the God/Brahman

There are a lot of misconceptions about God among men. Since the beginning of time man has always felt that there is a force in the world which creates and sustains the whole universe including man himself. But this force is ultimately unknowable, because it transcends the human faculties of time, space and causality and cannot therefore be grasped by human thinking. That's the reason man has tried to picture this primordial force for himself in familiar images. Man wondered about the world and his own life and came to the conclusion that the world and everything in it was manufactured by some craftsman. But unconsciously he made this conclusion by analogy of his own doings. He thought of creation as a manufacture. And in doing so he had to make, again by analogy, the force responsible for creation into a man much alike himself. Because he could not represent anything else.

There were some psychological tendencies working in man which aided this process of anthropomorphic representation. From the beginning man's life was always destitute. He was in want of nearly everything, of food, of housing, of warmth in wintertime, of caring by friends and relatives. He was also plagued by numerous diseases and from time to time there were conflicts and wars with neighboring tribes and peoples. He felt instinctively that by letting the creative force of nature (which had made him a priori and which wanted him to be strong, happy and without cares) help him, his troubles would be reduced. So he focused on this force in times of trouble. He anchored back to it, so to speak. Inwardly he went back to his source and made contact with it in the only way he could fancy himself communication: he spoke with it. But because this connection with the force became verbally (out of ignorance with other kinds of communications), the relation between man and the force became, again by analogy, a person to person-relationship. The force became a person, which man named God.

But the god/Brahman is a force, not a man. It is an image created by ignorance when one believes the god to be like man. But it is a mistake which is explainable and in some cases a useful mistake (if one believes that a fraus of the intellect can sometimes be pia). By imagining the god to be like man, the force becomes near to the person imagining. The human mind becomes tuned in to the force if one imagines him to be like oneself. It helps opening up the human mind for a lower state of samadhi (transcendental consciousness, a religious state of the mind wherein one makes contact with the force). So it is possible for a person to have mystical experiences by having a close relation with a personal god. From the standpoint of bhakti-yoga (the yoga of religious devotion as it is practiced by all the world religions) this personal devotion can lead to enlightenment, but it takes a long while and if this devotion is not accompanied by spiritual exercises it usually stays only a mood of the mind, not a state of being.

This is what Patanjali, the great Indian mystic who wrote about yoga in his Sutra's, meant by Isvara pranidanad va : people can come to samadhi by self surrender and devotion to the personal god (which is called Isvara in Indian mysticism). But from the standpoint of the yoga of intelligence believing in a personal god is a mistake. Brahman is a force too great to be restricted to the form of man (or a fortiori to any form since he is without limit).

The god is unfathomable strong and intelligent. It is the source of human intelligence. Human intelligence offers only a weak example of the intelligence of the god, because it is only a part of it, not the whole. The part is always weaker than the whole. You can see the intelligence of the force in the working of nature (but only in the amount that your own intelligence can conceive; in reality the intelligence is much greater). All the marvel which comes when one studies nature gives only a glimpse of the real intelligence which lies behind it. This intelligence is a creative force. In his being the force is unchangeable, but being capable of everything conceivable, the force can create, ie. change. With this faculty of change which is only an instance of its intelligence, the force produces the sensory world. From an enlightened point of view this sensory world is just an illusion, because the sensory world is only a variatio of the same unchangeable being, but not from an empirical point of view. With our sensory mind we can only see the sensory world, which changes continuously like our own mind changes continuously, not the substratum which lies at the root of it. Only the most inward part of our soul can see the unchangeable being, the force, because this most inward part is similar to it (like the semen in Stoic philosophy)

In all mystical literature, from all over the world and in all epochs, there is this same message which is being repeated time and again: the world as we conceive it is a mere shadow. Behind this world of the senses lies another world, the world of being, which is the substans of this world. This world of being, which we call the force, is the god/Brahman. It is distinct and separated from the sensory world, completely undisturbed by its changes, like a rock in the midst of a raging tempest. But at the same time it is the very core of the sensory world, because change, time, place and space could not for one moment exist without its sustaining. The force is the pediment of the artwork of nature. Without it this magnificent statue which we see around us would tumble over and collapse. So the force must be inferred from the sensory world for keeping it in equilibrium.

The Indians called the sensory world Maya. They considered it to be of lower and baser status than Brahman. All imperfections, cares and anxieties spring from Maya. They are all absent from the Brahman which lies at the root of Maya. Shankara, the gifted Indian philosopher of the seventh century AD, calls Maya an illusion. For him it is a world which is only seen and felt in ignorance. Once the mystic knowledge dawns on the man which is striving after perfection, he no longer considers the world of the senses to be of reality. It becomes like a dream, which we put of in the morning and to which we shrug. It is not essential anymore. The mystic laughs at Maya, like a child laughs at his countenances seen for the first time in a contorted mirror. The child knows that it's not him in the mirror. So the mystic knows that it is not him in Maya. The true person lies behind Maya.

