Among the meditations that are possible, one set goes by the name of philosophical affirmations. The understanding expands itself to the dimension of a universal presence. Here, understanding is the same as meditation (Jnana yoga). To understand is to be, and to be is to understand. This does not mean the empirical intellect working through the complex of space and time, but a superior reason which overcomes these limitations, and is the presupposition, the very background of the phenomenal intellect conditioned by space, time and causation.

The limitations to which the intellect of man is subject are known by a peculiar sense in him, to designate which there is no proper word in the language. It has been often held by philosophers that the intellect is limited, that the phenomenal understanding is conditioned. But who makes this statement? How does one become aware of the limitations of one's own self? How is it possible for anyone to be aware of the logical boundaries which the intellect can reach, unless there is something which transcends the intellect, and is capable of overstepping the limitations? In deep philosophical analysis, man outgrows himself, and works through a sense which cannot be equated with the psychic operations, whether intellectual, volitional or emotional. This higher reason is the pure, illuminated understanding, to be distinguished from the ordinary understanding confined to space, time and cause. It is a presupposition which can be inferred as being there and operating, but cannot be cognised by the mental faculties. The consciousness of finitude cannot itself be a part of the finite world. If the consciousness of finitude were also within the finite universe, there could not be any such thing as a consciousness of finitude. Man is aware that he is finite, and this awareness that enables him to cognise finitude is an indication of a superior element in him, which, perhaps, speaks in the language of the Infinite.

Apart from this interesting discovery, there is also the phenomenon of change that is daily observed in the world. Everything is transitional, momentary and passing. Philosophers have never been tired of telling us that the world is a phenomenon and not the finale of things. The recognition of the fact that the world is a passing show is the act of a superior faculty, which itself cannot pass with the passing changes. Change can be seen only by a changeless something. That which changes cannot itself recognise that it changes. The contingent nature of things, or the relative character of the world, presupposes the non-contingent, or the non-conditional. This reasoning is designated as argumentum contingentia mundi, the argument on the basis of the contingent nature of things.

It cannot be said that the world is self-subsistent, because that which is self-sufficient and self-contained cannot aspire for transcending itself in another nature. There cannot be movement of a thing which is self-perfect. Every action, every movement, and every urge to become another thing is to be equated with a sense of limitation felt in oneself. This urge within man, and the urge of a similar nature seen in all things, should indicate that nothing in the world is self-sufficient. Thus, the transitory nature of the world, and the restlessness characteristic of all things, should, again, be an indication of the goal of life being transcendent to things in the world, which are of the nature of an effect.

Every effect has a cause, and the nature of the effect is to move towards the cause. That the world is an effect is demonstrated by its daily movements, the very fact of the evolution of the universe. There cannot be evolution of anything, unless it is transitory and is characterised by a tendency to move to something which is beyond itself. That is why, again, it is held that the cause of the world cannot be within the world. The world is of the nature of a momentary effect; therefore the cause should be transcendent to it, which means to say that it should be outside the world - outside, not in the sense of a spatial separation from the world, but a logical precedence. God should be logically prior to the world which is the effect. When God is said to be transcendent and beyond the world, it does not mean that God is sitting above in the skies. God's creatorship is a logical presupposition, and not a spatial transcendence, or a location in some distant atmosphere.

There is also a feeling in everyone and everything to gather more and more of status to oneself. The status in which one finds oneself is always found to be insufficient. Everything grows, and everything has a tendency to grow, to increase, and to expand. Man asks for more and more of everything, and never gets satisfied with whatever is supplied to him. This asking for a 'more' should end in a culmination, which, too, indicates that this culmination should exist. There cannot be aspiration for a thing which is nowhere. If human aspirations have a meaning, what they suggest should also have a meaning. If we feel that our aspirations actually exist and that they are not merely apparitions, then that which they seek should be there as a reality, because thought cannot operate in non-existence.

