Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #28 – The Potency that Removes All Contradictions
Dhanurdhara Swami July 7th, 2025
I was driving my car in Manhattan and made a wrong turn and found myself on the 59th Street bridge heading to Queens. I needed to get to uptown Manhattan quickly for an appointment and I had no idea how to get back. I was concerned that I would be late. When I stopped at the end of the bridge, I therefore politely asked a worker standing there for help.
“Sir, I think I’m lost.”
The worker was a typically gruff, “what you see is what you get,” “just the facts” New Yorker. He looked at me with disgust.
“You’re either lost, or you are not lost!”
Brilliant!
I don’t think, however, my New Yorker friend’s cold logic would fare well in the spiritual world.
“The Supreme Lord walks and does not walk. He is far away, but He is very near as well. He is within everything, and yet He is outside of everything.”
“Ordinarily, if someone can walk, it is illogical to say he cannot walk. But in reference to God, such a contradiction simply serves to indicate His inconceivable power.” Śrī Īśopaniṣad Verse 5 and purport
Presently I am studying Kṛṣṇa-saṅgati by Sivarama Swami with a friend. Sivarama Swami provides a rendition of Krishna’s pastimes. His introduction is seventy pages long and is meant to prepare the reader to hear those pastimes properly. A lot of the introduction is an attempt to resolve, at least by referencing śāstra, how Krishna leaves Vrindavan at the age of eleven and simultaneously never leaves Vrindavan.
The śāstras often give descriptions like this of the spiritual realm that are full of contradictions, but that never bothers me. I think something like this.
God must exist beyond time and space. If He is subject to anything more powerful than His will and power, He is not God. Even time? Of course, but how can we logically conceive that there is something that is not limited by past, present and future? We can’t. Logic is based on the laws of cause and effect, including time and space, which are under God’s jurisdiction. So it is reasonable or logical that descriptions of God and his realm are not under the laws of ordinary reason or logic.
Since I have understood things in that way, I was thus quite pleased to read these same points in a short essay by Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura titled “The Potency that Removes All Contradictions.”
“Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the embodiment of eternality, absolute knowledge, and unlimited bliss, possesses an inconceivable potency called virodha-bhanjika-śakti (removing all contradictions). By the influence of this potency, all apparently contrary principles and natures are unified and are eternally present. Form and formlessness; omnipresence and localised beautiful physical presence; equal disposition towards all and special favour of mercy towards devotees; birthlessness and taking birth; being the supreme object of everyone’s worship and accepting the position of a cowherd boy; omniscience and accepting the position of a human being; impersonalism and personalism; and many such unlimited contradictory characteristics are wonderfully harmonized and manifest in Śrī Kṛṣṇa’s personality. And furthermore, they are engaged in assisting the activities of Śrīmati Rādhikā, the embodiment of the highest spiritual emotions and pleasure-giving potency. Those who doubt and contest this truth are truly deprived. Before one begins a debate, one must consider that human logic is very limited; hence, it has no jurisdiction in the realm of the unlimited, inconceivable principle. The fortunate soul discards dry rhetoric and cultivates faith in the evidence of the revealed scriptures—the Vedas. This seed of faith sprouts and gradually grows into a creeper of devotion to finally rest at Śri Kṛṣṇa’s lotus feet.”[1]
You are either lost or you are not lost!
True, but not in the realm of God, where everything is ruled by love.
For love He can be gone from Vrindavan and at the same time for love never leave. Everything is possible by His potency that removes all contradictions.
[1] This was forwarded to me by a friend. Despite research, I could not find the exact reference where this is found.