“To define God is to defile God.”

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 22, 2020. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To define God is to defile God." by Chinmayananda Saraswati?
Chinmayananda Saraswati photo
Chinmayananda Saraswati 118
Indian spiritual teacher 1916–1993

Related quotes

Charles Bradlaugh photo

“The Bible God I deny; the Christian God I disbelieve in; but I am not rash enough to say there is no God as long as you tell me you are unprepared to define God to me.”

Charles Bradlaugh (1833–1891) British freethinker, and radical politician

Charles Bradlaugh, in Paul Edwards, "Atheism." Paul Edwards, editor, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: Macmillan, 1967, vol. 1, p. 177.
Attributed

Miguel de Unamuno photo

“The knowledge of God proceeds from the love of God, and this love has little or nothing of the rational in it. For God is indefinable. To seek to define Him is to seek to confine Him within the limits of our mind — that is to say, to kill Him. In so far as we attempt to define Him, there rises up before us — Nothingness.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God
Context: Not by way of reason, but only by way of love and suffering, do we come to the living God, the human God. Reason rather separates us from Him. We cannot first know Him in order that afterward we may love Him; we must begin by loving Him, longing for Him, hungering after Him, before knowing Him. The knowledge of God proceeds from the love of God, and this love has little or nothing of the rational in it. For God is indefinable. To seek to define Him is to seek to confine Him within the limits of our mind — that is to say, to kill Him. In so far as we attempt to define Him, there rises up before us — Nothingness.

Patrick Buchanan photo

“No statement about God is simply, literally true. God is far more than can be measured, described, defined in ordinary language, or pinned down to any particular happening.”

Quoted in The Guardian ( 24 December 1984 http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/guardian/doc/186552854.html)

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

John Gray photo
Aldous Huxley photo
Robert J. Sawyer photo

Related topics