Spiritual preceptors have spoken about the particular and the impersonal in different ways, championing for one or the other. But a many have also said that God can be both particular as well as impersonal. Sri Ramakrishna went further and said that God is also “ numerous effects more ”( Gospel,p. 366). In other words, there's no need to limit God’s identity to either particular or impersonal, as if those are the only two options. God is beyond indeed the idea of the particular and the impersonal. No words can describe impeccably who God really is. maybe God is neither particular nor impersonal. God is God. Or, indeed more, God simply is.
To those who watch, whatever or whoever is appertained to by the word “ God ” is someone, indeed if the identity of that someone is delicate to jut down. The Holy Writ speak of God as one “ from whom all beings are born, in whom they live, and to whom they ultimately return ”( see Taittirīya Upaniṣad,3.1.1; also Brahma Sutra,1.1.2). God is the source, the support, and the ultimate destination of everyone and everything.
We may read about God in books, but God isn't a theoretical construct. God is real — infinitely more real than whatever we tend to accept as real. Books may help, but God is truly known only when God is seen. It's a special kind of “ seeing. ” It happens not through the eyes or any of the senses. It's an experience that's near to us than our own tone. It’s like the way we witness our own actuality.
Until this kind of “ seeing ” happens( and it'll one day), the coming stylish thing we can do is to suppose of God. But when the mind tries to suppose of God, it can only use the tools it knows, the orders it's familiar with, the language it understands. Hence the ideas of God as being either with form( sākāra) or without form( nirākāra), with rates( saguṇa) or without rates( nirguṇa).
Because every mind has a rich history of its own, its own set of accumulated prints( saṁskāras), its own unique way of making meaning, not everyone thinks of God in an identical way. sweats have been made throughout history, through persuasion as well as force, to bring people around to suppose of God in a invariant way. Commonly similar sweats have gone nowhere. They didn't succeed also, they wo n’t succeed now.
No matter how the mind thinks of God, it's only a manner of thinking, nothing further, nothingless.However, if it brings some clarity to the mind, if it draws a person closer to passing God, If the way we suppose of God is meaningful in some way.
When M said that his mind likes to suppose of God as formless, Sri Ramakrishna’s response is worth treasuring in every heart
“ veritably good. It's enough to have faith in either aspect. You believe in God without form; that's relatively each right. But noway for a moment suppose that this alone is true and all additional false. Flash back that God with form is just as true as God without form. But hold fast to your own conviction. ”( Gospel,p. 80)
There's no objective test to determine which kind of God will make sense to a person’s intellect or to which kind the mind will be spontaneously drawn. The connection between me and my God just happens in some mysterious kind of way. Since the connection, at this stage, is through the mind, the mind’s color gets reflected in it. As long as I'm a person, my God will also be a “ person, ” indeed when my intellect strives its utmost to suppose of God in impersonal terms. To suppose of God as impersonal and, at the same time, to cleave to one’s own personality just does n’t make sense.
Our conception of God evolves as we evolve. The God we worship is the God we understand and the God we need. As our understanding deepens, our conception of God becomes nuanced. As our requirements change, a corresponding change is noticed in the way we suppose of God. The contemporaneous elaboration of the sucker’s mind and the God whom the sucker worships reaches its fulfillment when the mind, now fully pure and transparent, disappears. With the exposure of the mind, allowing stops. That's when seeing thresholds. “ Allowing ” is an exertion of the mind. Everything comes to a deadlock when “ experience ” begins.
What we witness can not be put into words. What's endured is neither particular nor impersonal. What's educated neither has form nor is it formless. The moment we try to express what it is, the mind and the senses spring into action — and the experience ends. The expression always falls short. It's bound by the limitation of language and colored by the prints in the mind. The expression can noway match the experience.
It’s time to stop counting “ the trees, branches and leaves ” and to start eating “ mangoes ”( Gospel,p. 161). It’s meaningless to simply talk about God if the talk isn't followed by a bent walk toward the thing. How can we hope to reach there unless we begin walking, if not running?
Only when we reach God will we know who God really is.
Source:Vedanta society,Wikipedia