Form and Formless God
February 8, 2011 Comments Off
A devotee: “Has God forms or has He none?”
Ramakrishna Paramhansa:
“No one can say with finality that God is only ‘this’ and nothing else. He is formless, and again He has forms. For the bhakta (devotee) He assumes forms.
But He is formless for the jnani (The Enlightened person), that is, for
him who looks on the world as a mere dream. The bhakta feels that he is
one entity and the world another. Therefore God reveals Himself to him
as a Person. But the jnani-the Vedantist, for instance-always reasons,
applying the process of ‘Not this, not this’. Through this
discrimination he realizes, by his inner perception, that the ego and
the universe are both illusory, like a dream. Then the jnani realizes
Brahman in his own consciousness. He cannot describe what Brahman is.
Do you know what I mean? Think of Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss
Absolute, as a shoreless ocean. Through the cooling influence, as it
were, of the bhakta’s love, the water has frozen at places into blocks
of ice. In other words, God now and then assumes various forms for His
lovers and reveals Himself to them as a Person. But with the rising of
the sun of Knowledge, the blocks of ice melt. Then one doesn’t feel any
more that God is a Person, nor does one see God’s forms. What He is
cannot be described. Who will describe Him? He who would do so
disappears. He cannot find his ‘I’ any more.”
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Tags: God, Form, Formless
Path: Hinduism
