Ātman, the “real me,” is ever-free, ever-pure and ever-perfect—and yet I find that I am not so free, not so pure, and not so perfect. The “real me” is blissful and yet I suffer in all kinds of ways. Why does—and, more importantly, how can—the ever-blissful “real me” suffer? We reflected on this in the previous post.
It is the pain of suffering which forces us to search for ways to overcome it. While there are quick fixes available, none of them seems to root out the problem completely. One ancient and time-tested way to get a permanent fix to the problem of suffering is to seek God’s help. Not everyone does this, of course, but some of us do. When a discerning mind begins to think of God, it is natural for questions to arise. Any number of questions are possible. Beginning with the obvious:
“Who is God?”
One possible answer: God is one from whom everything originates, on whose support everything depends, and to whom everything returns (see Taittirīya Upaniṣad 3.1-6, Brahma-Sūtra 1.1.2). This bare-bones answer accounts for not only the presence of the world but also how it is supported and where it ends up. What the answer doesn’t explain is how everything originates from God, what God’s support really means, and what going back to God entails—and, most importantly, who God really is without reference to you, me and the world.
There hasn’t yet been a universally acceptable explanation, and almost certainly there never will be. Has there been anything at all which is acceptable to everyone, everywhere? What we do have instead are several different answers provided at different points in history by different people from different parts of the world, which is how different religious traditions have emerged.
It’s no surprise that the answers are different. What to speak of speculations, even answers backed by a revelation or direct experience of God are bound to be different. When an experience is clothed in words using language and culture-specific symbols, metaphors and imagery, it is bound to have a distinct texture and color. What is important to acknowledge is that, in spite of the answers that sometimes look radically different from one another, they represent sincere human efforts to understand and describe God. The efforts are never fully successful, but that is only to be expected. After all, how can you ask for a perfect description of a transcendent being who is essentially indescribable?
“Is God personal or impersonal?”
Some view God in abstract terms, as the all-pervading reality, the divine source, or the infinite being. Others view God as a person, not simply as a principle. Both of these views—God as a principle and God as a person—are from a human perspective. They represent a quintessentially human way of thinking. God as a person is human in many respects but also superhuman. God is viewed as being loving, kind, and compassionate, but also omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. Since God as a person is described in human terms, we tend to see in God a father-figure or a mother-figure. Hence the prevalence of God the Father, God the Mother—more of the former, reflecting the gender bias that still exists in most societies around the world.
Others go further and, in addition to ascribing qualities and gender to God, also think of God in visually more appealing ways, making God’s personality even more personable. There is an obvious limit to the qualities we can imagine in God, but to think of God in visual terms opens up a lot more opportunities. When I am in the presence of God, who will I see before me? Hindus have been historically very good at making the most of exploring these possibilities.
Thinking of God in an abstract, impersonal way or thinking of God in a most personal way is only a way of thinking. God always remains who God is, no matter how we think of God. Just because my friend thinks of me in some way doesn’t change who I am. I am who I am. My friend’s thinking about me doesn’t change me. Likewise, God doesn’t change. God is who God is. All disagreements about the nature of God have nothing to do with who God is. Those are disagreements about who people think God is. It is obvious that God has been imagined by the human mind in many different ways, which are sometimes mutually contradictory.
Until we metaphorically stand face to face with God, what can any of us do other than imagine how God is? Instead of quarreling about the superiority of one view over another, or claiming with no obvious evidence that one view is right and other views are wrong, it is better to ask a more practical question: will the way I imagine God take me close enough to God, so I can verify for myself who God really is?
Not all of these human imaginations are arbitrary and accidental. It is not helpful to dismiss them as products of infantile minds or overheated brains. Many of these descriptions of God, in both personal and impersonal aspects, have been provided by those who had a direct experience of God. The expression of an experience can never equal or substitute for the experience itself, but it does have the power to lead a person to the experience. Both a personal God and an impersonal God can lead me to God as-God-really-is.
“Does God really exist?”
Faced with multiple answers about God’s identity, each claiming to be right and none uncontested, it is natural to wonder if God really exists or is only a “belief,” a nebulous entity who can be propped up only on the strength of faith. Many affirm that God exists, but this cannot be objectively proved on the strength of their hope, belief or faith. Others seem too confident that God doesn’t exist, although their assertion is as much a statement of faith as of those who feel that God does exist. A few others claim that no one knows—and no one can ever know—whether God exists. We are left with the feeling that both atheism and agnosticism have today become religions of sorts.