But at the same time the great paradox of mystic knowledge is the fact that Maya and Brahman are one. Though in its essence separated and remaining totally unsoiled by the doings of the world, the force still is responsible for the world and working in it. In Christian metaphors: God the father has become God the son. The father and the son have an homoia ousia, they are essentially the same. Though in the mystical view the world of the senses is a mistake and a misinterpretation of true reality, it is some sort of a reality after all, like dreams also have there meaning and function. The simile is a telling one and not far fetched, because our dreams are also made up of elements of the waking world. So the sensory world is also made up of elements from the metaphysical world. So in all mystical texts you find this metaphor of the world of our senses being like a dream.

The difference between ordinary (and in a sense vulgar) religion and mysticism lies in the fact that mysticism considers the god to be inside of man and Christian dogma for instance, in its debased form (of course there are Christian mystics too who tell us another story), considers God to be outside of creation, and therefore out of man. Mysticism agrees with this dogma in so far as the boundless Urgrund of creation, which we call the force, stays apart from and is not changed or affected by creation. It always stays the same in its magnificent aloofness, like a saint is unaffected by the misery and corruption of the world. This distinctness of god with his creation, as told in Christian dogmatic texts, is confirmed by mystic texts. But the great difference, which cannot be stressed too much, between this dogma and the rapports of mystics is the following: in mysticism the god/ Brahman is at the same time apart from creation (it is the ever changeless being) and it is creation itself and therefore it is in man, immo it is man itself. The mystic has come by way of mystical experiences to the conclusion that he is godlike. He has experienced , and therefore it is true knowledge to him, what the poets have written all along, when they described man as godlike. That was not a hollow dream or a never attainable utopia, it was the mystic truth they described.

The mystic makes contact with the god inside in order to become that god. By turning inward and by becoming the stillness of the force, which is like a dormant volcano full of power, intelligence and happiness, he purifies himself from all imperfections and he becomes perfect. The glory of the force is that the mystic has only this simple message: turn inward and you'll become perfect. Because man is essentially perfect. It is his initial condition to be perfect. All a mystic wants to do is to go back to that initial phase.

In mysticism god is a negative concept. This means that all you can say about god is a negation: "God is not this, God is not that". The mystics mean by this sheer negation of any predicament of god that the god is ultimately unknowable for the human intelligence and therefore all kinds of communications about the god fall short of their goal. It is simply ridiculous to teach theology to people who have not experienced one way or another religious feelings. And for people who have had these experiences instruction is not necessary because they know already.

To the intellect the force can only be negated. But not to the feeling. Man can't say anything to give an adequate description of the god/Brahman. But in mysticism the great glory comes from the fact that after a time of inner purification the god is being experienced in all its majesty and its bliss, the only goal set by the mystic. By the lapse of time the mystic knows less and less about god, but he feels it more and more. That's why a truly religious person is not religious with his intellect but with his soul, with his inner being. He doesn't like to talk about the god because he can't formulate very well the words to describe it. This truly religious person -and only the mystic is truly religious- radiates his religion, he is religion, he is not religious in words, not even solely in deeds, but religious in being.

It is the goal of ones life to become god. There simply is no other goal in life. All other goals are mere substitutes and the long way home. One must make a short cut to happiness. In order to become god one must become completely empty, a nirvana. One must die his old worldly life and obtain the spiritual life. One must get rid of his ego to be a clean mirror of the force of nature. One must become innocent again, the innocence 'as it was in the beginning'.

Every mystic is not a person. I mean person in the Latin meaning of 'mask'. He has lost its mask, he has cast it away, he has got rid of it, because it covers and hides the true person he is. He has lost his ego, because the ego is nothing more than that mask. The ego is nothing more than a collection of superfluous remnants of the past. It is a source of great misery. It is ignorance of true reality. For the mystic in the long run it doesn't exist anymore.

Every mystic is a personality. He is so strong and full of love and inner contentment that everywhere he goes he leaves an impression. Everyone he meets takes strength from him, because he wears a Holy Robe, which one only needs to touch to feel happiness. Only the mystic is the truly happy man, because he 'walks with God'. The personality of the mystic is the personality of the god/Brahman. Everything strong, lovable, charismatic, beautiful -in short everything that makes up a personality- comes from the god. So the man who has become the god is the personality par excellence.

The god/Brahman is the source of everything beautiful in the world. So everything beautiful and worthwhile has a trace of the god in it. Where there is hate, misery and ugliness, there the god is absent. The god stays pure and unsullied amidst the doings of man. It is the only hope of mankind.

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