What exactly is God?

There is only 1 true God

 

Hi All,

I have studied many different belief systems, meditated for about 20 years. The Bhagavad Gita is the one book that speaks to me most. I try to strip away dogma and look at the core of everything.

I believe everything that ever was, is or will be is part of the Divine. In some sense we are all figments of god's imagination. All facets on an infinite jewel. Einstein proved that there is no such thing as solid matter. everything is vibrations. matter is just condensed energy. Also Einstein proved that matter is only "solid" when observed. (spooky!) (re - dual slit experiment) So all these vibrations, where do they come from? Vibrations must have a source. That source is the Divine. So we are all part of God.

I don't think in terms of the Divine being some old dude on a throne, god is a force, THE force, and the Supreme Consciousness. Reality consists of layers. we reside in one of those layers. Everything in our universe and possibly infinite other universes exists because of the will of this force.

It is possible to commune with the Divine. Meditate for long enough and you can have an out of body experience. Or you can do what Bill Hicks suggested and eat a fist full of dried mushrooms. One just gets you there quicker. But I believe the practice of meditation is crucial to the mushroom method. You have to steer your consciousness.

So I'm god, you're god, that rock over there is god but a part does not equal the whole. God is everything, Even my morning poots and even evil politicians. but for an individual soul - you have to find your Way. The way of love, compassion, forgiveness and growth. This Way leads you toward the source. Eventually.

 

Oh yeah, I am an ordained Christian minister and taught a few classes at the local Baptist pie palace. But found the Divine can not be restricted to one belief system. Jesus's name was really Yeshua (Joshua) and he quoted Krishna, the Buddha and LaoTzu very often. That seems to upset the local baptists. I really don't attend anymore. I try to be in a constant state of worship and awareness. Since everything is Divine, treat it as such.

 

God is ineffable. There are stories though, if one cares to partake.

 

The mystical is what is meant by God.

 

No one can be alone . Well , perhaps for a strange moment whether anxious or divine , and then a relationship
will choose you .

 

As per the ancient Rig Veda...

Prajñānam brahma - Brahman is pure consciousness (Aitareya Upanishad 3.3 of the Rig Veda)

This implies that Brahman or God is of the nature of pure consciousness.

Nirguna Brahman is pure consciousness of an impersonal nature.


Saguna Brahman is pure consciousness of a personal nature.


Shiva is considered as the greatest personification of Saguna Brahman, and was worshipped by the likes of Rama and Krishna themselves.


The Shiva linga is a oval shaped stone worshipped as a symbol of God in Shaivite temples. The Vedas and Shaivite scriptures consider the Shivalinga to a be a cosmic pillar of light. In the yogic philosophy, the Linga is considered the first form to arise when creation occurs, and also the last form before the dissolution of creation.

As per the monotheistic religious sect called the Prajapita Brahmakumaris, the form of the Shiva linga denotes God as a point of light.

The Prajapita Brahmakumaris associate the Shivalinga with Jehovah, Allah and Ahura Mazda of the other monotheistic religions.

 

What exactly is God?
Ans: Truth.

Truth is the only reality. Anything else is untrue and unreal.

However, most people are deluded (untrue). They don't know you are deluded because you are deluded.

 

there's no god

 

Question:Are we God sir?

Sri Aurobindo: In a sense we are the tail end of God.

 

God is the imaginary name we give to an imaginary being that fits into our hard-wired need to imagine we can live forever. Hinduism is simply the oldest and most cluttered of major religions.

Yes, I understand that the spiritual goal of Hinduism is to get off the wheel, to be free of the cycle of rebirth, and to attain a state that's beyond words, beyond bliss, and beyond our limited perspective. That sounds pretty desirable to me, and unattainable for most. Until then, there are many Hindu heavens.
Hare, Bulgakov

 

A celestial being with great power from beyond the stars

 

My concept of God differs from yours in three ways": I don't think (1) (S)he's necessarily "imaginary"; or that (2) our desire for eternal life is necessarily our main motive for believing in God. Instead, I think (3) the idea of god(s) is multi-functional, and arose from a broader range of psychological and societal needs. Here's why:

