How You Can Talk With God

[Guest guest]

Is God Personal or Impersonal?

 

Is God personal or impersonal? A little discussion on this point will

help you in your attempts to communicate with Him. Many people don't

like to think of the Lord as personal; they feel that an

anthropomorphic conception is limiting. They consider Him to be

Impersonal Spirit, All-Power, the Intelligent Force that is

responsible for the universe.

 

But if our Creator is impersonal, how is it that He has created human

beings? We are personal; we have individuality. We think, feel, will;

and God has given us not only the power to appreciate the thoughts and

feelings of others but to respond to them. The Lord is surely not

devoid of the spirit of reciprocity that animates His own creatures.

When we permit it, our Heavenly Father can and will establish a

personal relationship with each one of us.

 

Considering the impersonal aspect of God, we get the impression of a

Remote Being, One who merely receives the prayer-thoughts we offer,

without responding to them; One who knows everything, yet maintains a

heartless silence. But this is a philosophical error, because God is

everything: personal as well as impersonal. He created persons, human

beings. Their Originator could not be wholly impersonal.

 

It satisfies a deep need in our hearts to think that God may take a

human form and come to us and talk with us. Why doesn't He do it for

everyone? Many saints have heard the voice of God. Why can't you?

" Thou, O Lord, art invisible, impersonal, unknown, and unknowable; yet

I believe that by my devotion's frost, Thou canst be 'frozen' into a

form. " God can be persuaded to take a personal form by your intense

devotion. You, like St. Francis of Assis and other great ones, may see

the living body of Christ, if you pray deeply enough. Jesus was a

personal manifestation of God. He who knows Brahma (God) is Brahma

himself. Did not Christ say: " I and my Father are one " ? (John 10:30).

Swami Shankara also declared: " I am Spirit " and " Thou art That. " We

have the word of many great prophets that all men are made in the

image of Divinity.

 

I receive much of my knowledge from God, rather than from books. I

seldom read. I tell you what I have perceived directly. That is why I

speak with authority, the authority of my direct perception of Truth.

The opinion of the whole world may stand against it, but the authority

of direct perception will always be accepted eventually.

 

Contd...