[Advaita-l] ishwara swarupam

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

On Sunday, April 15, 2012, amith vikram wrote:

> >I was trying to bring out the complexity
> >of form, formless, indeterminate form, form of formless and formlessness
> of
> >form even with respect to entities within five elements.
> You said formlessness is an attribute of objects from which you derived
> form of formlessness. In that case, an object simultaneously has a form and
> is also formless which is absurd.
>
> Not so. The mind is an of perception but is also formless unlike pot etc.
which have a form. The mind is also able to assume the form of an object of
perception. Space is formless but when reflected in water, it reveals its
form which is different from the form of the reservoir. That is why you
perceive depth etc. (ref. siddhanta bindu).

>
> >when you say Ishwara is formless, what meaning can the word formless
> >communicate to you? If you had no experience of sweetness in life, what
> >will you understand if someone says sugar is sweet?
> When I say Ishwara is formless, I mean to say that Ishwara is not an object
> of perception, like sugar. However, when someone says sugar is sweet, I'll
> have some sugar and then I'll have an experience of sweetness, since it's
> an object of perception.

So, what you are saying when you say Ishwara is formless, you are indeed
saying He is beyond forms and formlessness. Otherwise, you would have just
said He is formless like the space.