A God who needed no temple, transcended all, was accessible to or within everyone

[Guest guest]

Karen Armstrong, A History of God

Ballantine Books, 1993

ISBN-13: 978-0345384560

 

A history of the concept of God

 

Is the Universe wholly apart from God, or is Creation in some sense,

a part of God? Is God solely One in nature, or is there a Threeness,

or a Manyness, or an Infinitude to God? Is God knowable or beyond

knowledge? Is God personal or impersonal? Does God have feelings?

Billions of people have had an opinion on these matters, and that's

the subject of this groundbreaking book. Those who depend upon the

unshakeableness of their beliefs may find this book upsetting or

worse, but to those who consider and question their faith, Karen

Armstrong's A History of God will be challenging and illuminating,

and perhaps, as I found it, even thrilling.

 

The title goes for brevity over accuracy. Perhaps it could have been

titled " A History of the Idea of God in Judaism, Christianity and

Islam, " but that would have lacked panáche, to say the least.

Armstrong concentrates on the changes in the concept of God,

particularly the unique aspects of monotheistic theology, for

instance, God as separate from Creation, God having a " personal "

nature, and so forth.

 

Religious cultures in conflict

 

Armstrong makes theological history simply fascinating. Beginning

with the evidence for near-universal worship of a Sky God in

prehistory, Armstrong traces the shift from the Sky God to the Earth

Mother to polytheism, and then focuses on the revolutionary

development of Abraham's faith in one God which would clash with

Canaanite, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian paganism for the next 1500

years. Many Christians interested in objective Biblical scholarship

are familiar with the " Documentary Hypothesis " of the Pentateuch

stemming from sources J, E, P, and D. Yet never have I seen an

attempt to reconstruct the history and interplay of these

perspectives throughout ancient Israel and the surrounding regions,

and not in my wildest dreams would I have imagined it would be so

illuminating...

 

For instance, Armstrong shows the revolutionary effect of the

prophets in Judaism, beginning with Isaiah, at the time when the J

and E material was still being written. She shows that prophetic

Judaism was an " Axial religion, " a development of the Axial age when

cities became the centers of culture in Asia and the Mediterranean.

Other Axial religious developments included the teachings of

Socrates, Plato, Zoroaster, the Upanishadic sages, the Buddha, Lao-

tse, and Confucius. These all taught a universal ethic, insisting

that God or the Absolute needed no temple, transcended all, was

accessible to or within everyone, and that compassion was the highest

virtue.

 

The prophets' teaching that " God desires mercy, and not sacrifice, "

was in sharp contrast to the priestly, Temple-based establishment,

which insisted the Temple was the ultimate dwelling on God on Earth,

having chosen the Israel out of all the nations. (This was the

beginning of a clash which would endure until John the Baptist and

the ministry of Jesus.)

 

But this is just the beginning. Instead of specializing on a single

religion or period in time, Armstrong boldly takes up all the threads

of theology throughout the four millennia of the monotheistic

religions. With them, she weaves a tapestry of our collective

religious experience which can help us understand our faith and

ourselves better. Subsequent chapters focus on the life of Christ,

early Christian theologies, understandings (and misunderstandings) of

Trinity, the influence of Greek philosophy upon Christianity and

Islam, mysticism, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and

Fundamentalism.

 

Three Persons or three personae?

 

A special treat is her insight on Trinitarian thought. It was a

surprise to learn that the term " persons " in " One God in three

Persons " came from the Latin word personae, referring to the masks of

characters in a drama. Personae was the Latin translation of the

Greek word hypostases, " expressions. " The different words used in

Greek and Latin to describe the Trinity reflected (and influenced)

very different understandings of God's nature. For the Eastern

bishops, the Trinity described how One God, whose essence (ousia) is

mysterious, ineffable, utterly beyond and above being known or

described in any way, imparts his energies (energeia) to Creation

through the expressions (hypostases) of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In other words, the Eastern view of the Trinity reconciled knowledge

of God as both personal and beyond personal, knowing and loving in

his expressions, and yet beyond any human conception at all in

essence. Have you ever heard it like that before?