According to Vedanta, God not only exists but is existence itself. This means, claiming that God doesn’t exist is tantamount to saying, “Existence doesn’t exist.” Funnily enough, this brings into question even the existence of the person who claims that God doesn’t exist. See Taittirīya Upaniṣad (2.6.1):
असन्नेव स भवति, असद्ब्रह्मेति वेद चेत् ।
Asat eva sa bhavati, asat brahma-iti veda cet.
“If a person knows Brahman as nonexistent, he himself becomes nonexistent.”
It is significant that the teaching of God as existence (sat) is not laid down as a dogma or an article of faith. It is simply a revelation found in the Upaniṣads. Everyone is welcome to study what it means, to examine it carefully, to ask questions about it, and to determine whether it fits well in the Vedantic worldview. If God as existence resonates with our own orientation to the divine, its truth can be verified through personal experience.
Vedanta goes a step further: God not only is existence itself but God alone exists. There is nothing else apart from God. If something else appears to exist, that too is nothing but God. See Chāndogya Upaniṣad (3.14.1):
सर्वं खलु इदं ब्रह्म ।
Sarvaṁ khalu idaṁ brahma.
“All this is indeed Brahman.”
The word for God that is commonly used in Vedanta is “Brahman.” Brahman is neither a person nor a power nor anything that can be described through words. Literally, “Brahman” simply means the vast, the infinite—which is how existence itself is. What we can say with absolute certainty is this: God is. Any description we add after “is” may be helpful, but it also somehow circumscribes God’s infinitude and compromises God’s ineffability.
Which means, even “God is existence itself” is not a perfect description. What it really implies is that God is not nonexistent (asat). In other words, God is not unreal. Likewise, when God is viewed as pure consciousness (cit or caitanya), what is really implied is that God is not a material (jaḍa) object. In other words, God is not subject to “the six modifications” (ṣaḍvikāra): birth, growth, transformation, decay, disease, and death. When God is viewed as infinite (ananta), what is really implied is that God is not finite. In other words, God alone exists.
Put simply, if we want an accurate description of God, we can only say what God is not, never what God is. After eliminating everything that God is not, whoever remains is God.
“In times of difficulty, how can I receive help from an indescribable God whom I have neither seen nor known?”
The answer is this: when there is a need, God becomes the fulfiller of the need and no longer remains indescribable. God becomes a helper-God when the “real me” becomes a being in need of help. God simply is as long as I simply am. The moment I become a seeker, for me God becomes the sought. When I become a child, God becomes my father or my mother. When I feel lost, God becomes my guide. When I need company, God becomes my friend. When I am in trouble, I need someone to rescue me. The prayers of the “troubled” Ātman are answered by the “troubleshooter” God.
The subject and the object are dynamically related: when the subject changes, so does the object. God’s becoming someone else is as real—more accurately, as “apparently real”—as the Ātman’s becoming someone else. The water next to my bed is of no use when I am thirsty in my dream. Only dream-water can quench my dream-thirst. In order for me to receive God’s help, the God I turn to must belong to the same level of reality as mine. When the Ātman is apparently transformed, there is also an apparent transformation in the God whom the Ātman worships and adores.
God thus takes many forms. When the Ātman becomes an individual self (jīvātman), God becomes the supreme self (paramātman). When the Ātman becomes a devotee (bhakta), God becomes one endowed with divine qualities (bhagavān). When the Ātman becomes a creature, God becomes the creator. When the Ātman becomes a resident of God’s kingdom, God becomes the ruler (īśvara) or the supreme ruler (parameśvara).
When the Ātman stops becoming anything, so does God. That’s the moment the duality ends. Since it never really existed, duality’s end is as apparent as its existence. God alone continues to exist, the way God always has. Which is same as saying that the Ātman alone continues to exist, the way it always has. Both these statements are not only accurate but identical, because Brahman and Ātman are one and the same reality. When the reality is viewed with reference to an individual, it is Ātman. When the same reality is viewed with reference to no one in particular, it is Brahman, or God, who is beyond all names, forms and concepts.
Religion can be viewed as a dynamic relationship between the apparently changed Ātman and the apparently changed God. The goal of religion is reached when this relationship reaches its culmination with the realization of total identity: the “sleeping” Ātman wakes up and the dream vanishes. The boundaries that separated the Ātman from God and from everything else evaporate. Forms disappear, names disappear, limitations disappear. What remains is the truth—call it Ātman or Brahman or by any other name or by no name at all. Who cares? What’s in a name anyway?
