of the soul is a part of the infinite love with which God loves Himself." He sees the soul's intellectual love of God, and God's love for the individual soul, to be one and the same.

Srila Prabhupada: There are five kinds of love: santa, dasya, sakhya, vatsalya, and madhurya. In the beginning, there is love in awe and adoration (santa), and one thinks, "Oh, God is so great. God is everything." When the soul understands God's unlimited potencies, the soul adores Him, and that adoration is also love. When our love advances, we serve God as a servant serves his master (dasya). As the service becomes more intimate, friendship is established, and a reciprocal relationship of service is developed. This is the kind of service one friend renders to another. As this develops, the love turns into paternal love (vatsalya), and this expands into conjugal love (madhurya). Thus there are different stages of love of God, and Spinoza only touches the beginning one: adoration and appreciation of God's powerful expansions. That is commendable, but when this love expands, it reaches the platforms of dasya, sakhya, vatsalya, and madhurya-rasa.

Hayagriva dasa: It appears that Spinoza believes in the Paramatma present within all beings but not in the jlva accompanying the Paramatma. Is this not a typical impersonalist position?

Srila Prabhupada: This means that he does not know what is love. If God loves the living entity, He must be both well-wisher and friend. Because God expands Himself unlimitedly, He lives in the living entity. This is the conclusion of Bhagavad-gita:

Isvarah sarva-bhutanam 
hrd-dese rjuna tisthati

"The Supreme Lord is situated in everyone's heart, 0 Arjuna." (Bg. 18.61) The Upanisads also give the example of two birds sitting on a tree. One bird is eating the fruit of that tree, and the other is simply witnessing. The bird that witnesses is God, the Paramatma. Thus God, the Paramatma, and the individual soul, the jlvatma, live together on the same tree of the body. This is confirmed throughout the Vedic literature.

sarvasya caham hrdi sannivistho 
mattah smrtir jnanam apohanam ca

"I am seated in everyone's heart, and from Me come remembrance, knowledge, and forgetfulness." (Bg. 15.15) God reminds the living entity that unless Brahman is present, he cannot remember anything. The Paramatma is always there with the jlvatma.

Hayagriva dasa: Spinoza does not believe that God has a body because "by body we understand a certain quantity possessing length, breadth, and depth, limited by some fixed form; and that to attribute these to God, a being absolutely infinite, is the greatest absurdity."

Srila Prabhupada: God has a body, but it is not like this material body, which is limited. Spinoza's view comes from imperfect knowledge of God's spiritual qualities. It is confirmed in Vedic literatures that God has a body: sac-cid-ananda-vigraha. Vigraha means "body" or "form." God's form is eternal, and He is all-aware. Sac-cit. He is also always blissful. The material body is neither eternal nor blissful, nor all-aware, and therefore it is different from God's body, which possesses different qualities and is all spiritual.

Hayagriva dasa: Concerning the individual material body, Spinoza asserts that each soul coincides with its body. That is, the soul acquires the body that befits it. However, the soul can progress beyond bodies to come to know spiritual truths by turning toward God rather than the material world, or, as Spinoza would put it, God's "extensions."

Srila Prabhupada: The extension or expansion is also God, but at the same time, God is not personally present in the extension. The extension or expansion comes from the person. We might compare the expansions to the government and the person to the governor. The government is under the control of the governor, just as the impersonal expansion of God is under the control of the Supreme Person, Krsna. Pantheism says that because everything is God, God Himself has no individual personal existence. To say that everything is God and that God is no more than everything is a material conception. In the material world, if you tear a piece of paper into pieces and throw the pieces away, the original paper is lost. The spiritual conception is different. God may expand Himself unlimitedly through His extensions, but He still remains complete in His own person.

Hayagriva dasa: Spinoza believed that as long as man is composed of body and soul, he will be under the mode of passion, and as long as the soul is confined to the body, the living entity will necessarily be attached to the physical world.

Srila Prabhupada: Yes, we call this maya, forgetfulness. The real aim of life, however, is to learn how to distinguish the soul from the material body so that when they separate, we may remain in our original, spiritual form. As long as we are attached to the material body, we have to continue to transmigrate from one body to another. If we give up our attachment to the material body, we are liberated from transmigration, and this is called mukti. It is possible to remain in our spiritual body by always thinking of God. That is the real meaning of meditation. This is confirmed by Sri Krsna in Bhagavad-gita:

manmana bhava mad-bhakto 
mad-yaji mam namaskuru 
mam evaisyasi satyam te 
pratijane priyo'si me

"Always think of Me and become My devotee. Worship Me and offer your homage unto Me. Thus you will come to Me without fail. I promise you this because you are My very dear friend." (Bg. 18.65)

Hayagriva dasa: Spinoza considered good and evil to relate only to man. They have no basis in God, who is beyond both.

Srila Prabhupada: But if everything is in God, as Spinoza thinks, what is man's position? God is there, but what is the position of evil? Evil is there, but he says that there is no evil in God. If this is the case, where does evil come from? According to the Vedas, good and evil also emanate from God. It is said that evil is His back, and that good is His front.

Syamasundara dasa: Since the absolute reality is perfect, error and evil do not really exist because they would imply imperfection. According to Spinoza, since everything is God, everything must be perfect.

Srila Prabhupada: Purnat purnam udacyate (hopanisad. Invocation). Everything that is produced from the perfect is also perfect. Because God is perfect, the expansions of God are also perfect. If things are perfect in themselves, as long as we keep them in a perfect state, they are perfect. Because material nature is temporary, in the course of time it will become imperfect.