METAPHOR AND TRANSCENDENCE

Metaphor and Transcendence

On the use of metaphors in

the Vaisnava tradition

Apart from being pervasive in our everyday thought and language metaphors have entered various fields of philosophical inquiry as well. Richard Moran writes in one article that

Metaphor enters contemporary philosophical discussion from a variety of directions. Aside from its obvious importance in poetics, rhetoric, and aesthetics, it also figures in such fields as philosophy of mind (as in the question of metaphorical status of ordinary mental concepts), philosophy of science (as in the comparison metaphors and explanatory models), in epistemology (as in analogical reasoning), and in cognitive studies (as in the theory of concept-formation).[1]

In their book Metaphors we live by[2] Lakoff and Johnson (hereafter: the authors) have also shown that there is a lot more that could be said about metaphors and the way in which they structure our conceptualisation of reality. This book had a pivotal role in my previous essay because in that essay I tried to show that the assumption underlying the authors’ concept of an ‘experiential basis’ of metaphors as being of a physical nature constitutes a fallacy. Furthermore, I tried to show how their ‘physical experientialism’ and their physical concept of a person could be perfected by considering the subject of the experience as a non-physical person and thus the experiential basis of metaphors to be of a non-physical kind (i.e. the non-physical consciousness of that very same person). I concluded by giving some scope for further investigations into what could be called ‘transcendental experientialism’.

The purpose of the present essay is to give an account of some of the underlying principles and implications of this transcendental experientialism for the way in which we, by means of a particular type of metaphor, can come to an alternative understanding and conceptualisation of reality. In doing so I will adopt a certain viewpoint and will draw upon sources which may be unfamiliar to some but which are relevant for present purposes. The viewpoint I will be adopting is that of a religious tradition called Vaisnavism and the sources are the ancient Sanskrit texts of India such as the Bhagavad-gita and the Srimad-Bhagavatam (also known as the BhagavatPurana) and contemporary writings in pursuance thereof; I will elaborate on this in the next section. Uncommon though this particular viewpoint and these sources may seem, they do, however, yields one insight into the transcendental nature of experience and the means by which we can actually have full cognisance of an ultimate reality; means of which the one we will be concentrating on presently is the use of metaphors.

Ancient Sanskrit texts and Vaisnavism

As part of the Veda’s the ancient Sanskrit literature has been seen as inextricably bound up with Hinduism, and although in one sense this could be said to be true, to be overly attached to the term Hinduism would, scientifically speaking, be somewhat precarious. The reason for this is that the term is imprecise, hence not very scientific: it encompasses too large a variety of religions and philosophies to make it fit any clear-cut definition. As far as the terms ‘Vedic’ and ‘Veda’ go, literally they mean ‘knowledge’; moreover, the Vedic literature is said to encompass a vast corpus of texts which contains knowledge of all facets of reality. Without wanting to going to deep into the different ramifications of the Vedic literature, I will just add that many different traditions within the purview of Hinduism are based on the Veda’s, one of which is the religious path known as Vaisnavism. In this essay I will be using editions, translations and commentaries of scholars and saints of this particular tradition.

To get a familiar with the term Vaisnavism the following description is given:

Vaisnavism can be described as devotion to Krishna, Rama, Vishnu, or any of his divine incarnations. It is seen by its adherents as a type of monotheism in which worship of a personal God is the focus.[3]

It is the

(...) sanatana dharma, or “the eternal function of the soul,” and it is also referred to as bhakti-yoga, or “the devotional path through which one can link with the supreme.[4]

The most prominent expression of Vaisnavism as it exists today is known as Gaudiya Vaisnavism and

This is a form of the religion that began in the sixteenth-century Bengal with the great avatara/saint Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu.[5]

The reason for approaching the theory of metaphor from the viewpoint of Vaisnavism is that this particular tradition pays special attention to the use of metaphor in experiencing and understanding ultimate reality (i.e. a personal God) as being both transcendent and immanent to matter. This twofold characteristic of the ultimate reality is not foreign to Western forms of theism which have also propounded the idea of a personal God as being absolute in the sense that He is both independent from and involved in the material world.[6] Much like Western theism, Vaisnavism gives its adherents a theoretical and practical understanding of God’s immanence and transcendence; moreover, it enables one to experience and give expression to this ultimate reality in a variety of ways among which metaphorical speech is not the least prominent.

