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OMG!!! OMG! Oh my god, what has God got to do with it?

 

Oh my god (OMG!), thats a tricky question!

 

But not really a new one.

I guess the question has been mind-boggling the human mind ever since humans did develop a mind to think on their own terms.

I am not talking about the belief in a God or some gods, as we are taught while we were still pretty receptive and malleable  by the belief system of the loved ones around us.

Parents, aunties, grannies, teachers, priests, the whole religious or ideological environment we grew up in.

 

I still remember myself as a child in the night while a big thunderstorm and lightning happening outside my window. Hiding under  the blanket, feverishly praying to God to spare our house from being hit.

“Please dear god, please ….”

 

I guess we all – maybe just except the very cool or coldhearted amongst us – have raised our head upwards or went down to our knees in a time of desperation. In our darkest hour we usually turn to some unseen, unknown higher power we address as “God” to help us, to bless us or simply to do something for us that we ourselves are not able to do.

 

But which God are we actually talking to, who is this ominous being or entity?

Is he a “He” or a “She” or maybe even a “It”?

Is he/she/it aware of my troubles, ready to help?

Or is God just there, feeding Life into whatever is in existence?

Detached? Aloof?

Or maybe not even a personalized entity at all.

 

~~~

 

Throughout the ages religions have painted many pictures of God, thats for sure.

And given him/her/it many names.

And people have been inspired by their belief in God to do many good deeds indeed.

And other people have used the reverence to “their God” to do unspeakable damage and even evil.

 

When islamic terrorists and suicide bombers shout “Allahu Akbar” before they blow themselves to pieces and everyone around them as well, i guess that whatever God exists can not be very happy about that.

Same for the torturers of the Inquisition “in the name of Christ” or the Crusaders or the Missionaries “bringing the name of the Lord” to everyone who had no need to hear it.

 

The list is long indeed and one has to ask: In whose name actually are people doing all of that????

 

I really don’t know.

And God, as usual is pretty quiet about it all.

 

So ….. who is God really?

Who or what or where is God?

Or is there any “GOD” at all?

 

~~~~~

 

I guess that every civilization since Adam & Eve and every culture since the Stone-age has had its own idea and concept of some kind of God.

Can any of them say for sure that their particular view of God was the right one? Their “God” has always been the product and outcome of their own situation, time, cultural development, thoughts, opinions, and imaginations.

The Jewish God of the Old Testament has always corresponded to Jewish thought (The punishing, angry father in Heaven), the Christian God has always corresponded to Christian thought (The unconditionally loving, compassionate Christ), the Muslim God has always corresponded to Muslim thought, and so on.

Even people belonging to one religion have somewhat different ideas of God.

And when people worship or pray to their God, what is it they are really worshipping and praying to? Mostly it is their own idea of God, the mental image in their own imagination.

Or the picture and belief that they have been taught to believe.

Yet more often than not they insist that this God of their imagination is the only true God. They say that anyone who does not believe in the God of their own conception does not really believe in God at all. Some people even say that everyone who does not believe in and worship this “God” will be eternally damned.

Many people in some religions do not have religious statues, pictures, or icons. But they still have specific idols and ideas. They have created their own mental image or philosophy of the Divine and tricked themselves into believing that this image and idea in their own mind is the absolute truth about the matter of God.

They worship the child of their own imagination and then make this child greater than themselves, by maintaining that it is the All-powerful, the Absolute and Infinite Being.

I suppose that everyone in some way can accept the existence of the Infinite. Even atheists and agnostics don’t deny the Infinite. They know that everything that is finite, including this universe, must have originally come from something infinite, something not finite at all, whatever that may be.

In our world today, especially in the civilized, somewhat educated societies, many people tend to think for themselves rather than blindly following traditional belief systems. They make use of their developing ability of independent thinking. They are not lazy or foolish enough to just accept and believe whatever the religions or ideologies tell them. (Hopefully ;  ).

Obviously this has also resulted in great confusion and the loss of moral frameworks of behavior in the younger generations.

But in general i think that has a positive des-illusioning effect. Illusions and easy digestible phantasies have been taking away.  Many people cannot go along anymore with the belief that the Infinite, the Cause and Source of all, is a big man, a father figure with a white beard up in the sky, with a chosen people, a favorite religion, and very human-like characteristics and attitudes. They are awake enough to recognize that this sort of “God” is the result of man’s own imagination. They see that it is a “God” created in man’s own image and likeness.

They/We also can realize that if something is truly infinite, then it means there can be nothing finite about it whatsoever.

If something is really infinite, it cannot have a form, an appearance, a body, a location, a name, gender, feelings, or even the impulses of will, mind, or intention. These are all finite qualities. In fact, every quality we can conceive of is finite.

I am aware that i am assuming stuff here, as if i would know ;  )

Please bear with me a while longer, i am trying in this contemplation to get to the core of the matter ….

If something is truly infinite, then there can be nothing else except that. Everything that exists must be an expression, a manifestation, of the Infinite. This “Infinite Something” must be the innermost essence and true nature of everything that exists, in all the Kingdoms of Nature and on every level and realm of life, seen or unseen.

If something is truly infinite, it must be omnipresent. This means “always present absolutely everywhere”. If something is truly omnipresent, in the true meaning of the word, there can be nothing else apart from that. There could be no room or possibility for anything else to exist apart from that Omni-Presence, that One Presence, that “Infinite Something”.

