Shankara corrected the followers of Buddha
Buddha kept silent about the unimaginable God and silence is the most truthful expression of the absolute God. He concentrated on the eradication of desire, which is essential requirement to serve God. The followers of Buddha misunderstood His silence as negation of God and became atheists. Shankara condemned the followers of Buddha and not Buddha, who is the 9th incarnation of Lord. To rectify this, Shankara took the formless cosmic energy as God, but such cosmic energy is only a medium into which God can enter. When God enters a medium, such medium becomes God just like the metallic wire becomes current when current enters it. Such charged medium is called as incarnation or relative God.
The electrified metallic wire is treated as current and hence the medium charged by God can be also treated as God. The relative God is imaginable and some times visible also if the medium consists of matter. By taking the relative God, the possibility of atheism can be avoided since the relative God is understood.
In the case absolute God. You can understand only the existence of God but not any other characteristics of God (Assteetyeva…Veda). In the case of relative God, you can understand not only the existence but also the other characteristics since the characteristics of medium of God can be understood. you may not see the current but if you treat the metallic wire as current, you have seen the current by seeing the electrified metallic wire.
The cosmic energy is invisible but imaginable. Shankara told that this relative God is awareness. But the all pervading cosmic energy is inert then, God is not all pervading since awareness is limited to living human beings which are discontinuous. If you take the awareness of human body as God such awareness is not all pervading and also not omniscient. By this the awareness limited to human body is not God. He proposed the all pervading omniscient awareness as God and such God is neither the inert cosmic energy nor the limited human awareness. Such God is not available in the creation and hence the God of Shankara becomes again unimaginable.
But if you take the human incarnation like Krishna as God, the awareness limited to the human body of Krishna is all pervading and omniscient. Therefore, if you analyze the God of Shankara, He is only the human incarnation. Shankara Himself being the human incarnation told that He is God. The disciples misunderstood this and extended the concept to themselves and felt that each one of them is God. Shankara swallowed the molten lead and proved that the human incarnation alone is God and not every human being. However, Shankara did not mention the word human incarnation because the atheists were highly egoistic and can never accept the very concept of human incarnation limited to a specific human being only.
To satisfy them he told that awareness in every human being is God but the completeness of God can be achieved only by some other specific characteristics like wonderful knowledge, miracles etc. Awareness is only one of the characteristics, which means that God is not inert. A king is a human being but every human being is not the king. Apart from the basic characteristics of a human being, the king has some additional specific characteristics like extraordinary valor, controlling capacity etc., Shankara just introduced the concept of God by mentioning one characteristic called awareness only so that atheist accepts the existence of God event though he fells himself as God due to the single characteristic (awareness).
One merit with 99 defects is better than 100 defects. The ego and jealousy are the main hindering factors to accept a human being existing before your eyes as God. This is the most truthful concept but has the most powerful problem of ego and jealousy. Hence, this concept cannot be introduced in Toto in the first instance it self. It has to be introduce partially depending on the concentration of ego and jealousy. At the time of Shankara, all were atheists with the highest concentration of ego and jealousy. Hence, Shankara introduced the human incarnation with out the name and limiting Himself to one characteristic (awareness) only so that every one feels that he is God. Thus, their most powerful ego and jealousy were not hurt and at the same time the concept is introduced by one percent only. Acceptance of the existence of God itself reduces the ego and jealousy.
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