Understanding God

Yes, Virginia, there is a God. Yet God may not be what you have been told God is. For one thing, God is not Male. So when we keep referring to God as 'He,' we are inaccurate.

For another thing, God does not have all the emotional needs and predilections with which most humans are burdened. That is, God does not have 'needs.' God does not have things that God requires in order to 'be happy.' God IS happiness itself (if we are to use human terms). God is love (if we are to use human terms). God is not 'that which loves,' but Love Itself.

So, too, by the way, are You.

You are not separate from God in any way. I know that there are millions of people who embrace what I call Separation Theology ("God is 'over there' and we are 'over here,' and our job is to get from 'here to there"), but that theology is based on mistaken notions. It is based on the idea that...

1. God is separate from us
2. God is the cause of our separation
3. God wants and needs and requires something from us in order to allow us to Return to Him

None of this is true. God, by definition (as the All-in-All), cannot be separate from any one thing. There is Only One Thing, and God is the One Thing There Is. Everything Else is God, expressing Itself in some form. We are all....God's In Formation.

Not only is God not burdened with human emotions or needs, God is also not burdened with human physical forms or limitations. That is, God is not limited to a Particular Form of Expression, but is, in fact, All Expressions At Once.

Thus, we could say that God is LIFE, expressed.

And what is Life?

Energy. Life is energy, expressed in multitudinous and limitless form.

This is Life, and this is God the All Knowing, the All Powerful, the All Loving. Of course God is All Knowing, All Powerful, and All Loving, because God is all the intelligence, all the power, and all the love that there is.

In March of 2007 I delivered a satsang in Tokyo in which I discussed God's true identity. Early in the program I described God in this way:

"God is not a Super Being in the Sky, with the same proclivities and emotional needs as human beings, including the need for love and for revenge. God is life's Essential Energy. You might want to call that energy Pure Intelligence.

"Intelligence doesn't care whether you believe in It or not. It doesn't care whether you use It on purpose or not. If you do use It on purpose, It doesn't care how. It makes no judgment about any this. In fact, It makes no judgment about anything at all.

"Pure Intelligence wants nothing, needs nothing, seeks nothing. It simply Is. It exists in a way that allows Itself to be used. It does this, it allows this, it makes this possible, by placing Itself inside of Everything.

"Wherever you look you will find Pure Intelligence. It is at the basis of all things that exist. Snowflakes reflect Pure Intelligence. The tiniest atoms reflect Pure Intelligence. The biggest swath of the night sky reflects Pure Intelligence. The process of life Itself, examined at every level, reflects Pure Intelligence.

"The energy that I am here calling Pure Intelligence can be used--is being used--at every level of life, by Life Itself. You are using this energy, you are focusing this energy, every second of every minute of every hour of every day...usually without knowing it.

"The fact that this energy exists, and the way to focus it, therefore using it to one's personal advantage, is what has been called 'the secret.' A movie by that very name was made last year and is now sweeping across the world.

"This energy that I am calling Pure Intelligence, and that I am telling you is another name for God, has no opinion about anything. That is because It doesn't need anything. It is singularly without need, for the simple reason that it is everything that exists in any form whatsoever. This includes not only physical things, but metaphysical things as well. This includes all spiritual things, and anything in any form that simply IS...including thoughts, emotions, feelings, ideas, and, yes, the black holes of space.

"Think about this. If God is truly everything that exists in any form whatsoever, what in the world could God want or need or require? Why would God punish us for not giving God what we imagine that God wants or needs or requires?

"The answer to these questions is self-evident. It need not be discussed in great detail, because simple logic reveals it to us and makes it clear how we have been held captive by the mythologies of our own culture and its past.

"The opportunity that lies before us, and before all sentient beings, is to use the Essential Energy of Pure Intelligence in the way in which it was designed to be used. Not all things that exist in the universe can use this Essential Energy consciously. That is, with full self-awareness and with intention. Only those elements of Life Itself that are self-conscious--that is, aware of themselves--can do so.

"I should correct that last statement. Not even all elements of life that are self-conscious can use the Essential Energy consciously. It is not only a question of being conscious, it is also a question of the level of consciousness that a being or a species has attained. For instance, a dog, while highly intelligent, is not sufficiently self-aware (as far as we know) to be able to use Essential Energy with intention.

"Human beings are not only aware of themselves, they are aware that they are aware, and so have risen to at least the Second Level of Consciousness. This level of consciousness allows sentient beings to notice themselves, and even to notice themselves noticing themselves. That is, we can stand 'outside of ourselves' and watch ourselves doing what we are doing and thinking what we are thinking and saying what we are saying.

"We can even watch ourselves watching ourselves. We can step back into the hallway of awareness, looking through doorways both forward and backward -- and, according to some, ultimately seeing and experiencing our Divine and Sacred Self."

I thought I was being fairly "safe" in my definition of God (I left the part of God being us for later in the discussion), so I wasn't ready for someone in my audience to plunge into despair as a result of my description--but I see now that I should have guessed this might happen.

When I finished with my comments at that satsang in Tokyo a man in the back of the room rose to ask what he said was a burning question.

"When I first read Conversations with God I was very touched because it allowed me to believe in a God who was personal, a God who loved me. Now I am confused. You have just described a God who is not even a person or a being, and who doesn't care what I do or how my life turns out.

