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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Bhaskaran: When you think of The Supreme God? (maybe this is being
asked to you for the zillionth time), do you think of the Supreme as
an Infinite Impersonal Force or do you associate a Form ? ( I agree
that you know both are not different) yet each person thinks of the
Supreme in a unique way, so am curious to know.

Sitaram: Yes, I shall explain.

Sitaram: One person emailed me, some years ago, saying that they
appreciated my dream (page 1) and saying that their teacher once
explained that it is acquaintanceship with the personal God which is
the gateway to knowledge of the impersonal God.

Bhaskaran: of course, your dream on Page 1 does throw some light on
my question, yet, one has the concept of Ishta (the most liked
Form of the Lord in case one imagines the Lord as a person.)

Bhaskaran: Ahh, please continue.

Sitaram: The letter is in an early page (below page 100) entitled Website
Feedback.

Sitaram: and page 2 (Meher Baba) is also for me a good explanation of
the above sentiment

Sitaram: and thirdly, the page entitled "Hinduism in a Nutshell"

Sitaram: (He wrote): Some people would say that the experience of
Deity as a person is inferior to the realization of the Impersonal
(Brahman). But I have learned from my teachers that, to the contrary,
His Person is the source of the Impersonal (Consciousness).

Sitaram: (from Meher Baba): Consciously or unconsciously, every
living creature seeks one thing. In the lower forms of life and in
less advanced human beings, the quest is unconscious; in advanced
human beings, it is conscious.

The object of the quest is called by many names; happiness, peace,
freedom, truth, love, perfection, self-realization, God-Realization,
union with God.

Essentially, it is a search for all of these, but in a SPECIAL WAY.
Everyone has moments of happiness, glimpses of truth, fleeting
experiences of union with God what they want is to make them
PERMANENT. They want to establish an ABIDING reality in the midst of
constant change.

This is a natural desire, based fundamentally on a memory - dim or
clear as the evolution of the individual soul may be low or high - a
memory of the souls essential unity with God

For every living thing is a partial manifestation of God, conditioned
only by its lack of knowledge of its own true nature.

The whole of evolution, in fact, is an evolution from unconscious
divinity to conscious divinity, in which God Himself, essentially
eternal and unchangeable, assume an infinite variety of forms, enjoys
an infinite variety of experiences, and transcends an infinite
variety of self-imposed limitations

Evolution from the standpoint of the Creator is a divine sport
(Lila), in which the Unconditioned tests the infinitude of His
absolute knowledge, power, and bliss in the midst of all conditions.
But evolution from the standpoint of the CREATURE, with its limited
knowledge limited power, limited capacity for enjoying bliss, is an
epic of alternating rest and struggle, joy and sorrow, love and hate -
-- until in the perfected person, God balances the pairs of
opposites, and duality is transcended.

Then creature and Creator recognize themselves as ONE; changelessness
is established in the midst of change; eternity is experienced in the
midst of time. God knows Himself as God, unchangeable in essence,
infinite in manifestation, ever experiencing the supreme bliss of
Self-realization in continually fresh awareness of Himself by Himself.

This Realization must and does take place only in the midst of life;
for it is only in the midst of life that limitation can be
experienced and transcended, and that subsequent freedom from
limitation can be enjoyed. (this union of the created and Creator is
an Avatar or Incarnation.

(END of Meher Baba quote)

(Excerpts):

That which has a starting point in time is not eternal, only
immortal. How can that which is not eternal be divine? How can that
which is not divine be saved? How can that which is ETERNAL not be
DIVINE? And why does that which IS DIVINE need saving?

Since God is the source of even BEING AND NON-BEING (in the
Samsara of Dualities)it is not correct to speak of the question
of Gods existence. God is prior to and outside of being, non-
being, temporal, eternal.

Bhaskaran: Still Sita Ram ji, you haven't directly answered a
personal question I asked you.

Sitaram: But, you see, is light quantum or wave, but the answer is
BOTH.

Bhaskaran: Ah yes

Sitaram: God is BOTH personal AND impersonal, both existent AND non-
existent, both good AND evil, AND beyond all existence, morality,
etc.

Bhaskaran: I Said when I asked the question: I agree that the Supreme
is both Personal and Impersonal, both The SadGuna Brahman and Nirguna
Brahman.

Sitaram: We may learn much from modern physics.

Sitaram: If God is really Omnipotent and Omnipresent, then WHY CAN’T
God have many names and forms, as well as being NAMELESS and
FORMLESS? Even LIGHT in physics behaves both as WAVES and as
QUANTUM PACKETS. Why should God be bound by frail human syllogistic
reasoning?

Bhaskaran: True, yet, I asked the question because I had some changes
inside me when I "went after" a personal God, that's all.

Sitaram: It is the West's failure to understand duality, which leads
to the folly of trying to eliminate evil, and have only good,
eliminate poverty and have only wealth, or convert all people to ONE
TRUE FAITH, in one lifetime. It is a very evident historical fact
that such unanimous agreement has never been reached in the past 2000
yrs, and will never be reached. This provides evidence for the
necessity of rebirth, and gradual spiritual ripening of individual
souls.

It is not possible to EXPERIENCE bliss WITHOUT attachment.

The drop enters into the ocean, and loses its identify as a drop
but the ocean also enters into the drop.

Bhaskaran: Yes.

Sitaram: The drop enters into the ocean, and loses its identify as a
drop but the ocean also enters into the drop, and GAINS identity
(the personal). Personal/Impersonal is a two-way street.
God is ONE with TRINITY of aspects: Brahman-creator Vishnu-
preserver Shiva-destroyer; cyclically creates, destroys, and
recreates a myriad of universes, manifests in 330 million forms,
yet is nameless and formless, is immanent in creation (non-different
from creation) yet transcendent (more than creation and has
personality).

