Question: Sometimes I like to meditate upon formless God and sometimes with form. Which is the right one?

Swami Brahmeshananda: A great saint used to recommend that if you can meditate on the formless aspect, well and good. If you can’t, imagine that there is a formless light all around which has taken the form of your chosen deity. Then, meditate on Him and at the end of meditation, again merge the form into the formless.

(From the July 2009 issue of The Vedanta Kesari)

Think of Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, as a shoreless ocean. Through the cooling influence, as it were, of the bhakta’s love, the water has frozen at places into blocks of ice. In other words, God now and then assumes various forms for His lovers and reveals Himself to them as a Person. But with the rising of the sun of Knowledge, the blocks of ice melt. Then one doesn’t feel any more that God is a Person, nor does one see God’s forms. What He is cannot be described. Who will describe Him? He who would do so disappears. He cannot find his ‘I’ any more.

(The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 148)