Alston:
Śaṅkara’s answer is that from the standpoint of the highest truth there is no plurality and no world and no Creator, and only the divine ground exists, if even the notions of existence or ground can be applied to it.
But from the standpoint of nescience the world of duality is a fact. And from that standpoint it is a grievous error to believe that the world-process goes on through the operation of any blind force and without the conscious support and control of an omniscient and omnipotent Lord.
In Śaṅkara, the terms ‘Īśvara’ (the Lord) and ‘Parameśvara’ (the supreme or highest Lord) are virtually interchangeable terms. The notion of ‘the Lord’ or ‘the highest Lord’ is also usually identical with that of the Absolute (ātman, brahman), though in certain contexts it may be distinguishable.
The only positive characteristic which Śaṅkara attributes to the Lord is that of Consciousness. He seldom attributes the character of ‘bliss’ either to the Absolute or to ‘the Lord’ and he certainly never associates the latter with the ‘bliss sheath’ in the manner of his followers.
From the Lord’s nature as Consciousness other characteristics follow. He is omnipresent (sarva-gata). Hence He is in the body of the individual, but that body does not limit Him. He is eternally self-evident from beginningless time.
As He is Himself perfectly identical with the Absolute, He is often characterized by negatives. He has no body, He is not an agent, enjoys not a whiff (gandha) of individual experience and has no defects or sins. As He identifies Himself with no body, He does not experience the feeling ‘I suffer’.
He is eternal and raised high above all change (kūṭasthanitya) like the highest Self, He has no form (rūpa), He is imperceptible (adṛśya) and needs no support (ādhāra). He cannot be known through the secular means of knowledge, and for this very reason His nature is revealed as the final import of the meaning of the Veda.
He is not subject to transmigration (asamsārin) and His Lordly power (aiśvarya) knows no limits. These and similar texts show that for Śaṅkara ‘the Lord’ (īśvara) and ‘the Absolute’ (brahman) are essentially one and the same thing.
His nature is Consciousness. All other affirmations in regard to Him reduce Him below His real stature. Such affirmations can, however, occur. They occur when the Lord is considered in His capacity as ‘Lord’ specifically in relation to the world or to the individual soul, or when He is taken as an object of meditation.
There are just a few passages in which, considered in such contexts as these, the Lord is actually differentiated from the Absolute (brahman), though even in these contexts the Lord and the Absolute are normally identified.
The Lord may be called, in relation to the world over which He is ‘Lord’, its projector (sraṣṭṛ) or its maker (kartṛ) or the one who fashioned (akalpayat) the universe, or the cause (kāraṇa) of the universe. He is the unmoved mover. He is omniscient and is often called omnipotent (sarva-śakti).
He exists in everything as its essence, and, despite the mention of subordinate deities, it is He ultimately who witnesses and presides over the evolution of all forms even after they have come into manifestation. When the texts speak of various subordinate deities, they imply that all are the one deity Īśvara viewed under different external adjuncts.
The view that the Lord, though pure Consciousness in his true nature, is somehow at the same time an active being manipulating his power of Māyā, is appropriate and useful for the development of the religious consciousness, which is a necessary preliminary before the final stages of the spiritual path for most people. But if it is taken as the final truth, it will imply that the Lord is an agent and is subject to change and is consequently Himself phenomenal.
The stricter usage, therefore, is to reserve the terms Hiraṇyagarbha, Brahmā or Prajāpati for the world-soul and to use the term ‘Īśvara’ (the Lord) to denote pure Consciousness as Witness and that by whose Light the world-soul and all living beings carry out their powers of activity and knowledge within the phenomenal world.
Within the world-appearance there are deities or powers which carry out their cosmic functions owing to the presence within them of the Light of the Lord, who is Himself a motionless, actionless Witness.
So Śaṅkara says, ‘Thus the lordship, omniscience and omnipotence of the Lord exist relative to the limitations and distinctions of nescience only, and in reality there can be no practice of rulership or omniscience on the part of the Self, in which all distinctions remain eternally negated in knowledge’.
Nevertheless, precisely because He is thus pure Consciousness (cit), He is the only effective root of all activity and knowledge, for He is that which alone exists. Thus, although He is in the true sense bereft of all form, body, organs or action, He is in fact the effective controller of the world-display.
For ‘The cosmic powers take up and lay down their activities in a controlled way through the mere proximity of the Lord as actionless Witness’.
Thus the Lord, though without bodies and organs of His own, carries out activities through the bodies and organs of the deities or cosmic powers. The conception of unmoving mover is illustrated by the analogies of a magnet and a king, both of which cause directed activity in others by their mere presence.
~excerpted and edited from from 'Sankara on the Creation' pp8-80
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