Godhead is Form. He is not formless. The formless is a view of the Effulgence radiated by the form. The Effulgence acts as a blinding zone of pure blissful light encircling the Form. This radiated Divine Effulgence has the quality of obscuring the vision of the spiritual Form of the individual soul bound on the quest of the Absolute. Arriving in this zone of light, the seeker is apt to receive the overpowering impression that he has no individual Form of his own and that he is one with the vast undifferentiated Effulgence. He is so fully satisfied in making this discovery that he has no mind to question the legitimacy of his overwhelming satisfaction.
True, the light emitted by the Divine drives away all worldly ignorance and misery and draws the purified soul into itself. It is as if a great light draws to itself one of its own rays gone astray. What happens to the individual ray after it is merged in the great light, is left undescribed. No vocabulary, it is urged, can carry us into the mystic depths of existence inside the great light. This is the semitic psychology represented by the idea of the indefinable personality of Godhead.
Sri Krishna is Swayamrupa or the Absolute personal Form. Godhead has an infinity of personal and impersonal forms. His own Form is personal. The personal Form of Sri Krishna is the embodied concentrated essence of the principles of Absolute Existence, Cognition and Bliss. The Form of Godhead is not an adjunct. The Form is Godhead himself. The impersonal Form is an attribute of the personal and is not the substantive entity. The impersonal Form is of the nature of the Halo of the person of Divinity.
Those who do not admit the Form of Godhead as being Godhead Himself, or who suppose His Form to be a passing manifestation of His Essence, are pashandas or atheists and fit to be punished by the God of death. In other words, one who denies the Form of the Absolute commits the gravest of all offenses against Godhead. The offender is punished by being incarcerated in twin material bodies, viz the gross physical form and the subtle material body, which he is deluded into supposing to be his own body.
An offence that is attempted against Godhead recoils on the offender with tenfold severity. If Godhead is denied His Form, the offender is punished by addiction to the gross conception that the physical body and mind are his own real form and this conception leads the victim to the vicious round of his worldly activities. Every item of such worldly activity is the punishment for the denial of the corresponding activity to the Lord. This is verily the hypocrites Hell. The prayers of impersonalists offend the Lord more than the denunciations of His avowed enemies.
Persons under the influence of such mentality are apt to be disinclined to accept any description of the form and doings of Godhead. They prefer to make their obeisances to the zone of light, and do not consider it their duty to be over curious or to peep into the hidden secrets; but the realm or light, according to both the Koran and the Bible, is inhabitated by an infinite host of angels with bodies of light who eternally serve Godhead and have an uninterrupted view of Him in His Divine Realm. Beyond this admission no clue is supplied to the details of the actual Divine Form, and to describe or represent him or his angels to mortal ear or mortal eyes is condemned as idolatrous activity. It is also considered an offence to describe the Form and activities of Godhead even analogously in terms of mortal experience.
Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura, from 'Sri Chaitanya's Teachings' Part Two, published by Tridandi Sri B P Yati, 1974, Gaudiya Math, Nadia, Calcutta and Madras.
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