Is there a God?

Most of the saints and sages of the past are mostly social reformers, thus they are more concerned to the humanism rather than the truth. Their contribution is very valuable to live in the practical world.  But their contribution is not the means for acquire Self-Knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana.   Thus, humanism is part and parcel of the universe, which is mere illusion.

That is why Swami Vivekananda said: ~ “You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.”

Mundaka Upanishad:~ Ignorant fools, regarding sacrifices and humanitarian works as the highest, do not know any higher good. Having enjoyed their reward on the heights of heaven, gained by good works, they enter again this world or a lower one. (First Mundaka -10-   Chapter I Source: "the Upanishads - a new translation" by swami nikhilananda in four volumes)

The humanism is limited to practical life within the practical world.    The path of love is the path for humanity therefore, it is individualized path. Thus,  the path of love is limited to the physical structure, it cannot transport one to ultimate end.  Thus,  THE seeker has to understand the fact that the practical life and practical world are part of the mirage from the ultimate standpoint. 

The simple reason is that the average person may have the desire for knowledge but when the whole society is immersed in belief system and feeling himself   out of place because of societal fear and surroundings circumstances and he thinks it unfits him to pursue the path of truth. 

That is why Buddha said:~

Do not believe a spiritual teaching just because:-

1. it is repeatedly recited,
2. it is written in a scripture,
3. it was handed from guru to disciple,
4. everyone around you believes it,
5. it has supernatural qualities,
6. it fits my beliefs anyway,
7. it sounds rational to me,
8. it is taught by a respectable person,
9. it was said to be the truth by the teacher,
10. one must defend it or fight for it.

However, only when it agrees with your experience and reason, and when it is conducive to the good and gain of oneself and all others, then one should accept the teachings, and live up to them."
....Buddha.

The seeker of truth is one who is ready verify and has courage to accept and reject the truth when he finds out what is truth and what is untruth. The meek will stick to their inherited conditioning remain experiencing duality as reality.

The quest of truth begins with inquiring:-

• v  Is there a God?
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• v  What is his nature? 

There has to be a proof.When such questions arise then it is the starting point of the quest for truth. Everyone has their own idea of god or no God, according to his parental grooming or accepted idea through circumstances. But he must know god as Truth. One must have proof of that God has created man and the world,because, no one has seen god creating the creation. One can only assume or imagine about the existence of god. God exists only for those who accept the belief system. 

• v  Why did God create pain and pleasure?
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• v  Why does he crate pleasure and make one indulge in pleasure? 
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• v  Why does he torture people with misery, new epidemics, terrorism, and wars?
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• v  Has God no better business to do? Why he created pain and pleasure in his creation?
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• v  Is god a sadist and teaching people lessons through these violence and sufferings.
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• v  What lesson can God teach the people died in terrorism and wars, which is going on in the name of religion and god?
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• v  How can one accept that God is all-merciful when he constantly displeases all humanity with hide and seek play of pain and pleasure? 
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• v  How does one know that man is related to God?
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• v  Why God created injustice, oppression, starvation, poverty, exploitation, inequality, slavery, epidemics, violence and wars?"

Only through scriptures one is saying man and world are the creation of god. No one has ever seen God, creating this universe, that he has manifested himself is merely supposed. Even it may be god’s creation, but how do one know, because man and world were not in existence prior to his creation. Man is talking of gods’ creation only after god created it. The religion, scriptures saints and sages prophets came into existence only after the creation came into existence. Therefore, the scriptures cannot be taken as proof.

The saints and sages, prophets, might have been imagined the existence of god. To accept these scriptures blindly without reasoning is to possess the sheepish mentality. 

Inquiry implies doubt, proof, evidence, so that even if God were to come and say that He is God, one would inquire into the truth of the statement. People are overawed by doctrines enunciated upon authority of some god men or religion or scripture.

The truth is universal, not individual. The truth must be tested.  If it is true, it will survive the test and will bear proof, without any scriptural authority to support it.  The idea of god cannot stand without the religious authority.  The religious authority suggests the existence of God, but it cannot prove his existence. Blindly believing and belief is not the proof, because the belief is not God. 

The truth has to be uncontradictable and it has to universally applicable. The truth has to be common for all people who pursue inquiry to the utmost extent. The world often appears to be a reality when it is not properly inquired into. Even if most of the population declare that this world is the ultimate reality, their assertion is of less value than the assertions of a seekers of truth who have inquired into the nature and reality of the world and found it to be an idea. 

The conviction of the ultimate  truth comes only by adequate reasoning in the right direction. The bookish knowledge is not the means to acquire Self-Knowledge;there must be reasoning on them to know they are speaking of the uncontradictable truth. 

Some have got faith in a particular religion or teaching. Some have no faith in them. Thus, there is a contradiction. Nothing can be done about it. In the real truth there can be no contradiction, nor any possibility of it. 

How does one know there a God? The onus of proof is on the one who makes this assertion. Without proof one should not accept any doctrine. To reason means to go to the very end of things. 

Verification, the testing and proving of truth, is absolutely necessary in pursuit of truth;in religion the truth is merely assumed. 

There are degrees of truth, most doctrines are partially correct in coming,  gradually nearer to the truth and thus pointing towards it. Only non-dual alone cannot be contradicted, all others are contradictable. The religion is based assuming the existence of god.Mere assuming the existence of the god makes one accept the duality as reality.  The idea of god makes one think he an individual separate from the world and the idea of god. Until this conviction is there discovering, assimilating and realizing the ultimate truth is impossibility. 