 

World-wide paradigm shifts

 

Brilliant also is her ability to relate the historic phenomena of

mysticism, reformation, rationalism, and fundamentalism beyond just

the Christian perspective, into a world-wide perspective

simultaneously developing in all " the religions of God. " Her

revelation that the Reformation was not just a Protestant

reformation, but a universal one is a brilliant example. As the

printing press spread, the authority of the written word took on

unprecedented dimensions. Galileo, she points out, was condemned by

the Catholic Church not because his heliocentric universe conflicted

with any doctrine or dogma, but because it contradicted an extremely

literal reading of the Bible.

 

Especially helpful is her knowledge about Islamic history with

revealing treatments on philosophical and mystical eras in Islam,

before the relatively recent phenomenon of Islamic Fundamentalism. It

was fascinating to learn that some Sufi schools were so devoted to

Jesus that they adapted the Shahada to " there is no God but God, and

Jesus is His Prophet. "

 

A History of God

The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

www.frimmin.com/books/historyofgod.html

 

 

A God who is in the deepest sense of the word subjective

 

" People, such as the ulema, might be unable to understand the Islam

of a Sufi like Ibn al-Arabi. Muslim tradition makes Khidr the master

of all who seek a mystic truth, which is inherently superior to and

quite different from the God which is the same as everybody else's

but to a God who is in the deepest sense of the word subjective. "

 

Karen Armstrong, A History of God

Ballantine Books, 1993, p. 237.

ISBN-13: 978-0345384560

 

Main Entry: subjective

(1): peculiar to a particular individual : personal (subjective

judgments)

(2): a: modified or affected by personal views, experience, or

background (a subjective account of the incident)

b: arising from conditions within the brain or sense organs and not

directly caused by external stimuli (subjective sensations)

c: arising out of or identified by means of one's perception of one's

own states and processes (a subjective symptom of disease)

 

Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary

 

 

Muslims, Hindus, Christians and all have to evolve to a higher state

 

" That you have to be born again, that you have to be baptized, that

you have to become a Pir, that you have to become a Brahmin — all

these descriptions have come to us from all the great scriptures. It

is very easy to say that we don't believe in God, we don't believe in

any Incarnation, we don't believe in Jesus, we don't believe in any

religion, we don't believe into anything; is very easy to say. Even

it is easy to say that we believe in them, we believe in God, we

believe in Christ, we believe in Krishna, Rama, all that. Both things

are equally the same.

 

When you believe in God you believe in the darkness and ignorance,

and when you do not believe in Him also you are in ignorance. By

believing into you close your eyes, accept the faith and go along

with it. Of course it shows that you are conscious of some Power

which is beyond. Such people have a great chance. But in the case if

you go to these extremes in this kind of faith then you start only

believing in Christ, only believing in Muhammad, only believing in

Krishna — I mean depending on where you are born. How human beings

are so narrow-minded?

 

If you are born in England either you will be a Catholic, or a

Protestant, or maybe one of these witchcraft people. You believe into

anything because you are localized in a place; there has been some

identifications because your mother believed into something, because

your father believed into something, or you paid for it. And this

faith can become such a blinding effect on people that you develop

absurd types of groups which call themselves as Christians, Hindus,

Muslims — whatever you may say — and are extremely, extremely

exclusive, blind, and fanatic. "

 

Shri Mataji Shri Nirmala Devi, Being Born Again

Caxton Hall, London, U.K. — May 12, 1980

 

 

" The religion of Christianity or any religion is the religion of the

living God. At different times, there were great flowers on the Tree

of Life, but we plucked them and said, " This is mine; this is mine "

and we are fighting the dead. But in Sahaja Yoga, you will know the

beauty of all these great prophets and you will be amazed how they

have enriched us; all of them. "

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Christian tradition and Christ

Vienna, Austria - 8 September, 1984

 

 

" The Kundalini rises through a very thin line of Brahmanadi. In the

beginning only a hair like thing rises, it pierces through. In some

people, of course, in a big way it rises also. And then it pierces

this fontanel bone area which is a real baptism, real. Today only

people felt the cool breeze coming out of their heads. Can you do

that by jumping, or by paying money? They felt the cool breeze in the

hand. It's written in the Bible, even in the Bible very clearly, that

it's the cool breeze. Cool breeze is the sign of the Holy Ghost. You

start feeling the cool breeze in your hands and you start feeling the

cool breeze on your head. This is the actualization.

