The Spirit Of Spirituality: How can I experience God?

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

How can I experience God?

We have seen, read or heard of numerous accounts of so called God men world over purporting to show their gullible followers a vision of God. Most of us have wondered at some stage or other, regarding the nature of God. Is God, the multi-faced person seen in many pictures? Is he an elephant God? Is he blue in color? Is he the person hanging on a cross? We try in our own way to try and get answers to these questions. We rarely succeed and we fall back either into a group of atheists who swear there is no God or into a group of believers who just follow what has been handed down over generations. I want to share my 2 cents on this topic.

As indicated earlier, and to the disappointment of several people, God cannot be seen or felt by sensory perceptions. By definition God is omnipresent, omniscient and is the Creator of everything. Since we are a creation of His, we cannot see him just as a microscope, a creation of man cannot itself see the man, just as a dream character in a dream created by me, cannot see me. What is God then? Were all the great masters who taught us about God mere pranksters? Did they so surely succeed in pulling wool over people’s eyes over centuries?

Let’s start off with an illustration? Assume I am living in India and I have a visitor from USA. I am trying to explain to him the taste of gulab jamoon. I have tasted it and know what the taste is. But how do I explain it to the visitor? I can start by telling it is not spicy, it is not salty etc. That gives the visitor an idea as to what it is not, but still does not tell what the taste is. I can then go on to say, it is sweet. The visitor may ask, does it taste like a banana, an orange, grape or a cookie. I tell, it is sweet like any of these, but it is not the same. Notice that I am coming a step closer to the concept of taste of gulab jamoon, but still nowhere near fully explaining the taste. I am at my wit’s end. What do I do? I take the visitor to a nearby sweetshop, buy a jamoon and ask him to taste it. When he tastes, he immediately says, this is delicious. It is unlike a grape, banana or anything. Only when he experiences by actually eating, he knows the taste.

All the masters over centuries experienced God. But there is no way they can talk about the experience in its fullest sense. They can at most start off by telling what God is not, just as above we told jamoon is not salty, spicy etc. This is called the “nethi nethi” principle, wherein we try to explain, what God is, by telling what God is not. They then took the next step of telling God is everywhere. They were trying to take us a step forward in our search for God. Just as I went to a shop, bought a jamoon and got the visitor to taste and experience it, the wise men over centuries have shown us the path to god and told us that we have to experience God by ourselves. No amount of description can fully tell what the experience really is.

If nothing can tell us what God really is, what is the purpose of all the Upanishads, the Bible etc? They have a purpose as sign posts on the road to God. Just because we have directions to go to Boston does not mean that we reached Boston. However, without the directions, we can never get to Boston. Once we get to Boston, the directions are irrelevant. In the same way, scriptures are essential for us on the road to God. Without them we cannot reach God. At the same time, just because we have the scriptures does not mean, we will reach God. Just reading the directions and memorizing it will be of absolutely no use unless I actually start driving as per directions. In the same way, memorizing the scriptures and reciting them is useless in attaining the experience of God if I do not understand and start walking in the path taught in the scriptures.

Readers may want to know some elementary nature of God. Just as I gave the visitor a hint of what jamoon tasted like, can we get a concise hint of what God is? One of the best statements I have heard is God is Satyam Jnanam Anantham. Satyam refers to the fact that the only Reality or truth is God. Our waking present is not truth because it changes every moment, is totally distorted in dreams and is not at all there in deep sleep. Just as a dreamer is the only reality and not the dream characters, God is the only reality and we the characters of his dream are not real. Jnanam refers to the characteristic of knowledge. Does it mean that God knows physics, chemistry etc.? The knowledge we refer to it is knowledge of self, knowledge of existence, knowledge to create the whole universe with exacting laws. What makes the planets go round and round with high precision? What made electrons revolve around the proton? What keeps the blood circulating in our bodies? So there is an universal intelligence and the owner of that intelligence is God. Finally Anantham refers loosely to infinite. There are no boundaries for God. There is no birth or death. There is no beginning or an end.

The question then is, if God has the characteristics described above, why do we have various idols or representations? For a person with normal intellect, it is impossible to visualize a god as described above. Something we cannot visualize, we will not even remember and we will not take it seriously. Hence there had to be some means to represent God so that the masses could visualize. To explain the structure of an atom, any elementary physics book will show a circle as the nucleus and we draw concentric circles around it to show electrons. It no way means that the atom is as pictured. It is just a visual aid to understand the atom. In a similar way any idols or pictures of God are a visual means to represent God. For example, Hindu Gods are shown in blue. Blue is color of sky and symbolizes vastness, infinity. In Hinduism, almost everything is a God, a tree, a cow, a monkey etc. This is to help awareness at every stage of a person’s life, of the existence of God. Secondly, each person’s requirements are unique. Just as a restaurant has menus to satisfy the needs of different guests, Hinduism provides absolute freedom to worshippers to choose any symbolism for God depending on their temperament.

As readers may be aware, 3 of my books on spirituality are available on Amazon.com.

I invite readers of my blog to try any of the books and give me feedback so that I can make changes in the next edition.

1. My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality

My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality