What exactly is God?

Space seems filled with unknown stuff like dark matter and such. There seems also to be some ancient radio wave, something like a big bang hum. Perhaps that is God humming?

 

Nope, just No-thing. In my experience.

 

Prajnanam Brahman -- God is pure consciousness. ( Rig Veda)

And yes, it is by witnessing or being a witness through meditation that one can comprehend Him.

 

As per the enlightened master Sri Sri Ravi Shankar , " Pure consciousness is pure love and love is the highest healer on the planet."


This probably is the reason why Jesus himself stated ,"God is love. "

Thus meditation and pure love are ways by which one can experience God or the Divine.

 

as the op seems to have already mentioned, this question has only an opinion, either of an individual or a shared belief, for an answer.
i can give you mine, without subscribing to any one belief more or less then another.
but you will only say, well that is his belief only.
and you would be completely justified in doing so.

i would say that i god is a thing that is self aware, even as we are, that has no inate physical form, yet exists perfectly fine without one.
it really doesn't need to be any more then that to exist.

to be a god, it would likely have telekenisis and teleportation. it would likely have these and other powers more strongly then any abilities we poses ourselves.
a god that is good would also have wisdom, and having wisdom, would not wish to cause harm.

 

An idea ... thats all.

 

An idea is a mental concept. And mind is but thoughts which have a beginning and an end. That which is eternal does not have a beginning and ending.

So obviously, the divine cannot be grasped or comprehended by the limited mind.

Thought itself is but subtle matter and hence that which is spiritual cannot be grasped by thought.

That which is beyond the mind and thought, that is consciousness, is a far more effective instrument to perceive the divine.

 

But infinity and beyond can be grasped, with mathematics with our minds, even if such things aren't exactly encountered in reality .. or do they?

 

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

 

It's interesting that the human race is acquiring so many of the abilities that once only a god had. People of the past would have believed us to be gods.

We:
-live in the sky (the ISS).
-cure horrible diseases.
-feed the multitudes (in fact, we do this so well the multitudes could use some time on a StairMaster).
-create life (We'll be getting real good at this with the advent of genetic sequencing).
-destroy our enemies with fire (think modern warfare).
-have great knowledge (we don't know everything like a god does, but our knowledge base is increasing exponentially).

I'm sure you can come up with more examples. In view of this I think that god was originally a way to vicariously do these things until we were able to do them ourselves (though no one was aware of this). I should note that my understanding of god is limited to the western way of thinking; none of this may apply to eastern religions, idk. This is just my 2-cents worth.

P.S. Something we don't have yet is immortality but I'd bet we achieve that also.

 

Mathematics and physics has not yet come to a point where they can accurately define reality.

And such definition of reality also would be merely intellectual, without bringing any substantial change in the character or consciousness of the scientist or physicist, which is otherwise termed as enlightenment.

 

Yes, but science or the scientific method as a philosophy is also a double-edged sword. It goes both for construction and destruction. The kind of destructive weapons in use can wipe out the user as well if used at this point of time.

The other problem is that science focuses on the detail rather than the whole. Decades back chemical fertilizers came into being with the endorsement of scientists. Now it has been proven that use of chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides are harmful in the long run to human beings and plants as well. Many cancerous diseases have their origin in the indiscriminate use of chemical fertilizers and other appliances. People are now heavily into organic farming due to this issue due to uprecedented rise in cancerous diseases.

The widespread air, water and soil pollution is also an another oversight of science. Global warming can increase sea levels to the point that coastal areas can go down under water. And this can potentially wreck the world economy as most of the ports and economic centres are in the coastlines.

So I would say that the scientific method is an inadequate philosophy to resolving the problems and issues of man. It can be used in combination with other philosophies such as Advaita so as to bring in a holistic perspective so that the whole is also taken into account.

 

I agree that we have done a poor job in some areas thus far. We are still very new at all this; modern science is only about 400 years old. We will go through growing pains, make mistakes and often act foolishly. Bad politics is also a major contributor to our problems. But over time we have shown an ability to overcome our shortcomings and become a more perfect creature; give us a thousand, ten thousand or one million years and we will become unrecognizable.

 

See when the part is disassociated from the whole to an extreme level, there will be compensatory effort by the whole to put the part in order in the form of an extreme reaction so that equilibrium is restored.

And man's separative consciousness is now really out of bounds and not in sync with the true nature of reality.

 

An interesting dialogue between Ramana Maharshi and a young H.W. Poonja on the nature of God...


http://nisargadatta.net/ramana_maharshi_david_godman_1.html

 

Undescribable. You can realize it, but trying to speak of it only leads to a great risk of confusion. This is why most people who attain enlightenment choose not to talk about it. Because it is so easy to distort. If it should be talked about, it needs to be vague or spoken about in figurative language. If I were to tell you what it is right now, it would only put an idea in your head, and that idea is definitely not it. If you want to know what it is, follow the many methods people have developed.

I will say one thing however, it's probably going to suprise you at how blatantly obvious it is. I laughed my ass off when I realized it.

 

God is love or the greater context of the Truth which Socrates described as the memory of God which none can remember in all its glory. It is the self-evident truth which only asserts itself within the silent void. At least, being agnostic myself, that's about all the sense I can make out of what people call God.

 

I once asked someone what God is. He said, "None of your business."

 

Was that God you asked? That was pretty much the answer (S)he gave to Moses when he asked that question. The answer was the tetragrammaton: YWHW (Yod Heh Vav Heh);" I am that am", which Karen Armstrong says is the equivalent of NOYB. In Judges 13:18, the response was "Why do you ask my name, seeing it is incomprehensible? The Hindu theologian Shankara addressed Brahman as:"Thou before whom all words recoil." Or as the Tao Te Ching puts it: "the Tao that can be expressed is not the true Tao." Joseph Campbell said: "God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of human thought." God is ineffable. That is affirmed by mystics of all major world religions, who tell us that it is easier to say what God is not than what (S)he is. We can encounter God and have some rudimentary understanding of the concept--hopefully enough to get us by--but a full understanding is above our pay grade. God is the Ground of Being, or ultimate meaning--which is, among other things, the summation of human idealism. "God is Love" is a useful working definition in relating to the Deity and to each other.