Mūrti

Form, embodiment, sacred image. Mūrti designates the concrete manifestation of the formless: the shape that the absolute assumes to become accessible to devotion. In the Bhagavad Gītā 9.11, Kṛṣṇa laments that the ignorant “do not recognize my transcendent nature when I assume a human form” (mānuṣīṁ tanum āśritam). The mūrti is not an idol but a window: the devotee who grasps its symbolic nature transcends form and accesses that which it points toward. See [[arcana]] and [[pratyakṣa]].