Why does God choose to remain mostly in his unmanifested formIJ AJIT KUMAR BISHNOI answers
God usually prefers to remain in His unmanifested form. This way He is all-pervading, ie omnipresent and available to one and all. Advanced devotees of God can feel His presence. God even accompanies His sincere devotees as promised by Him in the Bhagavad Gita verse # 6.7. From our scriptures, we learn that God is always present in His manifested form in the Vaikuntha lok. There He takes a four-handed form. However, when God incarnates Himself on the planet Earth, He usually takes a two-handed form, though He does appear in other forms also.
Through the medium of the Bhagavad Gita, lord Krishna informs us that He incarnates Himself on the earth planet whenever there is decline in religion (righteousness), and there is ascendency of immorality. (4.7) Such incarnations happen rarely, ie only in different yugas. He performs three main tasks during his period of stay here. These are: Welfare of good people, punishment of the wicked and re-establishment of religious principles. (4.8) Even in any yuga, God incarnates Himself at the time of His choosing. No one can force God to appear, but He does manifest Himself briefly in order to give darshan to His most sincere devotees, who have qualified for such a privilege after performing severe austerities for a very long period, which may span several births.
Why does God choose to remain mostly unmanifestedIJ Would His revealing Himself not help in developing faith in HimIJ The answers to both these questions are in the negative. Rather such frequent appearances on earth will be counterproductive. I have listed several reasons why God does not choose to do so.
The very first reason in that it is entirely unnecessary. Only the most sincere devotees of God are genuinely interested in Him. To them, God is always giving indications of His presence. As mentioned earlier, He even accompanies His most fortunate devotees. He does so either to provide useful information/answers or to warn them of some danger or what they should not be doing. God even prevents such situations from developing which could compromise His followers, because they are still not strong enough to resist the various temptations which exist in this material world.
God sends help to those connected to Him, whenever that is necessary. Such help can be in many forms including monetary and physical. God rewards those committed to Him with material ‘siddhis’ (perfections), through which they can serve others. God empowers those linked to Him to do specific tasks like writing spiritual texts. God even performs miracle for them.
let us take up the case of non-devotees, ie who are not interested in God. Why should God bother to reveal Himself to themIJ We can understand this by a common example. Does a President of a country go out and introduce himself to a common manIJ There are other compelling reasons as well. Confirmed atheists will reject Him as a great magician or they will call Him a great hypnotist. Cynics will call Him another god. Aren’t there many already who call themselves gods and goddessesIJ Even during incarnations of God, majority treat God as a mystical figure. Others ignore Him or are envious of Him. At that time also, only the genuine devotees of God recognise Him and revel in His presence.
Therefore, we can conclude that seeing God in a live gross form is not going to help a common man much in building faith. For that, we need to do the prescribed spiritual practices. Once we do that, we are on our way to realise God and at some point, if we so desire, can see God in person also. I welcome your comments.
Bishnoi is a spiritual writer and can be reached at spiritual@ajitbishnoi.com