What Is God?

[LetTheNewDayBegin]

What is god? Please tell me.

[egoeimai]

An idea in people's mind ....

It's like a bubble. ?

[Prabhaker]

5 hours ago, LetTheNewDayBegin said:

What is god? Please tell me.

GOD is not a person. That is one of the greatest misunderstandings, and it has prevailed so long that it has become almost a fact. Even if a lie is repeated continuously for centuries it is bound to appear as if it is a truth.

God is a presence, not a person. Hence all worshipping is sheer stupidity. Prayerfulness is needed, not prayer. There is nobody to pray to; there is no possibility of any dialogue between you and God. Dialogue is possible only between two persons, and God is not a person but a presence – like beauty, like joy.

God simply means godliness. It is because of this fact that Buddha denied the existence of God. He wanted to emphasize that God is a quality, an experience – like love. You cannot talk to love, you can live it. You need not create temples of love, you need not make statues of love, and bowing down to those statues will be just nonsense. And that’s what has been happening in the churches, in the temples, in the mosques.

Man has lived under this impression of God as a person, and then two calamities have happened through it. One is the so-called religious man, who thinks God is somewhere above m the sky and you have to praise him. to persuade him to confer favors on you, to help you to fulfill your desires, to make your ambitions succeed, to give you the wealth of this world AND of the other world. And this is sheer wastage of time and energy.

And on the opposite pole the people who saw the stupidity of it all became atheists; they started denying the existence of God. They were right in a sense, but they were also wrong. They started denying not only the personality of God, they started to deny even the experience of God.

The theist is wrong, the atheist is wrong, and man needs a new vision so that he can be freed from both the prisons. God is the ultimate experience of silence, of beauty, of bliss, a state of inner celebration. Once you start looking at God as godliness there will be a radical change in your approach. Then prayer is no more valid; meditation becomes valid.

Martin Buber says prayer is a dialogue; then between you and God there is an ”I-thou” relationship – the duality persists. Buddha is far closer to the truth: you simply drop all chattering of the mind, you slip out of the mind like a snake slipping out of the old skin. You become profoundly silent.

There is no question of any dialogue, no question of any monologue either. Words have disappeared from your consciousness. There is no desire for which favors have to be asked, no ambition to be fulfilled. One is now and here. In that tranquility, in that calmness, you become aware of a luminous quality to existence.

Then the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the people are all surrounded with a subtle aura. They are all radiating life, and it is one life in different forms. The flowering of one existence in millions of forms, in millions of flowers.

THIS experience is God. And it is everybody’s birthright, because whether you know it or not you are already part of it. The only possibility is you may not recognize it or you may recognize it. The difference between the enlightened person and the unenlightened person is not of quality – they both are absolutely alike. There is only one small difference: that the enlightened person is aware; he recognizes the ultimate pervading the whole, permeating the whole, vibrating, pulsating.

He recognizes the heartbeat of the universe. He recognizes that the universe is not dead, it is alive. This aliveness is God! The unenlightened person is asleep, asleep and full of dreams. Those dreams function as a barrier; they don’t allow him to see the truth of his own reality. And, of course, when you are not even aware of your own reality, how can you be aware of the reality of others? The first experience has to happen within you.

Once you have seen the light within you will be able to see it everywhere. God has to be freed from all concepts of personality. Personality is a prison. God has to be freed from any particular form; only then he can have all the forms. He has to be freed from any particular name so that all the names become his.

Then a person LIVES in prayer – he does not pray, he does not go to the temple, to the church. Wherever he sits he is prayerful, whatsoever he is doing is prayerful, and in that prayerfulness he creates his temple. He is always moving with his temple surrounding him. Wherever he sits the place becomes sacred, whatsoever he touches becomes gold. If he is silent then his silence is golden; if he speaks then his song is golden. If he is alone his aloneness is divine; if he relates then his relating is divine.

The basic, the most fundamental thing is to be aware of your own innermost core, because that is the secret of the whole existence. That’s where the Upanishads are tremendously important. They don’t talk about a God, they talk about godliness. They don t bother about prayer. their whole emphasis is on meditation.

