The Hindu Conception of the Deity as culminating in Ramnuja

Ramanuja repudiates the doctrine of the illustriness of the material world and the finite self (jivatman), and postulates that ultimate Reality is one in which the material world and the finite self find a necessary place. He claims that the ideals by which we live - the perfections of truth, goodness and love - are rooted in the very heart of the Eternal. Unlike Sankara, who, as a stern metaphysician, follows the dictates of the intellect, even if it condemns the world of experience to ultimate unreality, Ramanuja is primarily a realist, abiding by the data of physical, moral and religious experience and seeking to systematize them into a Whole in which they are not ultimately lost, but gain new meaning and value. In Ramanuja, Indian theism of several centuries attains its loftiest philosophical expression.