WHERE IS THE
LIVING GOD?*
The
following is taken from a letter from Bengal:
“I had the privilege to go through
your article on birth-control with the heading: ‘A Youth’s Difficulty’.
“With the
original theme of your article, I am in full agreement. But in that article, you have expressed in a
line your sentiment on God. You have
said that it is the fashion nowadays for young men to discard the idea of God
and they have no living faith in a living God. [‘It is the fashion nowadays to
dismiss God from life altogether and insist on the possibility of reaching the
highest kind of life without the necessity of living faith in God.’]
“But may I
ask what proof (which must be positive and undisputed) can you put forth
regarding the existence of a God? Hindu
philosophers or ancient Rishis, it seems to me, in their attempt to describe
the svarupa or reality of Ishwara have at last come to the conclusion that He
is indescribable and veiled in Maya and so on.
In short, they have enveloped God in an impenenetrable mist of obscurity
and have further complicated, instead of simplifying the complicated question
of God. I do not dare deny that a true
Mahatma like you or Sri Aurobindo or the Buddha and Sankaracharyas of the past
may well conceive and realize the existence of such a God, who is far beyond
the reach of ordinary human intellect.
“But what have we (the general mass), whose
coarse intellect can never penetrate into the unfathomable deep, to do with
such a God if we do not feel His presence in our midst? If he is the Creator and Father of us all,
why do we not feel His presence or existence in every beat of our heart? If He cannot make His presence felt, He is
no God to me. Further, I have the
question - if He is
the Father of this universe, does He feel the sorrows of His
children? If he feels so then why did
He work havoc and inflict so much misery on His children by the devasting
‘quake of Bihar and Quetta? Why did He
humiliate an innocent nation – the Abyssinians? Are the Abyssinians not His sons? Is He not Almighty? Then why could He not prevent these
calamities? You carried on a
non-violent truthful campaign for the independence of my poor Mother India and
you implored the help of God. But, I
think, that help has been denied to you and the strong force of materialism,
which never depends on the help of God, got the better of you and you were
humiliated and you have sunk into the background by forced retirement. Had there been a God, He would certainly have
helped you, for your cause was indeed a deserving one! I need not multiply such instances.
“So it is not
at all surprising that young men of the present day do not believe in a God,
because they do not want to make a supposition of God – they want a real living
God. You have mentioned in your article of a living faith in a living God. I shall feel highly gratified and I think
you will be rendering a great benefit to the young world, if you put forth some
positive, undeniable proofs of the existence of God. I have the confidence that you will not more mystify the already
mystified problem and will throw some definite light on the matter.”
I very much
fear that what I am about to write will not remove the mist to which the
correspondent alludes.
The writer
supposes that I might have realized the existence of a living God. I can lay no such claim. But I do have a living faith in a living God
even as I have a living faith in many things that scientists tell me. It may be retorted that what the scientists
say can be verified if one followed the prescription given for realizing the
facts which are taken for granted.
Precisely in that manner speak the Rishis and Prophets. They say anybody following the path they have
trodden can realize God. The fact is we
do not want to follow the path leading to realization and we won’t take the
testimony of eye-witnesses about the one thing that really matters. Not all the achievements of physical
sciences put together can compare with that which gives us a living faith in
God. Those who do not want to believe
in the existence of God do not believe in the existence of anything apart from
the body. Such a belief is held to be
unnecessary for the progress of humanity.
For such persons the weightiest argument in proof of the existence of
soul or God is of no avail. You cannot
make a person who has stuffed his ears, listen to, much less appreciate, the
finest music. Even so can you not
convince those about the existence of a living God who do not want the
conviction.
Fortunately
the vast majority of people do have a living faith in a living God. They
cannot, will not, argue about it. For
them, “It is.” Are all the scriptures
of the world old women’s tales of superstition? Is the testimony of Chaitanya, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Tukaram,
Dhyanadeva, Ramdas, Nanak, Kabir, Tulsidas of no value? What about Rammohan Roy, Devendranath
Tagore, Vivekananda – all modern men as well educated as the tallest among the
living ones? I omit the living
witnesses whose evidence would be considered unimpeachable. This belief in God has to be based on faith
which transcends reason. Indeed even
the so-called realization has at bottom an element of faith without which it
cannot be sustained. In the very nature
of things it must be so. Who can
transgress the limitations of his being?
I hold that complete realization is impossible in this embodied
life. Nor is it necessary. A living immovable faith is all that is
required for reaching the full spiritual height attainable by human
beings. God is not outside this earthly
case of ours. Therefore exterior proof
is not of much avail, if any at all. We
must ever fail to perceive Him through the senses, because He is beyond them. We can feel Him if we will but withdraw
ourselves from the senses. The divine
music is incessantly going on within ourselves, but the loud senses drown the
delicate music which is unlike and infinitely superior to anything we can
perceive or hear through our senses.
The writer
wants to know why, if God is a God of mercy and justice, He allows all the
miseries and sorrows we see around us.
I can give no satisfactory explanation.
He imputes to me a sense of defeat and humiliation. I have no much sense of defeat, humiliation
or despair. My retirement, such as it
is, has nothing to do with any defeat.
It is no more and no less than a course of self-purification and
self-preparation. I state this to show
that things are often not what they seem.
It may be that what we mistake as sorrows, injustices and the like are
not such in truth. If we could solve
all the mysteries of the universe, we would be co-equals with God. Every drop of the ocean shares its glory but
is not the ocean. Realizing our
littleness during this tiny span of life, we close every morning prayer with
the recitation of a verse which means: ‘Misery so-called is no misery nor
riches so-called riches. Forgetting (or
denying) God is true riches.’
Courtesy
‘Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture. The writer has
written in response to a letter from Dr. M. M. Mukhapadyaya when he was very
young.