Defining God

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Now that I got your atten­tion, let me tell you that I am not going to define the unde­fin­able. But, this is merely to ask you to con­tem­plate on your def­i­n­i­tion of God. Every­time some­body asks me, “Do you believe or have faith in God?” I pause and ask a ques­tion in return, “What is your def­i­n­i­tion of God? Unless I know that I can­not hon­estly answer that ques­tion.” This is because behind every ques­tion, whether spir­i­tual or oth­er­wise, there are some under­ly­ing assump­tions. Unless those assump­tions are brought out, one can­not answer a ques­tion truly and honestly.

As I stared at my com­puter screen typ­ing ran­dom strings and eras­ing them try­ing to artic­u­late my under­ly­ing assump­tions about God, the text edi­tor I was using was emit­ting type­writer like sounds. I had enabled those sounds to enter­tain my five month old daugh­ter, Gay­a­tri, who was in the bounc­ing chair next to me. My eleven year old son, Sudar­shan, got curi­ous at the sounds and he approached me ask­ing if he could play with those “cool” sounds. I gave him my lap­top with the title of this arti­cle intact in the text edi­tor. He took a look at the title and said, “I want write some­thing here,” and he went on to type what I quoted below with­out any soft of edit­ing. After read­ing that I said to myself, “Well, he just wrote what I wanted to express, though not in the same terms. But, it expresses One­ness of all.” With his per­mis­sion I am repro­duc­ing it here.

I am God
You are God
Beasts are God
Money is God
Poverty is God
Life is God
Every­thing is within God
It is all a day­dream of God
God is the Uni­verse
The Universe’s will is God’s will
Uni­verse has a col­lec­tive con­scious­ness car­ry­ing all thoughts in God’s daydream

— Sudarshan

What is your defin­tion of God? What are your under­ly­ing assump­tions when you ask, “Does God exist? Do you believe in God?” and so on.

Read Related Posts:

  1. Why Enlight­en­ment?

5 thoughts on “Defining God”

  1. Read Nasadeeya Suk­tam. Rishis have attempted a song on cre­ation dur­ing the Rig Vedic period.

  2. Good ques­tion! Who is God??? Is there a God???
    A lot of peo­ple are answer­ing these ques­tions with books, lec­tures, retreats, paid pri­vate read­ings, blogs etc. All pro­claim­ing to put you on the path to infi­nite intel­li­gence. It seems the lead­ers, authors etc have found finan­cial gain by tak­ing us on jour­neys and hold­ing us in some kind of trance while they exclaim to us how easy all of this is and just stick with them and God will appear within. Some­thing is just off.……! Are we just beings from another unknow uni­verse left here to take care of this planet.… maybe it is just that sim­ple! Tolle, Dyer, Abraham-Hicks, Seth, Budda, Raman­tha, Chopra and thou­sands more try to instill their beliefs into our minds and all with dif­fer­ent direc­tions. It’s obvi­ous we as humans are starved for some­thing more and this is quite evi­dent in our pur­suit of spir­i­tual enlightenment.

    Sorry for the vent.……just really over enlight­en­ment through mankind

    Who is God.….…hmmmmmmmm, beats the heck out of me!! But, I don’t think it cost money to find out :-)

    I enjoyed your son’s cozy answers :-)

  3. I had to laugh at my response a few months ago. Can you tell I was frus­trated with enlight­en­ment and all the peo­ple who were “get­ting it” except me??? Yes, I know exactly who God is. God is me, God is you !
    What a beau­ti­ful school room our Planet gives us for learn­ing and growth.

    Thank you Desika for shar­ing your insights and knowl­edge with us. You are so appre­ci­ated!!
    Bev

  4. Hi Bev,

    No prob­lem. :-) I went through that phase of frus­tra­tion and denial as well. But I came out of that just as you did.

    Just to answer your ear­lier com­ment regard­ing money: money is just energy and cur­rently money is the stan­dard of trans­ac­tion for gifts and ser­vices. In older times, the teach­ers in India were given cows, land, fruits, veg­eta­bles, grains, as gifts/tuition fee/donation (guru dak­shiNa) depend­ing on the finan­cial sta­tus of the dis­ci­ples. So, money itself is not bad, but how we per­ceive, use and get attached to it. In short, “Greed” for money is the prob­lem and not money itself. Note that the teacher is trans­mit­ting his energy (teach­ing) and the dis­ci­ple exchanges that energy with a gift — this keeps the balance.

    It is unfor­tu­nate that spir­i­tu­al­ity became iden­ti­fied with poverty. In Buddha’s and even Mahatma Gandhi’s time, major­ity of the peo­ple were poor and une­d­u­cated. So, to get their atten­tion they renounced their own wealth. It is not that they hated wealth. It is just that they felt sat­is­fied within them­selves that they just did not need it. If their audi­ence was rich, they may not have renounced their wealth. Will a rich man be fol­lowed by all the poor, starv­ing peo­ple, if he tells them how great it is to be enlight­ened? I wouldn’t. I would say, “It is easy for you to talk, because your belly is full.” :-) These days espe­cially in west­ern nations, it is not a prob­lem since most peo­ple who embark on spir­i­tu­al­ity or those who are dis­il­lu­sioned by mate­r­ial wealth, any­way. :-)

    I am cur­rently work­ing on an arti­cle, depend­ing on my free time, of course. I hope that it sees the light of the day soon. :-)

    Thanks,

    Desika

  5. Hi Desika,
    Thanks so much for the great com­ment. I do under­stand so much more now and I am most grate­ful to indi­vid­u­als like you who shed “light” where there were clouds. I enjoy all your arti­cles and look for­ward to more.

    Bev

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