Who is God? Recently, someone asked, “Who is your God?” So, that was the question. Let’s talk about that: who is God?
Notice how complicated this is. We usually ask someone, “Do you believe in God?” Everyone has an idea, a concept, and a belief about God. This means that, in fact, each one has a particular God. If we unite behind a common God, we form a group, and now we have our God, and there’s that other group over there with their God. How we disagree, how our ideas, beliefs, and concepts are different… Let’s understand this. After all, who is God?
“Let’s go there to hear a lecture, a sermon, a preaching, let’s get a book, let’s go to the Bible, to Bhagavad Gita, to Koran, to Upanishads to find This!” Will this be the way to approach the Truth about who God is?
In the next few minutes, we're going to work this out with you, and it’s not about agreeing or disagreeing with what we're saying. Maybe you already have a concept, a formed idea. Can we put aside, for a moment, this issue of belief and approach in a direct way the Truth of what God is? What is this nameless Reality we call God? Without form, to which we give a form and put this “Reality with form” in a little place that we call Heaven?
So, there is the Heaven for the Hindus, the Heaven for Christians, the Heaven for Buddhists, the Heaven for Muslims… After all, where is God? In which Heaven is He? First, this talk here is just an approach for you to look at it, and look with an open heart, free from any prejudice, prejudgment, or idea. This is a speech… not for us to agree or disagree, it’s for us to just follow along like we listen to a song when it’s being played. It’s not a speech to attack or defend – to attack or defend an idea. It’s just a question: where is the Truth about God, about this nameless “Thing”?
Human beings have been looking for this for millennia, looking for something called God, because their life is tedious, tiring, distressing, a very problematic life, and full of psychological, internal, emotional, and sentimental pain. Human beings have been looking for millennia for something outside this envy, this jealousy, this greed, this ignorance, which has been their life in their relationship with others, and in their relationship with themselves. So, they are looking for something, something called God. Where is This?
I want to challenge you, before asking where God is or who is God, first ask yourself this: “Where am I? Who I am?”
If we first find what is close, in that encounter we find what seems or appears to be far away. We have to start with what is closest, with what is nearby. It’s not asking where God is or who God is, but rather asking, “Where am I? Who am I?”
The Sages, those who Realized the Truth, are not those who believe in the Truth. But those who live the Truth are the Sages. It’s not theologians, theorists, not the ones who study the holy scriptures, the religious teachers... But the Sages, those who experience the Truth of God, tell us that the answer to this question lies within each one of us, in the very answer to the question “who am I?”
It’s here that the vision of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi is fascinating. He left us this as a legacy. When people came to him and asked about God, he used to say, “But do you know who you are? Why all this interest in God without first knowing who you are? After all, who are you?”
The Understanding of the Truth of What we are here and now is the Understanding of the Reality that God is.
This is the testimony of the Realized Beings. Those Who Realized Truth don’t talk about God, they talk about investigating the truth of what is not God. What is not God? That illusion. The Sages deal with illusion and investigate illusion because they know that when the illusion is seen and vanishes, the Reality of God, which is not hidden, not occult, paradoxically shows itself.
God is the ever-present Reality. What prevents us from having this contact with this Reality is the illusion of who we are. The Reality of your Being is the Reality of God.
We are here working with you from a non-theoretical, non-verbal viewpoint. Here, I want to say that it is possible to experience the Truth of your Being. And there comes a time when you find that the deeper you go into this Vision of What is You, the illusion vanishes and the Truth of God reveals itself. We can call it Consciousness, Presence, Being, Truth, the Unnamable, and the Indescribable – they are just names, just expressions, words, verbal expressions, words…
Here, it’s about the Reality of your Being, which is Love, Compassion, and Intelligence. This is present when there’s no longer a sense of separateness. The absence of the sense of separateness is the Reality of the Divine Presence.
