Who is GOD ?

Understanding Existence of God

 On this planet, a lot of values exist regarding GOD. Consequently, folks recognize Lord into their very own means and often into their very owin magination. But precisely what is expected could be the comprehending Lord seeing that He could be, precisely what He could be and also precisely how He could be. The right comprehending regarding GOD must be written by Lord Herself! There are some who don't believe in the existence of GOD, usually you'll find His existence are not proved like that regarding humankind. But since many of us can't see Lord with the gross eyes, doesn't necessarily mean that Lord won't exist. Just as wind flow, which cannot be seen yet can be very much felt, it is possible to experience God's presence through Godly knowlegde and meditation.

 Who is God and what is His form and name? 

We shall now try to understand who God or the Supreme Soul is. The term 'Supreme Soul' means He is supreme among all souls. It implies that, He is also 'a soul', though He is the Highest of all. He is above birth and death. God is the Supreme Father-Mother, Supreme teacher and Supreme Preceptor to all the human beings and He himself has no father-mother, teacher and preceptor. God is a subtle, infinitesimal point of Light. He is not visible to the naked eye but it is very much possible to experience His presence and proximity in meditation. He is incorporeal in the sense that he does not have a body of his own. He is not a human being nor does He have a human form. He is immune to pleasure and pain unlike human beings. Names are a means of identification of human beings after they are born. They do not speak of qualities and actions of the person; they are simply proper nouns and are not attributive names. But the name of the supreme soul or God is based on His qualities and actions. His self-revealed name is 'Shiva'. 'Shiva' means doer of good or benefactor. God does good to all and therefore He is called Shiva. All souls ask for salvation and beatitude i.e. peace and happiness from Him. People remember Him by many other expressive names.

 His Virtues 

 God is the Supreme Father of all. He is called the creator. He is oceanic in his virtues - the ocean of peace, the ocean of love, the ocean of bliss, the ocean of knowledge, the ocean of happiness, the ocean of mercy, etc. He is the truth. He is the Almighty and Authority. He is reputed to be the preserver or sustainer of virtues and the destroyer of all evils. He is also the liberator, the guide, and the bestower of salvation, therefore the sadguru. He dispels sorrow, bestows joy. God is perfect in all ways and absolutely detached and loving. He is very benevolent and helpful and so souls ask all things of him. When in sorrow and losing all hope, souls turn to him intuitively and inevitably. Many are the religions and paths that souls take in their quest for reaching God. Many wars have been waged in his name. However, he does not exclusively belong to anyone. He belongs to everyone equally.

 The Supreme Father of all Souls 

 God is the father of all souls in this world. It is observed that all religions have images, idols or memorials bearing one name or another to represent the form of Light that God is. All over India, the images of the form that Shiva has is found installed; these images are without any human form, in the form of linga, which is the symbol of an incorporeal Being. At Mecca, in the holy place of Kaaba, a stone image with oval form is called "Sang-e-Aswad". The devotes who go for Haj kiss this holy stone. Jesus Christ said, "God is Light". Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism also sang the praise of Him who is 'All-Light' ( ek Omkar) and is incorporeal. In olden days, the Jews held a stone of this shape in their hands while taking a solemn oath and it is believed that Moses had vision of this form of God when he saw a flame behind the bush. The Zoroastrians worship God as fire. The ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun as god. A Buddhist sect in Japan focuses the mind on a small oval shape. They call it Karni, the peace giver. It seems therefore that human beings, without realizing, have all been worshipping and trying to discover the same God. There is only one God and His form is a point of light. He is called by different names in different religions.

Omniscience

God creates with knowledge. Being the wisest of all, He has the power to change the intellects of human souls. By imparting to us the knowledge of Himself, the Creator, and the beginning, the middle, and the end of the creation, we are able to appreciate this vast world Drama, and our true qualities of love, peace, and bliss are touched. The laws of nature automatically take care of the details of nature, as the law of cause and effect (karma) takes care of the details of human life. In order for Him to perform His work as Creator it is not necessary for Him to listen to our every thought, our every secret. He is part of an eternal, predestined drama that He did not create but in which He finds Himself the principal actor.

