God the Creator and God the creation

God originated Himself from His own Silence.

God was One, but He wanted to become many. Why? He wanted to divinely enjoy Himself, to enjoy His Game, to enjoy the Truth in finite forms. He felt that if He remained all alone, there would be no joy, no Lila. If we want to play any game, we won’t enjoy ourselves alone; we need more players. If we want to play football or soccer, we need players to play on each side. Otherwise there cannot be any game. For His Game, God needed cosmic players. So He created Himself in millions of forms and shapes.

God is the tree and we are the leaves of the tree, God is the ocean and we are tiny drops of water. He is vast, but we have our constant oneness with God, just as the leaves can claim the tree as their very own and the drops can claim the ocean as their very own.

You can look at a leaf or any one of the branches and you can say. “This is the tree.” Or you can look at one of my fingers and immediately you can say, “This is your body,” because the finger cannot be separated from the body. Similarly, when you look at me you can say, “You are God,” because the one God is all-pervading. When you look at God in any of His many forms, it is the same God.

The purpose, the sole purpose of God’s creation is the fulfilment of His Vision and the fulfilment of His Reality. God has envisioned the Truth and the Reality, but He also wants to manifest it. Unless manifestation takes place, God feels that He will not be complete.

Why does God exist?

Why does God exist? Why do we exist? We exist and God exists on earth and everywhere for only one thing: Joy — to create Joy and to receive Joy. We sometimes use a deeper word, Delight, but right now let us use the term Joy. God is the Eternal Player. God creates something and, while He is creating, He gets Joy. When His creation is finished He also gets a kind of Joy. And then when He looks at His creation and sees the Joy that He has offered, He tries to receive this same Joy from the creation. He tries to get more Joy.

If a child is playing with a tennis ball, he will get joy first when he holds the ball, then when he throws the ball, next when the ball strikes against the wall and makes a sound and then when the ball bounces back to him. Similarly, when God creates something He offers His Joy outside Himself, beyond Himself. That which He spreads, He gets back, just as when a fisherman throws his net, it spreads out and he can draw it back towards himself again. So God exists because of His spontaneous inner Joy which he offers and which comes back to Him.

The source of life

People often wonder how God creates life from nothing. However, the word ‘nothing’ is incorrect here. God does make life out of something and that something is His Light, His Consciousness-Light. The Source of life is Consciousness-Light. Stone life, plant life, animal life, human life, divine life, universal life: everything comes from God’s Consciousness-Light. We all have consciousness, but unfortunately, ordinary unaspiring people are not aware of this. But the deeper we go and the more we become aware of the real consciousness within us, the clearer it becomes to us what life is and where its Source lies.

God creates life through His Will, through His Will-power. The moment God exercises His Will-power, His Vision is fulfilled. His adamantine Will-power can immediately perform any task.

God's Dream and God's Reality

God’s Dream-Boat is man: man the aspiration, man the experience, man the realisation, man the oneness, total oneness with God the Omniscient and Omnipotent, God the all-loving Father.

Man’s Life-Boat is God. Man’s life is God; man’s very existence is God. Man realises God, man embodies God and man finally will manifest God here on earth.

God’s Dream is man. His Dream is His Reality within and without and this Reality is also man. God fulfils Himself in man, with man, through man and for man. Unfortunately, the ordinary human beings are not aware of the truth that they have infinitely more divine and fruitful qualities than they can imagine. That is to say, they have infinitely more latent truth within than they are now capable of manifesting in their day-to-day lives.

Now, what does it mean when we say that man is a Dream of God? First, we have to know that God’s Dream is not like a human dream. There is a great difference between human dreams and God’s divine Dream. Earth’s dream is mental fantasy; God’s Dream divine is the precursor of Reality. Each second God’s Dreams are immediately being transformed into Reality. Human dreams are only pensive thoughts and ideas which we sometimes try to become. Very often when we dream, we feel miserable because our sweet dreams are never fulfilled. Sometimes we become victims of hostile forces which make us dream about all kinds of horrible incidents taking place in our life. Again, sometimes we create our own fantasies during the day and they come out at night in the form of a dream.

In God’s case He does not have these kinds of dreams. His Dream is more like a lid on a box. If you just lift the lid, there is the world, there is the Goal. So in God’s Drama, today’s Dream is tomorrow’s Reality. When you become one with God, you see that everything in God’s Dream already embodies the Reality itself. That is to say, when the Divine dreams in the seeker, then Reality is going to be manifested immediately in his life.

One Truth, one Life, one Face

In our Invocation to the Supreme there is a line that says, “Thou art one Truth, one Life, one Face.” “Thou art one Truth.” Truth is fulfilment. Only in Truth is there fulfilment; there cannot be fulfilment without Truth.

Then “one Life.” You think of Life as your life now, but you had Life before you were born and this Life will continue after your body’s death. Here on earth your life and death are just stages in your larger Life. So this is what we mean by “one Life.”

Last comes “one Face.” Face is manifestation. The Supreme manifests Himself in many ways and He reveals His Face through His many manifestations. There are two ways to see the Face of God. One way reveals His luminous features, His eyes, ears and nose. The other way reveals His luminous Reality.

The finite and the Infinite

God is at once finite and infinite.

He is space. He is measured. He can be measured. He must needs be measured.

He is beyond space. He is measureless. He is boundless. He is infinite.

