Experiencing God

He is formless, and can never be seen with these two eyes. But he reveals himself in the heart made pure through meditation and sense-restraint. Realizing him one is released from the cycle of birth and death.

Katha Upanishad

Perhaps the Christmas season is a good time to question our very human need to experience God through the physical senses. However beautiful and comforting, the accretions to the Christmas story throughout the centuries when taken literally foster and amplify this need, and obscure what Jeshua taught as the way to achieve at-one-ment with God. Although the need to personify and anthropomorphize God exists in most religions, it seems to me that the eastern religions are more forthright in emphasizing that God is indeed formless and unattainable through external physical senses.