Me!: May 2009

It can be said, though arguably so, that this question is as old as mankind itself. The quest to find God has been serendipitous; nothing conclusive has been found yet. While mankind has progressed by leaps and bounds from the days of our forefathers to date, the one question that has remained as elusive and out-of-bounds as none other is most definitely the question regarding God’s existence. Different faiths have different theories and each one finds varying degree of acceptance amongst mankind in general.

So what’s the scope of this article? Is it an announcement revealing my success in finding God? Or an insight into God’s existence of which there’s no dearth – confusing, confounding or revealing notwithstanding - already? Not quite. I want to reveal a few ‘thoughts’, which have dawned on me as I have continued with my research into the mystery surrounding the quest of God.

The Vedas in the Hindu Dharma each have a section called Vedanta. The subject of Vedanta deals with the knowledge of self and the relation of self with God. I cannot go into the details of Vedanta quite yet. Besides, I am not qualified either to talk much about Vedanta, having started its study only recently. One can only learn what’s there in Vedanta by the grace of God and through the medium of a qualified Guru who himself has understood the nature of self beyond any shadow of doubt. Only such a Guru, propounds Vedanta, can dispel the clouds of ignorance surrounding our understanding of the real nature of self.

But, I want to state the most fundamental understanding that I have derived from Vedanta, directly and rather bluntly so. Vedanta states unequivocally that SELF is Brahman. There’s nothing beyond or other than Brahman, which is unlimited by the conceptions of time and place. You can give Brahman itself any other name: Holy Spirit, Spirit of God, God, Aatman – whatever it is you desire. Why is Brahman limitless? Why is this Brahman the substratum that’s the basis of everything else? That’s a subject precisely beyond the limits of this blog simply because even though I have a vague idea of why is it so, I still do not have the crisp vocabulary that would convey the subject matter without confusing every one. So if you get stuck with the why and wherefore of it then what follows may not make much sense unless you assume its validity for the purposes of moving ahead with this article.

I will only say that just as knowing the nature of clay makes inquiries into the nature of various objects made out of clay redundant, or knowing the nature of water makes the same kind of inquiries into the various physical water body formations such as sea, oceans, rivers, lakes, rain, tap water meaningless, so too knowing Brahman, the source of everything, makes every other knowledge subservient, meaningless and indeed redundant. What newness can you derive about addition once you know what addition does basically. So whether you add one and one or a million and billion – it’s just another number.

The issue however is that while most people can fathom things that can be ‘objectified’ – indeed nothing that can’t be ‘objectified’ by our ‘five senses’ can ‘ever’ be understood – they cannot understand the ‘subject’ (the ‘actor’ that seeks to understand) itself. This is where the true trouble begins.

My own inquiries have revealed a few fascinating aspects of this material life: for example, there’s a reason why we can always see others but not our own selves – except perhaps with the aid of a mirror. Have we ever wondered why it is so? Why do we need a mirror? That’s ‘nature’. That’s the way it is. There’s no use in questioning it. The laws of nature are not made by anyone of us. So we say God has made those laws and they are ‘beyond’ our control. On the other hand we can see everything else around us. With the help of light and our eyes, everything can be seen, appreciated and understood – except our own self. So it is with our own true identities as well. How can the subject see its own self? To me this denotes the fundamental nature of nature itself. That’s why one needs a GURU who with the mirror of knowledge can help us see our own selves. That’s why to appreciate the knowledge of Vedanta – which is essentially a study in one’s own nature – one needs the help of a Guru.

That being the case, reverting to the subject that I started the blog with: Why, despite numerous accomplishments to its credit, has human-kind failed to find God yet? Indeed is there any hope of finding God ever? The short, direct, blunt, fascinating, and indeed some would even label as controversial, answer to this question is that “we ourselves are God!”; God is not different from us and We are not different from God. Thus God being us and we being God, the problem reduces to the problem of being unable to see our own selves directly by our own selves. We need the aid of that Guru who will reveal our own true self to us.

If God were reducible to just another object - something, which as we have seen earlier is an essential requirement for us to understand and know anything - that would make God much less than the Omnipotent, Omniscient being somebody like God must ought be. God, reduced as an object of discovery, would cease to be God indeed. He would become just like any other thing and that's the reason why we cannot understand (meaning find, discover etc) God like we have 'found', 'discovered', 'unearthed' the other discoveries till date.

As Swami Dayanandji explains in his lectures - God is both the material cause and efficient cause of this nature. What is a material cause and what is an efficient cause? Material cause is the materials that are used to create something. Efficient cause is the Creator. The web of a spider serves as an illustration - the spider itself is both the efficient and material cause. Sri Krisna reveals in the Holy Gita that I am the source of all creation and into me indeed does all creation resolve. If all Creation does indeed resolve into Him, that must mean He is the material cause (besides being the efficient cause) behind all creation, for it is the material cause into which all materials must resolve, eventually. The clay pot for example resolves not in the potter but into the clay. Thus, since Krisna states that all nature resolves in Him, He gives away the fact that He himself is nature and nature is Him. Thus Brahman is Him and everthing else is Brahman - hence we are Brahman too and we resolve into our creator because materially there's no difference between us and our creator. That's the underlying argument.

It does rest on a few assumptions that the human mind, given to questioning and a spirit of inquiry will indeed question and cast doubts on: For example, why should we believe that what Krisna propounds in the Holy Gita is true: Why should we believe all beings resolve in Him and thus the fact that He is not just the Efficient Cause (like God's supposed to be, at least generally) but also the Material Cause (this is hard to accept for most people).

Let me, however, present another view of the same argument. Let's assume God is not the Material Cause behind this nature. It then means that there's something other than God, which God used to create the nature with. However, the very fact that something exists other than God reduces God to being just an object and as discussed earlier - God cannot be reduced to an Object... that would create a duality and all duality must destruct one day. That would render the whole conception of an Omnipotent and Omniscient substratum, which is at the core of all existence redundant and meaningless.

One may still argue: What is the need for such a concept to exist at all? And the simple reason is that without it you cannot explain nature itself. Hindu Dharma states that the concept of time and space exposes the limitations of all objects: Anything that's limited must be born and must die (just like our bodies must). However, this means that there must have been some time when nothing would have existed at all. What is this nothing? There is indeed no nothing because even the nothing is actually something.

This is what I mean when I say Brahman IS the substratum and it IS God. Period. It cannot be limited by space and time for if it is we get the logical absurdity that cannot be resolved.

[To be continued]

PS: This article derives heavily from the present set of books I am reading: the books are all authored by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, who is a great scholar, saint and a Vedanti.