Bhaskaran: "With sincerity and earnestness one can realize
God through all religions. The Vaishnava will realize God, and so
will the Saktas, the Vedantists, and the Brahmos. The Muslims and
Christians will realize Him too. All will certainly realize God if
they are earnest and sincere.

"Some people indulge in quarrels, saying, 'One cannot attain anything
unless one worships our Krishna', or, 'Nothing can be gained without
the worship of Kali, our Divine Mother', or, 'One cannot be saved
without accepting the Christian religion.' This is pure dogmatism.
The dogmatist says, 'My religion alone is true, and the religions of
others are false.' This is a bad attitude. God can be reached by
different paths.

"Further, some say that God has form and is not formless. Thus they
start quarreling. A Vaishnava quarrels with a Vedantist.

"One can rightly speak of God only after one has seen Him. He who has
seen God knows really and truly that God has form and that He is
formless as well. He has many other aspects that cannot be described.

"Once some blind men chanced to come near an animal that someone told
them was an elephant. They were asked what the elephant was like. The
blind men began to feel its body. One of them said the elephant was
like a pillar; he had touched only its leg. Another said it was like
a winnowing-fan; he had touched only its ear. In this way the others,
having touched its tail or belly, gave their different versions of
the elephant. Just so, a man who has seen only one aspect of God
limits God to that alone. It is his conviction that God cannot be
anything else.

Sitaram: God sends rays or sparks our as individual souls
(consciousness) which are reborn countless times but eventually
achieve salvation, virtue and sin are their own rewards (karma is
like inertia.)

Bhaskaran: "How can you say that the only truth about God is that He
has form? It is undoubtedly true that God comes down to earth in a
human form, as in the case of Krishna. And it is true as well that
God reveals Himself to His devotees in various forms. But it is also
true that God is formless; He is the Indivisible Existence-Knowledge-
Bliss Absolute. He has been described in the Vedas both as formless
and as endowed with form. He is also described there both as
attributeless and as endowed with attributes.

Bhaskaran: I like the following very much Sita Ram ji as Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa has said:

"Do you know what I mean? Satchidananda is like an infinite ocean.
Intense cold freezes the water into ice, which floats on the ocean in
blocks of various forms. Likewise, through the cooling influence of
bhakti, one sees forms of God in the ocean of the Absolute. These
forms are meant for the bhaktas, the lovers of God. But when the Sun
of Knowledge rises, the ice melts; it becomes the same water it was
before. Water above and water below, everywhere nothing but water.
Therefore a prayer in the Bhagavata says: 'O Lord, Thou hast form,
and Thou art also formless. Thou walkest before us, O Lord, in the
shape of a man; again, Thou hast been described in the Vedas as
beyond words and thought.'

"But you may say that for certain devotees God assumes eternal forms.
There are places in the ocean where the ice doesn't melt at all. It
assumes the form of quartz."

KEDAR: "It is said in the Bhagavata that Vyasa asked God's
forgiveness for his three transgressions. He said: 'O Lord, Thou art
formless, but I have thought of Thee in my meditation as endowed with
form; Thou art beyond speech, but I have sung Thee hymns; Thou art
the All-pervading Spirit, but I have made pilgrimages to sacred
places. Be gracious, O Lord, and forgive these three transgressions
of mine.' "

MASTER: "Yes, God has form and He is formless too. Further, He is
beyond both form and formlessness. No one can limit Him."

Bhaskaran: There is one more quote I remember from Sri Chandrasekhara
Bharathi, a Jivan Mukta.

Sitaram: Yes...?

Bhaskaran: Why should people quarrel about the nature of the Absolute
Being? If we are content to believe that Being has a form, we are at
present far away even from His feet and the path to attain those feet
is yet to be trodden by us all. When we are at the end of that path
and if, by the grace of that Being, we are enabled to have a vision
of His glorious face, it will be time enough then to look Him in the
face and ascertain whether He is wearing on His forehead holy ashes
or the trident mark or anything at all and whether He can be called
Siva, Narayana, or by any other name. Why should we wrangle over it
now?

What does it matter to us in the stage in which we are at present
situated whether the highest truth is absolute non-dualism(Advaita),
qualified non-dualism(Vishistadvaita) or dualism(Dvaita)? The path of
Dharma is broad enough for all of us to travel along, each according
to the Dharma prescribed for him; when we have advanced far enough in
this long and arduous road and are on the threshold of the final
goal, it will be time enough to consider the true nature of the
Absolute Being.

Sitaram: It is a curious coincidence that, some years ago, Sunday
was Shiva-ratri, the Night of Lord Shiva, which always falls
near, and 4 or 5 yrs ago FELL ON Ash Wednesday. Both religious holidays
involve placing ashes on ones body. At one Cathedral, I noticed the
vestments of the priests had downward swooping images of the Holy Spirit
Dove WHICH LOOKED IDENTICAL to the Shiva Trisula (three-pronged
image)!

We find two metaphors of precious stone in the Bible, one in the Old
Testament and the other in the New Testament:

Exod 24:09) Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and
seventy of the elders of Israel: (74 people, possibly the first of the
Sanhedren?) 10) And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his
feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body
of heaven (blue) in his clearness.

Revelation 4: 2-3 And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a
throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And he that sat was
to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow
round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.

I once asked a rabbi what he thought of the passage in Exodus, regarding
the clear blue sapphire. He explained that it is a spiritual METAPHOR of
what it might have been like to be with Moses and experience Divinity.

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