GOD : What is it ?

We are considering the question: Does God exist?

If he does, how may we know him and name him?

Some persistent questions haunt some of us: 

Who is God? 

Where does he dwell? 

How can we prove that he is?

It is not just deniers and atheists who have raised these questions. Philosophers and saintly souls and wise men who realized God in their lifetime have also been troubled by these persistent doubts. People who go through mental turmoil and suffering, also find it difficult to believe in the existence of God.

The omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient God is not confined by the definitions, nomenclature or religious dogma. No religion has the right to deny others' concept of God and proclaim their own version of the truth as God.

I have heard an amusing story from Jewish scripture. It concerns the Emperor who said to Priest, "You talk of God, but where is he? If he exists, can you show him to me?"

"That is impossible," answered the Priest.

The Emperor insisted, "How can I believe in God when I cannot see him?"

The Priest took the Emperor outside. It was a hot summer day. The Priest said, "Look at the sun."

"I cannot," answered the Emperor.

And the Priest said, "If you cannot even look at the sun, which is but a servant of God, how can you look at God himself?"

Yes, God can be seen and heard. He is more real than all the things that we perceive with our outer senses. To be able to see God, we have to put in efforts. This effort is cultivating deep longing for the Lord, deep yearning for the First and only Fair. As Sri Ramakrishna said, "Long for the Lord even as a lover yearn for his beloved, as a miser yearns for gold, as a child yearns for his mother." Yearn for the Lord. Say to him with tear-touched eyes, "I need you Lord! I need nothing else- neither pleasures, nor possessions, nor power! I need you alone!" When god gets the assurance that you truly need him and nothing besides, he will reveal himself to you.

Think of God in any form that draws you. He is the formless one, but for the sake of his devotees, he has worn many forms and visited the earth-plane again and again. Call him by any name that appeals to you. He is the nameless one, though the sages have called him by many names. Do not quarrel over forms or names. You must stick to the one that draws you and let others stick to the one that draws them. All forms and names ultimately leads to the one, who is beyond the form and the formlessness. "On whatever path men approach me, on that I go to meet them - for all the paths are mine, verily mine!" says the Lord in the Gita.

As Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev expalined that our idea of God is just an exaggerated version of ourself. See, we are still not able to define ourself. Whatever definition we put on ourself is not correct. When this small piece of creation is like this, the source of creation, how are we going to put a definition on it? We cannot define it, we cannot understand it, we can only dissolve into it. We can experience it, we can never know it. We cannot make knowledge out of it. Whatever knowledge we have about God is just pure nonsense, cultural nonsense. Depending upon which kind of culture we are in, that kind of God we have. It can only be experienced. Experience does not mean we can eat it or we can grasp it. No, we can experience only by dissolving in it, there is no other way. So, we are just looking for methods of dissolution, sothat we can experience something far bigger than ourselves

It is time to stop asking questions on whether God exists, it is time to make God real in our lives!