God is infinite Consciousness, infinite Bliss, yet he can also assume a finite form. He is infinite, He is finite; and at the same time He transcends both the Infinite and the finite. He is life, He is death; yet again He is beyond both life and death. When I say ‘Supreme’, I am referring to the Infinite, the Eternal and the Immortal. But when I see Him, I see Him face to face the same way I see you. But in fact God is boundless and in the field of manifestation He takes all forms, from that of a tiny insect to that of a large elephant. Many people cannot agree with the idea that God can be finite. But let us think of one of God’s divine qualities called Omnipresence. According to our human feeling, when we think of Omnipresence we immediately think of vastness. True, He is as vast as the world, but because He is in everything, God can also be finite. Again, God is omnipotent. Where is His Omnipotence if He cannot become a small child, a tiny insect or an atom? At our sweet will we can do practically nothing. But just because God is omnipotent, He can do anything He wants to do at His sweet Will: He can be vast, He can be infinitesimal.

As human beings we are evolving towards our transcendental Perfection. We are aspiring towards the Infinite. Right now, we feel that this is God’s creation, but that God has His own separate existence. But this feeling is wrong. Just as the soul is inside our body, God is inside His creation. Otherwise the creation cannot exist. When the soul leaves the body, we will die. Similarly, if God left the creation, the creation would also come to an end. God the Infinite has entered into us, into these finite bodies, which last for fifty, sixty or seventy years. The Infinite gets the greatest joy only by making itself finite as well. We have to know, we have to feel and we have to realise this for ourselves; only then will we see God in His creation. Otherwise, we will think that God is in Heaven and, although we are His creation, we have no connection with Him.

Finite and Infinite, according to our outer understanding, are opposites of each other. But in God’s Eye they are one; one complements the other. The finite and the Infinite always want to go together. The finite wants to reach the Absolute, the Highest, which is the Infinite. The Infinite wants to manifest itself in and through the finite. Then the game is complete. Otherwise, it will only be a one-sided game. There will be no true joy, no achievement, no fulfilment. In and through the finite, the Infinite is singing its song of unity. In and through the Infinite, the finite is singing its song of multiplicity.

God is everything, but each person has to feel for himself what God is for him. He can be infinite Light, infinite Consciousness, infinite Power, infinite Joy, infinite Bliss, infinite Compassion, infinite Energy. He can be personal, with form; again, he can be impersonal, without form, just as water has form when it is ice but no form when it is in the liquid state. At times we get joy when we see God with form; at times we get joy when we see God without form. We can see Him in His impersonal aspect as a vast expanse of Light. In his personal aspect He can appear as a luminous human being with two hands, two eyes and everything else that we have. He will be the most illumined Being here on earth and there in Heaven. When he appears as a personal Being, we can have all kinds of intimate talks with Him face to face.

Personal and impersonal God

The Supreme’s form is not always the same. He can change His form at any time He wants. Even spiritual Masters will not see the Supreme in the same way; for each Master, He may appear differently. If one starts his journey by thinking of God as a personal God with form, then he will realise Him as a personal God. If he starts his Yoga thinking of God as impersonal, then he will realise the impersonal aspect of God. It depends on how the seeker wants to approach God while he is in the process of aspiring. If someone starts practising Yoga while thinking of God’s infinite Consciousness, then he will realise God as infinite Consciousness. A spiritual Master may first realise one aspect of God, but when he has his full realisation he sees God in all His aspects.

No matter how God appears to us, we will feel ecstasy, divine ecstasy. Ecstasy is delight. When we are in our ordinary consciousness, we are disturbed by the many ugly, undivine things in the world. But when we see God, at that time everything appears beautiful to us. All is good and nothing appears ugly.

In our Indian scriptures we say, Tat twam asi, “That Thou art.” This is the realisation of the Vedic seers of the hoary past. But the most important thing is to feel that God is Something or Somebody who has not only the capacity but also the eagerness to fulfil us. So let us not try to define God. We can say only that God wants to fulfil us. Now we are trying to fulfil ourselves with desires, but we ourselves are not fulfilled even if our desires are fulfilled. Real fulfilment comes only when we are swimming in the sea of Infinity, Eternity and Immortality.

The form and the formless

When God created Himself, He created Himself in two aspects: the Infinite and the finite. When you think of the finite, you think of form, and when you think of the Infinite, you feel that there is no form. However, inside the finite is the message of the Infinite; in the finite is first the revelation and then the manifestation of the Infinite. The finite is necessary because it is through the finite that the Infinite plays its role in the cosmic rhythm here on earth. At the same time, the Infinite is necessary because it is in the Infinite that the finite has its eternal shelter. There it finds protection and perfection.

The Formless is necessary to realise the Highest, the Ultimate, the Infinite; and the form is necessary to reveal and manifest the Highest and the inmost in an intimate way. That which is infinite in consciousness can be seen only in the formless form. Again, it can house itself in form. That is why the heart can hold Infinity inside it. When you enter into the subtle physical, it is all formless when you enter into the physical, it is all form.

If you meditate in order to achieve something in a most tangible and intimate way, it is helpful to approach the Supreme in the form of the Mother, the Mother Divine. But if you want to experience something in abstract form, in the form of energy or ether, then you will approach an endless, formless form.

The personal God

I see God as a luminous Being, the most luminous Being, who has infinite Love, Concern and Compassion for mankind. My disciples approach the Supreme as a personal God, as a human being. Although the Supreme has both personal and impersonal aspects, if you approach Him as a personal Being, especially in the beginning, your journey will be safer because the personal way is easier. If you want to see God’s impersonal aspect, you may become confused or afraid of the vastness. A human being may be only six feet tall, but inside him the soul has boundless capacity. Let us take the soul as the impersonal God and the body as the personal God. In the beginning it is much easier for the seeker to identify with his body than with his soul. If my soul wants to manifest its beauty or its strength through the physical, then the soul will give my body luminous beauty or solid strength. So the seeker can take the form as an expression or manifestation of the formless.