We use an expression here for This, which is Indian – it’s called Advaita, Non-Duality. We use this expression a lot, because it’s famous and very well known, but we can dispense with these expressions. The fact is that there’s only one Reality present here and now: it is the Reality of Consciousness.
Dealing with the world, with the body, the mind, the other, life, with whatever is emerging here and now, at this instant, at this present moment, without the sense of separateness, is to be aware of the Truth of God, of what God is. God is the Reality of what appears; What is present here, which transcends all that is present here, the body and the mind.
This is something experiential, it’s not a theory, not a concept or belief… it’s an experience! When this experience is present, there is no longer this separateness created by beliefs, concepts, and ideas, sustained by illusion. There’s no “my God” and “your God,” we are before Reality. In this Reality, there’s no separateness, no division, and, therefore, no conflict, no dispute, no problem, there is no suffering.
There are some expressions we use on this channel, which are Indian expressions, which are well known, and, therefore, used here. One of them, as I said just now, is this expression “Non-Duality, Advaita.” This is straight from the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Indian scriptures.
In the last part of the Vedas, we find Advaita Vedanta. And Vedanta addresses that issue, but what we have is a book. I want to invite you to live This. And how can we live This? How can we live? How can we have this vision of the Reality of what God is? By discovering the Truth about who we are.
Self-Awareness shows itself as the study of the Truth about who we are here and now, or the study of the truth about who we appear to be or present ourselves as being this here and now. What are we? We are envy, fear, jealousy, possession, desires, beliefs, superstitions, beliefs, we are miser, ambitious, bored, violent, aggressive… That’s what we are here and now; that’s what we seem to be in this illusory identity, in this illusory egoic identity.
Self-inquiry, Ramana called it Atma Vichara. The direct approach to self-observation, which is what sustains Self-Awareness, will show us that this is not the ultimate Truth of our Being, our Consciousness; this is egoic consciousness, our superficial being, our illusory identity.
Self-Awareness will show us that all the unhappiness present in our life consists of this ignorance – the ignorance of who we are – and when there is Self-Awareness, there is the discarding of the “I,” of the ego. This occurs when this duality, this “me and the other,” “me and life,” “me and the world,” “me and these beliefs,” “me and these feelings,” “me and these emotions…” When all this ends, something entirely new arises – a radical, profound change takes place in this structure, in this body and this mind: it’s the appearance of this Presence the Sages call Kundalini; it’s the Power of Consciousness. That is an Indian expression for this Power, this Presence, dormant within each one of us.
So, the Reality that is God is the Reality of your Being, which is Kundalini. This Energy Awakens and operates, works, and makes a change in this body-mind, then there is Spiritual Enlightenment, Spiritual Awakening, and the Truth of your Being. That’s the end of the sense of separateness and therefore the end of suffering.
Thus, What is, is this Presence, this Consciousness, this Truth of God; that’s your Real Nature. This is not theoretical, not verbal, this can’t be found in books, in a lecture, in preaching, in a sermon; This is Realized when What is present is no longer the “I” – here is the Christ, the Buddha; here is God.
It’s not the Christ carpenter of Nazareth, it’s not Shakyamuni Buddha of 2500 years ago from India; it is the Consciousness of God in that form, in that Realized Being. Here, we are working with you and showing you that this is possible.
My Master, Ramana Maharshi, left this as a legacy. This approach to a Realized Being, as it happened in my case, is something possible for you. It is possible to Realize This in this life – the Realization of your Self.
What a Master, a Realized Being does or shows you is that it is possible to have this approach. What he does is just telling you that you can look at This and acknowledge This within yourself, then What Truth is, is revealed, which is the Divine Truth. Ok?
If that’s something that makes sense to you, that’s what we're working on here on this channel: the Revelation of who You are, the Revelation of who God is!
If this makes sense to you, leave your “like,” subscribe to the channel... and I always leave it here, reminding you this: we have online and face-to-face meetings and also retreats to work on this together. If that makes sense to you, here’s the invitation, and see you next meeting. Ok?
See you next!
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