Other kinds of experience

Before proceeding towards a discussion of the use of metaphors in Vaisnavism one particular issue should be dealt with first, namely the issue of the authors’ notion of the existence of different kinds of experience. They give an account of these kinds of experiences in the following passage:

Perhaps the most important thing to stress about grounding [of metaphors in our experience, RV] is the distinction between an experience and the way we conceptualize it. We are not claiming that physical experience is in any way more basic that other kinds of experience, whether emotional, mental, cultural, or whatever. All of these experiences may be just as basic as physical experiences. Rather, what we are claiming about grounding is that we typically conceptualize the non-physical in terms of the physical - that is, we conceptualize the less clearly delineated in terms of the more clearly delineated.[7]

Later on in their book the authors also claim of ‘the less clearly delineated’ that it needs to be understood “in terms of other entities and experiences, typically other kinds of entities and experiences.”[8] Although agreeing that most people conceptualise the non-physical in terms of the physical, in the light of the philosophy of Vaisnavism one main objection could be raised here against the authors’ statements. This objection concerns the fact that emotional, mental, cultural “or whatever” kinds of experience are classified as being non-physical, because the distinction between the physical and the non-physical realm, or between spirit and mater is one of the major themes in the Bhagavad-gita, “The song of God.” Consequently, according to this text the classification of experiences as proposed by the authors is not at all tenable. For instance, in the seventh chapter, verse 4 of the Bhagavad-gita it is stated that:

Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego - all together these eight constitute My [Krishna’s] separated material energies.[9]

In a commentary written on this particular verse the translator and eminent vaisnava scholar His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada writes the following:

(...) earth, water, fire, air and sky, are called the five gigantic creations or the gross creations, within which the five sense objects are included. They are the manifestations of physical sound, touch, form, taste and smell. Material science comprises these ten items and nothing more. But the other three items, namely mind, intelligence and false ego, are neglected by the materialists. Philosophers who deal with mental activities are also not perfect in knowledge because they do not know the ultimate source, Krishna.[10]

Apart from the “material energies” mentioned in verse 7.4 the consecutive verse distinguishes the existence of “another energy” (emphasis added):

Besides these, O mighty-armed Arjuna, there is another, superior energy of Mine, which comprise the living entities who are exploiting the resources of this material, inferior nature.

Throughout the Bhagavad-gita and the Vedic literature in general the superior energy is identified as being non-physical or transcendental in nature and the inferior as physical or material. In this verse the constitutional position of the living entities (i.e. individual souls - in Sanskrit called atma) is also established: they are part of the non-physical, superior nature and are distinct from both gross material elements and the more subtle ones (mind, intelligence an false ego). Seen from a Vaisnava perspective the identification of the living entity with either the ‘conglomerate of physical elements’ (i.e. the gross physical body and its gross sensory apparatus) or with mental and intellectual activities is ultimately not correct and constitutes the very same fallacy as the one underlying the authors’ physical experientialism. This distinction between ‘matter and spirit’ has of course also been present in Western philosophy wherein questions such as the following have been raised:

Is there, as some have argued, a special Life-force, or élan vital, present in living things which makes their behavior different from that of non-living things? Are living things merely complicated machines? Do living things exist somehow on a higher “level” of existence, and is there more to them than the physicist and chemist could ever possibly discover? Are biological phenomena reducible to those of physics and chemistry?[11]

However, Vaisnavism, and all Vedic knowledge for that matter, takes the existence of the “special Life-force” as axiomatic. This is expressed in the Sanskrit phrase “aham brahmasmi”, which literally means: “I am Brahman, I am spirit.”

