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To Know God, Taste the Sugar
Q:What makes the best 'case for God' to a skeptic or non-believer, an open-minded seeker, and to a person of faith and Why?
1) The message of scripture?
2) The scientific evidence for an Intelligent Designer?
3) The 'words' that God has 'spoken' - Torah, Jesus, the Qur'an?
4) A compassionate lifestyle?
5) Personal, subjective experience?
-- Karen Armstrong
God, Consciousness, Bliss, the Divine, Truth--all synonymously speak of what can be understood only by experience. Hinduism is premised on liberation through personal experience. The Vedas, the Hindu sacred texts, teach that understanding God requires scriptural study, a guru, or teacher and personal spiritual practice (sadhana). The masters teach that the scriptures can tell us that sugar is sweet. A guru can show us the sweetness of sugar as he enjoys it. But only personal practice will allow us to taste the sweet sugar we crave.
Asked to make a case for God, my initial retort is simply, "Who am I?" Am I a father, a brother, a son, a urologist? Am I this person that I behold in the mirror? For this person that I see will not last, for I already have a terminal disease: it is called life. This physical body will die, and so if my identity ends and begins with "me," then it is all over, lights out some day. Therefore I know that this body, this person in the mirror, is not my true Self. My Self and God are truly one and the same. Indeed, God is defined more by what we are not, than trying to fathom what God may be. As Adi Shankaracharya, one of the greatest of Hindu philosophers taught more than two millenia ago, God is everything that we are not:
Nor ego, nor thought,
Nor am I ears or the tongue or the nose or the eyes,
Nor am I earth or sky or air or the light,
But I am Shiva (God) the all pervading happiness,
Yes, I am definitely Shiva (God)."
In the Vedanta and Samkhya schools of Hindu thought, and Buddhism and Jainism for that matter, accepting or believing in a personal "God" is superfluous. Believe if you like, and it orients your mind for contemplation. But God is simply the infinite bliss, and omniscient and immanent force that pervades the universe and beyond. That same God dwells as the atma, or undying and eternal soul, in every being and is unaffected by the temporary joys and sorrows of daily life. When each embodied soul realizes its divine potential, then moksha or nirvana, liberation, is achieved.
The case for God empirically fails just as it succeeds. The skeptic argues that God unseen is a God that does not exist. But love between a mother and her son, or man and his dog is just as unseen but very much real and present.
There is no need to convince anyone to believe what I say or beg them to accept my way to be "saved." Salvation is not attained by a club membership in my faith or another, or bought and sold in a transcendental marketplace of souls. Salvation is the most available of all commodities, there to be had for anyone whose mind is still and open to experience the divine.
The great spiritual master, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, was asked this very same question as to the existence of God.
By
Aseem Shukla
|
October 9, 2009; 3:36 PM ET
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Posted by: nikosd99 | October 19, 2009 8:30 PM
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Correction: meant to write "from the previous POPE"
Posted by: Farnaz1Mansouri1 | October 13, 2009 11:29 PM
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Re: Coloradodog's post
Dog knows nothing of Abrahamic religions, the term an unfortunate coinage from the previous post, except for his own version of Protestantism, which, his professed atheism notwithstanding, he carries in his hardened heart.
His posts have always been iffy, but recently he categorically revealed himself as the Jew-and-Muslim hating bigot he has always been, two new revelations to his previously disclosed hatred of Catholics.
What does this say? Wei Wu Wei left words, but only for those who can read.
Posted by: Farnaz1Mansouri1 | October 13, 2009 11:27 PM
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Other than JJ being JJ, what an oasis from the columns and comments for or against Abrahamic dogma.
Posted by: coloradodog | October 13, 2009 10:49 PM
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Hello Persiflage!,
Wonderful to (not) hear you!, though seeing the print is, I imagine, like looking at the pointer as opposed to the Beauty.
Thanks for the heads up on Coloradodogs' Wei Wu Wei. I sped on past, looking for pointing fingers....
Ah well. I have been doing a bit of taking in the opinionated virtual-waters of WaPo's string theory of 'social networking'. Got a cold and I am supposed to
'take it easy'. That is when one takes in the waters, yes?
Low profile is good, and I understand, though a mind and heart such as yours is always missed by those seeking a direction!
My best! Justillthen
Posted by: justillthennow | October 13, 2009 12:54 PM
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Dear Mr. Waters & Mr. Rupuert Murdok et al:
STOP Deleting our Academic NEW Ideas; and PLAGERIZING our [my] Intelectual Property!
