WHAT IS GOD?

 

Everyone and everything are Divine; what man observes is just the manifestation of the Manifestor. Because man functions only with his five senses, and the five senses are very limited because we usually use only a tiny fraction of our minds. The fraction is so small that Einstein, regarded as a genius, only used eight percent of his mind. The mind has three levels; the conscious level that makes you think; the subconscious level, which contains all your past impressions and then you have the superconscious level of the mind, which is the Universal Mind, and every person has the ability, through spiritual practices, to reach the Universal Mind or the superconscious level of the mind.

There is only one mind, but because of our past experiences, actions, and deeds, good or bad, we have compartmentalised ourselves, which made us believe that we are individuals. It is like you take a plastic bag of water from the river and you put it in the middle of the river. The water in the pack is the same as in the river. But the sheath gives it individuality, and then as more and more experiences are gained, you add more and more sheaths to this bag until the water in the bag is not seen, and you forget your true nature, which is Divine, because functioning with the five senses you do not see that inner self of you. Does the Scriptures not say, and I would repeat this a million times repeatedly, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven within, and all else shall be added unto thee.”

That Kingdom of Heaven within is that Divine indefinable energy. I can talk to you about God; I can show you the path towards God, and I can show you that I have travelled that path and known God and have become one with Him. But you cannot explain it. You cannot explain it because the explanation is typically from the conscious level of the mind, where the left hemisphere of your brain is functioning, and the left hemisphere is primarily analytical. How can you, with a finite mind, analyse that which is infinite? Divinity or God is usually expressed as He, but speaking, it is neither a He nor a She. I call it “IT.” It is a very subtle energy.

BY SERVING-MAN, YOU ARE SERVING GOD

The knowledge of Divinity can only come about experientially. But to get that experience, a lot of preparation is required, and one does prepare oneself by meditating, searching within, spiritual practices, self-analysis, weighing the pros and cons of how we live our lives, moral values, the dos and don’ts to a great extent. Then you reach the pure stage where you, as the pure one, merge away into purity which we call God. People can have that experience in this lifetime if they are diligent enough. If they are not, they would naturally go through all the sufferings that life holds for them. As I have said before in some talk somewhere around the world, there should be no suffering, and you will have no sorrow if you make your life an offering. What do you offer yourself? You show yourself to service humanity, for that is the most authentic reflection of God on this earth in its present stage of evolution. By service to man, you would be serving God. Therefore, there is no differentiation; you can see the Divinity in others if you first see the Divinity in yourself.

The analogy I always like to use is – I could explain honey’s texture, send it to a laboratory and have the chemical analysis etc., but you still know nothing about honey. Your knowledge of honey will be peripheral. But when you taste the honey, then only would you see the sweetness of honey. What is the sense of having a jar of honey on your shelf if you do not partake of it, eat it, taste it, and see how beautiful and sweet it is? That very honey, that very Divine energy there, sweetens your life? In that integration, you will find harmony. You are harmonising your exterior self with your inner self so that you function in totality, the body and the mind and that Spiritual Force within functions in totality.

MAN KNOW THYSELF, AND YOU WILL KNOW GOD

In my younger days, I have been trampling around all the Himalayas, going to various caves and ashrams and meeting multiple Gurus. I learned a bit from everyone until I found my Guru, Swami Parvitranandaji.

You get a lot of so-called bogus Gurus because no man should ever speak of Divinity if he has not experienced Divinity himself, and he has no right to do that. For example, University Professors have studied every philosophy in the world to become a professor, yet they are more muddled up than all of you sitting here. That mental analysis and gaining knowledge is not enough; what man has to achieve is through learning, analysis and enquiry, you gain wisdom.

There is a significant difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is a mental acquisition, while wisdom is not only knowledge but also experience combined. Man wants to find God because he wants to feel happy, and all the theologies of the world have taught that it is only through Divinity that you can achieve that peace. Therefore, we find our theologies saying, “Man know thyself.” No religion says “Man knows God” because you cannot know Him. Know thyself, and automatically you will know Divinity, then you could genuinely use the words of our Lord Jesus that “I and my Father are one.”

FROM DUALISM THROUGH QUALIFIED DUALISM TO MONISM

You proceed from duality, from the “I and Thou” concept, reach a qualified non-dualism, and then get non-dualism in its entirety. Jesus used to preach duality to the peasants who could not understand him well. He used to say, “Pray to Thy Father in Heaven.” In other theologies, it is called Bhakti Yoga, the path of devotion, where you got to have an object of devotion.

To people that would understand him better, Jesus would say that Divinity is like the trunk of a tree, and you are the branches and the leaves. That is qualified non-dualism, and then you reach proper non-dualism or monism, which would make you realise that “He and I are but one. “

THE UNIVERSE IS A MANIFESTATION OF THE MANIFESTOR

I am very fond of making revolutionary statements – God never created this world. Creation requires a will and will stem from the mind. If it stems from the mind, then there will be limitations. But yet everything around is so complete if you can only see it. So, I would rather say that the universe is a manifestation of the Manifestor. It is the nature of fire to give off heat; otherwise, it would not be fire. It is the nature of a flower to give off fragrance, or else it would not be a flower.