Distinct from the mind

It has been shown so far that Vaisnavism takes the living entity to be distinct from matter. However, concerning the experiential basis of metaphors and their proposed cognitive content, a closer look at the distinction between the living entity and its mental activities is needed, for Vaisnavism considers the mind to be of a subtle physical nature. For this purpose I would like to provide some key concepts that are given in a book called Mechanistic and Nonmechanistic Science written by Richard Thompson, a scientist and vaisnava scholar, wherein he includes a section called ‘The Epistemology of Transcendental Consciousness’. I this section he writes about mental activities and functions such as thinking, feeling and willing as belonging to a “psychic subsystem” of the machinery of the body which

(...) acts as an intermediate link between the natural senses of the jivatma [i.e. the soul, RV] and the sensory apparatus of the body. Before reaching the jivatma, data from the bodily senses pass through this subsystem and are augmented and modified by the addition of information representing various thoughts, feelings, and desires.[12]

He further argues that

According to the Bhagavad-gita, (...), the mind has [a] component which in Sanskrit is called manah, or material mind, and which is distinct from both the brain and the conscious self.[13]

Thompson adds to his description of the material mind that it is a

(...) reservoir of elaborate programs that govern everything from gross movements to subtle attitudes, and thus our mental life consists of a succession of conditioned thoughts and feelings that unfold inexorably according to their own internal logic and the stimuli of the senses.[14]

From these quotes it appears that according to Vaisnavism the ‘conscious self’ cannot also be identified with mental activities such as thinking, feeling and willing. Hence, the experiential basis of metaphors cannot be any kind of experience we have on the platform of the material mind. The kinds of experiences the authors’ consider non-physical do appear to be physical after all when seen in the light of the Vaisnava philosophy and its anatomy of the gross and subtle machinery of the physical body. This plurality of experience leads the authors to accept what could be called ‘experiential fragmentation’ due to the fact that for them every kind of experience constitutes an experiential basis in itself. Again, the cause of this ‘experiential fragmentation’ is the fact that the authors do not seem to have a clear conception about the entity who has the actual experiences; however, Vaisnavism does have such a conception.

False ego

In the verse quoted from Bhagavad-gita (7.4) which deals with the eight separate energies of God the last element that is mentioned is the false ego, or the materialistic ego (in the Sanskrit language this is called ahankara)[15]. This false ego is a subtle material energy which causes the soul proper to identify itself with either the gross physical body or with the subtle mind. In a commentary on verses 8-12 of the Bhagavad-gita Srila Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada elaborates on this false ego and how it differs from real ego:

False ego means accepting this body as oneself. When one understands that he is not this body and is spirit soul, he comes to his real ego. Ego is there. False ego is condemned, but not real ego. In the Vedic literature (Brhad-aranyaka Upanisad 1.4.10) it is said, aham brahmasmi: I am Brahman, I am spirit. This “I am’, the sense of self, also exists in the liberated stage of self-realisation. This sense of “I am” is ego, but when the sense of “I am” is applied to this false body it is false ego.[16]

Srila Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada also uses a cognitive metaphor when he explains the false ego in a purport to a verse from the Srimad-Bhagavatam (Canto 3, chapter 24, verse 4) in which the words hrdaya-granthim - the knot of the heart - appear. Srila Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada writes (emphasis added):

Matter and spirit are knotted by false ego. This identification of oneself with matter, which is called hrdaya-granthi, exists for all conditioned souls, and it becomes more and more tightened when there is too much affection for sex life.[17]

The same cognitive metaphor of the knot is also used elsewhere, also in connection with the false ego but this time the word avidya-samsaya-granthim is used which means ‘the knot of doubtfulness’. Srila Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada states (emphasis added):

Here the word avidya is very significant. Avidya means forgetfulness of one’s identity. Every one of us is a spirit soul, but we have forgotten. We think, “I am this body.” This is called avidya. Samsaya-granthi means “doubtfulness.” The knot is also called ahankara, the junction of matter and spirit. By proper knowledge received from the scriptures in disciplic succession and by proper application of that knowledge, one can free himself from this binding combination of matter and spirit.[18]

It is by the knot of false ego that we are ‘bound up’ by birth, death, old age and disease which, according to Vaisnavism, are the four basis problems inherent to physical existence.

