Finding God

How Seekers found God

We can understand how man first conceived a science of medicine. He suffered physically and therefore sought a method to heal himself.

But how did man try to find out about God?

In the Vedas we find the earliest true concept of God.

In these scriptures India has given the world immortal truths that have stood the test of time.

Motivated by necessity the early rishis (seers) of India became ardent spiritual seekers.

They had found that without inner satisfaction, no amount of external good fortune can bring lasting happiness.

How can one make oneself really happy?

This is the problem the wise men of India undertook to solve.

We must look within and remember that the Infinite is everywhere. By diving deep into super consciousness (other than ordinary consciousness), we can speed our mind through eternity; by the power of our mind we can go further than the farthest star.

It is we who must travel to the kingdom of heaven; it will not come to us by special delivery.

Three aspects of nature

Worship of God in pre-historic times began man’s fear of the various forces of nature. When it rained excessively, floods killed many people. Awed, man thought of the rain and wind and other natural forces as gods.

Later on, human beings realized that nature operates in three ways:

It creates, it preserves and it dissolves.

Just as Jesus perceived the universal force of evil personified in Satan, so the great rishis beheld the universal forces of creation, preservation, and dissolution personified in definite forms.

The sages of old named them Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer.

These primal powers were created as projections of the unmanifested Spirit to unfold His infinite drama of creation.

While He is God beyond creation, He remains ever hidden behind their consciousness.

In times the cosmic dissolution, all creation and its vast activating forces dissolve back into Spirit.

There they rest until called upon again by the Creator to re-enact their role.

Gita VIII: 17-18

“They are true knower’s, who understand the day of Brahma, which endures for a thousand cycles (yugas) and the night of Brahma, which also endures for a thousand cycles. At the dawn of Brahma’s Day, all creation, reborn, emerges from the state of non-manifestation; at the dusk of Brahma’s Night all creation sinks into sleep of non-manifestation.”

God the Supreme Cause

In the Western world the idea of God developed through observation of the law of cause and effect. Man can materialize objects by taking material from the earth and shaping them in accordance with a pre-conceived idea; therefore, it seemed conceivable that this whole universe must have been created out of ideas,

This let to the concept that everything must have existed first as an idea.  Someone had to create that first idea or cosmic plan. Thus through the analogy of the law of cause and effect, intelligent men reasoned that there must be a supreme cause.

Science has learned that all matter is made out of invisible building blocks- electrons, protons etc. Nobody can tell why some electrons and protons become wood, and others human bones or what intelligence guides them.

This line of questioning led to quantum physics and the idea that there must be consciousness behind those subtle events.

The sages of India say that everything proceeds from and goes back into its source: God.

Evidence of Order and Harmony is everywhere

We can observe that everything in nature is arranged in a particular way. There are seasons; there is a time to plant, a time to cultivate and a time to reap.

Planets don’t collide. Everything we see points to order and harmony. There must be something behind all this, and that something we call God who is both the Cause of matter and the Intelligence behind it

Once we attain the ultimate wisdom we will realizes that everything is consciousness or spirit in essence, though hidden in manifestation. If we have this perception, we see God in everything.

Devotion and right attitude Attracts God’s Attention

Devotees convert the concept of God into perception of  Him.

First, we must have the right concept of God,  a definite idea through which we can form a relationship with Him and then we must meditate and pray until that mental conception becomes changed into actual perception. If we persist, the lord will come.

The searcher of hearts wants only our sincere love. He has everything else. We must pray in God with unconditional, one-pointed, steady devotion.

In seeking the lord, activity comes after devotion in importance. Some say, “God is Power, therefore let us act with Power.” When we act in doing good, with the Lord foremost in our mind, we will perceive Him in this way. But, there is wrong as well as right activity even in doing good.

An ambitious minister who brings ever more people to his church solely to satisfy his ego is not pleasing God.

To realize the presence of the Divine Indweller should be the first desire in every heart.

It is when we persistently, selflessly perform every action with love-inspired thoughts of God that He will come to us. Then we realize that we are the ocean of life, which has become the tiny wave of each life.

This is the way of knowing the Lord through activity. When in every action we think of Him before we act, while we are performing our action we will have the Blessings of the Lord.

We must work, but we must let God work through us.

If we are constantly thinking, that it is God who walks through our feet, who works through our hands, acts through our will, we will know Him as the doer.

However, we must also practice discrimination in that we prefer spiritually constructive activity to work performed without any thought of Him.

Meditation is the highest form of activity.

Greater than activity, devotion or reason is meditation. To meditate truly is to concentrate solely on Spirit. This is the highest form of activity that man can perform, and is the most balanced way to find God.

If we work all the time, we may become mechanical and lose Him in pre-occupation with our duties.

If we seek him only with discriminative thought, we may lose him to endless reasoning.

If we cultivate only devotion to God, our development may become merely emotional. But meditation balances all these approach.

Work, eat, walk, laugh, cry, and meditate only for Him. This is the best way to live.

In so doing, we will be truly happy serving Him, loving Him and communing with Him.

If we let the desires and weaknesses of the physical body control our thoughts and actions, we will have trouble finding Him.

We must be the master of our body.

The body is a switchboard and the five senses are the telephones. Through the senses we are in touch with the world, but when we don’t want to communicate, we switch off the five senses and live in the silent joy of God.

The Self (soul) is our Savior

This deep truth is not for the inspiration of the passing moment but should be assimilated and made practical for our highest benefit.

To those who act wrongly, the Self is an enemy. Befriend the Self and the Self will save us.

There is no other savior other than our Self.

The fetters of ignorance and bad habits keep us bound. It is because we are determined that we follow our wrong habits that we suffer.

There is a saying:” the child is busy with play, the youth is busy with sex, and the adult is busy with worries.

How few are busy with God.”

We must banish the imaginary hope that happiness will come from worldly fulfillment.

Prosperity isn’t enough, gracious living isn’t enough. We want to be eternally happy.

We must seize the God within us and realize that the Self is Divinity.

We must be able to answer with surety the highest question of our intelligence:” From where did I come.”

God and immortality are not myths. It is the gravest insult to the Self within us to die believing we are mortal beings.

To summarize, there are basically two approaches to God realization: the outer way and the inner or transcendental way.

The outer is by right activity, loving and serving humankind with the consciousness centered in God and the transcendental way is by deep esoteric meditation.

By the transcendental way we realize all the things we are not and discover That which we are.” I am not the breath; I am not the body; neither bones nor flesh. I am not the mind or feeling.”

When we go beyond the consciousness of this world, knowing that we are not the body or the mind, and yet aware as never before that we exist- that Divine consciousness is what we are. We are That in which everything in the universe is rooted.

We must inquire behind the darkness when we close our eyes

This is the place to explore.

John 1:5 “And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not”.

Vast lights and cosmic forces are moving there.

Samadhi is a joyous experience, a splendid light in which we behold the countless worlds floating in a vast bed of joy and bliss.

We must banish the spiritual ignorance that makes us think this mortal life is real through having these spiritual experiences for ourselves in eternal samadhi, in God.

All spiritual teachers declare that within this body is the immortal soul, a spark of That which sustains all.

He who knows his soul knows this truth:

” I am beyond everything finite;

I now see that the Spirit alone in space with its ever new joy has expressed Itself as the vast body of nature. I am the stars, I am the waves, I am the life of all; I am that laughter within all hearts, I am the smile on the faces of the flowers and in each soul. I am the Wisdom and the power that sustains all of creation’.