The Supreme Personality of Godhead, the Absolute Truth, is not like a material object that can be known by experimental knowledge or sense perception

Expressions researched:
"The Supreme Personality of Godhead, the Absolute Truth, is not like a material object that can be known by experimental knowledge or sense perception"

CC Adi-lila

The Supreme Personality of Godhead, the Absolute Truth, is not like a material object that can be known by experimental knowledge or sense perception.

CC Adi 5.41, Translation and Purport:

Vāsudeva, Saṅkarṣaṇa, Pradyumna and Aniruddha constitute this second quadruple. They are purely transcendental.

Śrīpāda Śaṅkarācārya has misleadingly explained the quadruple form (catur-vyūha) in his interpretation of the forty-second aphorism of Chapter Two of the second khaṇḍa of the Vedānta-sūtra (utpatty-asambhavāt). In verses 41 through 47 of this chapter of Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Śrīla Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmī answers Śrīpāda Śaṅkarācārya's misleading objections to the personal feature of the Absolute Truth.

The Supreme Personality of Godhead, the Absolute Truth, is not like a material object that can be known by experimental knowledge or sense perception. In the Nārada Pañcarātra this fact has been explained by Nārāyaṇa Himself to Lord Śiva. But Śaṅkarācārya, the incarnation of Śiva, under the order of Nārāyaṇa, his master, had to mislead the monists, who favor ultimate extinction. In the conditioned stage of existence, all living entities have four basic defects, of which one is the cheating propensity. Śaṅkarācārya has carried this cheating propensity to the extreme to mislead the monists. Actually, the explanation of the quadruple forms in the Vedic literature cannot be understood by the speculation of a conditioned soul. The quadruple forms should therefore be accepted just as They are described. The authority of the Vedas is such that even if one does not understand something by his limited perception, he should accept the Vedic injunction and not create interpretations to suit his imperfect understanding. In his Śārīraka-bhāṣya, however, Śaṅkarācārya has increased the misunderstanding of the monists. The quadruple forms have a spiritual existence that can be realized in vasudeva-sattva (śuddha-sattva), or unqualified goodness, which accompanies complete absorption in the understanding of Vāsudeva. The quadruple forms, who are full in the six opulences of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, are the enjoyers of the internal potency. Thinking the absolute Personality of Godhead to be poverty-stricken or to have no potency—or, in other words, to be impotent—is simply rascaldom. This rascaldom is the profession of the conditioned soul, and it increases his bewilderment.