Formless God: What Is God's Real Form?

By Seema Burman

What Is God's Real Form?

Does God have a form or is He formless? Adi Sankara preferred a formless God while Ramanujacharya believed that He was both with and without form.

Ramana Maharshi realised the Inner Divine Self by enquiring, ''Who am I?'' Vivekananda was not for dualism, of seeing God in an image. But when Ramakrishna Paramhansa touched his chest to indicate the divinity within, Vivekananda began to 'see' God in every thing - living or non-living.

Ramakrishna Paramhansa believed that it was meaningless to debate over whether God had form or was formless. "Can a man really fathom God's true nature?'' he asked. ''However high a bird soars there are regions higher still. God has form; He is formless, too.

He is beyond form and formlessness. He who is called Krishna is also Shiva and the primal Shakti, and He, again, is called Jesus and Allah. All people are seeking the same Truth; the disagreement is due to differences in climate, temperament, and names."

Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita refers to the difficulties of fixing the mind on the Formless: "Greater is their trouble whose minds are set on the Unmanifested; for the goal of the Unmanifested is very hard to be reached by the embodied" (12.5).

Says Swami Ranganathananda: "Because of human-body-consciousness we feel pain caused to our bodies by injury, cold, heat or burns and so a mind trapped in a body cannot think of emptiness as God. Whenever we think of anything our mind instantly forms an image - be it living or non-living. Those who wish to think of the formless will first have to know, 'I am not the body'.

Your body pulls you down to the feeling of duality. Only when you are in a state of samadhi , where you forget your own body, can you realise all aspects of formless Divine Brahman. That is why bhakti is the universal form of religion all over the world. Success is very limited in the path of knowledge for when the body goes wrong it pulls the mind down."

Sri Ramakrishna explained that image worship was necessary till man did not love God's Lotus feet, till he did not shed tears and his hair did not stand on end on repeating God's name. Only when devotion becomes ripe and the devotee sees Brahman everywhere, do rituals drop off.

God reveals Himself in the form which His devotee loves most. Arjuna, Meera, Radha, the Gopis of Vrindavan and Hanuman were devotees of God with form and without. Kabir said: ''The formless Absolute is my Father, and God with form is my Mother.'' Tulsidas said: ''God with form is in my eyes, without form He is in my heart and His name is ever on my lips.'' Christians too love the form of Jesus while believing in His formless aspect.

Sage Narada recommended the bhakti path for Kaliyuga, as in Kaliyuga it is difficult to understand, ''I am not the body, not the mind, not the 24 cosmic principles, I am beyond pleasure and pain, above disease and grief, old age and death.'' Sri Ramakrishna said that one couldn't obtain jnana if one had the slightest attachment to kamini and kanchan . Even after great practice the feeling that the body is identical with soul crops up. One who says 'I am He', yet looks upon his body as Self, cannot evolve spiritually.

To realise God one must love Him unconditionally. Japa (chanting), fasting, austerities help one to acquire this love but they drop away when one gets 'mad' with love. And then there remains only ompassion for one's family, relatives, enemies and friends. Discussions are then meaningless.