When the beginner meditates early in the morning, he should meditate on the Feet of the personal Supreme. Then, along with his own devoted love, he will feel God’s Compassion and Concern. He will say, “Here is someone who is really great, infinitely greater than I. That is why I am touching His Feet with such devotion.” He will feel that there is some purpose behind what he is doing. By touching the Feet of the Supreme, he is trying to become one with the Supreme. He feels that for him this is the easiest approach. If someone is very tall, I won’t be able to touch his head. But I can touch his feet. Whether I touch his feet or his head, I can say that I have touched him. But when I touch his feet, immediately I get the feeling of purest joy and devotion.

Then after touching the Feet of the personal God, we have to concentrate on the Heart of the personal God. Touching His Feet may give us a devotional feeling, but we have to ask ourselves, “Do I consider Him as my very own? Or is it just because He is very great that I am touching His Feet?” We can touch the feet of a very great spiritual Master; but along with our veneration, we have to claim that person as our very own. If we feel that he is our very own, then our devotion gets dynamic power; It enters into activity. When you feel that the Supreme as a personal God in human form is your very own and that you are His very own, only then can you have complete identification and inseparable oneness with Him. And from that oneness you get boundless joy.

When you feel that someone is your very own, you want to give that person something of yours. If you have a dollar, you want to give it to him; If you have a mango, you want to give it to him. But there has to be an exchange. He will give you what he has and you will give him what you have. How do you actually exchange? It is through Light transmitted through the eyes. When the Master and the disciple look at each other, at that time what does each one do? The Master looks at the disciple with soulful Compassion and the disciple looks at the Master with soulful adoration. The Master, who represents the personal Supreme, has all Compassion: and the seeker has all adoration. So they barter, they exchange. The Master gives his property and the disciple gives his property. Here they meet, they exchange their offering and then they become inseparably one.

The eye is the place of vision and light. Adoration is a form of light and compassion is also a form of light. Here in between the eyebrows, a little above, is the third eye. This is the place through which we shall give what we have to the personal God and the personal God will give us what He has. This form of meditation can be practised by any aspirant who is trying to go beyond his limited existence.

Again, it is best to start with faith in the personal God. In this way we get the feeling that we want to become like ‘Him’. He is very great but just because we take Him as a personal being we feel that we can become like Him. Next we feel, “Am I not supposed to give Him what I have and to take Him as my very own? Anything that I have, any limited quantity of peace, light and bliss, let me offer to Him in the form of adoration, because in everything He surpasses me. Although He has infinite Peace and I have only an iota of Peace, He is the Supreme. So let me give Him all that I have.”

The Divine Father and the Divine Mother

Here we see that Father is the Face, Mother is the Smile. You need a face; otherwise, how will you smile? Again, if there is no smile in your face, then how are you going to make continuous progress, spiritual progress? They are like the obverse and reverse of the same coin. If you have one side of the coin, there has to be another side, or there is no coin at all. The Mother aspect with all Love and Compassion is trying to bring the child closer to the Supreme. And the Father aspect is also trying with all Wisdom and Light. But these are all complementary. Wisdom, Light, Compassion and Love: they always go together.

The Living Force or the Creativity of the Supreme is His Smile. Without this Smile, which is the very breath of the universal Consciousness as well as the Breath of the Supreme Himself, the creation remains unmanifested. In the very Smile of the Supreme is the birth of creation.

The Supreme is both masculine and feminine. It is very difficult to comprehend this with our human mind, for He is also beyond masculinity and feminity. In His masculine form the Supreme is static and He always remains beyond manifestation. When the Supreme is unmanifested He is just a Face. But if He wants to manifest Himself, then He has to smile. He is alive, He is functioning, He is active, but this we can know only when we see a Smile dawn on His Face.

When He comes into manifestation, it is through His feminine form. This feminine form in our Indian philosophy is called Prakriti, the Nature-Force or the Mother aspect of the Supreme. When the Nature-Force operates in the physical world, we see activity in the Being of the Supreme. And when Nature’s activity takes place, we see spontaneous Joy throughout the Supreme’s manifested form. This Joy expresses itself most effectively as a Smile on the Face of the Supreme.

Man and woman

God is both masculine and feminine. He is expressing Himself as female through nature, as Prakriti. He is fulfilling Himself as male through Purusha, the Unmanifest. We see God around us in His universal Form. If we go deep within, we see that this is His female aspect. If we go up to the Highest, the Absolute Infinite, there we see God as male. But we have to know that the universal aspect is in no way inferior to the transcendental aspect; both are of equal importance. God is enjoying Himself in His creation in the masculine and the feminine form. Both are absolutely necessary to fulfil the cosmic play.

In the case of man and woman, husband and wife, the male has to play the part of wisdom and inner peace and the female has to play the part of dedication and love. That does not mean that man will not have any love and dedication. No! But, in his case, these two divine qualities of wisdom and peace come first and then come love and dedication. Love and dedication are in no way inferior to wisdom and peace; they have to go together, they have to be combined. If he is sincere enough, man must feel that his entire success depends on woman’s conscious or unconscious inspiration, on her divine inner urge. If woman’s inspiration is conscious, then man’s success becomes quicker. But ‘female’ does not necessarily mean woman; ‘female’ is the feminine aspect of the Supreme. So man’s inspiration may not come from his wife. The female aspect of the cosmic enters into the male in the form of inspiration and makes him successful. If he is not successful in fulfilling the Divine or in realising the Divine, then he is no better than an animal. So his entire success depends upon the female. Similarly, woman has no existence without the masculine aspect of God; her life has no necessity or meaning. One complements the other like a complementary soul. Both are of paramount importance.

