Once someone asked Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Guru of Swami Vivekananda, the question “Is God Saakaara – with form, or is he Niraakaar – without form?”.
Ramakrishna had spent most of his life worshipping God in a feminine form of Goddess Kaali. Even during meditation, he could see none other than the figure of Kaali. How could he have answered this question, other than by saying “Of course God has a form!”.
But Ramakrishna was supposed to be a realized person. How did he actually answer this question?
Apparently, Ramakrishna said “God is Saakaar as well as Niraakaar and may be more”! Is Ramakrishna contradicting himself? How could a single entity have form as well as be formless? And what is this “may be more”? 😊
Some thing can either have a form or it can be formless. There is no third alternative. That is what we think.
We live in a space-time limited world. Here, an entity can only be in one given form at a given time. And it can be in only one place at a time. An entity cannot be in more than one form at a given time and in more than one place simultaneously. But at different times though, it can be in more than one form. And in can be in different places at different times. But not all at once.
So, how can God be both formless and with form? The reason is that God is NOT ‘it’. God is not an object in our space-time limited world where we talk in terms of binaries – ‘it exists’ or ‘it does not exist’, ‘it has form’ or ‘it does not have form’, and so on. We need a different language to talk about such an entity which is outside the domain of space and time. That is probably why Ramakrishna said “God is Saakaar as well as Niraakaar and may be more”.
If you look at the Upanishads, the Upanishads do say that God or the Atma, as the Upanishads refer to it, is beyond space and time. What it means is that God can exist in more than one form all at once, and in more than one place, again all at once! Our rules of space and time do not apply to God.
The consequences of space-time freedom are amazing. That enables God to exist in more than one form in more one place all at once. At the same time, God can be whatever he is, in addition to these myriad forms. That could be what Ramakrishna meant when he said God is formless as well as with some form at the same time.
What exactly do the Upanishads say? Upanishads arrive at this peculiar aspect of God by means of narratives.
Many of the Upanishads have this description about how this world emerged from that one and only God who alone existed ‘in the very beginning’.
“Sat Eva idam agra aaseet. Ekam Eva adviteeyam”
Which means
“In the very beginning there existed only Sat. There was nothing else.”
Sat is another word used by the Upanishads to denote God or Brahma. The Upanishad goes on and says
“tat aikshatah ‘bahusyaam prajaayEya’“
“that thought ‘Let me be many’”
The Upanishad uses the word ‘aikshatah’ or ‘thought’ to indicate that ‘that one and only thing that existed in the very beginning’ could ‘think’. Or in other words it was sentient. That means that the world did not emerge from insentient matter. It was something that was sentient that brought up the world which is brimming with both sentient and insentient entities. An insentient thing could not have done it.
In the next few verses, the Upanishad goes on to describe how this single Sat, that alone existed in the beginning, multiplied itself as infinitely many things. But all these things that emerged were insentient. They are actually the material aspects of the world. These material ‘things’ had to be brought to life. So, the Sat replicated itself as infinitely many sentient forms called Jeevatma or individual souls and entered the bodies formed out of material things.
“sEyam dEvataa aikshatah ‘aham anEna jeevEna aatmanaa imaa tisrah dEvataah anupravisya, naama roopE vyaakaravaaNi’”
Which means
“God thought ‘let me multiply as many souls and enter these bodies, thus dividing them into myriad forms and names’”
This according to the Upanishads is how this world came into existence. I have quoted verses from one of the Upanishads namely Chandogya Upanishad which are quite representative.
The Upanishad sums up this discussion by saying
“sa yah Eshah aNimaa idam sarvam aitadaatmyam.
tat satyam. sah aatmaa.
tat tvam asi.”
Which means
“That subtle thing which permeates whatever that exists is the Atma.
That is the ultimate truth.
And you are that”
Sankara takes this last sentence as the most important message of the Upanishads – Mahaavaakya, and concludes that the individual soul is none other than the Atma – jeevo BrahmEva na paraa.
This identity equation raises problems. If the individual soul is identical to the God, then why does it go through suffering? Why does it not know that it is God?
Sankara gives the well-known rope-snake analogy – rajju-sarpa nyaaya, to explain out this paradox. When someone is in the dark, he mistakes even a rope as a snake. But when the darkness is dispelled, the real nature of the rope becomes evident. Similarly, Sankara explains, when the soul is ignorant, it does not realize that it is Atma and suffers due to this ignorance. But when it comes out of this ignorance, it sees its true nature.
That amounts to say that the soul can be ignorant. Which in turn boils down to the assertion that Atma can be ignorant about itself, since Sankara equates soul to Atma with an identity relation. But that inference contradicts the Upanishadic assertion that Atma is embodiment of wisdom – Prajnyanam Brahma. How can an embodiment of wisdom be ignorant about anything?
What about the material world around, that is experienced by the soul? Is it same as Atma or different?
Sankara dismisses all these questions in one stroke by saying that the world along with the souls is just an illusion. There is neither the world nor the souls. They are all illusions – Mithya! ‘Illusion to whom?’ is a mute question 😉
Then why all these descriptions about how the world emerged etc.? If everything is an illusion, then even the Upanishads have to be taken as part of this grand illusion! Surprisingly, Sankara goes to the extent of admitting that even the Upanishads are illusive! That takes us nowhere 😉
But this is not the conclusion, neither of the Upanishads nor of the Brahma Sutra, not even of the Bhagavad Geetha, though Sankara quotes all these three as the basis for his version of Advaita.
The problem lies in the identity relation between Atma and soul assumed by Sankara. Yes, the Upanishad does say that the soul emerged from Atma or soul is a form taken by the Atma. But it is just a form taken by the Atma and not the Atma itself.
It is like a character played by an actor in a drama. As long as the actor adorns the makeup and the robes of the character, he is just a character in the drama and not the actor in real life. The character and the actor playing that role are same only in the sense that it is the same actor who is the actor as well as the character played in the drama. The character is bound by the script of the drama and it is not as free as the actor without the makeup. For example, the character can be a wicked person, while the actor who plays that role can be a saint behind the curtains.
So, the individual soul, even though inherently same as the Atma, can be ignorant, can have limitations. It is bound by the body it has taken and whole lot of limitations that are associated with that body. It is only when the individual soul shrugs off its form – i.e. when the actor wipes out his makeup – the character and the actor are identical. The character does not become the actor since it was always that even with the makeup. So also, the soul does not become the Atma, since it was always the Atma. It is just the makeup that made them different!
That is the Advaita of the Upanishads.
To summarize, God has not one but myriad many forms, and at the same time God is formless. And may be more! That is in God language 😉
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