1
There
are two points of view from which one sees the God ideal. One is the point of
view of the imaginative person, and the other the point of view of the
God-conscious. The former is the minor, and the latter is the major point of
view. One person thinks that there is a God, and the other sees God. The
believer who adorns his God with all that imagination can supply, sees God as
all beauty, all goodness, and as the most merciful and compassionate God, and
recognizes Him as the Almighty, the Supreme Being. He sees in God the true
Judge, and he expects one day to receive justice from Him. He knows that in God
he will find at last the perfect love on which he can rely entirely. He sees in
God the Friend to whom he can turn in sorrow and in joy. He calls Him his Lord,
his Father or his Mother; and all that is good and beautiful he recognizes as
coming from God. In point of fact he makes an intelligible form of God, that
being the only means by which he can see God. And the believer who has imagined
God as high as his imagination permits adores Him, asks His forgiveness, looks
for His help, and hopes one day to attain to Him; and he feels that there is
someone nearer to him than anyone else in life, whose mercy is always with him.
It is this point of
view that is called monotheism: believing in the personality of God, a
personality which man imagines to the best of his ability. Therefore the God of
the monotheist is within him, made by his mind, though it is only the form of
God that he makes; the spirit is always the same, hidden behind the form that
man has made because he needs a form. But there is no doubt that at this stage
the God of the believer is the form made by him, the form of a human being; God
is behind that form, and He answers His worshiper through it. Someone once said
to a Brahmin, "0 ignorant man, you have worshiped this idol for years. Do
you think that it can ever answer you?" "Yes," said the Brahmin,
"even from this idol of stone the answer will come if your faith is real.
But if you have no real faith, you will get no answer even from the God in
heaven." It is natural that man, who knows and sees all things through his
senses and his feelings, and who tries to picture everything through his
imagination, things that he has neither seen nor known, such as spirits, angels,
and fairies, should make God intelligible to himself by means of his
imagination.
The other, the major
point of view, is perhaps less interesting to some and more interesting to
others; however, this is the true point of view. When a person begins to see all
goodness as being the goodness of God, all the beauty that surrounds him as the
divine beauty, he begins by worshiping a visible God, and as his heart
constantly loves and admires the divine beauty in all that he sees, he begins to
see in all that is visible one single vision; all becomes for him the vision of
the beauty of God. His love of beauty increases his capacity to such a degree
that great virtues such as tolerance and forgiveness spring naturally from his
heart. Even things that people mostly look upon with contempt, he views with
tolerance. The brotherhood of humanity he does not need to learn, for he does
not see humanity, he sees only God. And as this vision develops, it becomes a
divine vision which occupies every moment of his life. In nature he sees God, in
man he sees His image, and in art and poetry he sees the dance of God. The waves
of the sea bring him the message from above, and the swaying of the branches in
the breeze seems to him a prayer. For him there is a constant contact with his
God. He knows neither horror nor terror, nor any fear. Birth and death to him
are only insignificant changes in life. Life for him is a moving picture which
he loves and admires, and yet he is free from it all. He is one among all the
world. He himself is happy, and he makes others happy. This point of view is the
pantheistic point of view.
In reality these two points
of view are the natural consequences of human evolution, and one cannot really
separate them. No one reaches old age without having passed through youth, and
no one attains to the pantheistic point of view without having held the
monotheistic. And if anyone arrived at the pantheistic point of view at once,
without having held the monotheistic one, it would be like a person becoming a
man without having been a child, which would be devoid of beauty.
2
There is
a question often asked by the metaphysician or the philosopher, when he reads
that all is God and God is all. He says, "If God is goodness, what is then
the opposite of goodness? Is it outside God? If so, God is limited and something
else exists as well as God. Are there two powers, rival powers? What is the
power called evil?" It is true that God is all, but we would not call a
man's shadow the man; evil is only a shadow, just like illness, which is another
illusion. In reality there is only life, real existence, and illness is lack of
life.
The Being of God is
recognized by His attributes. Therefore man speaks of God as the just God; he
sees all power, all goodness, in God; but when the situation is changed, when he
sees God as injustice, he begins to think that God is powerless, and to judge
the action of God. But one must look at this from a different point of view.
Human beings are limited, imperfect, and yet we try to judge the perfect Being,
or His perfect action, from our own imperfect standpoint. In order to judge, our
vision must become as wide as the universe; then we might have a slight glimpse
of the justice which is perfect in itself. But when we try to judge every action
by limiting God and by holding God responsible for every action, we confuse our
faith, and through our own fault we begin to disbelieve.
The error is in man's
nature; from childhood we think that all we do and say is just and fair, and so
when man thinks of God he has his own conception of justice, and by that
conception he tries to judge God and His justice. If he is forgiving, he tries
to overlook God's apparent injustice, and to find goodness in God and to see the
limitation of man. This is better; but in the end man will realize that every
movement is controlled and directed from one Source, and that Source is the
perfection of love, justice, and wisdom, a Source where nothing is lacking. But
it is most difficult for man to have a perfect conception of the God ideal, and
he cannot begin in a first lesson to conceive of God as perfect. So the wise are
tolerant of all the forms in which souls picture their God.
