Knowing God will continue to be a mystery to the Twenty-First Century Man as long as man hovers on the threshold of belief in God instead of man experiencing and eventually knowing God. For the man who believes in God without knowing God is like a totally blind man rowing his boat on a mighty ocean. His boat leads to any destination but where he would like to be. He therefore roams aimlessly on the ocean and will be subject to the vicissitudes of life.
More than a billion names have been ascribed to God by man based on man’s experience with that mysterious force man regards as the ultimate. Such names were given to God by man in an attempt by the early man to describe or demonstrate that Force that the English Man described as God. But different languages have their own description of this ultimate power that most men would love to own. Thus in Nigeria alone different tribes call God by their different languages or dialects all in an attempt to describe their own experience of that Great Force known as the Ancient of Days.
For instance while the traditional Yoruba man calls God Olorun or Olodumare, their Ibo counterparts call the same God as Chineke or Chukwu while our Northern brothers call God as Allah or in their different dialects. Thus we have ascribed different names to describe God as we know it in our different languages.
These are the names we have given to God but not the name God has given to Itself.
Apart from the different traditional names we have given to God there are also religious slant in the description man has tried to label God in. Different religions we are told call God by their different names based on their own experience of God. But these names originated from an individual’s experience of God and the rest of us become slaves to that experience of one individual who had a personal experience with God. Religions were later formed based on the experience of other people with God while the rest of us become members of such religions.
The true religion therefore would be the one that would guide an individual to have a personal experience with God at that individual’s level of spiritual consciousness. The different religions therefore correspond to our different understanding of God.
But then, how can man know God?
In man’s attempt to explain God, man has over the years personalized God as if God can be put into one’s pocket. But such individuals who attempt to personalize God are living in a state of self delusion. For we have been told by all sages who have walked this earth that God does not belong to any religion but all religions cannot do without God. But since most religions of today are prosperity driven, man is a situation of a blind man being led by a wiser blind man into a blind alley all in an attempt to lead man to the Almighty.
The man who believes in God does not know God. For the man who believes that hydrogen and oxygen combine together to form water can never understand the production of water until he goes into the laboratory to put the right combination and produces the water then he can proclaim ‘Yes ,I know how water is produced because I have experienced it!’
Thus man can only know God by experiencing IT.
God as we have been told by those ‘who’ have experienced IT, is formless. But those who know IT know that God can be described as an Ocean of Love and Mercy. For when man is stripped of all the dross of the Human body and wakes up in spiritual glory in the presence of his Creator, then man would know that God is. For there are no words to describe God in man’s language but the closest is that God is an Ocean of Love and Mercy and has no form. But out of this Ocean comes the Holy Spirit, the Voice of God from which all atoms in existence are created and sustained. All these atoms of God that issue forth from this boundless Ocean therefore carry the characteristics of the properties of this Ocean.
Thus man is said to be created in the image and likeness of God. It is not the Human body that is created in the image and likeness of God but rather the spiritual body of man which shines like a million stars for those who have the eyes to see it when the gross Human body sleeps every night.
But how can man see it when half of the time he is awake but asleep spiritually speaking. For religion has put man into spiritual slumber and the only thing man searches for is money and prosperity all in an attempt to show that man is closer to God when he has acquired all the money in the world.
But we have been told severally that the rich man’s access into heaven is like the ‘camel passing through the eye of a needle’. This is so because the love for material things fastens the attention of man unto them rather than focus on God. The love of material things therefore prevents man to soar into the heavens of God while alive.
For man to understand and experience God therefore, he has to proceed from the known to the unknown. For by utilizing this cognitive procedure man can then experience God.
God can be described as this big Ocean while man can be said to be a container that one can use to fetch water from this mighty ocean. Different containers can be used to fetch water from this ocean but the contents of the different containers remain the same while the fabrics of the different containers are of different shapes and sizes.
The water from this ocean can be named as Soul and the different containers are the different bodies that soul is enfolded with and for Soul in the Human body to experience Itself, he can only achieve this feat while the body is either asleep, at rest or dead. When the container is ‘dropped’, man sees the glory of God in all fullness. This is why some of us will have to die to experience the heavens of God while the spiritually bold and courageous will soar like the eagles into the heavens of God through out of body experience.
The meek and gentle shall indeed inherit the earth through the process of karma and reincarnation while the bold will experience the heavens of God on a daily basis and return to tell the story.
Indeed man ‘dies daily!’
When man frees himself out of this ‘container’ he would then realize that there is no difference between him and God. For all the attributes of God can be found in the tiny atom contained in the HU-man body.
The starting point to know God therefore is man knowing himself! This is why when man is praying to God he is praying to no other being than himself! But he does this in ignorance because this is what his religion tells him.
How can man then experience his inner self known as Soul?
Towards Spiritual Freedom
By Tuborki Dauyemie