The presence or absence of false ego determines whether we conceptualise ourselves as belonging to either the material nature or to the transcendental nature - i.e. the false ego determines whether we adopt the ‘physical‘ or the ‘transcendental concept of a person’. Adopting either of the two concepts will cause one to experience reality in a fundamentally different way, and consequently the type of concept one adopts will inevitably affect our language, thought and action. Therefore, the false ego is an important factor when considering the nature of the experiential basis of metaphors, for if we do not consider the false ego we may erroneously propose as many experiential bases as there are kinds of experiences. However, once the false ego is removed it is the real ego - i.e. transcendental consciousness - that emerges as the common basis of all the experiential bases. Therefore, all the different types of physical experiences (sensory, mental, intellectual) are ultimately different experiences of the one living entity who is having the experiences. In summary this could be expressed in the following maxim: The experiential basis is one, the experiences are manifold.

One more thing should be said about the false ego before having a look at the way in which Vaisnavism uses metaphors. The conscious self as a transcendental entity is in itself not devoid of cognition, emotion and desires but these faculties become muddled by material designations and misconceptions arising from the false ego. The fact that the living entity has such faculties at its disposal in its pure and uncontaminated state certainly allows for the existence of metaphors having a cognitive content but the nature of the experiential basis of the metaphor changes from material to transcendental. Hence we can speak of ‘transcendental cognitive metaphors’ which, according to vaisnava philosophy, are capable of yielding insight into transcendence and into the nature and qualities of God.

Transcendental cognitive metaphors

In Vaisnavism there is a close relationship between being a learned scholar and being a poet capable of finding poetic metaphors for writing shastra - i.e. authoritative texts describing the qualities of Krishna, God. Thus a person who is both scholarly and poetic is called a kavi,[19] and that to be a kavi is one of the qualities of every devotee of God has been described in a book called Vaisnava Behaviour - The twenty-six Qualities of a Devotee written by a contemporary vaisnava scholar and poet Satsvarupa dasa Goswami.[20] In this book he makes a very important and for this essay a most fundamental statement; first he quotes a fragment from the Caitanya-caritamrta, a biography of Caitanya Mahaprabhu[21] and a most essential Vaisnava text.

Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu praised the metaphors and other literary ornaments of Srila Rupa Goswami’s transcendental poetry. Without such poetic attributes, He said, there is no possibility of preaching transcendental mellows.

- Cc. Antya 1.95-98

It appears from the statements of Lord Caitanya that unless a person can think in poetic metaphors, he cannot appreciate Krishna in His eternal rasas. One of the many names for Krishna is uttamasloka, which means that He is praised with the choicest poetic words. To describe the beauty of Krishna’s form, His pastimes, the nectar of His holy name, the glories of His abode, Vrndavana, and the sweetness of His love, is impossible - except by poetic language.[22]

The crucial statement here is that “unless a person can think in poetic metaphors, he cannot appreciate Krishna in His eternal rasas.”[23] At this point an important point should be raised, however, namely that when Vaisnava kavis are using metaphors to describe the nature of transcendence and the names, forms, qualities and pastimes of God they use cognitive and not decorative metaphors. The metaphors and other literary devices are not used as ornaments and are not supposed to be fictitious or merely anthropomorphic imagery; on the contrary, they have a cognitive content and are capable of transmitting truths about their subject matter. A Vaishnava kavi would therefore not agree with Nietzsche’s following statement:

