Who is GOD?

by Jai Maha Dev

 

God is not who you think He is. God is not where you think He is. God is not what you think He is.

 

God cannot be known by the thinking mind. God is beyond thought and beyond sense perception. With the mind, we can know what God is NOT, but we cannot know what God is. God is not a person, place, or thing. So, God cannot be who we THINK He is, nor where we think He is, nor what we think He is.

 

Does this mean we cannot know GOD? No, it only means we cannot know God with the mind. So, if we think we are the mind, then it is true that we can never know God.

 

Can we know Love just by thinking about Love? No, we will only imagine that we know Love (by thinking), because the only way to know Love is to experience it. Can we know the taste of a sweet mango by thinking what the taste might be? No, we have to actually taste the mango to know its sweetness. Someone may try to explain the taste to us, which might arouse our interest to have the actual taste, but until we have tasted it we cannot say that we know the taste of the mango.

 

The experience of God-Consciousness, MAHA CHETANA, SatChitAnanda, Nirvana, Moksha, etc., is inexplicable and indescribable because it can only be experienced directly. We cannot experience GOD through the activity of our mind. The mind must be still, it must be perfectly at peace. Then, THAT which is already there, already here, already everywhere, is known. THIS is not a knowing of the mind; THIS is the Self (Atman, soul) experiencing its Essence (GOD). THIS does not come and go; it is only the mind that fades in and fades out; the Self is unchangeable.

 

The Universe expands and contracts, but that which holds the Universe remains immoveable and unchangeable. This life is an entrance, and an exit; but the Self neither enters nor leaves but remains Immortal. The life force enters into the body at birth (or conception) and exits at the time of death, but the life force is never born nor does it ever die. The mind awakens at birth and sleeps (dreams) during the period of death, but the same mind was functioning before birth and will continue to function after death. (How it functions is another matter.) Even the body exists in its elementary form (as cosmic stardust) before its ‘birth’ and will continue to exist after its ‘death’, only its form will have changed, which in fact is changing every moment.

 

THAT which is Unknown, remains forever unknown. The Knower neither forgets nor remembers. It is only the mind that remembers and forgets. The mind tries to remember and tries to forget; only the Knower (the Self) really knows and never forgets. The Knower has nothing to forget, because the Knower does not know that he knows; that is, the Enlightened Self is Self-evident and its 'state of knowing' is self-perpetuating.

 

Knowing that we know, is the beginning of ego. Then begins the drama of existence. The mind begins to run and the games have begun. The mind-games come to a close only when we begin to know that we do not know. When we know that we know nothing, our liberation is close at hand.

 

The Truth cannot be known by an empirical process. The mind is an object of awareness, therefore it is not possible for the mind to know itself (what to say of knowing the Supreme Self, the Truth). Who is the knower of the mind? The intelligent self is the knower of the mind. Who is the knower of the intelligence. The self that asserts (without the mind) that “I am the knower, I am the experiencer”—this is the Ego, the small-self. Who is the knower of the small self? The Cosmic Intelligent Self—Cosmic Ego—is the knower of the small self. The Cosmic Intelligent Self is the Purush (Atman in the form of PRANA) connected with the Universal Self and in communion with the body of the Universe. Through union with the Universal Self, embodied in the form of the Universe, the Self (Atman) loses every trace of ego (self-identity) and all that remains is the experience of the Supreme Self, SATCHITANAND. This is the state of Liberation, or MOKSHA (This is GOD). This is the state to be attained. This is the supreme goal, the true purpose, and the meaning of our life.

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