Thus He is the only true altruist. Human actions, whether good or bad, are dictated by self concern, whereas, God has nothing to gain, because He is complete in all respects. He is the perfect ‘blueprint’ of spirituality. He alone has the right to give knowledge regardless of human arguments. His knowledge is purely spiritual.            
                                          

Omnipotence

All those who accept the reality of God believe that He is all powerful. It is believed He can do anything and everything, that He is some sort of cosmic magician who first of all created this vast universe from nothing, and continues to manipulate its workings whenever He chooses. It is thought that all that has been, is and will be is created and controlled by God. Some go so far as to say that the total cosmos is the mind of God. This has been a constant point of dispute.

Firstly, there are three distinct and eternal operative realities, each having its own powers and functions. There is God, there are souls and there is matter, or nature, together producing the scenes of creation.

Secondly, there are two fields of existence: the physical and the meta-physical. Both fields act, react and interact to produce this incredible, universal drama of which we all are a part, including God. Fundamentally, on the physical level there is the interaction between the matter and souls which produces all phenomena. On the metaphysical level there is the interaction between souls and God, the remembering and forgetting of Him, which gives the intresting plots and by-plots to the movement of events that we call world history.

Thirdly, ‘eternal’ infers that God neither created Himself, nor human souls, nor matter. God, in fact has no direct influence on nature. It is not He who throws lightning bolts at people, kills or grants babies, makes airplanes crash, causes earth quakes, floods, rainbows. This is the play between human souls and matter directly. The laws of nature are not the laws of God.

If God is an ocean of love, surely His will is the manifestation of that love. It is not His will to kill people, nor is it His power to bring them back to life. It is not He who makes the grass grow and the wind blow. It is not He who is the energy that binds the atoms together. It is not He who gives us our roles. It is because we have misunderstood His omnipotence that we seek His favor in the churches and temples: “Grant us this…” “Forgive me…” and so on. Though we flatter Him to give us this and that, when something goes wrong, or a relative dies, He is the one who is blamed, “It is the will of God” is solemnly intoned by almost everyone.

There are certain immutable laws which govern the interplay of the soul, God and nature. God will not infringe those laws. He will not grant favors to some and not to others. Nor will He remove sin unless the devotee himself begins to make the efforts necessary. He is immune to both flattery and defamation.

God’s greatness lies not in the ability to interfere with events when He chooses. It lies in the fact that He alone is the only one in the universe who upholds these laws perfectly and forever. His might is purely spiritual. The Supreme Father, Supreme Soul, uses His ”potency” for the benefit of the world. He uses His qualities to transform it when it reaches extreme degradation.

God is not Omnipresent

Is it really possible that the Supreme Soul pervades the entire universe? The ancient sages of India used to say “Neti neti” (it is not known) when asked about the identity of God, whereas their most recent counterparts have been claiming that God is everything and everywhere and even in human beings. The statement “Nothing except God exists, He is everywhere” may reflect the heights of mystical poetry, but to interpret that as literal fact is another thing altogether. The feeling “O Lord, wherever I am, Thou art with me…” certainly indicates a filial closeness between the soul and God but to twist the meaning of that into “God is everywhere” is more than slightly unreasonable. The sun is in one place yet its influence can be felt throughout the solar system to different degrees in different places, providing a source of heat and light, absolute essentials for our physical life. The closer one is to the sun, the greater the effect.

In the same way God,the one who is the ocean of perfect attributes, the source of all spiritual needs, does not have to be omnipresent in order to be with us wherever we are because the feeling of closeness to God is something beyond physical dimensions.

If I am pervaded by God, how could ignorance have come to me in the first place? Can ignorance come to God? If God is omnipresent to where or to whom do I turn my thoughts?

