God is a Spirit, worship God in Spirit and in truth.+

It is not so. Lord Krishna himself spoke against them long before these two religious leaders. At one place in the Gita, he says to Arjuna:~ "The Vedas are associated with the three qualities of sattva, rajas, and tamas.

Lord teaches us in the Gita and in it,  he also lashes out against the karmakanda. It is generally believed that the Buddha and Mahavira were the first to attack the Vedas.

You must transcend these three qualities. Full of desire, they (the practitioners of Vedic rituals) long for paradise and keep thinking of pleasures and material prosperity. They are born again and again and their minds are never fixed in samadhi, these men clinging to Vedic rituals.

“In another passage, Krishna declares:~  "Not by the Vedas is Self to be realized, nor by sacrifices nor by much study.

Lord Krishna himself declares that Self-realization is not possible by neither the study of the Vedas nor by sacrifices or by any other study.  Then why you are still thinking of studying Vedas and indulging yourself to get Self-realization.

Bhagavad Gita 2:46:~ "A man of true knowledge who has attained enlightenment, has the same use for all the scriptures as one has for a small reservoir of water in a place flooded on all sides."

Lord Krishna says Ch ~V: ~ “Those who know the Self in truth." The last two words (tattvataha) are usually ignored by pundits, but they make all the difference between the ordinary concept of God and the truth about God.

Know me in truth means Know God in truth.  That is God without form, time, and space. The Soul, the Self, is God in truth. 

The Soul is present in the form of consciousness.  The Soul is the cause; the Soul is the support of all that exists in this universe. May ye never turn away from the Soul the innermost self. Never accept another God in place of the Soul nor worship other than the Soul.

Bhagavad Gita: ~ ‘All those whose intelligence has been stolen by material desires, they worship many Gods. (7- Verse -20)

Only the path of wisdom leads the seeker of truth on his journey to the ultimate realization of the true nature of the Universal Essence, which is the Soul. The Soul is present in the form of consciousness.

Bhagavad Gita: 7: 19:~ "Such a man who has attained true knowledge, the knowledge of Self, the knowledge of Atman, worships ‘Self’ as~ Atman (God) alone exists~ everything is Atman, there exists nothing except Atman. Such a man is extremely rare"

Bhagavad Gita: ~ Brahmano hi pratisthaham ~ Brahman (God in truth) is considered the all-pervading consciousness, which is the basis of all the animate and inanimate entities and material. (14.27).

When Bhagavad Gita says, God is considered the all-pervading consciousness which is the basis of all the animate and inanimate entities and material then nothing has to be accepted as God other than consciousness. 

The dualistic worship of "God” is only for the ignorant populace. The God in truth is only Atman, the innermost Self.   In reality, there is no duality, no differentiation. Only Atman exists. The Vedas confirm God is Atman (spirit), the  Self.

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: ~ Brahman (God) is in the form of the Athma, and it is indeed Athma itself.

People, who worship the belief of God, are hallucinating that they become one with such God.

Rig Veda: ~ The Atman is the cause; Atman is the support of all that exists in this universe. May ye never turn away from the Atman, the Self. May ye never accept another God in place of the Atman nor worship other than the Atman?" (10:48, 5)

Yajurveda – chapter- 32:~  God is Supreme Spirit has no ‘Pratima’ (idol) or material shape. God cannot be seen directly by anyone. God pervades all beings and all directions. 

Thus, Idolatry does not find any support from the Vedas.

The Soul alone is God.  Never accept another God in place of the Soul, which is present in the form of the Spirit.

Even Bible says: ~ “God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in truth. (John 4:24) 

 The Spirit is the root element of the universe. The Spirit is present in the form of the Soul, the innermost Self. The Soul is present in the form of consciousness. From the Spirit, the universe comes into existence. In the Spirit, the universe resides. And into the Spirit, the universe is dissolved. The Spirit is the parent of all that is there. 

Sage Sankara’s Supreme Brahman is impersonal, Nirguna (without Gunas or attributes), Nirakara (formless), Nirvisesha (without special characteristics), immutable, eternal, and Akarta (non-agent). It is above all needs and desires. It is always the Witnessing Subject. It can never become an object as it is beyond the reach of the senses. Brahman is non-dual, one without a second. It has no other besides it. It is destitute of difference, either external or internal. Brahman cannot be described because the description implies a distinction. Brahman cannot be distinguished from any other than It. In Brahman, there is not a distinction between substance and attribute. Sat-Chit-Ananda constitutes the very essence or Svarupa of Brahman, and not just Its attributes. The Nirguna Brahman of Sage  Sankara is impersonal.

The God you see and meet and in your vision is not God in truth but a hallucination. How can you see and meet God without knowing what God is in actuality? Praying and meditating on God without knowing what God really is, leads to hallucination.    The world in which you exist hides God. Thus, Self-realization is necessary to realize ‘what God is in actuality.  

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad declares: "He who worships the deities as entities entirely separate from the 'Self' does not know the truth. For the Gods, he is like a pasu (beast)". (1. 4. 10)

That is why Sage Sankara:~ VC-  v6~ Let erudite scholars quote all the scripture, let Gods be invoked through sacrifices, let elaborate rituals be performed, let personal Gods be propitiated---yet, without the realization of one‘s identity with the Self, there shall be no liberation for the individual, not  even in the lifetimes of a hundred Brahmas put together: ~ Santthosh Kumaar