section_path: Themes covered/Theology/The nature of God
section_name: The nature of God
paragraph_text: The nature of God
  
  The Gita adopts the Upanishadic concept of Absolute Reality (Brahman), a shift from the earlier ritual-driven Vedic religion to one abstracting and internalizing spiritual experiences. According to Jeaneane Fowler, the Gita builds on the Upanishadic Brahman theme, conceptualized to be that which is everywhere, unaffected, constant Absolute, indescribable and nirguna (abstract, without features). This Absolute in the Gita is neither a He nor a She, but a "neuter principle", an "It or That".
  
  Like some of the Upanishads, the Gita does not limit itself to the nirguna Brahman. It teaches both the abstract and the personalized Brahman (God), the latter in the form of Krishna. It accomplishes this synthesis by projecting the nirguna Brahman as higher than saguna or personalized Brahman, where the nirguna Brahman "exists when everything else does not". The text blurs any distinction between a personalized God and impersonal absolute reality by amalgamating the two and using the concepts interchangeably in later chapters. This theme has led scholars to call the Gita panentheistic, theistic as well as monistic.