The Sons of God

Sons of God have come at different times to perform God’s work, but they are all God’s children. We don’t have to differentiate between them. In this incarnation you have a name and in your previous incarnation you had another name. Even in this incarnation your mother calls you by one name, your husband or wife by some other name, your children by another and your friends by still another. You are the same person but people approach you in different ways. Similarly, although you play different roles in your various incarnations, your soul or spirit is always the same. Likewise the Christ’s spirit, Lord Buddha’s spirit, Sri Ramakrishna’s spirit, your spirit, my spirit, everybody’s spirit is the same, but the forms are different. God is the universal Spirit, but He is assuming different forms for the sake of manifestation.

Now you have to know that the one Spirit is all pervading but when it takes an individual form, when a soul enters into the world-play, it has to manifest its own inner divinity. The Christ manifested his inner divinity, Sri Ramakrishna manifested it, the other spiritual Masters manifested it. But still we have not manifested it. That is, we all embody God; but when spiritual Masters take the human form, they embody God in a special way. Sri Krishna was a great spiritual Master and in his case he not only embodied but also revealed and manifested God. In our case we have three things to do: realise God, reveal God and then manifest God. Sri Krishna, however, had realised God before coming into the world, so he was already in a position to reveal and manifest God.

God and the spiritual Masters are one, and God and we are one. But the difference is that we don’t claim God as our very own because we know that we have done many things wrong. We feel that still we are in ignorance, wallowing in the pleasure of ignorance. The Christ said, “I and my Father are One.” But we don’t dare to say that God and we are one. Sri Krishna, Lord Buddha and the Christ, on the strength of their conscious realisation of God could say that they and God were one. All the Sons of God are divine manifestations of God the Absolute.

Belief in God

Some people say they don’t believe in the existence of God, the Supreme. But I wish to say that someone may not believe in God as infinite Consciousness or infinite Power, but he has to have some belief and some conviction of his own; and this is the same as believing in God. If a seeker is against the concept of God, if he is afraid or if he is doubtful, let him follow his own path. Let us take away the word ‘God’ from his dictionary. Let him have the feeling that there is no God. Let him go as far as possible in negating God. At the end of his negation, there he will see that positive Truth emerges. At the end of his journey Truth looms large and he can take this Truth as infinite Consciousness or boundless Energy.

God cannot be understood by any conception of the mind. If you go with your mind as far as you can, there will come a time when the mind becomes helpless. Then you will discover that you have to go deep within to find God. At that time God will come. Let us say that you are a teacher. If you show one of your children a particular city on the map called London, he may not believe it exists. You can even show him pictures of it and tell him it is in England, far away across the sea, but still he may not believe you. He has to take a plane to London and then he will believe that it does exist. Similarly, when a seeker comes to a spiritual person, he may come with doubt. At the very beginning, just like the young student, he may doubt the existence of God. But if someone has doubt or is afraid to enter into the spiritual life, I tell him not to worry; meditation is the answer. I will show him how to enter into meditation so that he may come and find God with me. Just as the child has to travel to London in person before satisfying himself as to its existence, so a spiritual seeker has to meditate either with a teacher or on his own. Even spiritual books do not prove the existence of God. For the seeker, meditation is of primary importance; meditation is the only answer. Meditation will not fail him. Let him approach his true self and then see if he still believes that there is no God.

The soundless Sound

Before God created the Universe, He created Himself. God exists because of His creation; He created Himself. While creating Himself, He felt the necessity of creating two most intimate friends. He wanted them to go hand in hand with His own creation. His two most intimate friends were Nad and Ananda. Nad is Sound, the Cosmic Sound, the Soundless Sound. God created this sound, and He requested this intimate friend to stay within His Heart. Here in this world when you strike one thing against another, it produces a sound. But this particular sound, which is in the inmost recesses of our heart, needs no outer object or subject to produce it. Automatically, spontaneously, this sound is produced. That is why in Sanskrit it is also called anahata. Ahata means “struck” and anahata means “unstruck.” Then, along with this sound, God created another friend, Ananda or “Delight.” He asked Delight to be always around Him and within Him.

God for a child

We know that God is everything: God is inside everything and God is beyond everything. This is our philosophical understanding and our psychic understanding. But I wish to speak about God from a child’s pure, innocent and soulful point of view, according to the child’s understanding.

What is God? God is Concern. A mother will try to show her concern for her child day in and day out. But out of twenty-four hours his mother can consciously offer him only two or three hours of concern, in spite of her best intentions. She wants to show him all her affection all the time; but we know that during the day she has to study, do her own meditation and do quite a few other things apart from taking care of him, even though he is her dearest child. When he is sick, perhaps she will offer her concern for fifteen or sixteen or even twenty four hours. But ordinarily she can give him only a few hours of concern. In God’s case, it is different. He constantly gives us His inner and outer Concern.

We stay on earth for fifty, sixty, seventy or even one hundred years, but this is not our real span of life. Our real life is endless. We came from the beginningless past and we shall enter into the endless future. We have had previous incarnations and we will have many future incarnations. In our past incarnations we had different parents. In this incarnation we get concern from our mother and father, in our previous incarnation we got it from other parents and in the future also we will receive concern from different parents. But we received God’s Concern from the very beginning. Now also he has the same kind of Concern for us and forever it will remain the same.

