Manifestations of the Divine

There is a saying in India, ‘There are as many cosmic gods and goddess’ as there are human beings’. Meaning that every human in fact is a god in essence, God lives inside us – housed within the Atman or soul.

This is not a foreign concept when looking at global religions, for example in Christianity this same reality is termed the Holy Spirit. Sri Chinmoy often refers to the soul as the Inner Pilot.

The various aspects of the Supreme Self have taken the forms of the cosmic gods and goddess’ manifesting different qualities and attributes of God.

If however someone has no feeling for the cosmic gods and goddess’ and wants to invoke a particular quality such as harmony, they can either pray to God without form for this quality, or for others it may be easier to pray to god with form, for harmony one would invoke Mahalakshmi

The Upanashads say: “That is far and at the same time is near. That moves and that moves not. That is within, that is without.” It is within and without. When our inner consciousness is fully awakened, we see that if something is within, that very thing also has to be without. If we have sown a seed, then it will germinate and there will be a tree. If the truth is already there within, then the truth has to be manifested sooner or later outside.

Sri Chinmoy speaks about God both with and without form: “The Formless is necessary to realise the Highest, the Ultimate, the Infinite; and the form is necessary to reveal and manifest the Highest and the inmost in an intimate way. That which is infinite in consciousness can be seen only in the formless form. Again, it can house itself in form. That is why the heart can hold Infinity inside it. When you enter into the subtle physical, it is all formless when you enter into the physical, it is all form.”