Was ist also Wahrheit? Ein bewegliches Heer von Metaphern, Metonymien, Anthropomorphismen kurz eine Summe von menslichen Relationen, die, poetisch und rhetorisch gesteigert, übertragen, geschmükt wurden, und verbindlich dünken: die Wahrheit sind Illusionen, von denen man vergessen hat, dass sie welch sind, Metaphern, die abgenutzt und sinnlich kraftlos geworden sind, Münzen, die ihr Bild verloren haben und nun als Metall, nicht mehr als Münzen in Betracht kommen.[24]

That the metaphors these kavis use are not merely decorative metaphors is an important point because the ancient Sanskrit literature and texts in pursuance thereof are often confronted with a condescending attitude and are considered to be a mere collection of fairy tales, or of mythology at best. But in contrast to this Satsvarupa dasa Goswami writes that

When Lord Caitanya says that without poetic metaphors a devotee cannot describe Krishna’s pastimes, this does not mean that Krishna is imaginary or unreal.

According to Vaisnavism, the Sanskrit writings of the kavis cannot be classified as mythology, for they make transcendence and God accessible through the use of what might be called ‘transcendental cognitive metaphors’. What gives these metaphors their cognitive and transcendental quality is that the kavis’ use of metaphoric language is in complete accordance with their main philosophical philosophy of acintyabheda-abheda-tattva, i.e. the philosophy of ‘simultaneous being one and different’ which has been established by the aforementioned great avatara/saint Caitanya Mahaprabhu and by which the ultimate reality can be understood.

The philosophy of acintyabheda-abheda-tattva

The philosophy of acintyabheda-abheda-tattva plays a pivotal role in Vaisnavism and is directly related to the ‘soul issue’ addressed above. This philosophy establishes that there is an inconceivable and simultaneous oneness and difference between the individual living entity and the supreme living entity Krishna. This can be explained by giving the following example which in itself constitutes a beautiful ‘transcendental cognitive metaphor’: the living entities are photons of sunlight coming forth from the sun globe which is God. If we analyse this metaphor we can see that the oneness between a photon and the sun globe is a qualitative oneness: both have the quality of being luminous. However, the difference between them is obviously a quantitative difference: the photon is the infinitesimal whereas the sun globe is the infinite. This metaphor gives one insight in the position of the individual living entity who is, as a ‘photon’, in one sense identical with the ultimate reality: he is part and parcel of God in that he is also endowed with the same qualities that He has (for instance wealth, strength, beauty, intelligence, fame and renunciation).[25] However, being merely a ‘photon’ the living entity also differs from God in that these qualities exist in the living entity in a minute, (i.e. limited) quantity.

What is exactly connecting the philosophy of acintyabheda-abheda-tattva with cognitive metaphors? It is the fact that within a metaphor both terms or both systems of terms are interdependent. Metaphorical expressions are dependent upon the literal understanding of the words that are used: without a literal understanding of words metaphors could not exist nor could language itself have any cognitive content. Conversely, it is also true that for an expression to be metaphorical the literal understanding of the words used are also dependent on a figurative understanding of the words used. As far as I can see both terms or both sets of terms within a metaphor are subject to what could be called a ‘metaphorical principle’ which combines the two terms to form a metaphor and which makes them interdependent. What this metaphorical principle actually does is that it makes the two terms used in a metaphor simultaneously one and different, simultaneously literal and figurative.

It is important to note here that this metaphorical principle does not have the same status as the philosophy of acintyabheda-abheda-tattva. Rather, it would be more precise to say that this philosophy is also applicable and active in all metaphors (both cognitive and decorative) as the metaphorical principle, but in and of itself the philosophy of acintyabheda-abheda-tattva has a far wider scope than linguistic phenomena. For example, it is also applicable to the absolute nature of God in the sense that He is both immanent and transcendent to the physical world; it is this simultaneous immanence and transcendence of God that can be understood by means of transcendental cognitive metaphors.