You have a body, you have a mind, you have a heart and you have a soul. When God created you, He created your soul first. The moment He created your soul, His Concern started. This Concern was not only for a minute, for an hour, for a year, for ten years or for twenty years, but forever, for Eternity. God is constant and eternal Concern. The moment He created Himself, Concern was there; and the moment He created your soul, Concern was there. So this is what we mean when we say that God is Concern.

Now where does this Concern come from? Everything has a source and the source of concern is oneness. When my finger is hurt or bleeding, immediately I am concerned for my finger. Why? Because I am one with my finger. When something is wrong with your mother, you show her your concern because of your oneness with her. Right now, there are many people who are suffering and dying in the hospital, but even if you knew them, you might not offer them your concern. Why? Because you are not completely identified with them and you don’t feel your oneness with them. But you do feel your oneness with your mother and your mother feels her oneness with you. So we see that the source of concern is oneness. It is to the near and dear ones, those who we feel are part and parcel of our life, that we offer our concern. God is the all-pervading One, who is everywhere and His Concern comes from His all-pervading oneness. Since He is everywhere, he has to have oneness with everything. When He has oneness, He has to offer something; and that something is His Concern.

What does God look like?

God looks exactly like us. In your case, when you see God He will look exactly like you. When somebody else sees God, God will look exactly like that individual. When any member of your family sees God, He will look exactly like that particular person. As soon as you see God you will say “He looks like me!” God’s Eyes, His Face, everything of His will look the same as you. The only difference will be that He is infinitely more beautiful than you because your own most illumined part is infinitely more beautiful than your least illumined part. Although at that time you will be able to recognise Him and claim Him as your very own, somebody else may not be able to recognise Him because He has come to you and nobody else. You will be able to recognise God as yourself, but with infinite Beauty, infinite Light, infinite Peace, infinite Bliss. That is how you will see God and how you will know Him when you see Him.

Does God test us?

Does God ever test us? No, God does not actually test or examine us. It is ignorance operating through hostile forces, undivine forces, that examines us. We have been with ignorance for many, many thousands of years. The moment we start aspiring, ignorance threatens us. It says. “Where are you going? You have been in my room for thousands of years. Now how can you dare to leave me?” We reply, “I made a mistake in staying with you for such a long time. Now I don’t want to stay with you any more.” Then ignorance puts all kinds of temptation before us.

So when we accept the spiritual life, we have to face all kinds of temptation. A temptation is nothing but a kind of test. If we pass these tests, we become one with God. At first God will only watch and observe. If on the one hand we say outwardly that we don’t want to stay with ignorance, but on the other hand we secretly enjoy wallowing in earthly pleasures, then God simply keeps quiet. We may say that we don’t want to eat ignorance-food, but at the same time we continue eating it. Here we are acting like a camel. A camel eats thorns and his mouth bleeds. He will say to himself that he will never eat these thorns again, but soon afterwards he does the same thing. Like this, some of us say we don’t want to stay any more with ignorance, but the next moment we again become most intimate friends with ignorance.

But if He sees that we are sincerely trying to pass our examination, then immediately He will give us the capacity. When He feels that we really don’t want to mix with ignorance, that we no longer want to have anything to do with it, then He gives us infinite inner power and strength to come out of ignorance.

God never tests; God never tempts. He will just give us the inner strength to conquer temptations. God’s Compassion itself is our greatest Power. But we receive His Power only when we are sincere. God’s help, just like sunlight, is there for everyone. If somebody keeps his doors and windows open, then he receives sunlight in his room.

But if he keeps the doors and windows shut, then sunlight cannot enter. So God’s divine Compassion is constantly raining down, but we have to keep our heart’s door open. Only then will we be able to come out of ignorance.

God's Name

There is one God called by many different names. I like the term ‘Supreme’. Other Masters have used different names. Jesus Christ used the term ‘Father’. He said, ‘I and my Father are one.’ His Father, your Father and my Father are the same, but I get a sweeter feeling from using the term ‘Supreme’ instead or saying ‘God’ or ‘Father’.

All religious faiths have the same God but they address Him differently. A man will be called ‘Father’ by one person, ‘Brother’ by another and ‘Uncle’ by another. Then when that person goes to the office, he is called by his surname. When he mixes with his friends, they will call him by his given name. He is the same person but he is addressed in different ways, according to one’s connection with him. Similarly, God is also addressed in various ways, according to one’s sweetest, most affectionate feeling.

Instead of using the word ‘God’, I use the word ‘Supreme’ most of the time. I ask my disciples to do the same, for I feel it gives us a more intimate connection with Him. Of course, only spiritual Masters can know the difference between these highest spiritual Realities. Many people may ask me, “Why do you have to separate ‘God’ and the ‘Supreme'? They are just synonyms.” But although God and the Supreme are one, there is a subtle distinction between the two. The highest Supreme is different from what we call God. When we speak of God-realisation, here ‘God’ is synonymous with the Supreme. But usually when we say ‘God’, we feel that He embodies a height which is static. He is like a mountain that is high, but flat. When we use the term ‘God’, we feel that He has reached His Height and stopped. He does not have a constantly evolving Consciousness; He is something finished, a finished product. But when we say ‘Supreme’, we are speaking of the Supreme Lord who not only reaches the absolute Highest, but all the time goes beyond, beyond and, transcends the Beyond. There is a constant upward movement.

The power of the creation

Sometimes we see that the creation becomes more powerful than the Creator. It is we who have created the hydrogen bomb and the atom bomb. Our human society has discovered them. But what is the good of our achievement if the creation becomes more powerful than we are?

