Single Use Divinity

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2 mins September, 2026
Single Use Divinity
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Last month Sri Ganesa was ceremoniously welcomed all over Maharashtra and also in other parts of India and the world. A clay murti or image of Lord Ganapati is brought into thousands of homes and at various community centers, and after ten days of festivities, on the eleventh day (corresponding to Ananta Caturdasi) the image is immersed in a body of water. The same is done for Srimati Durga Devi in Bengal and other parts of India.


This is certainly not a “use and throw” type of divinity. Rather it involves giving a chance to many who are not yet ready to embrace serving God as a serious, full-time enterprise.


This also put some intelligent Indians in a thinking mode. One reader asked the following questions on my YouTube channel:


Question: Isn’t it true that the Vedas proclaim that God or any other form of divinity does not have any form?


The question whether God can be represented in a material form or not has been going on for ages. For millennia philosophers have grappled with it. A layperson trying to gain spiritual knowledge finds it a lot more difficult to mentally focus on something impersonal rather than a deity form of the Lord.


For example, if you believe that God has no form, that the ultimate truth is impersonal, what will you hear? Simply “God is formless, God is formless, God is formless”? How long can you go on like that? If God were formless, there would be no point in hearing about Him, because He would have no activities.


But God is not formless. He is a person, and therefore He has His form and activities. If God had no activities, why would He say in the Bhagavad-Gita (4.9): “One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna”?


So, what do the Vedas mean when they proclaim that God or the Supreme Absolute Truth has no form? The correct understanding is that God indeed has a form, but He has a fully spiritual form.


Our situation is such that we can only think of a material form. You, me and all others around you have a form, so the moment we read in the Vedas that God also has a form, we connect His form with the one that we possess. That is why the Vedas stress that God is formless — “He is not under the conception of form which you can conceive.” In other words, His form is eternal, full of knowledge and blissful. Our form, our body, is not at all blissful.


Moreover, we can only see with our eyes or eat with our mouth, but Lord Sri Krishna can see with His eyes and also eat with His eyes. One Vedic verse says, “He has no hand, but He can accept your offerings.”


But if He has no hand, then how can He accept your offerings? He has His hand, but not like our hand. He can extend His hand millions of miles. Just like Krishna lives in His Goloka Vrindavana, a planet many millions and trillions of miles away, but He can accept what you offer. That is Krishna’s hand. Your hand is only three feet in length. That is the difference.

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Single Use Divinity

Single Use Divinity
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Last month Sri Ganesa was ceremoniously welcomed all over Maharashtra and also in other parts of India and the world. A clay murti or image of Lord Ganapati is brought into thousands of homes and at various community centers, and after ten days of festivities, on the eleventh day (corresponding to Ananta Caturdasi) the image is immersed in a body of water. The same is done for Srimati Durga Devi in Bengal and other parts of India.


This is certainly not a “use and throw” type of divinity. Rather it involves giving a chance to many who are not yet ready to embrace serving God as a serious, full-time enterprise.


This also put some intelligent Indians in a thinking mode. One reader asked the following questions on my YouTube channel:


Question: Isn’t it true that the Vedas proclaim that God or any other form of divinity does not have any form?


The question whether God can be represented in a material form or not has been going on for ages. For millennia philosophers have grappled with it. A layperson trying to gain spiritual knowledge finds it a lot more difficult to mentally focus on something impersonal rather than a deity form of the Lord.


For example, if you believe that God has no form, that the ultimate truth is impersonal, what will you hear? Simply “God is formless, God is formless, God is formless”? How long can you go on like that? If God were formless, there would be no point in hearing about Him, because He would have no activities.


But God is not formless. He is a person, and therefore He has His form and activities. If God had no activities, why would He say in the Bhagavad-Gita (4.9): “One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna”?


So, what do the Vedas mean when they proclaim that God or the Supreme Absolute Truth has no form? The correct understanding is that God indeed has a form, but He has a fully spiritual form.


Our situation is such that we can only think of a material form. You, me and all others around you have a form, so the moment we read in the Vedas that God also has a form, we connect His form with the one that we possess. That is why the Vedas stress that God is formless — “He is not under the conception of form which you can conceive.” In other words, His form is eternal, full of knowledge and blissful. Our form, our body, is not at all blissful.


Moreover, we can only see with our eyes or eat with our mouth, but Lord Sri Krishna can see with His eyes and also eat with His eyes. One Vedic verse says, “He has no hand, but He can accept your offerings.”


But if He has no hand, then how can He accept your offerings? He has His hand, but not like our hand. He can extend His hand millions of miles. Just like Krishna lives in His Goloka Vrindavana, a planet many millions and trillions of miles away, but He can accept what you offer. That is Krishna’s hand. Your hand is only three feet in length. That is the difference.