This is one of the articles in a book I have written on spirituality. The book is available on Amazon.com.

The Spirit Of Spirituality

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Every one of us has some concepts of God, which have been injected into us right from childhood and nurtured by society throughout our life. When we were very young, most of us had some beliefs and concepts about the way the world works and we soon outgrow those concepts based on our developing academic knowledge and also direct experience. But when we look back at our concept of God during my childhood days and our concept today as adults, most of us would realize that there is a very marginal difference in our concept.

When I was a kid, I remember my father taking me to a small hillock where there was a stone carving of the monkey God Hanuman and telling me that was God. That stayed in my mind for quite some time. During our primary school, based on what classmates discussed, God was someone high up in the clouds that would keep track of good and bad and give rewards/punishment accordingly. This is the concept that most of us have. We believe that if something good happened, maybe God was kind. If something bad happened, God was unkind. We still believe that God is some mystical person sitting somewhere up in Heaven who will take care of us.

These concepts of mine slowly started getting shattered as I saw more of the happenings in the world. When I read about mass genocides in history, I used to wonder why God did not come to prevent this. I used to read about drought/famine and wonder the same way. Even as recent as the World Trade center disaster, I wondered why God did not prevent this.

The more I thought, I wondered what was my expectation of God? That some heavenly hand would mysteriously create food for the starving, some mysterious magician would wave a wand and bring rain or a giant hand would come out from the sky and prevent the aero planes from hitting the twin towers? My limited intelligence told me that such an expectation was totally wrong. Then what was God if he was not around during time of need?

Once I started reading spirituality, the reality of God slowly started dawning. Now, I know for sure that God will never come and do something like Batman or Spiderman to protect good people from evil. What gives me this certainty? Well, imagine you are dreaming and in that dream, there are scores of people at a gathering. Assume that a bus is coming down with failed brakes and hits the people. Now, the people in the dream may wonder why God, the creator, could not protect good people. Now, who is the creator of this dream? It is you? Is there even a ghost of a chance for you to go into the dream and prevent the bus from hitting people? Similarly this world is an illusion or “movie” being played out in the mind of some supernatural power. There is absolutely no chance for that power to come into its own created illusion and change anything.

Throughout history, we have been told about people who have seen and experienced God. Let us take the same dream example in which you have created a dream city. Some of the people in that dream city would marvel at the universe and wonder who created it. They would look around and for sure none of them could have created it. They let their imagination run wild and conjure up images of the God who could have created the universe. Is there even a bleakest chance that they will know that the creator of their universe is the “you” who is sleeping in bed after a heavy lunch? So in this world of illusion, something that is constantly changing, we can very well guess that it is impossible to conceptualize God.

Does this mean that God does not exist and we can do whatever we want without fear of retribution or vision of rewards? The answer is NO. There is a universal power, which is an enlivening principle. It is an energy, which is everywhere, which we call God. Just as electricity as an enlivening principle exists and will power up anything with the right ability to conduct it, this enlivening principle breathes life into any matter which is capable of “conducting” this energy. Just as electricity is just an enlivening principle and provides the same energy for good devices like operation theater equipment, it also provides energy of light to the thief stealing from a home. Electricity is neutral to good or bad. As a matter of fact, electricity does not know any concept called good/bad. It is absolutely non-dual. Similarly God or consciousness provides the enlivening principle to any living being and does not know about good or bad. God is absolutely non-dual free of any attachments.

Now does it mean that since God is neutral, we can do anything and get away? NO. The law of Karma is an absolute universal law. If we do something good/bad, the karmic influence attaches itself to us and gives back in exactly the same way that we have dealt. Readers may refer to my earlier blog on Karma, the inexorable law of the universe.

Hope my article throws a better light on the concept of God and prods some people to at the minimum start examining what the truth could be.

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