Meditation has two parts: the beginning and the end. The beginning is called dhyana and the end is called samadhi. Dhyana is the seed, samadhi is the flowering. Dhyana means becoming aware of all workings of your mind, all the layers of your mind – your memories, your desires, your thoughts, dreams – becoming aware of all that goes on inside you.

Dhyana is awareness, and samadhi is when the awareness has become so deep, so profound, so total that it is like a fire and it consumes the whole mind and all its functionings. It consumes thoughts, desires, ambitions, hopes, dreams. It consumes the whole stuff the mind is full of. Samadhi is the state when awareness is there, but there is nothing to be aware inside you; the witness is there, but there is nothing to be witnessed.

Begin with dhyana, with meditation, and end in samadhi, in ecstasy, and you will know what God is. It is not a hypothesis, it is an experience. You have to LIVE it – that is the only way to know it.

Source: from Osho Book “I Am That”

[Ananta]

God (Isvara- In Vedanta) is a personification of the impersonal "dharma field" (the manifest universe). Isvara is the creator-sustainer-destroyer of all of manifestation, which governs the physical, psychological, moral/ethical laws, as well as dishing out cause and effect relating to karma (action). 

Isvara came into being by a power within pure awareness itself called Maya, which created the illusion or appearance of the phenomenal world.

[Prabhaker]

1 minute ago, Snick said:

since God is everything

This is not our experience. Unless it is not our experience, this hypothesis can't do any good. 

[Prabhaker]

26 minutes ago, Snick said:

Then non duality is wrong? 

It is not wrong but if we remain contented with theoretical knowledge and avoid spiritual journey then it is useless.

Edited June 23, 2017 by Prabhaker

[Zephyr]

Al Hallaj  on who is God:

"Before" does not outstrip Him,
"after" does not interrupt Him
"of" does not vie with Him for precedence
"from" does not accord with Him
"to" does not join with Him
"in" does not inhabit Him
"when" does not stop Him
"if" does not consult with Him
"over" does not overshadow 
Him "under" does not support Him
"opposite" does not face Him
"with" does not press Him
"behind" does not limit Him
"previous" does not display Him
"after" does not cause Him to pass away
"all" does not unite Him
"is" does not bring Him into being
"is not" does not deprive Him from Being.
Concealment does not veil Him
His pre-existence preceded time,
His being preceded non-being,
His eternity preceded limit.
If thou sayest 'when', 
His existing has outstripped time;
If thou sayest 'before', before is after Him;
If thou sayest 'he', 'h' and 'e' are His creation;
If thou sayest 'how', His essence is veiled from description;
If thou sayest 'where', His being preceded space;
If thou sayest 'ipseity' (ma huwa),
His ipseity (huwiwah) is apart from things. 
Other than He cannot
be qualified by two (opposite) qualities at
one time; yet With Him they do not create opposition.
He is hidden in His manifestation, 
manifest in His concealing. 
He is outward and inward,
near and far; and in this respect He is
removed beyond the resemblance of creation.
He acts without contact,
instructs without meeting,
guides without pointing.
Desires do not conflict with Him,
thoughts do not mingle with Him:
His essence is without qualification (takyeef),
His action without effort (takleef).

[Prabhaker]

20 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

But the Quran is God's most accurate scripture on Earth.

God's Attributes in Islam are:

The Most Compassionate (Al-Rahman)

The Most Merciful (Al-Rahim)

The Most High (al-Ala)

The Most Glorious (al-ʻAziz)

The Ever Forgiving (al-Ghaffār)

The Ever Providing (ar-Razzāq)

The Ever Living (al-Ḥayy)

The Self-Subsisting by Whom all Subsist (al-Qayyūm)

The Lord and Cherisher of the Worlds (Rabb al-ʻĀlamīn)

The Ultimate Truth (al-Ḥaqq)

The Eternal Lord (al-Bāqī)

The Sustainer (al-Muqsith)

The Source of Peace (As-Salām)

 

If you say God is the creator, then who is the destroyer? If you say God is good, then who will be evil?  who creates sin?

It is difficult for me to conceive that God exists as good. But I can conceive that God exists as evil, as Satan, because there is so much evil in the world, so much suffering, so much pain, so much anguish. I cannot imagine that God is managing this whole affair. There must be something like a devil in charge of it, a supreme devil. God must be good; otherwise what type of God is he? A basic goodness must be there. But as the world appears, it seems that God is devilish and not good – that he is playing with evil, and somehow it appears he is enjoying this whole suffering and torturing.