Similarly, nature, for want of a better word, the nature of Divinity is to manifest. So, this manifestation we see around us is a superimposition upon that Divine energy itself. It is because of the superimposition and the molecular and atomic structures of the emanation or manifestation that this universe has been formed. The variety came about when different kinds of molecules combined and created another product, which is how this world started evolving. Hydrogen and oxygen are opposing substances, but the combination made it into a third substance, H20, which is water.

Likewise, this has been happening all the time. Since the Big Bang, this vast explosion when it shot off all those billions and billions and billions of atoms, they started multiplicating themselves, duplicating, replicating mixing with other molecular structures, and that is why we find all the different elements in the world. The essential five elements that compose the universe are earth, water, air, fire and ether. Those are the five basic elements that compose this universe, and we see differences, not in their original substance, but because of name and form only. That is why we see differences. That is why we differentiate between one thing and the other.

THE DIVINE PLAN LIES IN THE MANIFESTATION

So, when someone asks me to tell about God, I say, “there you are sitting there,” because I do not look at your face, I do not look at your mind, I look at your inner Spirit, and that is Divinity. And when man learns to look at the inner Spirit of others, then only will he know the true meaning of love. For God is love, and love is God; there, love is an indefinable quality.

Two sparks just ignite together. There is no accident; everything is a plan, a Divine plan. The Divine plan lies not in that neutral energy, the Impersonal God, but the Divine plan lies in the manifestation where things have to operate in a certain way. If you study the universe, you will find that everything is so precise. There is no accident whatsoever. Like attracts like, one thing combines with another, and it is all there, all the time, indestructible; nothing is ever destroyed. For if anything, even if matter is destroyed, you will destroy God, which is impossible. It is all the same; it is all one. The only thing that is required is the realisation that I am Divine, and so is everything around me Divine. And when one feels and experiences the Divinity within, then you would find total peace, joy, bliss, no sadness, no sorrows, you would find that.

YOU ARE NOTHING ELSE BUT CONGEALED VIBRATIONS; YOU ARE A SOUND

Because of the structure of manifestation that caused the mind and that at the highest level of the mind, which I mentioned before, the superconscious level of the mind, there lies the first formation of how this universe began, at that level of its total purity, the mind was sound. “First was the word and the word was with God, and the word is God.” So, one has to reach the highest level and getting that level would mean that you have reached Christ Consciousness, Buddha Consciousness, or Krishna Consciousness. These are all labels. There is just one consciousness, and there is no separation. There can only be one consciousness.

You are nothing but vibrations, and anything that you can touch, see, smell, this chair, this table, all of you are congealed vibrations. If you are boiled down, body, mind and Spirit, you will only hear a sound, the primal sound, the word. When a true Spiritual Master gives you practices, he goes into a meditation on you and reaches that level of Superconsciousness and sees your state of evolution, your emotional state. Your physical condition, and accordingly, he will prescribe the necessary practices. It is no sense having a shelf full of medicine bottles and trying one after the other; it could cause you great harm, it could kill you, but if you have a qualified Physician to say, look, use that bottle of medicine, that will help you then the path becomes more manageable and smoother.

IN THIS WORLD, WE WANT LIVING GODS

That is how we work. Everyone is treated on an individual basis. And the purpose is this; we want happiness, all we want, and that total bliss and happiness are nothing but Divinity. You come from Divinity, and you have to go back home. Why spend millions of lifetimes suffering when there is a direct path from the conscious mind through the subconscious and right to the superconscious level, which is the highest level of relativity, and then spontaneously and automatically you enter the area of Divinity, and you live it.

I do not believe in God, I live in God, and that is what we want in this world, living Gods. Not conceptual Gods. If you study the various Theologies, you will find one religion will say that God’s got four arms, another one will say that he is sitting on a throne up there somewhere and with a couple of thousand bookkeepers writing down what Girish has done and what you have done and what he has done and keeping a record. No such thing.

People look for reality which they will find, but the underlying truth is something called actuality. You see a magician show, and you find the magician doing excellent tricks on the stage, sawing a woman in half, and then you will find him making elephants and motorcars disappear, which seems natural to you. But in your mind, you say this is a trick. That is the difference between seeing life’s reality and being conscious that this is not actuality. So we proceed from our conceptions of Divinity to our experience of Divinity, and then we can say, “Well lived this life, well lived.”

When you reach a little higher stage, nothing will bother you. The mountain around you might crumble down, and you will not bat an eyelid. Auntie Jane said a nasty word last week, so you keep mulling over it all the time, creating unhappiness for yourself, and in most probability, Auntie Jane might have forgotten what she had said. We magnify things because we only use a very small portion of the mind, but if we can use the totality of the mind, we will see life from a different perspective.

Our motto is the three L’s, Life, Love and Laughter.

… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang CAN 1984 – 01