I Don't Believe in The Same God You Don't Believe In
Dear friends,
A friend of mine said this to an atheist years ago, and I have always appreciated it. We all have images of God/Spirit/The Divine. It's just how the human mind works. Besides, it's a lot easier to feel devotion for something we can relate to, than feel the heart swell open when contemplating The Cosmic Ground of Being. I am somehow more moved when I look into Yogananda's eyes! :-)
Our materially oriented minds cannot really open our hearts and feel devotion or love for an abstract, hard-to-comprehend idea—or at least mine can’t!—so we use imagery as a doorway to the Infinite. When I look into Yogananda’s eyes my heart opens and devotion blossoms. Buddhists and Christians feel similarly when contemplating the images that touch their hearts.
One cannot explain particle physics to a five-year-old. This is neither the fault of the five-year-old, nor a demonstration that there is something amiss with particle physics. Physicists use a model for many things (light, the atom, etc.). They know full well that their models are flawed. That is, the models do not perfectly capture the reality of the item under discussion. But if they relax and use the models without nitpicking at their inaccuracies, they come to understand things they would not otherwise be able to understand. The models do more explanatory good than harm. And in this perfectly sensible way, science progresses.
The same is true for our spiritual imagery (God, Spirit, what-have-you). If we relax and use whatever imagery works for us, we can open our hearts and develop in ways that would be nearly impossible to accomplish otherwise. It is nearly impossible to “think” our way to Spirit, and imagery often bypasses the intellect. Avoiding or eschewing imagery is simply not helpful, nor is noting that the image is not exactly correct.
May we each work to get past the no-saying mind. May we further use whatever we see in the world around us to expand our limited consciousness into the infinite Spirit. We can see God in everything if we but open our eyes.
Blessings,
David G., manager
For the staff at East West