THE PROBLEM WITH GOD

June 6, 201 3 by mariawirthblog in Uncategorized 1 3 Comments

God is a much used word y et hardly anyone pauses to find out what is meant by it. Isnt it clear?
religious people may ask and answer: God is the Highest, the Creator of the univ erse, the Almighty
who knows whatev er any human is dong or thinking and it is He who will giv e the punishment or
reward in the afterlife.

This is a predominantly Western notion. Nobody will quarrel with the fact that this univ erse and we
included have to come from somewhere and God is giv en as the v erbal answer. Yet somehow, God
has acquired strange attributes in the mind of westerners, never mind if they are believers or
unbelievers. He is inv ariably male, has strong likes and dislikes and has supposedly communicated
those likes and dislikes to some special people who infor med humanity about it. Reading the Old
Testament and the Koran reveals a God who is hateful towards those who dont believe in him and
sev erely condemns those who worship idols. He is keen on smiting those enemies and punishing
them with eternal hell. Ho wever, he is compassionate and loving towards those who believe in him.

Somehow this western view of God has taken ov er any discussion about God, maybe because the
majority of human beings seem to believe it. This v iew is reinforced and fear of eternal hel l is instilled
in small children generation after generation. Ev en as adults, they dont question their belief. It has
become part of their mental make up. And there is comfort in believing that one has the right belief
and is belonging to a big group of like minded people.

Howev er nowadays, in the Christian west, many people do question their belief and ev en the v ery
ex istence of God. Atheists feel they hav e a cause and do their best to make their religious fellowmen
lose faith. In England busses ply with placards saying There is probably no God. God Delusion, a
bestseller by Richard Dawkins, focuses on refuting this God and finds many takers.

This God certainly deserves scrutiny. Is it possible that God is a sort of superhuman entity and heavily
biased towards his followers and unforgiving towards others? Are there different v iews? Here,
ancient India could help the west. Usually, one would expect that over time concepts become more
refined, but in the case of God, ov er the millennia, the concept became more gross.

In ancient times, long before Christianity or Islam appeared, Sanatana Dharma or Hinduism had a
v ery mature understanding of Brahman which would be God in English. Brahman (there are other
names, too, like Paramatman or Tat) was not pe rsonal, not a superhuman entity, not male or female,
but the most subtle, inv isible, conscious, one basis of all. The Rishis meditated on Brahman and came
out with astonishing insights. They realised that this univ erse is a sort of shadow play or
misinterpretation of Brahman, completely dependent on It but not the real thing. They had criteria
for what is true. One: it has to be at all times past, present and future and two: it has to be shining

of its own and not need any thing else to shine or in othe r words, it has to be self- ev ident. Those two
criteria dismiss the whole apparent universe as untrue. Apart from the fact that it was not alway s there
but started with a bang, it also needs something to shine it needs consciousness. So what is left
after the univ erse is dismissed as not true? That what is left is the real thing and could be called God.
It is the ex tremely subtle, conscious basis of everything. It means that God is here right now as the
source of our awareness. Yet somehow we miss out o n being aware of this source.

Now how to go about discovering it?

Simply knowing the truth intellectually will not do. The Jnana (knowledge) path is difficult, said Shri
Krishna. The Bhakti (dev otion) path is easier and here another v iew of God comes in: I shwara. This
v iew is relativ ely close to the western notion of God but far more benevolent. There is no eternal
punishment. Ev eryone gets chance after chance. Yes, suffering may be included depending on ones
karma but it is in the realm of may a, from wher e one will ultimately wake up like waking up from a
nightmare. Ishwara is God with attributes and has innumerable aspects. These are personified in
many dev as and the devotee can choose the one who is dearest to him. It helps to develop friendship
and intimacy with the inv isible through Shiv a Brahma, V ishnu, Dev i, Ganapathi and many more.
Those Dev as, who are mistakenly much maligned by western religions, are not separate entities but a
kind of access point to the one Brahman. And the scriptures leave no doubt that the devas are
ultimately Brahman.

For ex ample, the Ganapathi Upanishad clearly states that Ganapathi is the all in all:

Tv ameva kevalam karta si, tv ameva kev alam dharta si, tv ameva kevalam harta si.

Tv ameva sarvam khalvidam brahmasi, tv am saksadatma si nity am.

(Y ou alone are the creator, y ou alone are the sustainer, y ou alone are the annihilator. All this is
Brahman and y ou are that Brahman. You are indeed the Atman eternally.)

It goes on to analy se that Ganapathi is beyond the 3 gunas (satva, raja, tamas), the 3 mental states
(waking, dream and sleep), the 3 bodies (physical, astral, causal) the 3 times (past, present, future)
and much more.

It is awe-inspiring that those deep and analytical words were uttered thousands of y ears ago. Today,
this transcendental dimension of God is mostly ignored. Apart from the mystics of all religions, who
discovered the transcendental dimension as true, people generally consider God as a personal entity.
He is supposed to be watching us from somewhere.

Science has done away with this God. Einstein considered the notion of a personal God as nav e. Yet
scientists dont quite realise that the ultimate truth that they seek is basically the Brahman of ancient
India. A national daily reported some time ago that Lord Rees, a noted cosmologist and president of
the roy al society, claims that our brain is incapable of cracking the my steries of the univ erse. He
suspects that space has a grainy structure but on a scale a trillion times smaller than atoms. Y es, it is
v ery subtle and the ultimate truth cannot be thought of, the Rishis also claimed. Yet this truth is not
some thing at some place. It is our v ery being and therefore the Rishis claim there is a chance to
real-ise (know it as real) by turning towards what is unchanging and true about us and dev elop
dev otion for That one could call it God in English.