Someone once said, “If we want destruction, that is up to us.” But if we feel that the power of destruction is greater than the power of God-realisation, then we are making a mistake. The power of destruction has come from whom? From the Source of creation. And who is the Source? God. He who first created us is undoubtedly more powerful than His creation or our creation because if He had not created the individual, then the individual could not have created anything else.

Is God's power limited?

The other day a young friend of mine asked me why God had not yet made the whole world spiritual after so many thousands of years. “Is God’s Power limited,” he asked, “or does He not choose to make the world spiritual?” I wish to say that God’s Power is unlimited, but it is we who do not want to become spiritual. That is to say, earth does not want God’s Light.

God is wise, infinitely wiser than we are. Someone with less power than God can force another individual to do something that he does not want to do. But God does not force anyone to do anything. He feels that if He uses force, then we cannot get the ultimate Joy. You can force someone to eat but inwardly he will curse you. God only says, “My child, I am telling you to eat this for your good. If you eat this food, you will get nourishment. Then you will be strong and you will be able to fight against ignorance.” God offers His Light, His inner nourishment, but he does not force anyone to accept it. This is what His policy is.

God sees the past, the present and the future. He knows that the right thing will be for Him to constantly offer us His Wisdom and infinite Patience. Human beings do not have patience and they feel that by striking their child, by forcing him, they are doing the best thing. But when this child grows up, he will only want to strike his parents in return. Right now he is innocent, he is helpless. If the father beats his son, the child will remember this very incident. He may leave home at an early age and have nothing to do with his parents. Or when he becomes an adolescent he will play tit for tat: you struck me, now I will strike you. This is what happens when the human parents misuse their power.

But God the Father will not act in this way. He will only show abundant Compassion, infinite Compassion. Then in return His child will eventually offer infinite gratitude to God for showing His infinite Compassion-Light. The child will receive this Light and he will try to become worthy of his Father. When Compassion works, when Light works, then Wisdom works. If you offer wisdom to someone, then in ten or twenty years that person will also want to offer you wisdom when he himself has achieved it.

God will never give anything untimely. That would be like plucking an unripe fruit from a tree, thinking that it will be most delicious. If you eat it before it is ripe, it will taste deplorable. You always have to wait for it to ripen. Similarly, if somebody is fast asleep and you go and tell him that it is time for him to get up when actually it is only time for you to get up, then he will just kick you and you will feel miserable. He will say, “What are you doing? It is all well and good for you to get up. You do whatever you want to do. It is time for me to sleep.” Sleep is what is giving him joy. You are powerless at that time.

Look at the power of a Justice of the Supreme Court when he is in his office. Again, when this same man is with his wife and children, he cannot exercise this kind of power. His own son won’t listen to him. He may ask his son to bring him a glass of water and his son won’t do it. The Supreme Court Justice and the father are one and the same person. But when he is in court, the whole nation listens to him; whereas at home his own children won’t listen to him.

When in Heaven, the Supreme is really the Highest and at the same time He is constantly transcending Himself. The Supreme has that kind of supreme Power in the inner world. But when He wants to operate here on earth with His children, He has infinite Patience. He becomes one with their ignorance. He says, “All right, if you want to disobey Me, if you want to play these kinds of silly games, then let Me also play a little with you.”

You may ask how God manifests His Power in man. I wish to say that He manifests not only Power but all His other qualities through Love. God uses Power, but he prefers to manifest Himself through Love, Concern and Compassion.

God's Goodness versus God's Justice

Some people feel that God’s Justice is more prominent than His Goodness. But I wish to say that the greater attribute of God is Goodness, not Justice; and this Goodness is His real inner Wisdom. God knows what to do and when to do it, or what role He should play at each stage of our evolving consciousness.

Our soul’s journey proceeded from the mineral kingdom to the plant kingdom and then we entered into the animal kingdom. Now we are human beings; however, we are little better than animals. We have to know that animals are inside God’s very Heart; destructive forces are also inside Him. The human forces and the divine forces are also there. What is happening? The destructive forces are not being punished or destroyed; gradually, gradually they are being transformed into divine forces. If we look at the animal kingdom, we see it is all quarrelling and fighting. We human beings are not fighting so badly, so we are already transformed to some extent.

Again, in God’s creation there is still evil. But what we call evil is in this case something unaspiring. What a spiritual aspirant calls bad may be relatively good compared to what an unaspiring person calls bad. What we call error is a half-truth, a harbinger of truth. Always we have to see it that way. A child is imperfect and he does many things wrong. With our ordinary human understanding, with our justice-power, we may say that he is the devil incarnate. But this child, when he is fifteen or sixteen years old, will continue to develop. He will become nice, sweet, meritorious and wise. So we have to remember that the child is still growing up.

If we separate ourselves from God or say that all His activity is based on Justice, then we will be making a mistake. If He were to act only according to His Justice, then nobody would be able to stay on earth, nobody would or could exist if God stands in front of us and weighs how many good things we have done against how many bad things we have done, then we will see that there will be infinitely more bad things than good things. Nobody would be able to realise God.

So what is God actually doing? He is dealing with His Compassion and inside His Compassion is His Wisdom-Light. He is showing Compassion to someone who is now in the process of evolving because He knows that the person will grow spiritually and will eventually do the right thing, the divine thing. Inside His Compassion, Wisdom-Light is operating. Gradually, gradually He will be able to take the person to His infinite Light. If He started with Justice, immediately he would stand before us with an iron rod and strike us. But that He would never do. He gives us only Compassion.