1. I think God is still a useful concept in accounting for the integrated complexity of the universe, denoting the sum of human idealism, and making sense of personal experience of the numinous . There are good reasons to be skeptical that God is the "Dude in the Sky", although the vast majority of people in the U.S. continue to believe that. My concept of God is closer to the Hindu Brahman, Plato's Monad, Emerson's Oversoul, Hegel's Absolute. Einstein said he believed in the God of Spinoza, and I believe in Einstein's God. Also, the God of physicists Freeman Dyson, Paul Davies, John Polkinghorne, and Chet Raymo. I think of God as a working hypothesis. postulate or (as Luther put it) "joyful bet". I'd hasten to add that I realize my concept of God is likely to be far removed from the reality, which most theologians agree is ineffable. A fellowship group I belong to uses the term "Great Mystery" in place of God during prayer. But Bruce Mazet, in Skeptic magazine surveyed the evidence of "fine tuning" in light of the leading alternative explanation to God, M-theory, and noted "there is no evidence whatsoever that this infinite number of hypothetical universes exists, and...no means by which to obtain any such evidence. He concludes "if it is acceptable to postulate the existence of hypothetical universes, it is acceptable to postulate the existence of God".Skeptics Society--The Case for God Likewise, physicist Paul Davies, after reviewing the evidence for M-theory against that for design in explaining fine tuning opts for the latter on the basis of Occam's razor and theoretical parsimony.

2. I'm skeptical that we believe in God mainly because of some "hard-wired" need for immortality, mainly because: (a) a major civilization, Israel, went through most of its history without belief in an afterlife; (b) the Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman civilizations thought of the afterlife as a shitty existence for everybody; and (c) most primal religions believed in an afterlife but not gods. Until the post-exilic period and Jewish revolt against the Seleucid occupation in the second century BCE, the Israelites and Judaens didn't believe in an afterlife, but did believe God would reward or punish humans in this life. After the revolt, the Pharisees and Essenes developed the idea of an afterlife, but the Sadduccees who controlled the Temple cult rejected that belief. Many Jews believed in Sheol, a kind of bleak existence after this life where humans existed as warehoused "shades". This was also basically the view of the Babylonians, Greeks and Romans in ancient times. But before the Axial Age, the preoccupation of most ancient peoples was in securing benefits and avoiding penalties from gods in this life. Primal religions often have a belief in a "Happy Hunting Ground" inhabited by ancestors that people visit in their dreams. But most of these peoples have no belief in gods, in the sense of supernatural beings with jurisdictions over nature, as opposed to the animist notion of the things encountered in nature having spirits of their own. I, myself, have no belief in an afterlife, and will be very surprised if I wake up after death.

3. I think God, spirits or supernatural beings are a multi-functional concepts, meeting a diverse set of psychological and social needs. The concept is probably not directly hardwired into our psyches, but human psychology makes it easy to develop the concept. For individuals, it reflects our cognitive tendencies to seek patterns, to explain and ascribe agency to our surroundings; to address what Atran calls our existential anxieties; and to believe what trusted elders tell us. For societies, it provides the glue of shared belies and values, reinforcement for social norms, and legitimation for governments, elites and clergy. After going through these in his book Breaking the Spell, atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett wonders why religion continues to exist. I think he answered his own question.

 

That makes him (or her) a pure hypothesis

 

Not only that :-D

As soon as we're trying to define God we're bound to get hypothetical to some extent

 

I enjoyed reading your answers, and thanks for offering them. You have an academic's grasp of the histories of thought on the subject.

Since your thoughts are well thought out and ordered, I'll have to answer them as I am able.

 

One of the ideas in Hindu philosophy is that God cannot be known by thinking. Whatever idea of the Divine we can think of is only an idea, a representation in mental terms, and not the Divine itself. The Divine is not a kind of final thought or idea, but something that goes beyond all our conceptual thinking.

Whatever we say or think about God is only our thoughts. A crude analogy would be that I can think of Africa, but unless I go there I won't actually experience Africa..
The goal of all systems of yoga is the actual experience or realization of the Divine.