By Dr JP Singh
Behind every form lies the Formless — the Infinite whose true home is beyond manifestation. How can the finite arise within the Infinite without dividing it? How can limitation appear within limitlessness and yet not diminish it?
The answer is paradox.
The Formless does not fragment; it only appears as form. Like light refracted into colours yet remaining light, the One manifests as many and remains undiminished. Forms reveal the Divine—and simultaneously conceal it. In the tension between “is” and “is not,” reality unfolds its subtle play.
Forms exist—yet not independently. They define—yet they distort. They guide — yet mislead when absolutized.
The deception begins when form is mistaken for fullness.
This is the conspiracy of forms — not a malicious design, but a cosmic camouflage.
LANGUAGE AND THE FRACTURED MIND
Humanity lives largely on surfaces. Words are defended without probing their depth. Categories are inherited and mistaken for truth.
“Modern,” “progressive,” “rational,” “secular,” “development” — each carries hidden assumptions. Once internalized, they shape perception itself. Consciousness ceases to witness; it merely reacts. Language becomes battlefield. Concept becomes cage.
Behind language lies silence. Behind surface lies depth. Reality is never exhausted by description.
When the partial is defended as the whole, division becomes inevitable.
THE SCIENTIFIC AND ECONOMIC ILLUSION
Science and economics, among our most respected knowledge systems, also operate through forms.
Medicine measures, diagnoses, intervenes — yet the organism remains an indivisible whole. One variable is corrected; another subtly shifts. The measurable is treated; the immeasurable often determines the final outcome.
Economics models growth, predicts trends, charts stability — yet economies breathe through psychology, fear, trust, and moral climate. History repeatedly reveals the unforeseen overturning the calculated.
The error is not science.
The error is the presumption of completeness.
Wisdom begins where measurement admits its limits.
TECHNOCRATIC HUBRIS
Material progress is necessary. Civilization must feed, heal, and sustain itself. Yet when natural rhythms are replaced entirely by artificial control, imbalance begins.
One can imagine a world where:
• Children are conceived only through technological mediation.
• Food is engineered entirely in laboratories.
• Nature is redesigned without reverence.
• Oxygen is regulated mechanically in sealed environments.
• Time itself is commodified — life subscribed to rather than lived.
This is not prophecy of doom. It is a warning against arrogance untempered by humility.
Humanity once lived, like a child nourished in its mother’s lap, sustained by creation’s abundance. Yet insatiable greed erodes species, patience, and balance.
Progress without humility destabilizes civilization.
SACRED FORMS AND DEMYSTIFICATION
Religious forms too may illuminate or obscure. Robes, rituals, and symbols may express devotion — or conceal ambition.
Demystification is not desecration.
When Dr. Chandra Bhanu Satpathy, in Gopyaru Gopya, unveiled the symbolic science behind idols and demigods, faith was not diminished but deepened. Myth encodes cosmic principle. Matter and spirit are not adversaries. The manifest reflects the unmanifest. The microcosm mirrors the macrocosm.
To understand form rightly is to transcend it.
THE SOCIAL CATASTROPHE OF LABELS
When forms become ultimate, they become lethal.
Religion, race, nation, ideology — abstractions override conscience. A human being is reduced to a category. Words become weapons. Identity becomes executioner.
History testifies to violence sanctified in righteousness.
Visible punishment is often mistaken for restored balance. The removal of an individual becomes symbolic purification for the collective. Yet the conscience of society remains unexamined.
Forms camouflage humanity.
THE LEGAL FORM AND THE INNER MEASURE OF JUSTICE
Law operates by necessity through definition. It isolates acts, codifies conduct, assigns consequence. Without such structure, social order collapses.
Yet no statute captures the totality of a life.
A moment of crime may be weighed; the invisible architecture of deprivation, conditioning, despair, or moral neglect often remains outside the scale. “Criminal” and “innocent” are procedural necessities — but existential simplifications.
When legality is mistaken for moral completeness, justice risks becoming mechanical.
True moral authority arises not merely from position, but from inner clarity.
Before pronouncing judgment, justice must also ask: what structures, inequalities, or failures contributed to the act it condemns?
Justice is not merely retribution. It is equilibrium.
In nature, balance is maintained through complex interrelationship — like unseen oceanic currents regulating climate. So too must justice integrate proportion, transparency, compassion, and humility.
A teaching associated with Sai Baba of Shirdi reminds us that ultimate justice is restorative rather than merely punitive. Whether understood symbolically or metaphysically, the insight is profound: transformation fulfills the higher law.
No system — human or technological — can substitute for awakened conscience.
Only when outer law and inner balance converge does justice approach its higher form.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ICEBERG
Deception persists because ignorance persists.
Within every human being lies an iceberg of unexamined certainty. Most live at the visible tip of knowledge; the vast interior remains unexplored.
True knowledge (gyan) is not accumulation. It is descent — into humility.
Agyan is not mere ignorance; it is arrogance sealed against inquiry. Like the frog imagining the well contains the sky, narrowness masquerades as totality.
The voice of Sai Baba of Shirdi calls humanity back to iman, cool intellect, accommodation of others, and above all sabr — patience.
Not rejection of science.
Not rejection of progress.
But rejection of arrogance without wisdom.
THE ULTIMATE REALISATION
When depth matures, inner stillness blossoms. The conspiracy dissolves — not because forms vanish, but because they are seen against the infinite canvas of consciousness.
Forms become translucent.
Through them, the Formless shines.
The individual recognizes himself as never separate from the Infinite — resting in the unborn, uncreated essence of Sat–Chit–Ananda — witnessing the leela of duality upon the seamless Whole.
—The writer is a retired Associate Professor of History, Delhi University
