God is…

God has a living Breath
And the name of that Breath is man.
Man has a living Goal
And the name of the Goal is God.

Sri Chinmoy ¹

God is all Love. God is all Light. God is all Beauty. God is everything: Truth, Peace, Light, Bliss in infinite measure. He is with form; He is without form. If you experience God as Peace, then you will say God is Peace. If you experience God as Light, then you will say God is Light. If you experience God as Love, then you will say God is Love.²

God was One, but He wanted to become many. Why? He wanted to divinely enjoy Himself, to enjoy His Game, to enjoy the Truth in finite forms. He felt that if He remained all alone, there would be no joy, no Lila. If we want to play any game, we won’t enjoy ourselves alone: we need more players. If we want to play football or soccer, we need players to play on each side. Otherwise there cannot be any game. For His Game, God needed cosmic players. So He created Himself in millions of forms and shapes.

God is the tree and we are the leaves of the tree, God is the ocean and we are tiny drops of water. He is vast, but we have our constant oneness with God, just as the leaves can claim the tree as their very own and the drops can claim the ocean as their very own.³

Talk — Does God exist?

“Does God exist?”: one of the fifty university lectures given by Sri Chinmoy in each US state in 1974. ⁴

Common questions about God

Question: How do you define God?

Sri Chinmoy: God is beyond definition. But according to one's own vision or receptivity, one will define God in one's own way. Some will say that God is all Love. Others will say that God is all Power. Each one will see God according to his own necessity, his own receptivity and, finally, according to the way God wants him to see the ultimate Truth. ⁵

Question: What does God-realisation really mean?

Sri Chinmoy: God-realisation, or siddhi, means Self-discovery in the highest sense of the term. One consciously realises his oneness with God. As long as the seeker remains in ignorance, he will feel that God is somebody else who has infinite Power, while he, the seeker, is the feeblest person on earth. But the moment he realises God, he comes to know that he and God are absolutely one in both the inner and the outer life. God-realisation means one’s identification with one’s absolute highest Self. When one can identify with one’s highest Self and remain in that consciousness forever, when one can reveal and manifest it at one’s own command, that is God-realisation. ⁶

Question: Is there only one God?

Sri Chinmoy: There is one absolute God. But each human being is a portion of God. The Supreme God is like the ocean. Each drop has a little of the consciousness of the ocean; therefore, we can say each drop is a tiny god, a portion of God. If you are a portion of the Infinite, you can say that you also embody the essence of the Infinite.

According to our Indian philosophy, there are as many gods as there are human beings. What do we mean by that? Each human being has God inside him. Most of the time the God inside us is fast asleep. But when we pray and meditate, our God comes forward. The soul, which is God's representative within us, has a complete and inseparable connection with the Absolute God. ⁷

Question: Why does God exist?

Sri Chinmoy: Why does God exist? Why do we exist? We exist and God exists on earth and everywhere for only one thing: Joy - to create Joy and to receive Joy. We sometimes use a deeper word, Delight, but right now let us use the term Joy. God is the Eternal Player. God creates something and, while He is creating, He gets Joy. When His creation is finished He also gets a kind of Joy. And then when He looks at His creation and sees the Joy that He has offered, He tries to receive this same Joy from the creation. He tries to get more Joy.⁸

Spirituality

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