If something is truly infinite, it cannot be a Being, a specific form of any kind. It cannot be a Person. It can not have specific attributes.

So what is the Infinite? What is God?

As far as i know, the Indian and Eastern religions have quite a different perspective than the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Buddhism and Jainism, two Indian religions, both don’t proclaim the existence of a God.

They do not deny the Infinite. They teach the Unity and Divinity of All Life but they maintain that there is no-one and nothing which can properly be thought of or referred to as “God.”

I always found this pretty interesting and attractive.

Hinduism is the world’s oldest religion. It is a very diverse religion, it can be very confusing to the Western mind, with many different “lesser gods” and viewpoints and perspectives existing side by side.

But the main teaching of the central Hindu scriptures is about Brahman, which is a name applied to the Divine.

They say that Brahman is the Absolute, the Infinite, the One Ultimate Reality. They say that it is not a Being or a Person but an impersonal Principle:

– the Principle of Consciousness itself

– the Principle of Life itself

– the Principle of the Whole of Existence itself

the Eternal Energy pervading and underpinning this entire universe.

 

They also say that Brahman is the “highest part”, highest aspect of every being. It is our Higher Self, our Spirit, our eternal essence. It is not personal or individual but universal.

The One Universal Self of all. All is Brahman. Therefore all life is sacred, all life is precious, all life is Divine.

 

As far i know, every religion actually has a mystical, a esoteric side to it that teaches this same truth. Those Mystics often have been suppressed by the organized side of the religions and the priesthood, but they did and do exist.

In Judaism there is the Kabbalah. In Christianity there is Gnosticism. In Islam there is Sufism. And although religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism are already quite esoteric when compared with Western religions, these also have a still deeper side to them than is generally known.

Which is clearly and very elaborately expressed in the original Vedic Scriptures, Upanishads and so forth.

And brought to the awareness of the West and translated to be understood by the Western, more logical and scientific thinking in the teachings of Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Vedanta philosophy and so on.

 

Religio – in my interpretation – literally means re-ligio, re-connect. And i think of it as the “Reconnection with the Source”

I think that in our confusing and diverse and separating, diverging world of the 21.Century, more than ever before we human beings need a kind of “Science of Life and All”.

And a “Science of the Art of Living”.

In my view, all religions contain some core teachings of Truth. Some religions seem more true to me than others. But no religion can contain the whole Truth.

Truth transcends all religions. It also pre-dates all religions. The mysteries and secrets of life and the universe seems to have been known throughout the ages to a very small number of people in the world.

Maybe we can call them the Mystics, the Sages, the Avatars or Enlightened Beings of the past.

I think that it is time discover and re-discover the treasures that those beings found. The nature of Truth beyond the appearances and cultures and times.

The truth about God and the Universe, about Life and Consciousness and Love is not anyone’s invention. It is also not a collection of ideas from different religions all mixed together.

For the human mind and our mental comprehension i think this kind of ultimate truth can be found in the naturally occurring unity and synthesis of direct mystic experience, religion, philosophy, and science.

To do that it is probably necessary “to free God” from all limited elements of religious dogmatism and theological ideologies. And actually free “God from knowing God”. ;  )

It looks almost as we have to create a new kind of re-ligio, lets better not call it a new religion ;  )

I think it is a very intimate individual process, happening inside any developing soul rather in some trend or movement, cult or New Age religion.

 

~~~~~

 

Do I, Cris believe in God?

I actually hardly ever use the word “God” as such.

But my “belief” is actually a sureness without any doubt.

If i have to revere to the Ultimate, the Infinite, the Un-knowable, i call “It”:

“God/Goddess/All That Is” or simply “All That Is”

“Om Tat Sat” it is called in Sanskrit.

I might also to say “The Divine” or “The Absolute”, or “The Tao”, or “The Unspeakable”, or “En-Soph”, or “Brahman” ….. that’s a lot of options for “something” that i can actually not name ;  )

I really like what Lao Tsu in the the Tao Te Ching says about the The Unspeakable:

 

“The Tao which can be expressed in words is not the eternal Tao; the name which can be uttered is not its eternal name. Without a name, it is the Beginning of Heaven and Earth; with a name, it is the Mother of all things.”

 

 

I think that the One Infinite Divine Principle is undefinable and indescribable but for me the ancient Vedic teaching about Brahman comes closest to the reality.

Brahman is thought of as beginning-less, endless, boundless, and entirely unconditioned. It is not a Being. It is Be-ness itself.

For thousands of years, we humans who have been driven by the search for ultimate answers have been looking upwards and outwards for God, for something beyond the Universe, something ultimately “higher”

If we will turn our gaze around and look inside our Self and within all living beings, i guess we will discover that The Truth is not so far from us as we have always thought.

That The Divine, The Ultimate, The Infinite is actually closer to me than my own breath … my Life, LIFE itself.

Everything is alive. All is Life. Life is One. There is only one Life, the One Infinite Divine Life, the One Eternal Energy. It is expressing Itself in, through, and as every form, being, and thing.

Everyone, even a child can know and sense this somehow instinctively.

And it can be re-discovered and re-established as our ultimate healing from the endless divisions and confusions of our mind, our psyche and society.

 

Enough of the words already!!!

 

Have a happy re-discovery ;  )

 

 

 

 

om tat sat