God is simplicity. God is flexibility. God understands all: you and me. We are in God and God is in us. We cannot get any closer to God than we already are. Then why is this fuss about getting closer to God? When God is with us, when we are in God, why should we find a way to God? Ours is the anxiety of a child whose mother is hidden from its view momentarily. What can we do then? To be more and more aware of the reality of us being in God. To more and more appropriate and live in that beautiful, ever-consoling reality which is the best gift and the only real gift God has bestowed on us. Now I understand the saying of Paul of Tarsus that absolutely nothing can ever come between us and the love of God.
God loves us and accepts us unconditionally. We have a great – nay, all-consuming desire – to love God. In the final analysis, we ought not to have any other desire. In reality no other desire is worth having. God loves us and we have this insatiable desire to love him. So we already have the sure way to the heart of God. Long ago I stopped asking God for anything rationally as God promised us that God knows our needs even before we ask for. Yet I found myself asking God affectively or emotionally for health, security, courage, serenity, etc…Now I do not ask for anything. Because God, the Great Cosmic Energy, provides me with everything I need. So what do I do? I bask in the presence of God being aware of that energy’s awesomeness and goodness.
Having studied philosophy, education, theology, and psychology, I came to the conclusion that the more I learn the more I realize how little I know. The only worthwhile knowledge and insights that come from others are from their integrity and lived experience. Our wonderful God has given us all that we need right from the beginning. No mediation is necessary. Neither any doctrine nor any dogma is required. Nor any religion, for that matter. God wants to connect with us more than we even want to. Heaven is where we experience God. Hell is where we do not experience God. Heaven or hell begins for us in our own disposition, and to the degree we experience God and God’s bliss.
Having said all this, do we really need a way to God? Not really. What we truly need is an intense awareness of God. But for starters, what is needed is to be faithful to one’s conscience. For God unmistakably and faithfully communicates to us through our conscience. One invariably connects with God through creation, especially with other human beings. So from all that I know it will be very difficult to find God among hoarders of wealth and earth’s resources that God has given for all. It will also be very difficult to find God among those who diminish the precious human freedom through autocratic power and control in spite of their avowed claim of using their authority for promoting God as they understand God. In the end, I believe everyone will be saved on account of one’s ignorance in which all of us participate in some degree.
Interestingly, God recognizes only those who recognize the least among humans. While I do not want to get into the theological squabble related to predestination and free will, humans through their own choices dispose themselves to damnation or bliss. It may be of interest to note that all theological disputes arose from the way the undefinable God was defined. God is fine; we need to be fine in our belief of God for who we understand God to be and who we are as God’s children. Finally, a simple way to God is a simple way to us in God.
Swami Snehananda Jyoti
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