Reflections on God

"So long as one is a Truth-seeker, it does not matter if one is a theist, an atheist or an agnostic" - Sri Chinmoy.

I never used to believe in God. How could I believe in something which I can't see, smell or touch? After all, no scientist has ever discovered God with their telescope or test tube.

Then after awhile it dawned on me that just because we can't detect something, doesn't mean it isn't there. Perhaps our senses are simply not advanced enough to perceive it. However, God for me was still a big 'maybe'.

Then I changed my conception of God a little. After reading numerous books on religion and spirituality, keeping up to date with the latest scientific findings and exploring meditation, an idea dawned on me.

In this vast cosmos there is a seemingly infinite array of forms and shapes, all apparently separate but nevertheless components of an overwhelming unity. Beneath the diversity of form, what is their underlying essence?

A scientist would probably describe it with the term 'energy'. The world's religions would use other words such as 'Brahman', 'Allah', 'Buddha-nature', the 'Absolute' or 'Supreme Being'. In the West we have inherited the word 'God' from our particular cultural tradition.

It struck me that all these names are referring to the same all-pervading reality. Perhaps it is like the story of the blind men and the elephant - one man grabbed the trunk, declaring that the creature must be long and soft. Another, the elephant's ear in his hand, believed the creature to be circular and flat. Other men held the tusk, tail and so on.

I once asked my uncle, who is a Catholic priest and a missionary living in the Pacific islands, as to his definition of God. He answered, "the totality of existence". If the scientist and the priest were both to concur on such a simple and broad description as this, they could surely reach an agreement that God is indeed real.

If Existence and God are synonomous, then even the atheist has to accept the reality of God - for he cannot help but believe in something. A poem of Sri Chinmoy relates that:

"Atheism is another name for absurdity,
For there is no human being
Who is empty of faith
In something or in someone.
God, being the universal Existence-Life,
Embodies that very thing
Or that very person."

Sri Chinmoy explains that “The total atheist does not believe in God. But fortunately he believes, or rather unfortunately he has to believe, in a certain idea, some concept of order or disorder. And that very idea, that concept, is nothing but God.”

Traditionally, in mainstream science there has been a dominant belief in which Reality is regarded as essentially unconscious. Life and consciousness are viewed as mere accidents, or nothing more than the predictable outgrowth of a blind mechanical law which itself lacks any will or intelligible purpose.

Spiritual seekers on the other hand have tended to see Reality or God as inherently conscious, as being fully capable of personality and of containing in itself all the attributes which differentiate humanity from inconscient matter.

Now modern science is slowly coming to the conclusion that consciousness and intelligence are built into the very structure of the universe. Quantum physicist Amit Goswami, author of The Self-Aware Universe states that “The Universe is self-aware through us” and that "Consciousness is the ground of all being."

Despite having different ways of approaching the omnipresent Truth, it seems that spirituality and science are finally ready to embrace each other as comrades in the quest for enlightenment. After all, what is spirituality but an inner science of the soul?

According to Sri Chinmoy, “the future generations will have both science and spirituality at their highest, not as two dire competitors, but as two complementary forces. Both science and spirituality will achieve the perfect perfection of matter and spirit.”