Page 141 - Complete Works of Dr. KCV Volume 1

Lecture - 3
As I said, according to Shri Ram Chandraji, where religion ends, there spirituality begins. After this sentence, Master gives the description of God or the Ultimate Reality. Religions have got notions of God which are as different from one another as possible. But they have all one common thing. God has a particular nature such as that of the Creator of the world, Sustainer of the world and Destroyer of the world. He has wonderful attributes or excellent attributes - Infinite Compassion, Infinite Beauty, Infinite Power, Infinite Grace and so on. This God is the God of Religion. That is, we are all thinking of the excellent quality of which we have some awareness and these are the qualities of God. God is perfect extension, perfect space. He is at all time, the past, the present and the future, which are all in Him. And so He has wonderful attributes. This God we call Saguna. Of course, it may be that God has the qualities of nature also in a sense. Nothing that is not in the cause can be found in the effect. So, God has all these attributes. But according to Vedanta, the definition of Brahman has been "He from whom all creation, all origination arises". But, there are some people who have stated in Upanishads that God is described in terms of negation of these qualities, which we call of nature, that is, Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. Some people go to the extent that God has no qualities - either good or bad. Some people say that God is Nirguna; some people say that He is Saguna. What guna means, of course, is a very troublesome point of discussion or controversy. God has gunas means He has no bad qualities. So, that is how some people have interpreted. Certainly God cannot have bad qualities. One may then ask `we have bad and good qualities, how did they come about. If God has created bad qualities, they must have come from Him'. The cause must have the seeds of effect. There is evil in the Universe. God must in some way be evil. But we do not like to attribute evil to God and so they say evil is the good that we do not understand. 'Evil' is excellent. You do not know what it is. So you call it 'evil'. Anything you are afraid of is 'evil'. That is how some people try to explain or rather explain away evil. Some others say that the good qualities have the opposites also in this world. The world is a negation of God. God is perfect, we are all imperfect. God is good; we are all evil. Where there is good there must be bad. A good cannot be understood except in terms of bad. So, the standard