ISHERWOOD ON BRAHMAN

In his introduction to the book of essays Vedanta for the Western World, Christopher Isherwood summed up the Brahman.  He said that Vedanta teaches that this universe is an effect or power of Brahman.  The relationship is that of heat to fire.  They are inseparable. 

However, Brahman does not intervene in the world’s affairs, which raises the question, why does God permit evil?  This, to a Vedantist, is as meaningless as why does God permit good?  The fire burns one man and warms another, hence is neither kind nor cruel.

Vedanta sounds like an inhuman philosophy this way.  Certainly it is, Isherwood says, for the obvious reason that Brahman is not human.  We must avoid the temptation to think of Brahman in relative terms.  Brahman is not simply a giant person, and has nothing to do with our shifting standards of good and evil, pleasure, unhappiness, right and wrong. 

Brahman is sat-chit-ananda.  It is existence itself.  It is consciousness itself.  It is, as in the Christian Bible, the peace which passeth all understanding, termed “bliss” in Vedanta.