In the Bhagavad-gita we can find clear examples of transcendental cognitive (not: decorative) metaphors by means of which Krishna Himself explains how He can be understood as being both immanent and transcendent. In verse 18 of the tenth chapter Arjuna (Krishna’s devotee and friend) asks Him:

O Krishna, O supreme mystic, how shall I know You? In what various forms are You to be remembered, O Supreme Personality of Godhead?

What Arjuna asks from Krishna is to give some indications how He can be understood to be all-pervasive, because

The common man who has no love for Krishna cannot always think of Krishna; therefore he has to think materially. Arjuna is considering the mode of thinking of the materialistic persons of the world. (...) Because materialists cannot understand Krishna spiritually, they are advised to concentrate the mind on physical things and try to see how Krishna is manifested by physical representations.[26]

After that Krishna gives an indication of how He can be seen to be immanent: He is the taste of water, the light of the sun and the moon, the ability in man, the original fragrance of the earth, and the heat in fire, etc.[27] Krishna says that He is all the items He has enumerated in a literal sense; so we can say that this constitutes the oneness between God and the material world. When Krishna says: “I am the taste of water,” He is using a transcendental cognitive metaphor that is structured according to the aforementioned metaphorical principle in that both terms - ‘I’ and ‘taste of water’ - are identical and are one. This is also explained by Srila Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada:

There is an identity of this world with the Supreme Lord. This identity is accepted in a misconceived way by the impersonalist; they say that the Supreme Absolute Truth, transforming Himself into the universe, loses His separate existence. Thus they accept the world and everything in it to be the Lord. That is pantheism, wherein everything is considered to be the Lord. This is the view of the impersonalists. But those who are personal devotees of the Lord take everything to be the property of the Supreme Lord. Everything, whatever we see, is the manifestation of the Supreme Lord; therefore everything should be engaged in the service of the Lord. This is oneness.[28]

As has been mentioned before this oneness of God and the world is one feature of the absolute and to merely conceive of God as being immanent leads one to adopt pantheism, which is a preliminary and still materialistic realisation of God. Yet, according to Vaisnavism, a complete realisation of God takes place when we adopt a theistic stance, i.e. seeing Him as being absolute in the sense that He is both immanent, all-inclusive or all-pervasive (in Sanskrit this is called abhijah), and at the same time also as being transcendent or independent (the Sanskrit term for this is svarat). As examples of God also being independent I quote two verses from Bhagavad-gita:

O conqueror of wealth [Arjuna], there is no truth superior to Me [Krishna]. Everything rests upon Me, as pearls are strung on a thread.

And:

Know that all states of being - be they of goodness, passion or ignorance - are manifested by My [Krishna’s] energy. I am, in one sense, everything, but I am independent. I am not under the modes of material nature, for they, on the contrary, are within Me.

Conclusion: developing ‘eyesight’ and yet even more scope for further investigations

It has been said that the false ego is causing the non-physical living entity to understand one thing in terms of another thing, namely: spirit in terms of matter. That this is not exactly what the authors said in their statement that “what we are claiming about grounding is that we typically conceptualize the non-physical in terms of the physical”[29] has also been shown by pointing out that when the authors conceive of something non-physical it is in reality simply something physical in a subtle form. Unlike Vaisnavism, the authors do not make the same distinctions between matter and spirit; hence, they arrive at what was called ‘experiential fragmentation’ From the standpoint of Vaisnavism this is an untenable suggestion: Vaisnavism sees a common experiential basis for different kinds of experiences in the consciousness of the living entity who is of a transcendental nature but not devoid of cognition, emotion and desire. The experiential grounding of metaphors takes place in this consciousness and therefore a special type of cognitive metaphor has been proposed: the transcendental cognitive metaphor. This type of metaphor will enable the living entity to clearly understand and see the ultimate reality that is identified by Vaisnavism as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, or Krishna.