Just as a radio transmitter emanates waves throughout the world and a receiver, if tuned in, will pick them up, so too if the mind is tuned totally to the gross world and physical activities, then I am unable to experience God practically in my daily life. Even though He always radiates His qualities, I can only pick up those transmissions if I am soul-conscious and if I turn my thoughts in His direction and to His location. If God were omnipresent, are the ones who are so called ‘God-realised beings’ more God than the ones who have not realized?

If God were omnipresent there would be no need for knowledge and no need to search for peace. The One who is the ocean of peace and the ocean of knowledge would be everywhere. Perhaps the strongest point against the idea of literal omnipresence is the point of relationship. In the heart of every soul the search of truth is impressed; I am the child, God is my Father.

God is also the Supreme teacher, guide, liberator, friend and purifier of human souls. That is why everyone turns their thoughts to Him in their hours of despair. The idea that God is omnipresent is indeed the ultimate excuse and greatest escape from responsibility that human souls have made and continue to make.

Acts of God

In India God is called “Karan Karavanhar”. That means He is the one who does and gets things done by others. However, this is traditionally mistaken to mean that everything moves according to His will. If God had created this material universe, then He would also control and interfere in it constantly, creating rain storms, droughts, plagues, good harvests, sunrises, sunsets etc. These are all natural processes. The planets keep position because of attraction and repulsion, not because of some supernatural force. In imagining God to be Generator, Operator and Destroyer in the physical sense we have utterly confused His real role.

In order to accomplish the work of creation, sustenance, and destruction, God, first of all, creates three subtle deities, called ‘Brahma’, ‘Vishnu’, and ‘Shankara’. He is therefore called ‘Trimurti’ meaning thereby the Creator of the Divine Triad. But since people do not know these recondite truth to-day,they wrongly think that Shiva and Shankara are one and the same person. The fact, however, is that Shankara is a deity created by God Shiva to represent how the world ultimately gets destroyed. Shiva himself is incorporeal whereas Shankara has an angelic body.  

After having created the three deities, the Supreme Father Shiva descends from His Supreme Abode (Param Dham) into the body of a mediocre man for the Incorporeal Being requires a human organ of speech to reveal Divine Knowledge. Such a descent or advent of God into a human-being’s body is known as God’s super-natural or divine birth (Divya janam) or the divine presence of God in a particular man’s body (Parakaya pravesh). God, by controlling Nature or Matter, is born in an un-earthly and supernatural manner.

God Shiva gives the Divine name ‘Prajapita Brahma’ to the person in whose body descends. Those who obtain God’s knowledge as revealed through the mouth of this man, Brahma, are called ‘Brahmins’ or ‘Dwijas’, meaning: the twice-born. Everyone has an ordinary birth i.e. the physical birth given by one’s parents. But when a man obtains Divine Knowledge from God and his life is metamorphosed considerably, i.e. his soul gets elevated, he is said to have had a new birth which means a spiritual awakening. When the men of Iron-age, having lived in vices for generations, discard vices and other dirty habits and become pure and morally reclaimed, they are said to be re-born. Such a birth is called Marjeeva Janma i.e. spiritual rejuvenation or moral regeneration. Because of giving such a birth to human souls, God is called the Father, the Creator and theRedeemer, as, otherwise, the souls are immortal and there is no question of their being created or born. Hence regenerating the soul by giving it Divine Knowledge and enabling it to establish itself firmly in such consciousness as is implied by these words; ’I am a soul’, the immortal child of the Supreme Soul, and then spiritually adopting the souls as His children, is what we call he work of ‘creation’ that God does. Only those men and women who follow God’s direction and become purified, attain deity-status in their next birth in Golden Age that ensues soon after. The act of ‘Creation’ does not mean constructing something out of nothing but it means the moral reconstruction of mankind or their re-establishment of the ancient most Deity Religion.

Creator

Creation is actually the regeneration, rejuvenation or re-shaping of what already exists. When the whole of humanity becomes weak spiritually, God rejuvenates the souls by imparting knowledge and divinising their intellects. He puts life-energy back into souls. In that way He sows the seeds of the new Golden Age. He brings souls nearer to Himself and thus they come nearer to each other. In this way, He is the Creator of a world of unity, peace, love and harmony on the earth.