The Satan creates sin and God creates the Satan. Then who is the real sinner—the Satan or God? But the dualist conception always leads to such absurdities.

 And if the Satan is something independent, not related to God, then he himself becomes a God, a supreme power. And if God has not created the Satan , how can God destroy him? It is impossible. The Satan or Devil can provoke and seduce and God cannot protect. The Devil seems to be a stronger God.

[Zephyr]

When you don't know whether the you got lost or the thread did. 

Edited June 23, 2017 by Zephyr

[Joseph Maynor]

@Zephyr I love it.  I read a lot about Sufism when I visited Istanbul a a couple of years ago.  Istanbul is a wonderful city if you ever have a chance to visit.  I loved hearing the call to prayer all the time.  It was awesome.  

Edited June 23, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Joseph Maynor]

@Prabhaker  I don't accept any definition or theory of God.  I have a personal relationship with God.  Theory is just theory.  God is God.  In the same way that you are you, versus somebody's description of you.  You are not somebody's description of you, although that description may be useful in locating you, or knowing something about you.  And God is not a person.  And you are not God.  I know Leo says the latter and it bugs me.  It's very ignorant.  Non-religious people should not talk about God.  They are blind to it.  It's like a blind person talking about viewing a Rembrandt painting.  Ridiculous right?  We are not God.  God is God.  And we can't know God fully, only what God reveals to us.  We are always gonna be partly blind to knowledge about God.  The Quran is the best fairy-tale, as it were, for us to kind of get an idea, some kind of human analogy, of what God is.  Scriptures are analogies when they pertain to God.  But they're useful.  They're vehicles to God basically.  Roadmaps.

Edited June 23, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Prabhaker]

20 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Scriptures are analogies when they pertain to God.  But they're useful.

Scriptures can be useful, but we are very cunning, we know how to interpret them in a way that we can avoid any spiritual transformation. 

[Anirban657]

Watch Leo's video

Keep an open mind

[Deep]

5 hours ago, Snick said:

But non Godly experiences are also God, since God is everything, even the most egoic experience is God, since he is eveything? This is what non duality and oneness means? 

Everything is NOT God, but God appears as everything. Egoic experience is God dreaming. Non-duality means you become one with the universe, in other words no-mind. Non-duality means you experience yourself as God, not just intellectually know. 

@LetTheNewDayBegin In Hinduism, Brahman is defined as the following: formless, eternal, timeless, infinite, without attributes, but at the same time aware of itself. What this means is there no words that can describe God. You can't understand God through the intellect. Many people also like to think of God with form such as Shiva, Vishnu, Laxmi, etc. That is because meditating on the formless God is very difficult, so they gave God attributes but in reality God has no attributes. 

[harisankartj]

The realization of what Is. Since realization has no form people say it has no quality. its just realizing the whole of existence .The hollow man realizes its own hollowness to become THAT. 

                          

 

At least thats what i think it is.

[Nahm]

People have a long history of writing inspired words and believing what others say and write about God. Whatever there is, could it really be captured by any human's capacity? When any words are applied, it's no longer God. 

[abrakamowse]

God is reality, our true nature, consciousness, our higher self... the universe...

 

but none of those words describe him, because "he/she" is indescribable. For that reason Ramana and Nisagardatta called "him/her" THAT.

Anyway, THAT is also a word that can't describe God/Reality.

 

One of the best descriptions for me is I AM. The bible says when Moises ask God who was him, God said "I AM that I AM"... that can be translated as "he/she is existence"... "he/she" just IS.

 

 

Edited June 23, 2017 by abrakamowse

[pluto]

God is a human misinterpretation of ALL THAT IS. Another way you can put it is a word that humans use to fit infinity inside their heads.

[LetTheNewDayBegin]

Is God both good and evil then? Is God both light and darkness?

[Ananta]

50 minutes ago, LetTheNewDayBegin said:

Is God both good and evil then? Is God both light and darkness?

Since the apparent reality is dualistic in nature.....yes.