All of this can be confusing. God is said to be indescribable and yet descriptions of God abound in religious texts. God is said to be one and yet I see people worshiping a God who seems to be different from my own.
“How do I make sense of all this?”
The first thing to remember is that none of God’s descriptions is perfect. An imperfect description is nevertheless better than no description, since that’s about the best we can do, considering our limited expressing skills and the inherent limitation of language. However imperfect God’s description may be, it still gives us enough idea to make a beginning in spiritual life.
The second thing to remember is that, all said and done, our descriptions of God, our explanations of who God is, are all “human” explanations. This is unavoidable. Our all-too-human minds are trying to make sense of the world, its origin and its purpose. We cannot but see everything from the human perspective. No wonder we tend to put human beings on top of the evolutionary ladder and look at everyone else as somehow inferior or at least less capable. A dog or a cat may have different ideas. Who knows what animals think of us and what their ideas of God are!
The third thing to remember is that we human beings don’t have an idea of God on which we all agree. This is because our minds don’t think in an identical manner. Nevertheless, none of the ways in which a sincere struggling soul thinks of God is wrong. The God I worship is the God I need in my present state of evolution. As I evolve, my concept of God evolves too. For more insights on this, please read Swami Vivekananda’s talk delivered in London on October 20, 1896. It is titled “Maya and the Evolution of the Conception of God” (CW 2. 105-117). See also Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009).
At every stage in my spiritual growth, God responds to me in a way that is appropriate in our relationship and in a way that helps my evolution. So every way in which God is approached deserves respect, since they all represent ways to reach the same divine being. Every one of us is unique in our own way, so the divine we worship is also unique for us on our own mental horizon. God is one. Our perceptions of God are many.
In the beginning, God may appear to be a being far removed from me, staying in a distant place and controlling the universe like a governor, rewarding the good and punishing the wicked. Over time, when my ideas evolve and my love overcomes fear, God becomes a benign figure and comes closer to me. The love that connects me with God makes me feel that I belong to God: if God represents the whole, I am a part of that whole.
Such is the power of love that it slowly absorbs and engulfs everything. When my love for God blossoms into its fulness, it reaches a point when I no longer feel I am merely connected with God. Even the bond that connects me with God begins to feel like a barrier. The awareness of my separate identity becomes a burden at that stage. It is then that the two identities merge and all distinctions vanish. The journey often begins with dualism (dvaita), passes through the intermediate stage of qualified nondualism (viśiṣtādvaita), and ends with nondualism (advaita).
“When will I know, beyond any doubt, that God exists (or does not exist)?”
Absolute certainty about God’s nonexistence is impossible to achieve. We are never going to find the kind of objective evidence we may want to see, because God is not an “object,” like the things we find in the world. The absence of evidence, though, is not the evidence of absence. What is possible is to raise doubts about God’s existence. Whoever finds such doubts to be reasonable is likely to question the existence of God and believe that God is a myth.
We can only raise doubts about what we know, usually from whatever we have heard, read or been told. For accuracy’s sake, therefore, it must be said that God-deniers are not really denying God but only the idea of God with which they are familiar and which doesn’t make sense to them. For most people, God is more an idea in the head than a real being, so when the idea of God is rejected, it feels as if God has been rejected.
Absolute certainty about God’s existence is possible only through a direct experience (aparokṣa anubhūti) of God. It is good but not enough to have only faith in God, or a strong feeling or an intellectual conviction that God exists. What is needed is a direct experience, an experience not filtered through the mind and the senses. Such experiences are possible and, when they occur, all doubts about God vanish (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 2.2.8, Bhāgavata 1.2.21), all fear vanishes (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.2.4), everything that constricts freedom vanishes for ever. Once I experience God in that way, no one in the universe can persuade me that God doesn’t exist.
It is to know whether experiencing God is really possible that a teenager named Narendranath (who later became Vivekananda) met the religious leaders of his time, asking them not about God but whether they had seen God. To his utter amazement and joy Sri Ramakrishna said that he had and, what’s more, Narendranath could see God too. Which he did a few years later, through the grace of his Guru and his own relentless struggle. That is why his words are as powerful today as when he first uttered them. We must, he said, “realize God, feel God, see God, talk to God. That is religion” (CW 4. 165).