"I feel desolate after hearing this description from you. This is not what I came expecting to hear today. It is very depressing. Can you help me?"

It was a marvelous question. A question from someone who was tracking every word and weighing every nuance and implication. Others in the audience nodded their approval and added, with their eagerly uplifted faces, to the thrust of the inquiry. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, cleared my throat, and began to speak in a slow, steady voice, the words coming from somewhere beyond my conscious mind.

"The fact that God is Pure Intelligence does not preclude the possibility of God taking the form of a sentient Being. In fact, if Pure Intelligence is the essential energy of All That Is, then it can presumably take the form of any part of that. In other words, 'God' can 'show up' in our lives in any form that is desired.

"So what we call 'God' can continue to shape Itself as a Being that looks very human, if this is how It feels that It would be most understood or most easily embraced in any particular moment by any particular Individuated Aspect of Itself.

"Indeed, I have come to understand that the energy that is God takes the form of exactly what and who God is showing up for. And so it is that, for human beings, God takes the form of a human being.

"Yet God is not limited to that form. Indeed, God can 'show up' in any form that we wish--including pure, undifferentiated energy--and we can shape that undifferentiated energy into anything that we choose.

"How? By using the Process of Personal Creation!"

Now the audience perked up. Suddenly, the pieces were beginning to come together.

"Before we go on with that," I said, "let's talk about this business of God not caring, and the idea that this means God is not loving.

"Not caring what we do is not the same as not loving us. I want you to imagine your own children, sent out to the back yard to play. Do you care what games they choose? Does it matter to you whether they play Tag or Hide and Seek or Kick the Can? Of course not. In fact, you would never even dream of impinging on their inventiveness by dictating to them how they must use their play time.

"All you say to them is, 'Go, now, and play! Enjoy yourself! But be careful. Try not to hurt yourself! And if you need me, I'll be right here.'

"This is what God says to us. The fact that God does not care what we do is a sign of how much God loves us, not how little! For freedom to be and do and have what we choose is the greatest joy of all. It is the biggest treasure and the grandest gift that God could give us. Even traditional religion teaches that God has given us this gift. It is called Free Will."

Again, nods of recognition and understanding rippled through the house. You could see that people were "getting it." Things were coming together in their mind.

"Now, getting back to the Ultimate Nature of God...I said that God can 'show up' in any form that we wish God to show up in--including an old man with a beard, a ray of golden light, or pure, undifferentiated energy--just as we can shape into anything that we choose.

"We can, you know. It's just that we do it one cell at a time and that which we call God does it all at once.

"Recently medical science has come to understand more and more of what are called 'stem cells.' Do you know what stem cells are? They are cells in the body that have no particular characteristic whatsoever. But they can adopt characteristics by renewing themselves through cell division and differentiating into a wide range of specialized cell types.

"Conversations with God says that the purpose of life is to recreate ourselves anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are. This is precisely what is going on in your body right now.

"Medical science has now learned that stem cells can be "coaxed" into becoming cells of any part of the body whatsoever...including heart or brain cells!

"Now if God can create something as marvelous as undifferentiated cells in all multi-cellular organisms that can become any body part at all, what do you suppose God can do with Itself?"

The audience grew silent.

"Could we call God simply Undifferentiated Life, from which all Individuated Life emerges? Would it be so far-fetched to imagine God as the Mother of All Stem Cells?"

Now I have said in this space before that a stem cell is an undifferentiated cell, containing the potential and the capacity to become any cell of the body. When a stem cell differentiates, it, in fact, becomes just that -- resembling (but never exactly duplicating) an already-existing humana cell. Thus, the stem cell is "reading" the assembly of the current cell and resemling it by reassembling it, sometimes with the tiniest variations.

We are told that every cell in your body changes every seven years. There is a constant "turnover" of cells. You are, quite literally, not the same person you were seven years ago. When new characteristic-specific cells emerge from the Undifferentiated Cell Bank known as Stem Cells, they reassemble the cells they replace -- but never in precisely the same way. They offer variations. These variations lead to perfection...which some of us call "growing old," or "death."

Death is the body, perfected.

It is the body, done with itself in this particular form.

The spirit which ignites it and fuels it move on to recreate its own physicality in another form, leaving the present form behind.

The Whole Being that is Body/Mind/Spirit evolves to its Next Highest Expression. That part of You Which Is Physical continues to be physical -- but in Perfect Form.

Perfect Physicality is not visible to the human eye, the vision of which is constrained to certain light spectrums only, nor can it be discerned by the human mind, the inputs to which operate in only three dimensions.

God is The Totality. The Seen and the Unseen. The Essence and the Energy that makes up both.
This Essence and Energy can be directed, focused, used. That is the Great Secret of God.

God can be used.

In fact, we are using God every day. Every moment.

Each instant is an expression of Life, and thus a "use of God." The question is not whether we are using God, but whether we are doing so consciously or unconsciously; with full awareness or unwittingly.

Many spiritual traditions insist that we are to put our lives to God's use. In this we have it all backward, for in truth, God puts Godself to our use. When we understand this, we become as Jesus was: God incarnate.

Does that sound like blasphemy to you? Then you have completely misunderstood God's purpose and God's very nature. For even Jesus proclaimed, "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?" (John 10:34)