 

Of course, you people don't read other books which are very good,

like Adi Shankaracharya. People don't even like the mention of his

name who has really and clearly said that it is the cool breeze, the

chaitanya, is to be felt like cool breeze in the hands. They do not

want that you should know the truth. And this is the truth that when

you get your realization, you have to feel the cool breeze in your

hands yourself. You have to judge yourself. I'm not going to tell

you. It is you who has to see, it is you who has to feel. And then

you have to grow and you have to know all and everything - all the

secrets of Divine Science. You become the master then, you are the

guru.

 

You are the Spirit, and you should get it. It's your own which is

given to you. I have nothing to do about it. I'm just a catalyst. "

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

Maccabean Hall, Australia on March 22, 1981

 

 

" The Spirit resides in our heart; it's the reflection of God

Almighty. In Sanskrit language, this aspect of God which is all-

pervading and is the first and the last, is called as Sadashiva; is

the Father, who does not incarnate. We say Yehovah, we can say, or

the God who does not incarnate. This great aspect which encompasses

everything ultimately and also manifests everything is the reflection

within our heart as the Spirit. This aspect is just the witness

aspect; it witnesses the play of its power, the Primordial Power, the

Holy Ghost, to see what is created by Her. He's the only enjoyer of

the game. He sees the game, the Leela, the fun. She organises

everything, it is She who gets divided into three powers, it is She

who creates the whole universe, it is She who gives us this

evolution, it is She who makes us human beings and it is She who has

to make us the higher human being. That's the Holy Ghost, the

Primordial Holy Ghost and the reflection of that is this Kundalini

within us. "

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

Sat-Chit-Ananda, Houston, Texas, Oct 7, 1981

 

 

Question: I am a Muslim who absolutely am against worshipping of any idol or

image. How then is Sahaja Yoga and Shri Mataji compatible with Islam?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: We are devout Christians who are very uncomfortable with Hindu

rituals, and see the same in Sahaja Yoga. Is there any way we can do without

such rituals?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: You loudly claim on your website that all religions and holy

scriptures preach the same message. I don't see such evidence. What have you got

to say?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: I do not want to meditate on anything non-Christian but agree that the

Holy Spirit is feminine. How do I only worship the Holy Spirit but not the Adi

Shakti?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: I completely agree with your belief that if you have to take a single

step in any direction to seek the Divine you are going the wrong way. How and

why did you reach this incredible conclusion only now despite spending so many

years meditating, checking the scriptures and listening to Shri Mataji's

speeches?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: I do not want to follow any religious organization or yoga teacher but

still am interested in spirituality. You think that is possible?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: I am a Sikh. I am completely against any Hindu ritual or worshipping

of their idols and gods. Sikhism is completely against such practices. But

Sahaja Yoga is also so full of such rituals and gods. What have you got to say,

being a Sikh yourself?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: I am getting somewhat ridiculed for my own spiritual experiences

regarding the crown chakra and the divine feminine. People think I'm weird by

emphasizing that the Devi is the true nature of brahman and it is creating doubt

about my path (despite my own experiences). Should I continue with my

meditations and ignore them or try to explain to them? What do you suggest?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: There is so much information about yoga and meditation. I am so

confused and do not know which path to take. What then is the truth? How do I

attain it?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: I have been in Sahaja Yoga for years but still do not know what is

Self-realization. Can you tell me in detail what you understand by it?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: I am a Muslim living in Pakistan who want to practice Sahaja Yoga. But

there are no centers here. How can I continue?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: I do not want to join Sahaja Yoga but believe in a number of Shri

Mataji's teachings. Can you help me?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: What is the shortest and surest route to realize God?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: Some religions claim that humans are divine in nature and that

liberation is from within. Can you tell me how all this is realized in such a

hectic and materialistic world?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: What is the most profound and deepest enlightenment you have

discovered after all these years, based on the teachings of Shri Mataji? She

also claims that all religions teach the same truth about the spirit. How is

that so given all the religious differences and centuries-old rivalry?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: Hi, man-made religions, sects and denominations are wide spread. So

much misdeeds and divisions are committed and blood is shed in the name of God

and religion. Is there a way to make humans realize that they are all

worshipping the One and same Creator, no matter how different religious

organizations have made God to be?

 

Answer: Silence on Self

 

 

Question: It seems that religions are all preaching about a God that is to be

found only in their organizations. Why then is it that the Divine can only be

realized through one's own experience? What and where is God then?

 

Answer: Silence on Self