We all know who God is. God is the Supreme Force of the Universe. He is present everywhere and in everything. Yet He is a mystery to all of us. Those of us who have experienced and acknowledge the Love and Protection of God and have pondered over His Greatness, His Sublime Love, His Unending Compassion, His Strength, His Management of the Universe Skills find Him so awesome, overwhelming and magnificent. We cannot behold the wonder of God with our limited perceptions of time and space and He is beyond them. We get glimpse of God or the ParaBrahman during the course of our life and spiritual practices and even those small experiences are mind blowing. Our glimpse of God are like seeing the reflection of the Sun in the pond and being dazzled by the light and glory of reflection of the Sun in the waters of the pond.
God is Omnipresent. He is in every atom of life, creation and Universe. He is within all of us and yet beyond all of us. When we look at the skies at night, any stars that we see are a part of our Milky Way. Our Milky Way is said to contain 200 to 400 billion stars. Our solar system is a very tiny part of the Milky Way – if we assume size of our solar system to be size of a rupee coin, we could say that the Milky Way is larger the size of India. The size of Milky Way is approximately 100,000 light years in diameter. There are countless Milky Ways in the Universe. The human mind fails in comprehending the colossal vastness of the size of universe.
God is beyond any measurement or limits. But because of our incapacity and our inability to comprehend infinity, He has limited Himself to levels that permit us to understand Him. He is the epitome of all goodness and virtues. Such goodness is beyond human capacity. Our knowledge of Him is a grain of sand in the infinite shores of the Universe and this prevents us from approaching Him with any semblance of true understanding. As the Creator – the Father and Mother- He loves and cares for us very much. He longs for our love and He seeks to help us find a truth, an opening which will lead us to some understanding of Him. Then having tasted the sweetness of His Love, we yearn and desire for more. He, then, opens many more doors and sends a Guru to lead the way to Him. God manifests to us His Omnipresence, Omniscience and Omnipotence in many ways. This little story tells us of how God leaves us clues to go closer to Him:
A king had some questions about God humming in head since a long time. He raised these questions in his Court. They were: Where is God? In which direction does He cast His look? What does He do?
No one could answer the King’s questions. A minister suggested that a Sage who lived in a nearby forest would know the answers. The Sage was brought to the court with due honour. Then the King asked him the three questions and sought to know the answers from him.
For the first question the Sage replied: Like butter is present in every atom of milk, God is present everywhere.
To answer the second question, the Sage asked for a lamp and lit it. Then he asked the King: In which direction does the lamp shed its light? The King said: In all directions. The Sage declared: In the same way, God is Radiance and His vision is not directed to a particular person. He is all seeing.
Then the King asked: What does God do? The Sage replied: Since I answer your doubts and give you knowledge, you must give me the respect of a Guru and seat me on your throne. Then I will answer you. The King did so and the Sage, seated on the elevated throne, replied: God brings down the mighty and elevates the humble. He can make the poor, rich and the rich, poor. God can do anything. He is all pervading. He is all seeing. He is all powerful. The King was very pleased with the answers and he rewarded the Sage suitably.
Like the king in the story, we should try to understand the true characteristics of God: God is Omnipresent, Omniscient, and Omnipotent and Love Him for His sake! Bhakti, Mantra Japa and Meditation are easy ways to going closer to God and understanding Him.
