Our obsession with formlessness

There has always been a trend in the thinking of intellectuals. Intellectuals here as per my definition are people who are well-read in the worldly sense and have formed opinions based on careful reasoning, deep thinking and are reasonably open and rational. These people are not fundamentalists but refuse to believe anything without an agreeable justification - fair enough. For a long time in the history of religion and spirituality, there have been intellectuals who opposed to seeing God in a form. They either think it is too narrow a definition for someone so big like God or the other side which thinks that people who believe in Idols and God as an entity have still got to grow up! Reasonable thinking, I would say, because believing in an idol or a form might run the risk of limiting one's view of this world to force-fit in to that picture. They believe that people judge right or wrong by benchmarking against that idol (or a book!). So there were people who started Arya Samaj and the great saints of Advaitha philosophy. Although in different streams, both rubbished the need for idols. "When the God is You and You is Him", why need an idol  they would ask.

But laymen like me never could comprehend this argument beyond a limit. I always thought everyone lives by holding on to an idol. For, what are ideals if not a different form of idol? We all live by a certain ideology and that is idol worship. These ideas/ideals can change but when you leave it you are either dead or you don't need it anymore for you yourself have become that idol. That is when we leave it. The only way we can move beyond idol/ideal/idea worship is to just not have any ideals or ideas, to live without the need of them for judgment, to live without the need for argument - for you don't see the difference anymore; Because you see the same thing in every voice and in every idea. But as long as you hold on to a thought as yours, consider it right and feel the need to express it as different from others, you have already made an idol out of it.

But what is wrong with idols anyway? Why should it be intellectually demeaning to accept that my entire life is revolving around an idol? There was an interesting argument that Lissome put forth in her blog for proving that  she is an atheist - in her stern refusal to call anything incomprehensible as God. She says that it is being lazy and intellectually blunt and people hide behind the name of God to cover this up. I personally think that is a gross
generalization. There are millions of people around me as I see who are just like the other atheists as per her description, rational logical open and true and everything associated but are real stern believers in God. They are just calling that way of life as God-intended. What is wrong with having a name and living a way of life and still living the same without that name? And also not everyone who is a theist fears God and does behave in a way to  be rewarded later in other life. So do they become atheists with this new definition? And what is at the root of our desperation to name everything and then discuss over definitions? I do that all the time too, but I know that is the reason for any difference I feel with the person next to me or a blog next to me - a name and its definition.

That makes me wonder how could Sri Ramakrishna become all-loving and a wonderful soul by talking to the Maa Kali idol in that small, dilapidated temple? How could Ramana Maharshi not differ with millions of people who discussed/argued with him by silently staring at the hill of Arunachala?

I concluded that we as humans need the forms and descriptions but definitions are what push of us away from one another. Probably that is the reason I bumped into reading this paragraph just yesterday in blog when my  ind was thinking about this!

"When I approach Thee regarding Thee as having form, Thou standest as a Hill on earth. If with the mind the seeker looks for Thy (essential) form as formless, he is like one who travels the earth to see the (ever-present) ether. To dwell without thought upon Thy (boundless) nature is to lose one's (separate) identity like a doll of sugar when it comes in contact with the ocean (of nectar); and when I come to realize who I am, what else is this identity of mine (but Thee), O Thou Who standest as the towering Aruna Hill. - Sri Arunachala Ashtakam"