Sarvaantharyaami is One and Only One

The Vedas, the Sastras, and the messages of the Rishis, all have proclaimed uniformly and without any possibility of doubt, from that day to this, that Paramatma is Sarvaantharyaami, present and immanent in everything. So too questions like the relationship between 'He who is served', 'he who serves', and 'the wherewithal of service', viz., 'Prakriti', have also been the subject of endless discussion. Every Asthika has heard the Bhagavatha verse in which the great Bhaktha Prahlada states out of his own experience that Paramatma, the Sarvaantharyaami, need not be searched far and wide and that He is very near the seeker himself.

'He is here, He is not there, give up such doubts;
Listen, Oh! Leader of the Danavas!
Wherever you seek and wherever you see,
There... and there... He is!'

People speak of the Lord as having a particular nature of characteristic, as having a particular form and so on. These statements are true only to the extent that imagination and guesswork can approximate to Truth; they are not the fundamental Truth. Such conceptions are valid as far as practical worldly knowledge goes; they cannot be considered as valid knowledge of the Absolute. For, it is impossible to see the Poornam or speak about it.

In spite of this, however, Bhakthas and aspirants have been framing, each according to the stage of his own inner progress, some form or other of the Divine as the basis of their devotion. They worship Paramathma as existing in some Ayodhya or Dwaraka and nowhere else; as found in places where some image or picture exists and nowhere else. They worship that form itself as Poornam. Of course, it is not wrong to do so. Only, Bhakthas should not proclaim that their belief alone is the Truth, that those names and forms which they have ascribed are the only names and forms of the Divine and that all other forms and names are worthless and inferior. It should be realised that the names and forms which are the ideals of others are as dear and sacred to those others as other names and forms are to oneself.