The task of making a plan for the whole of humanity is beyond the capacity of human beings. It is the function of God, by virtue of His unlimited attributes. Creation is really the purification of souls, the act of establishing once again the divine order.

Nothing created is permanent. Just as when a seed is sown in a field, first the old crop must be harvested, when the new world order is being established, the old world order must be destroyed. When Shiva Baba acts as a Creator, there is world-scale transformation. Souls are not destroyed. Matter or nature is not destroyed. Only disease and pollution and the negative forces within humans are destroyed.

As the revealer of the laws of actions, Shiva Baba must come onto the field of action and demonstrate them. He could not just remain in the soul world and perform the act of creation from there. Sending vibrations is just not enough primarily because human beings have become so body conscious that they are not subtle enough to pick up such vibrations. Their link with Him has been severed, and human beings through their own efforts and fantasies have not been able to reconnect themselves with Him.

He comes in an incognito way like a “thief in the night” as it says in the Bible, at the end of the Iron Age. He “borrows” the body of the most experienced of all human souls, the first soul to enter the cycle. In India he is called “Admi” (man) or “Adi Dev”, which means the first deity. “Adi”, (the first or original), is the probable root of the word “Adam”. So the soul of “Adam” after passing through the cycle of births, again becomes the instrument for the recreation of the world of heaven. Shiva Baba is able to make full use of his experience in revealing all the secrets of the human world drama. The very fact that He comes unleashes the forces of transformation. In the act of creation of the new “house”, the destruction of the old one becomes necessary and inevitable.

Destruction

God is not the destroyer of human beings, just as He is not the creator of human beings. He is the destroyer of evil and the creator of virtue. The Supreme Soul in fact, merely inspires us to reach a powerful stage of meditation. It is from the centre of this fire of love and yoga that the vibrations of world transformation spread. This purifying influence on the consciousness of humanity actually fans the fires of the destruction of the old world. Destruction is thus a reflection of the power of yoga, the necessary companion of creation. This destructive aspect is shown by the symbol Shankar. He is shown sitting in the deep stillness of meditation; naked to show the complete freedom from body consciousness and conquest of evil in the self. It is said that the flames of destruction emerged from Shankar’s third eye.

Sustenance

The result of knowledge and the deep fire of yoga is the all-virtuous state. Vishnu is a symbol of this purity and sovereignty. Vishnu is shown with four arms and represents the perfect male/female couple; pure and equal. It is the perfect couple Lakshmi and Narayan who rule throughout the Golden Age.

Vishnu also symbolises the perfect family life which acts as a sustaining force in the early part of human history. As the family life becomes more impure, so too the sustaining force in this world becomes weaker until eventually the system breaks down completely. The four ornaments that Vishnu is holding represent four subjects that souls must absorb in order to take part in the Kingdom of Vishnu. The discus denotes the knowledge of the cycle which enables pure thoughts. The conch shell represents service through spreading both the sound and vibration spirituality. The lotus flower is a symbol of pure actions. The mace represents the completeness of victory through yoga over the five vices of anger, greed, ego, lust and attachment and the conquest of the sense organs.

Thus, what Vishnu represents becomes the aim and object of human beings, i.e. purity in thoughts, words and actions and complete success in relating to the world around us. Many think that God is a sustainer out of His supreme generosity and that He gives us our goods, wealth, health, food, water, air etc. If that were so, why would He be so unfair? Why does poverty, starvation and disease exist if God is a sustainer and provider of all in the physical sense.

In fact, each human being earns his own livelihood. It is not God who pays the wages. Whatever fruits we earn are the results of our own efforts. God is not a physical sustainer just as He is not a physical creator or destroyer. He sustains first of all by providing human beings with a glimpse of their own highest potential. When we have inculcated that purity through loveful relationship with Him, it is that purity which sustains the systems of the new world. God is the provider of love, peace, happiness and all the virtues. It is the absence of these which results in our systems gradually falling apart.