Nirguna Saguna Bhavas

 Nirguna Saguna Bhavas

The clear light of truth very few in this life can bear, much less live up to. It is necessary, therefore, that this comfortable religion should exist; it helps many souls to a better one. Small minds whose circumference is very limited and which require little things to build them up, never venture to soar high in thought. Their conceptions are very good and helpful to them, even if only of little gods and symbols. But you have to understand the Impersonal, for it is in and through that alone that these others can be explained.

Thus this universe itself is the Absolute, the unchangeable, the noumenon; and the phenomenon constitutes the reading thereof. For you will first find that all phenomena are finite. Every phenomenon that we can see, feel, or think of, is finite, limited by our knowledge, and the personal God as we conceive of Him is in fact a phenomenon. The very idea of causation exists only in the phenomenal world, and God as the cause of this universe must naturally be thought of as limited, and yet He is the same Impersonal God. This very universe, as we have seen, is the same Impersonal Being read by our intellect. Whatever is reality in the universe is that Impersonal Being, and the forms and conceptions are given to it by our intellects. Whatever is real in this table is that Being, and the table form and all other forms are given by our intellects. (II, 337 – 338)

Many people think that a personal God is impossible and cannot be demonstrated. “But He is the highest reading of the Impersonal that can be reached by the human intellect and what else is the universe but various readings of the Absolute? It is like a book before us and each one has brought his intellect to read it and each one has to read it for himself.”     

Importance of Forms, Names and Godmen

We find that in many different religions, holy personages have been worshiped. They worship Krishna, they worship Buddha, they worship Jesus, and so forth. Then, there is the worship of saints; hundreds of them have been worshiped all over the world, and why not? The vibration of light is everywhere. 

The owl sees it in the dark. That shows it is there, though man cannot see it. To man, that vibration is only visible in the lamp, in the sun, in the moon, etc. God is omnipresent, He is manifesting Himself in every being; but for men, He is only visible, recognizable, in man. 

When His light, His presence, His spirit, shines through the human face, then and then alone, can man understand Him. Thus, man has been worshiping God through men all the time, and must do so as long as he is a man. He may cry against it, struggle against it, but as soon as he attempts to realise God, he will find the constitutional necessity of thinking of God as a man.

So we find that in almost every religion these are the three primary things which we have in the worship of God — forms or symbols, names, God-men. All religions have these, but you find that they want to fight with each other. One says, “My name is the only name; my form is the only form; and my God-men are the only God-men in the world; yours are simply myths.” (II -242)