Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa: God has form and, again, God He is formless.
Once a man went into a wood and saw a beautiful creature on a tree. Later he told a friend about it and said, 'Brother, on a certain tree in the wood I saw a red coloured creature.'
“The friend answered: I have seen it too. Why do you call it red? It is green.”
A third man said: 'Oh, no, no! Why do you call it green? It is yellow.'
Then other persons began to describe the animal variously as violet, blue, or black. Soon they were quarrelling about the colour. At last they went to the tree and found a man sitting under it.
In answer to their questions he said: 'I live under this tree and know the creature very well. What each of you has said about it is true. Sometimes it is red, sometimes green, sometimes yellow, sometimes blue, and so forth and so on. Again, sometimes I see that it has no colour whatsoever.'
Only he who constantly thinks of God can know the real nature of God. He alone knows that God reveals in different forms and different ways, that God has attributes and, again , has none. Only the man who lives under the tree knows that the chameleon can assume various colours and that sometimes it remains colourless. Others, not knowing the whole truth, quarrel among themselves and suffer.
Yes, God has form and, again, God has none. Do you know how it is? Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, is like a shoreless ocean. In the ocean visible blocks of ice are formed here and there by intense cold. Similarly, under the cooling influence, so to speak, of the bhakti of Its worshippers, the Infinite transforms Itself into the finite and appears before the worshipper as God with form. That is to say, God reveals Himself to bhaktas as an embodied Person. Again, as, on the rising of the sun, the ice in the ocean melts away, so on the awakening of jnana, the embodied God melts back into the infinite and formless Brahman.