Both the Srimad-Bhagavatam and the Bhagavad-gita are full of verses that support the theistic version of God realisation and the philosophy of acintyabheda-abheda-tattva.[30] According to Vaisnavism this God realisation takes place once the living entity cleanses its consciousness of the misconceptions which are due to the presence of the false ego. Unless and until the living entity does so cognitive metaphors may be there but they will not be transcendental - they will merely express one physical entity in terms of another physical entity -, and therefore they will be of no avail when one tries to realise or understand God in the theistic sense of the term. This means that with the demise of the false ego a clear cognition of God by means of metaphors is possible.

A special feature of Vaisnavism is that it has a specific process of purging the consciousness from false ego. This process consists primarily of reciting God’s names in the form of a prayer: Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare / Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare, which in turn enables one to increase one’s ‘metaphorical perception’ of Him - i.e. our understanding of Him through transcendental cognitive metaphors. According to Vaisnavism. through regular recitation of this prayer we can develop the necessary eyes to see God everywhere and within everything:

You will see Me in all living entities as well as all over the universe, just as fire is situated in wood. Only in that state of transcendental vision will you be able to be free from all kinds of illusion.[31]

And also:

He who sees everything in relation to the Supreme Lord, who sees all living entities as His parts and parcels, and who sees the Supreme lord within everything never hates anything or any being.[32]

As far as some further investigations in the particular field of ‘Vaisnava or Vedic Metaphorics’ are concerned, there are a few issues that might be of interest. Firstly, the distinction of physical and transcendental cognitive metaphor may need some further refinement and more examples of the relation between metaphors and the philosophy of acintyabheda-abheda-tattva may be required.

Secondly, Vaisnavism also speaks of different ‘modes of material nature’, namely goodness, passion and ignorance. These are material qualities which

make possible our mental, emotional, and physical experiences of the universe. Without the influence of the modes, thought, value judgement and action are impossible for the conditioned soul.[33]

It might be interesting to have a closer look at how these three modes affect the metaphorical expressions of living entities.

Thirdly, taking the aforementioned maxim of ‘The experiential basis is one, the experiences are manifold’ to also be applicable to a non-physical realm where living entities interact and communicate among themselves and with God, it might be interesting to investigate what role metaphors play in this interaction. As all these living entities act on a transcendental plane because of their consciousness being purified from false ego their metaphors will no longer contain terms that refer to physical things. Moreover, it is at this transcendental platform that metaphorical expressions explain the transcendental in terms of the transcendental.

This leads to a fourth point which is very closely connected with the third, namely that after having given some arguments in favour of what I have called a ‘transcendental experientialism’ (as opposed to ‘physical experientialism’) it may be of interest to go one step further and develop it towards a ‘transcendental personalism’ wherein interpersonal relationships and exchanges become a strong impetus for metaphorical expression which are laden with cognitive, emotional content and desires.

A last point of investigation could be the relation between the process that Vaisnavism offers for actually realising God and the ‘metaphorical vision’ of developing the required ‘eyesight’ to be able to see Him everywhere and within everything. According to Vaisnavism this process is crucial when one actually wants to understand and perceive God, for

I [Krishna] am never manifest to the foolish and unintelligent. For them I am covered by My internal potency, and therefore they do not know that I am unborn and infallible.[34]

This process offered by Vaisnavism is said to ultimately cause the reawakening of the relationship between the individual living being and the supreme living being a relationship that will certainly not be devoid of metaphorical speech. But to come to such a stage of God realisation we are advised evoke the goodwill of God Himself by following this prescribed process of reciting his names, because

The Supreme Soul [and the individual soul] cannot be grasped by hearing discourses [thereon], nor by intellectual endeavour, nor by perusing many scriptures. Only one whom the Lord selects can comprehend Him. Indeed, He reveals His personal, transcendental form to such a person.[35]

Rogier Vrieling, 1998