Saguna or Nirguna Brahman?

(Worship God With or Without Form?)

Self-Inquiry/Self-Reflection:

What aspect of GOD do you tend to worship most - imagining God as a visible Being (Saguna), or thinking of God as a Formless Infinite Consciousness & Energy (Nirguna)?

We all have at least some of both sorts of worship in us, and even that fluctuates with our spiritual attainment and with what we’re going through in life.

(a) Which are you now, at this point in this lifetime?

Divide 100 points between the two:

_______% Saguna points (Worshipping God in a Form)

_______% Nirguna points (Worshipping Formless God)

(b) How do you want that to shift over the next 18 months?

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In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna asks Arjuna:

“Which of these two aspects of God—the visible God with a form (Saguna), or the formless God (Nirguna)—is easiest to worship?

___ 1) Worship Saguna Brahman—God in a form, the one you can see.

___ 2) Either path, is good, but this is the right one for you at this stage.

___ 3) Devotees of the formless Godhead have a steeper climb. Nirguna Brahman is God without form or name. It is extremely difficult for a person in a physical body to understand the formless God.

___ 4) The term Nirguna literally means “not of nature. ”This Godhead is indefinable, unmanifested, invisible, not materialized. Your senses therefore have no access to it. There is nothing in nature to which you can compare or associate it.

___ 5) To deeply love the formless God you must be free from your own form, your body consciousness. This is a rare state that is not attainable by many.

___ 6) Ordinary people identify themselves with their own physical body and cannot help but conceptualize God as also being in some sort of body.

___ 7) Those who worship Nirguna (the formless Brahman), if they truly subdue their senses, maintain a calm mind, and work for the good of all beings—they come to Me.

___ 8) For now, set your heart steadily on the visible aspect of Me. Become utterly immersed, absolutely saturated with devotion to Me in form (in a body). This full absorption in God will lead you rather quickly and surely to Me, the Godhead, beyond the form.

___ 9) Keep in mind, however, that worshiping Divinity in a form will help you only for a while. If your ultimate aim is full liberation, sooner or later you will have to give up all attachment to the body.

Without detaching from the form, the Atma stage of your spiritual development cannot be attained.” – Krishna

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