“God is addressed differently

[Guest guest]

…… " God is addressed differently by different groups of

people and also personally by individuals through

various names. God, the unseen, is thus addressed

differently as He does not have a single form. His

manifested forms are millions and millions. These

forms maybe visible to the human eye or may not be. He

has gross forms, subtle forms, energy forms, thought

forms, feeling forms. But the ultimate form of God is

an unseen form, which no one has seen. All Saints,

paths and religions, at their best, have called it a

vast, timeless, spaceless, causeless, attributeless

ocean of emptiness or a primordial void

 

Whatever God reveals about Himself through the sense

and beyond perceptions to the human beings, is what

they understand Him to be. Species other than human

beings are not mentally evolved to conceptualize that

the movements in the universe and also in them are

created by God as their soul-force. The excellence and

superiority of the homo-sapiens lies here. Not only do

they have the capacity to conceptualise God in myriads

of forms but they have also worked through the methods

to experience God at different stages of

consciousness. Whereas other religions have

conceptualized a limited number of these forms of God,

Hinduism, being one of the oldest religions on this

earth has created thousands of symbols for millions of

aspects of the unlimited God. This has not happened in

a day or year. It has evolved through the passage of

time of thousands of years through the experience of

practitioners who have devoted their full lives to the

realm of spiritualism.

 

The universally accepted principle of experiencing God

can be explained through the parallelism of a river

meeting an ocean or sea. All rivers emanating from

different places (locations), meandering through

different lands and paths ultimately merge in sea.

Thereafter, forever the river is a part of the sea. It

merges its total identity in it. When we think of the

Bay of Bengal, we do not picturise is it as a

combination of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and other

similar rivers and thousands of other water channels

merging in it. Herein comes the concept of multiplism

and dualism leading to Monism (Advaita). Since each of

these rivers flows on different soils, through

different hills and forests, takes different curves

and falls, the attributes of the water it carries

cannot be the same - i.e., in content, speed, density,

quality and quantity. However, once merged in the sea,

all its qualities merge and become one with the

attributes of the seawater.

 

 

Different religions and paths that people follow are

like these different rivers. It is wrong to criticize

any of these religions and paths. One is free to

practice any path he chooses, but is socially and

morally not free to slander other religions or paths.

 

This is what Shri Sai Nath Maharaj taught his

disciples through His own conduct and precepts. Shri

Sai Satcharitra amply elaborates on this universalism

of Baba in the backdrop of some day-to-day happenings

at Shirdi. Following the Master, Sai devotees should,

therefore, develop the highest quality of religious

tolerance. As Baba used to say all are the children of

God and He is the only and ultimate Lord. " …….