There is a story told
of Moses. One day he was passing through a farm, and he saw a peasant boy
sitting quietly and talking to himself, saying "0 God, I love you so; if I
saw you here in these fields I would bring you soft bedding and delicious dishes
to eat, I would take care that no wild animals could come near you. You are so
dear to me, and I so long to see you; if you only knew how I love you I am sure
you would appear to me!" Moses heard this, and said, "Young man, how
dare you speak of God in this way? He is the formless God, and no wild beast nor
bird could injure Him who guards and protects all." The young man bent his
head sorrowfully and wept. Something was lost to him, and he felt most unhappy.
And then a revelation came to Moses as a voice from within, which said,
"Moses, what have you done? You have separated a sincere lover from Me.
What does it matter what I am called or how I am spoken to? Am I not in all
forms?"
This story throws a great
light on this question, and teaches that it is only the ignorant who accuse one
another of a wrong conception of God. It teaches us how gentle we ought to be
with the faith of another; as long as he has the spark of the love of God, this
spark should be slowly blown upon so that the flame may rise; if not, that spark
will be extinguished. How much the spiritual development of mankind in general
depends upon a religious man! He can either spread the light, or diminish it by
forcing his belief on others.
3
Many are ready to accept
the God ideal, yet question the personality of God. Some think that if all is
God, then God cannot be a person; but to this it may be answered that though the
seed does not show the flower in it, yet the seed culminates in a flower, and
therefore the flower has already existed in the seed. If one were to say that
the flower is made in the image of the seed, it would not be wrong, for the only
image of the seed is the flower. If God has no personality, how can we human
beings have a personality, who come from Him, out of His own Being, we who can
express the divine in the perfection of our souls? If the bubble is water,
certainly the sea is water; how can the bubble be water and not the sea? The
difference, however, between the human personality and the divine personality,
God's personality, is that the human personality can be compared, whereas God's
personality has no comparison. Human personality can be compared because of its
opposite; God has no opposite, so His personality cannot be compared. But to
call God "all" is like saying that He is a number of objects, all of
which exist together somewhere. The word "all" does not express the
meaning of the God ideal; the proper expression for God is the Only Being.
And then there are
others, philosophically and scientifically minded people, who have read many
books and who have thought about the soul and the spirit, who have come to the
intellectual understanding that if God exists it is as an abstract idea which we
may call God or life, it does not matter which. They are the people who have
eaten of the truth without digesting it. It is like swallowing pebbles which one
can never digest. They have some part of the truth, but they do not profit by
it. To the one who believes that we should not consider God as being abstract,
but that He can only be realized, to him the abstract means something. But when
the abstract means nothing, then God means nothing.
By turning God into
something abstract, man loses the opportunity which is given to him to benefit
by the formation of a conception of God. No doubt what man has constructed is
subject to destruction; it can only last a certain time. But if he makes use of
it he arrives at realization; whereas if he destroys that conception which was
meant to bring him to the fulfillment of his life, he has lost something which
was invaluable. By thinking in dry philosophical terms, people often go astray,
not so much by having false ideas as by not being able to digest the truth.
Thus one might ask if one
should worship the personal God rather than the abstract God. We should begin by
worshiping the personal God, and we should allow our soul to unfold in the
abstract God. If we begin our religious life by worshiping the abstract God,
then we begin at the wrong end. The realization of the abstract God is the
satisfaction which comes after we have perfected the worship of the personal
God. But if we were to remain forever at the stage of worshiping the personal
God, we would not derive the full benefit of that worship; we should worship the
personal God as a means to attain to the knowledge of God, and this knowledge is
to be found in the abstract. It is like an artist who has painted a beautiful
picture, the best he has ever painted, and he looks at it and is so impressed by
what he sees that he cannot believe that it is he who has made it; he sees in it
something which is beyond himself. This is the moment when he begins to
understand art, when he begins to profit by it.
The worship of the
personal God is the art of idealizing, the greatest and best art there is. We
idealize the object of our worship as the perfection of all things, of love and
justice and forgiveness and power and beauty. In the idealization of our object
we offer all the appreciation and admiration we have, and when we have humbled
ourselves before the object we have created, we have begun our journey on the
spiritual path. It is this beautiful negation of the self which is artistic,
more so than the attitude of the ascetic who calls himself God but whose ego is
rigid, devoid of beauty and art. In the end it is this path which helps us to
efface ourselves entirely in that object of worship, that object in which we see
God. And by doing so, in time a door opens, and then we enter into the abstract
qualities of the Spirit, to realize the ultimate truth.
From THE HEART OF SUFISM: Essential
Writings of Hazrat Inayat Khan.
© 1999 by The International Headquarters of the Sufi Movement.
Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, www.shambhala.com
