What Is God?

The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by "God" one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... It does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.

Carl Sagan

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S, Australia

What is God? Is God a giant man who once incarnated as his own son 2,000 years ago through the womb of a woman in the Middle East? Certainly not. Is God a man who created everything we see? Wrong again. These stories are just perceptions filtered through the limited human mind. They are not ultimate truths. Is God male? No way. This is an erroneous interpretation by the male ego.

"God" is the Life Force

One can think of God as the life force or sentience that permeates the cosmos - gravity or levity, it matters not. As an example of such an energy, one can take a plug and stick it into an electrical outlet - this "zapping" is what becoming spiritual is all about. One becomes plugged into "God." But think about that electrical life force: It has no form. In other words, it's not a human being. It has no gender; it's not a male. It has no color; it's not white. It has no size and no container. That life force, or "God," is not a giant white man, as we have been told, who can mysteriously incarnate himself through the womb of a virgin of any particular ethnicity. Rather than being historical, these are myths that are merely symbolic for the creation of matter out of spirit.

In the Far East, this life force has been discerned as and termed "the Tao." The Tao is the "thing" that makes birds chirp, cats purr and the sap of the trees run. We can also call it "cosmic consciousness." It is simply an energy, sentience or spirit that pervades all things. Far from having gender, as we have been led to believe, it is the magnetic principle between the male and female potencies. It is also the male and female polarities themselves. This Great Spirit, Tao, or God, encompasses all things. If it is not all-encompassing, it is not God. Anything less than the total is not God. The definition of "God" is omnipresence itself. Nothing is outside of "God."

The Cosmic Mind

The creative/destructive mechanism of this all-encompassing life force can be called the "cosmic mind" or the "universal mind." This cosmic mind projects its thoughts into form; hence, reality could be called "God's Dream." But this dream includes the fragmentation of the Divine into seemingly dense objects and entities that have a will and independence of their own. As separate entities, we are nonetheless connected atomically to this life force, but the individual ego separates itself into a deluded state. This delusion, or maya, can become so strong that the creative life force is limited and the entity in which this spark exists no longer knows that it is "God." This delusion, which can be called "Satan" if personified, is how existence creates, by separating itself out of the whole and presenting the illusion of the many. But this delusion/ego/Satan is not anything bad until it is so separate and dense that it no longer sees itself all around but sees "other," which it is then free to harm if need be or desire arises.

True Spirituality

True spirituality is defined not by separation but by union, union with the whole, union with the life force, Great Spirit, Tao, or God, that lies behind creation and binds it together. Of course, the separation itself could also be thought of as a spiritual experience, in that it provides an opportunity for an individual soul to truly develop itself. Yet in that development, we come back to the omnidimensionality of being one with the cosmos. It is a paradox, yet one we like to live with, one that we ourselves created, as directors of our own drama. To be separate yet infinite - now, this is "God." This union is ecstasy, which in Greek means "to stand outside oneself."

Anything that imposes limits on an infinite divinity is not a complete spiritual system or experience. Anything that projects form upon this genderless, raceless, formless and nonhierarchical