As deeper self-search reveals the fact that,the nature of truth is non-dual. It can never be changed under any circumstances. It may be misrepresented. It must apply to the whole of existence, to the whole of the three states. It is in the experience of duality alone that one has all changes.

The ultimate truth remains unchanged and remains immortal. It can never die for it never changes. The mind is seen, and goes, but the witness or knower of the mind, can never go. Seeker has to take this principle as his guiding thread and non-dual truth becomes easy to assimilate.

 The reality can never be subject to the changes of the unreal; it is unchanged. The mistake usually made is that real becomes unreal, or that unreal is real. 

Scholastic or mystic argument leads nowhere. If one says “God is formless “another will say, God has a form. If one says "this scriptures has higher than all other scriptures” another will say, "No, that is lower and there are many scriptures higher than that." It is impossible to get anywhere with such talk because both sides are merely assuming and imagining. Truth means the absence of conflict.

The consciousness (spirit) dwell in all the three states as their formless substance and witness. People worship only images or their belief, thinking that God is there. People do not recognize the  Spirit as  Self to be the real God, but that they do not realize that god, as the spirit, which pervades in everything and everywhere in all the three states.

The ignorant people are not capable of   discriminate and reason to unfold the mystery of the mind. Therefore, they will not be able to grasp the non-dual truth. It is the realization of the true self that will free one from bondage of duality, which he experiences as reality.  But the belief system makes them to believe the duality is reality therefore, they cannot think beyond physicality. The individualized god can exist only in duality. 

No one has ever seen God; they only heard or read about him. Some may claim they seen him in their vision. But vision is mere an experience similar to dream. If one takes the visions as real then the dream also has to be taken as reality. Observe how one religion is inimical towards another. Why has God created them so? 

 No one knows god’s capacities, what he can create, and what he cannot create. Therefore, any statement one might make about God would only be a lie, because god can exist only when man exists, and believes in the belief of god. If there is no belief then there is no god. Thus, God is the religious software used in belief system.  If the software is discarded then it is only physical existence that prevails.  The truth will unfold only when one is able to know the truth beyond the physical existence. 

The truth of religion can only be proved by physical strength or by imagination, or power of the weapon or political power, never by reason. Belief in religious prohibitions arises out of fear of God's punishment. Religion is not truth merely because it always shows the contradiction.

Seeker of truth has to regard the theosophy in the same way as he regards the idea of God of religion.  Mere assuming or imagining the gods’ existence through belief will remain as belief. 

The belief is not truth, because every religion has its own belief, thus belief is limited to individuality, so it is not universal.  The belief cannot be god,because to believe in something man has to exist prior to god to believe. Until and unless one finds the answer for: with what the physical body is able to function itself as a person and perceive the world, the truth will not be unfolded.  The truth is based on the power which holds the physical existence, not on the physical existence, which appears and disappears.

Religionists place God as the unknown reality and they base everything on the creation and creator theory. Every religionist has a different idea of God. Every man has a different idea of reality, hence there is a need to know the ultimate truth. The fallacy of religionist’s appeal to scripture lies in the varying and conflicting interpretations of the same scripture which different persons feel entitled to give or hold. 

Therefore, one has overcome all the inherited conditioning of belief system to unfold the mystery of the physical existence(mind).  Reason is common to all, whereas belief system is based on individual speculation and imagination.  The truth cannot be based on the belief system or on its scriptures.  

Scriptures can be interpreted in a many different ways and hence can never finally determine truth. Many scholars, god men, priests and intellectuals, each have different interpretations for example.  Most people take their own interpretations and call it truth. 

The God exists only when the man exists. Man and his experience of the world exist only when the mind exists. Therefore, it is necessary to unfold the truth of man’s existence, before investigating about gods’ existence.   Until and unless one is able to unfold the mystery of the mind, which appears and disappears, he will not be able to know the reality of the true existence. 

Individualized God propagated by the belief system can exist only within experience of duality(waking). Deeper self-search revels the fact that, the self is not physical, but it is the formless spirit. The experience of duality(universe or mind) is a mere mirage on the standpoint of the formless soul, the innermost self.  When one finds the fact that,  the self is not physical than reasoning on the physical base is erroneous . Therefore, one has to base the reason on the formless soul, the innermost  self.  Whatever is seen known believed and experienced as a person within the waking is bound to be falsehood, because they are based on the false physical self. The seeker can become aware of the fact that, physical existence is a mere mirage, when he indulges in deeper self-search. 

Thus, man and his experience of the world and his belief of God is part and parcel of the mirage. The mirage is created, sustained by spirit and finally it dissolves as consciousness.  The formless substance and witness of the mirage is real and eternal.

Reason is not intuition but that which exercise of the  thinking  the formless base in order to acquire the non-dualistic truth. When it is rectified, the closer to truth one proceeds.

Therefore,soul-centric  reasoning is necessary in order to unfold the mystery of the physical existence(universe or mind) to realize the fact that, the physical existence is a mere mirage.  Only the ultimate truth can be taken as God, because God is not an entity or identity within the experience of diversity(waking)  because God is formless soul, which is present in the form of consciousness. The  consciousness  pervades in everything and everywhere in all the three states.Thus, consciousness is the ultimate reality and ultimate reality is God.