The perfection that one sees in the world, the method with which Nature works, and the precision which one can see in the operation of all things, is regarded as the teleological argument for the existence of God. The exactness, the minutiae, and the perfection with which anything in Nature works is incomparable. The beautiful arrangement of the parts into the wholeness of Nature cannot be explained unless there is something which brings about this arrangement. The parts cannot be connected together into the pattern of a whole without a permeating presence bringing together all the parts into their completeness. One part cannot associate itself with another, because the one is different from the other. There cannot be any such thing as association of one thing with another thing in this world. There cannot be a coordination of one individual with another individual if some element does not operate as a cementing link between things. One finds that everywhere such an association is recognisable - in human beings, in animals, in plants, and even in inanimate structures. Everything tends towards everything else. This is what one observes everywhere. In the astronomical universe, there is the law of gravitation; in the social world, there is the law of organisation; in the mental world, there is the sanity of coherence in thought which hinges into a living whole the variety in mental functions. The principle of affection or love that one psychologically demonstrates in one's life is again an indication of the impossibility to exist without mutual relationship. How can there be relationship of anything unless there is a presupposition of that which transcends the distinctions obtaining between the parts or the individualities? This universal power of cohesion is termed God. The very existence of the universe in the way it works should be adequate demonstration of God's glory.

The fact that one is aware that someone or something is in front of oneself proves that God exists, because the awareness of the presence of an object by a subject is made possible by the functioning of a principle which operates beyond the limitations of the subject and the object.

There is a poignant question which many have raised as to the way in which philosophy can contemplate God. God has been defined as Existence, and He cannot be conceived in any other manner, because to attribute to God any other characteristic would be to transfer the transitory qualities of the world to Eternity. No one can clearly say what God is. To define Him would be to limit Him to the visible nature of the world. To say anything would be to define, and to define would be to limit. Every definition is a limitation of the object defined. It segregates the characteristics of a particular object from those which do not belong to it. But there are no qualities which do not belong to God. Everything is in Him, and He is the repository or the supreme abundance of anything that can be thought of in the mind. Definition fails here, because definition limits, and God is limitless. Thus, the ontological position of God's being becomes the supreme object of meditation by consciousness, which also has an ontological status.

The idea of God in man is a mystery. It cannot be explained how this idea arises, because human nature is limited to every kind of finitude. There is nothing that does not limit man. He is hemmed in physically, psychologically, socially, and politically, and is spatio-temporally conditioned. Under these circumstances, it is unthinkable that the idea of a transcendent being should occur to him. A totally brainwashed individual cannot go outside the limits of the prescribed conditions. But there is something struggling within man even in the midst of these handicaps, which asserts relentlessly the presence of something beyond him, and which cannot be equated with anything that is seen, or heard, or even thought normally. Though the presence cannot be defined, cannot be characterised in any specified way, there is some weird haunting which keeps everyone perpetually seeking through every desire, aspiration, or activity. Man tends to a larger and larger expansion of the area of his being through his vocations, through his thoughts, feelings and efforts, of every kind. There is only one thing that we seem to be endeavouring to achieve in life - viz., to expand the area of our existence. Dictators work hard; totalitarian governments try to impose themselves on other individuals subject to them. There is a desire to dominate over everything, a psychological fever which cannot brook any limitation imposed upon it by the existence of other finites external to it.

The idea of God is the idea of perfection, the idea of limitlessness, the idea of the infinite, the idea of the immortal and the eternal. These ideas cannot arise under the conditions of space, time and causal limitations, the world of births and deaths. It has to be inferred by a severe logic that man does not entirely belong to the phenomenal world. He is a citizen of two realms, perhaps, partly belonging to this world, and partly to another realm which is different in order. He is not involved in phenomena wholly. Hence phenomena do not satisfy him. Else, he would have been contented with the things of the world. But nothing satisfies him. Contentment is unknown to man. No one who was wholly contented was born into this world. Man departs with a discontent. Discontentment would be unimaginable if he were to be wholly involved in the world of Nature. The asking for the unlimited, which is the main impulse in everyone, this great asking or seeking, has to arise from a source and centre which cannot belong to this world.

This novel idea has become the subject of a variety of discussions in philosophical circles. The consequences following from this idea have managed to elude the grasp of commonsense. Such an idea as this cannot be an object of sense. It does not arise by the operations of the senses in respect of the world. We do not see things and then begin to entertain this idea, because there is nothing in the world which can evoke such an idea in the mind. Nothing seen can be regarded as a source of this idea. The idea should be a priori, as they call it; i.e., it must be inherent in man. The things of the world cannot contribute anything to the generation of this thought in the human mind. As this idea is associated with All-Being, the Being which comprehends all things, its affirmation becomes a conscious acceptance of the totality of existence. In scriptures like the Yoga-Vasishtha, a type of meditation of this kind is called Brahma-Bhavana, which is the assertion of absoluteness free from all relative associations.