So if you ask, “What is God?” then I will say that God is all Love. And inside this Love, if you see Justice, you have to know what kind of Justice it is. If a child is only a few months old, then his mother will give him milk or some other liquid. She will not give him a big piece of meat or something very solid and heavy because he will not be able to digest it. Even though these solid foods may be more delicious and may give the child more pleasure, the mother cannot feed them to her child because he is too young. As the child grows, gradually the mother can give him these things.

When we see that someone is not getting enough Peace, Light or Bliss, we have to feel that God is giving to him according to the capacity of his receptivity. God is always doing justice to the inferior one, to the one who is still in a preliminary stage. But at the same time He is all Love for that person. God does not want his inner vessel to burst untimely. So if you ask, “Why is God not playing His Game justly? Why is He giving so much Peace and Power to one person and not to another?” the answer is that one person is not ready. Whatever God is giving to each person is a sign of His Love. He will say, “You are My infant, My child, and I can give you this much. This is what is required.” If God gives him more than that He may ruin the inner progress of that individual. But the one who is given more has the capacity to receive it, to embody it and to fulfil it.

So the most important attribute of God is Love. And when it takes an intimate form, it is called Compassion. This Compassion is the most powerful attribute, the most significant attribute of God, and not His Justice. Justice and all other divine qualities will be found inside Compassion.

Does God get angry?

Does God ever become angry with us? No, God does not become angry with us. When our vital makes mistakes, it makes us feel that naturally God is displeased with us. If your son does something wrong, then your immediate reaction is to get angry with him. So we see God through our own eyes. We feel that God also acts as we do. But God does not use anger-power. He uses two other powers instead. One is called Compassion, the other is called Justice. Occasionally He uses His Justice-Power, but ninety-nine times out of one hundred He uses His Compassion-Power. Even if we keep doing the same thing wrong. He forgives us and shows His Compassion.

There comes a time when God feels that His Compassion-Power is not working. At that time He uses His Justice-Power. But this Justice-Power is not like animal anger-power that wants to destroy us. No! God is only offering His Determination and divine Will-Power to us when we have done something wrong. He energises us, inspires us. But very often when we see God’s adamantine Will-Power, which is very strong, our guilty consciousness makes us think that God is angry with us. But at that time God is expressing His Compassion in the form of tremendous Will-Power so that we won’t repeat the same mistake.

Nectar or poison?

All people on earth have suffered and are suffering because they ask God for poison. When they pray, unconsciously they think that what they are asking for is all nectar. Then when they become more conscious, that very thing they think of as poison. The greater the awakening we have, the greater our realisation that hundreds of times we have prayed to God for poison, but out of his infinite Compassion He has not given us poison.

God is the Doer

The world is full of suffering, pain and ignorance. Since God has created us, we say, “Let us put all the blame on Him; it is His fault. God created rascals like me on earth; let me blame Him.” But do we get any satisfaction by blaming, insulting and finding fault with God? Instead, let us try to see if there is any meaning, if there is any purpose in the world.

To do this, we shall first ask the physical. But the physical won’t be able to answer. Then we shall ask the vital. But the vital also won’t be able to answer. Then we shall ask the mind. Instead of answering, the mind will only create infinite confusion. Finally we shall ask the heart. Unfortunately, if the vital enters into the heart, then the heart will not be able to answer adequately. But if the heart remains pure, then the heart will be able to tell us that there is some purpose. What that purpose is, the heart won’t be able to say. The soul will tell us that God is evolving in and through the world. He is the sufferer and He is the enjoyer; again, He does not suffer at all. He is enjoying Himself in countless ways in His divine Game of Manifestation.

If some result is not according to our satisfaction, we shall not blame God, nor shall we blame others. We shall not even blame ourselves. We will only say that we did what we could and that this is the experience that God has given us. In life there can be only one of two experiences: success or failure. If we take both failure and success cheerfully, then we get a real divine experience. Experience is what we need. If we do something good, often we expect something good. If we do something bad, we are always worried that something bad will come to us as a horrifying experience. From now on, if we play our role divinely, we can easily be detached while being full of concern. But if we don’t play our role divinely, then no matter what the result of our action may be, in God’s Eyes we will not be successful.

We make mistakes and the world also makes mistakes; that is why we suffer. Now, when we do something, let us be clever and say that we are not the doer; somebody else is the doer. If we have to put all the blame on God, let us do it in this way. Then let us make our heart wide, magnanimous. Tomorrow, when we feel that our enemy has done something wrong, we will say, “No, it is not he who has done it; it is God.” Your enemy is not to be blamed.

In that way we shall not blame ourselves and we shall not blame others who are doing wrong things. We shall put all the blame on God. In a few months’ time, we will notice that there are many good things that we do. Unconsciously we do many bad things and unconsciously we do many good things. When we do good things and also when others do good things, we shall say that it is God who has done it. When others do something good, it is so easy to say at that time that a third person has done it. Now that third person is God. So in this way we shall let God be responsible for our bad actions and good actions and for others’ good and bad actions also. We will see that God is not only the Doer of our good and bad deeds, but also the Doer of others’ good and bad deeds.

God and evil

God is in everything, but we have to know that here on earth everything is relative. God is in filthy water, God is in poison, but if we drink it we will die. God is in everything, but God has also given us wisdom. We have to use our brain, our own conscious judgement.

