Saguna OR Nirguna ?

Eshaan, ypu have beaten me to it. I wanted to start a similar discussion, but then you have brought the point to fore.Kudos. Yea as expressed by Vedant, Saguna Brahman is what Personal God is all about. Strictly speaking the God of Islam and Christainity, and I think of Judaism(Adoniah must correct me if I am wrong) is also a Personal God even though none of them give a Form to God. They still are talking of a Personal God, because He has those attributes of Benevolence, Mercy, and Compassion. In the idea of Nirguna Brahman, the Supreme is attributeless but all-pervading and Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnipresent.This concept is no doubt hard to grasp, hard to hold on to but IMO one such as that would not divide a people.Assuming somehow by miracle whatever religion is known today as Hinduism-the conglomerate of kindred faiths- if it had only stayed with the Original Vedic Essence, and manintained this Impersonal All-pervding Brahman to whom No Form was ever given, I feel there would have been lesser divisions within Hinduism. The penchant to give a Form after stressing that the Infinitely Positive Attibutes of a Personal God (Read: Saguna Brahman)had, in addition to giving the most easily distracted believer, a "graspable" view of God, had served to divide the Hindus by "narrow domestic walls" in the words of our Poet Laureate Rabindrnath Tagore. For this one thing, I had always felt a sadness about the concept of a Personal God. We should have managed like the J, C, Ms if only we needed to go with an idea of a Personal God. For me the idea of Unity whether at the level of humanity or the level Godhood is of primemost importance.[B]Ekam Sat ViprA bahudhaa vadanti[/B] is what I would love to believe. But I belong to what we call the Smarta concepyt of God. It accommodates both the Personal God and the Impersonal God. The additional advantage in the kind of Personal God concept the Smarta Doctrines express is to accept as equal ALL conceptions of God with Forms. This is perhaps the next best thing to having a system that talks of Unity in terms like [B]ekam advitIyaM brahma.[/B]The smarta system accepts the God with Form albeit with an apology. That said, I do say that when one wants to relate to God, it is always a Personal God.I personally relate to Krishna. But true to my smarta upbringing there is no "division" in my mind when I conceive of God in the virtually myriad forms in which a traditional Hindu is "pushed" to conceive of Him/Her/It. But all through my youth I have been pained by the division in the Hindu thinking about God. I have always admired all the Acharyas who stood for[B]ekam advitIyaM brahma[/B]even though they had accepted the erroneously popular/populist view of Hinduism as pantheistic/polytheistic religion. That is why my philosophical line has always been God needs NO NAME!!

Hi ! eshaan I believe we get attracted towards god by his saguna form and our religions say then when we are ready for experience of Nirguna the formless we start beliving in it according to the gods will. So both go hand in hand thank you for starting a interesting discussion

God is found in two phases of reality: as the Absolute supreme Being of eternal nature and as a personal God at the highest level of phenomenal creation,the celestial level of creation. The two realities of God are personal and impersonal. The impersonal aspect of God is formless,supreme; it is eternal and Absolute Being. It is without attributes,qualities or features because all attributes qualities and features belong to the relative field of life, and the impersonal God is of absolute nature.It is attribute less,but is the source of all relative existence-all the different forms and phenomena of creation. Everything in creation is the manifestation of the unmanifested,absolute,impersonal Being,the omnipresent and omniscient God. This is my belief about God.

When I think of GOD, God has no form, a form would make him finite where as GOD is infinite he can have no form. God is unseen but can be perceived if one searches for him.

I am not familiar in your religion although I am very interested to learn about different beliefs. I was brought up a Catholic so for many years I had the typical childhood image of an old man with a white beard wearing a white cape sitting on a cloud in heaven but now that I have matured and hopefully evolved in a spiritual sense I envision God as a bright warm light that covers the entire Universe. I don’t really try to ‘see’ God these days; it is more a case of feeling that He is with me at all times.

Hi eshaan, in the Bible( our sacred Book as I'm a Roman Catholic ), Genesis chapter 1 verse 26 God said "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." Literally I believe that God's appearance is like us.

The human mind does not have the ability to picture HaShem. There is no vocabulary on earth with the words to describe HaShem. HaShem is not OF this world. HaShem created this world, this world did not create HaShem. The only word that I can think of to discribe HaShem is Knowledge. Without universal knowledge how could all of this beauty and wonder ever have come about. Knowledge is ever expanding and growing. It is the one thing that is not static. This is necessary if the world and universe and Humans are going to continue to exist and grow too. Shalom~Adoniah

hi eshan to me God would appear as Saguna he has the form of a beautiful handsome man with a wonderful face and the light of peace that flows all around him and he sends out feelings of great warmth and peace. I am unafraid when I think of how he must look.I am a protestant and a Christian. I worship him as supreme being creator and master of us all. God bless you and keep you forever and a day.

I am a Christian and whenever i pray i imagine God as a spirit with an image like an old man with a beard and a smiling face. I think of him as a powerful God that no one can be as powerful as him. I also believe that he is a very kind God but he punishes those who commit sins. He has a son, Jesus who is also as powerful as he is and kind. I imagine him as a little younger than father God with long hair and a beard too. Well no one have ever seen them really but as long as we believe in them and we follow what they teach us we can be sure that we are in the right path.