S{HAME On LONDON, ENGLAND & Jealous QUEEN & similary situated!!
Dear John Esposito & CO.,, C/O: A Message from ANTi.BAD , Anti-Plutocrat Proletariates Party of AMERiK et al:
Ye hath Freudiantly Slippeth'd and Pre-Apocalyptically saith,
"the Vatican had brought together global religious leaders and academic experts who explored the theological and scriptural bases and implications of the foundation of A Common Word, the two great commandments, Love of God and Love of Neighbor, based directly Christian, Muslim and Jewish Scriptures.
Questiion: How much of This Theoligical POW-WOW [of Imprted Religions in Amerik, Not MADE in America] was 'Subsidized' by OUR tax-Payers money via the OBAMA's 'Faith Based Initiative" ??
After-All Last Week or two Britisher's Low-Lifes via "BONO" {Oprah Winfreys & Co, "SECRET" pals] built a Stage as if a Spac-Ship [Ummmm?] and The PLUTOCRATS [Government Run by the Rich/Wealthy] Of Washington, D.C. America; Like Nancy Polosi et al....
WHO PAID for THIS [ALL]! The VATican? BOBO? BLAIR? George Town? or did WE [i] The [SIPP] aka "SECULR INTERNATIONAL PROLETARiATE PEOPLE"????
Question again: WHERE is the [unconstitutional] $2,000,0000 of Stolen Tax-Payers [un-Godly] money , w/out THE-PEOPLES Consent/Approval/Voter, is going; who?, where, Why...???
Rise-Up! Rise-Up "SIPP"s Time to Take-Back Our Nation, as Promised US!
Dear Fellow Americans; To Hell with the Friendly's! Beacuse the TRUTH (opposite MYTH) is "OSAMA BIN LADEN IS DEAD!" and soon Borack Obam also will be Dead! It is the Prophecy!
Question Mr. OBAMA, Polosi, & CO; POPE & CO. LaLaLa... WHERE is Osama Bin Laden???? You know He is Dead! So Why? Why? Lie to The-People?? SELF Agrandizement?
A REVOLUTION; not only a REVELATION is comming!
VOTE: Down with THEOCRAY & DOWN with MONARCHY, in America via ENGLAND et all!
Get Out of AMERIK England! Get Out! Or WE will Force You Out and Take-Over ALL Your Assets/Investments HERE!
Hary! ARise PROLETARIATES: Vote: ENGLISH MONARCH w/THEOCRACY in Cahooch with THEOCRATIC VATICAN's & CO must be Destroyed or Dulky Stopped Today, not Morrow!
O' APOCALYPTARIAN's! Beware the Jealous/Evil?Satanic PRE-APOCALYPTARYAN's!
May god cuese the QUEEN! Curse Opra WINFREY & Friends et al!!
A NEW BOSTON TEA PARTY is Comming Soon Soon Very Soon!
Posted by: usa-proletariat-movement | October 12, 2009 11:20 PM
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Justillthennow,
How are you these days? I've seen you on various threads here and there - I'm keeping a lower profile of late.
Highly recommend the author that Colorado Dog quotes from here - see 'Ask The Awakened, The Negative Way' by Wei Wu Wei.
Pretty much a Zen/Taoist view & quite thought-provoking.... although non-thought provoking is more to the point!!
regards, Persiflage
Posted by: persiflage | October 12, 2009 1:20 PM
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God is in us all and we are all different so we all have different perceptions of what God is. It's personal and what we think God is is not to be preached to others or jammed down their throat. It may be OK to study some scriptures and listen to some clergymen for their ideas, but many of their ideas have been spoon feed to them and not their own.
Find God your own way for your own self lest your idea of God becomes only what someone else told you, or in the case of the Abrahamic religions demanded, what God should be.
Wei Wu Wei wrote:
"All instruction is but a finger pointing to the moon; and those whose gaze is fixed upon the pointer will never see beyond. Even let him catch sight of the moon, and still he cannot see its beauty."
Posted by: coloradodog | October 11, 2009 10:55 PM
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I like this essay and what it says about self and God. It is refreshing, offers a vision and cares little if one embraces that vision.
I suppose as an answer to the question, Mr. Shukla says that it is personal, subjective experience that makes the best case for God for all people.
Posted by: justillthennow | October 10, 2009 12:33 PM
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Aseem Shukla, unless you repent and come to Christ, what you'll be tasting after you bow before the Lord Jesus on Judgment Day won't be sugar. It'll be sulfur.