In the field of evolution, everything is proceeding towards a better, more fulfilling and more illumining existence. We started our evolutionary journey with limited knowledge. God was at one time inside our mineral life, plant life and our animal life. He is now in our human life. And when we lead a divine life, He will be there too. We are in the process of evolution, marching and running towards the highest Truth. When we were animals, at that time we used to kill and destroy, we used to do many wrong things. But according to the animal standard, we were perfect because the very nature of animals is to destroy. God was at that time in us, but now as human beings we are trying to lead better lives. We feel that evil has more than played its role in our past. This so-called evil was necessary for a particular period, but now we feel the time has come to transcend our animal nature We are moving away from ignorance and entering into wisdom. God was in that very ignorance and now God is acting through our evolving wisdom, our knowledge. God is above evil and good.

From the spiritual point of view, there is no such thing as evil. What we call evil is actually error. In our strict Indian philosophy, we do not use the term evil; we call it bondage or error. This error can be a pathfinder. When we get a little more knowledge in comparison to our old standard, we discard our former understanding as evil or ignorance. Let us say we get a thorn in our foot. We feel that this thorn is evil, but we need another thorn in order to remove the first thorn. Then we discard both thorns.

Once error starts its journey, it makes mistakes right and left like a mad elephant running amuck. But this elephant will one day calm down. Today what we call error, tomorrow that very thing we can transform on the strength of our own inner urge to see and grow into something more perfect, more divine.

From the strict spiritual point of view there is no evil, only experiences, limited experiences, the experiences that bind us. Now we are trying to transcend these experiences and have only divine, liberating experiences, experiences that expand and enlarge our consciousness. We are in the process of inner evolution: we are growing out of desire and entering into aspiration. When we go beyond the barriers of desire and enter into the domain of aspiration, we see that God is in everything and, at the same time, He is beyond both good and evil.

Our offering to God

What can we do for God Almighty? We can offer Him all our outer wealth as well as our inner wealth. When we offer Him both our outer and inner wealth, we see that He immediately gives us His Wealth in infinite measure. If early in the morning we offer to God just one divine thought, one pure thought, He will immediately give us thousands of divine thoughts to spend daily.

This is our inner wealth that we are offering. But how can we offer Him our outer wealth? When we are doing even the most minor, insignificant act, such as sharpening our pencil, we should feel that the capacity we have for sharpening the pencil, for utilising our hands to hold the pencil, has come directly from God. When we dedicate all our outer actions to God, this capacity we are giving back to God directly. This is our outer wealth in the form of capacity, which we can give to God. When we do this for minor activities, immediately we see that God gives us infinitely more power when we enter into more complicated, more meaningful, more purposeful activities.

God and peace

If we know that something exists, then for us that thing is real. If we cannot feel its existence, then to us it is unreal. During our meditations we try to feel the Peace of God. We are trying and we are crying to bring down inner Peace because inside the inner Peace is God’s Reality. We can see, feel and grow into this Reality only when we are in the sea of Peace. It is Peace that is the Mother and Father, Brother and Sister of God. So if we can have Peace, then we are not only getting God, but all God’s relatives as well.

God's perfection

Where does God keep His Perfection? It is in our choice. If we choose Perfection as the aim or goal of our life, then we will see that in our individual choice God keeps our perfection. And finally we will see that our very choice itself is God’s Perfection, perfect Perfection.

Divine Grace

God is Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent. He has various kinds of power, but His greatest adamantine Power is His Grace. The moment God uses His Grace for an individual, He offers His very Life-Breath to the seeker, for God and God’s Grace can never be separated. Whenever we think of God, if we feel that it is through His Grace that we are approaching Him, then we can be most successful in receiving Him.

The Divine Grace is constantly descending upon us. Those who are sincerely aspiring are conscious of this Divine Grace, but those who are not aspiring are keeping their heart’s door permanently closed. If we feel that God is Grace, then we shall see that His infinite qualities, Peace, Light and Bliss, are already in the process of entering into us, ceaselessly flowing in and through us and becoming part and parcel of our inner and outer life. We have only to allow the flow of Grace to carry us into the Source, which is God.

God's sense of humour

Without humour we cannot exist on earth. Humour really is the salt of life. There is nobody who has not enjoyed humour at least once in his life. Now, what is God’s sense of humour like? God will vary His approach to humour according to the individual. If you enjoy humour, then God is bound to join you. But if you are a dry, intellectual person with an absolutely serious nature, then God will not cut jokes with you. Perhaps you have read my book My Lord’s Secrets Revealed. Those conversations and those kinds of jokes with the Supreme are from actual incidents. So you can see that I enjoy jokes and God does also. If you don’t enjoy that kind of humour, then God will not bother you in that way. I always say that God is a perfect gentleman. A gentleman is not going to disturb you; but if you enjoy something, then he will join you. So God enjoys humour, provided the person He is dealing with enjoys humour.

The easiest way to please God

The easiest way to please God is to feel that God has done everything for us. On my part I have only to soulfully and gratefully appreciate what He has done for me and to be fully satisfied with it. If I do not constantly offer my soulful appreciation, if I think that God has dealt with me in a wrong way, then I am asking God to start His creation anew just for me. If I am not satisfied with God, He will again and again try to please me. There is no end to what He will do for me. But if I am not pleased with what He has done, then I am not pleasing Him in His own Way. The easiest way to please Him is to feel that He has already done everything for me unconditionally.

How can we make God smile?

How can we make God smile? We can make God smile by pleasing Him in His own Way. How can we please Him in His own Way? We can please Him in His own Way only when we can feel that without God we are absolutely nothing, worse than useless; and with God we are more than perfect, we are Perfection itself. Let us always ask ourselves: Without God, what will we become? And with God what will we become? We have to feel that with God what we will become is the Reality-Existence. Then God will give us a divine Smile.