If you go to India and you go see a Hindu temple, on the outside of the temple you will usually see, on the roof portion of the temple, gods, or images of gods, piled on top of each other, and painted representations of the different deities within Hinduism.
If you go to a Buddhist Temple, say inside Sri Lanka, the outside of the temple is usually very serene but if you go into the temple, and I had the opportunity to be taken into some of these temples, you’ll see that there is a chaotic collection of either demons or deities painted all over the place, and there’s usually a number of statues of Buddha, either standing, sitting, or lying down.
If you go to the Vatican in Rome you’ll see paintings of God touching Adam at the time of Creation. If you move on to the Protestant churches, whereas you would see Christ on the cross in Catholic churches, in Protestant churches you’ll just see a cross without a figure of a being on it.
If you go to Mosques you will find there’s no pictorial adornment. There’s calligraphy and writing but no pictures. And the same with Jewish synagogues or temples; you won’t find pictures, you’ll find calligraphy. Usually you’ll see a replica of the Ten Commandments somewhere within the temple.
If you look at a line of bulbs connected by wire, they may be of many colors like Christmas tree bulbs; green, and red, and yellow, and blue, and white. They all have something in common; an electric current lights them. Now the electric current is not the bulb, and the electric current doesn’t have any color, the electric current is a power. A power that’s capable of giving animation, or light, to these bulbs.
If you look at these various examples I gave of religious temples and their attitude toward portraying God, you’ll see that it comes from, or goes from, direct representations to no representation at all. God is a power, and He’s a power beyond our understanding. He is not capable of being portrayed. He is without form, and being without form, any portrayal of Him in form is deceptive. And it’s deceptive in a number of ways.
By portraying God as they do on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, as a man, or as portraying God as a man as they do in the Hindu deities, it alters God’s not being able to be portrayed as a form. It alters the perception of His formlessness within the understanding of the people who look at these things.
Now our perception has a lot to do with who we are and what our potentiality is in understanding formlessness, and in understanding that which is beyond illusion. If we understand that illusion is that which we see, then being able to see pictures of God gives us a false understanding of the rest of illusion. It gives us an understanding that somehow God is part of what everything is. God is not part of what everything else is.
Everything else is the Creation but God is the Creator. God has no mother, no father, no sons, no daughters. God is not a he or she. God is a majestic, glorious, transcendent power that maintains and sustains His creation, and is without form…
