Saguna and Nirguna Brahman -- God With and Without Form

Hindus worship God in a thousand forms -- as Krishna with his flute, Shiva in meditation, the Goddess on her lion -- and yet the Upanishads describe the ultimate reality as beyond all form, name and description. These two ways of speaking about the divine are called saguna and nirguna. Saguna Brahman is Brahman "with qualities": the personal God, endowed with knowledge, power, compassion and beauty, who can be loved, prayed to and seen in an image. Nirguna Brahman is Brahman "without qualities": the one reality that cannot be described by any attribute at all, because every attribute limits.

Both go back to the scriptures. The Shvetashvatara Upanishad, in a single verse, calls the one God the inner self of all beings, the overseer of action, the witness -- and in the same breath, nirguna.

How can the same reality be both? The great schools of Vedanta answer differently. For Adi Shankaracharya and Advaita, nirguna Brahman is the final truth. Saguna Brahman, Ishvara, is that same Brahman as it appears in relation to the world through maya -- fully real for the worshipper, who is also part of that world, but not the last word. Devotion to Ishvara purifies the mind and prepares it for the knowledge in which all distinctions, including that between worshipper and worshipped, fall away.

For Ramanuja and Vishishtadvaita, Brahman is never without qualities. When the Upanishads call him nirguna, Ramanuja argues, they mean that he is free of all bad, limiting qualities -- not that he lacks the infinite auspicious ones. God is the personal Lord Narayana, and the highest goal is loving service to him, not dissolution into an attributeless absolute. Madhva and the later devotional schools stand closer to Ramanuja. The disagreement is not about whether God has form, but about what is ultimate.

The Gita takes up the question directly. At the start of chapter twelve Arjuna asks Krishna which worshippers are the better yogis: those devoted to him in his personal form, or those who meditate on the imperishable unmanifest. Krishna's answer is generous to both. Those who worship the unmanifest also reach him -- but their path is harder, because for embodied beings the unmanifest is difficult to grasp. Those who fix their minds on him with love he lifts quickly from the ocean of death.

The same question shaped the poetry of medieval north India, which scholars divide into nirguna and saguna bhakti. Kabir sang of a Rama without form, found within, and mocked idol and temple alike; Tulsidas, Surdas and Mirabai poured their devotion into the forms of Rama and Krishna. Yet many of these poets refused the choice. Tulsidas wrote that there is no real difference between the saguna and the nirguna, and that the formless takes form out of love for the devotee.