[Advaita-l] Re : Ishwara swarupam

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

On Friday, April 13, 2012, amith vikram wrote:

> . For one who asserts the ishwara with name and form to be
> paramarthika, It doesn't really matter if maya is an upadhi or not.
>

I did not assert that but it is easy to say Ishwara is formless without
understanding what is form and formlessness. At a simplistic level, we
think of form as the shape of an object and if an object has a contour, we
say hat it has a form. We think of an object as formless if it does not
have a contour. However, if we ask ourselves whether space has a form, we
have to say that it does not because we can't see its infinite contour. But
space is nevertheless an object of perception and nothing can be so unless
it has a form. We thus have an indeterminate answer to the question whether
space has a form or not. This indeterminacy affects all objects contained
in space because if space has form then you cannot have a formless object
within space as such an object's contour will be the contour of the
enclosing space itself. Also, as all objects exist relative to others in
space, if we concede that there exists an object within space then we have
to concede that there can be no object without form ecause the former will
limit the latter. Thus we conclude that we do not know through direct
experience formlessness except as the logical opposite of form that we know
through direct experience. As formlessness is an attribute of objects,
though not seen, we have ask what is the form of formlessness? Also, forms
themselves are relative to the level of abstraction of perception. The
contour of a pot is no longer there when examined with a lense as the
contour of the clay particles supersede the former. Here arises the notion
of formlessness of form. We need to understand these basics before we talk
about Ishwara's form or formlessness. Is it not?