I M Perfect lady

I picked up Deepak Chopra's book "God" in the Library…and began to read.

What he does is he writes about different men and their experiences with seeking God or their view of God…and then what he calls, "Revealing the Vision"…where he sorts out or pulls apart the man and how he saw his path to God.

He writes about famous men in the Bible, Paul, Job, and he also writes about men in the East, Shankara and Rumi and even Socrates.  I am enjoying the revealing the vision part, for it shows how God doesn't change, but how we depict him varies.

For example, about St.Paul "…Paul drummed one formula into his readers; believe and you will be saved,  It's not a universal formula.  In the East, religions like Buddhism and Hinduism have no murdered saints, no emphasis on faith in the supernatural events, no resurrection from the dead.  Instead, the common thread in the East is consciousness.  A religious person seeks to escape pan and suffering by finding a higher reality that leaves pain and suffering behind, rendering them irrelevant.  The entire journey is done within, and therefore Gnosticism, or direct contact with the divine mind, finds in the East a refuge where it isn't a heresy."

"This isn't to say that religion as it flowered in Asia lacks divine love and miracles.  In popular Buddhism the young Prince Siddhartha was carried over the walls of his father's palace, where he lived a life of suffocating luxury, on the magical white horse held aloft by angels.  A devout Hindu sees the beautiful god Krishna as an exemplar of love.  But, Christianity isn't  a religion based on higher consciousness, it is based on salvation, the ultimate personal miracle."

He writes about Shankara, 

Shankara describes a permanent state that is very similar, in which you fully participate in the world, but you faintly know that you are dreaming.  This state of so called witnessing is the Vedic version of what Jesus names as being in the world, but not of it.  It is a very desirable state, because you become creative instead of passive.  Poised on the edge before you wake up from your jungle adventure, you know that the dream belongs to you. Suddenly, you are the author. Some lucid dreamers can even re-enter their dream, willing themselves to not wake up. they can do this because they are, after all, the authors of their dreams."

"In the same way, you are the author of your life.  It may seem that all kinds of outside factors hem you in and deny your authorship; disease, aging, the forces of nature, social rules and strictures, and ultimately death.  But Shankara asks a simple question that explodes these external limitations.  Has anything that ever happened in a dream actually hurt you? When you wake up, the whole dream is gone.  Tigers, angels, demons, pursuing enemies, and voluptuous lovers.  All share the same unreality."

"Mastering the dream is good news and bad news at the same time. The good news is that you are the author of your life with the capacity to make anything happen. To arrive at mastery takes time.  There are cautionary tales, like the reckless and unfortunate Giordano Bruno, who saw the light, but did not escape the dream. Shankara outlines how to undergo the process of mastery using all the tools of Yoga.  These tools are all about consciousness. They teach you how to use your mind instead of allowing your mind to use you."

"The bad news? It's not the prospect of failure. Once the process of awakening begins, it is unstoppable, even if you have to cross into new lifetimes to reach your goal. The bad news is that mastering your dream isn't being Midas. You won't turn everything you touch into gold.  The lure of riches, endless pleasure, power, and even saintliness starts to fade once you know that it's all a dream.  Unity consciousness is the ultimate mastery known to the world's spiritual traditions, but it cannot be described in worldly terms.  When the two domains of reality, "in here" and "out there" finally merge, a new existence dawns.  It is indescribable before you reach it, which is why there's another saying that Skankara's tradition insists upon; "Those who know It speak of it not, those who speak of It know it not."

"Making God disappear from the physical world is either a sign of progress, because it removes the self-centered belief that the deity must look and act like a human being, or it is a scandal, just as it was to the first Westerners, because you can't just wipe God away like that.  He will notice, and his reaction won't be pleasant. What is liberation in the East remains heresy to many in the West.  The only certainty is that God has more faces to show.  Matters are not settled by any means."

And about Rumi, 

"If the West wants an antidote to the East's habit of making God disappear, Rumi doesn't fit the bill. He offers a personal God who is approached with love and devotion, but the path of devotion makes the seeker disappear.  The light that embraces him extinguishes personality.  It even distinguishes the lesser love between lovers.  In the evolution of God, holding on to the image of a patriarch sitting above the clouds becomes more and more a stubborn habit. This is especially so when, as with Rumi, the divine is a feeling in the heart that expands to all-consuming bliss. Bliss has no name or face. The world's visionaries go in a different direction.  Their paths mingle, but still no single picture of God emerges.  A deeper transformation is taking place."  Deepak

What I find so interesting about this book is the relationship these men have had with God and their experiences…how they write about it and then how others have used their version as a rule or a religion to follow…and to see the evolution or the depiction, depending upon growing up in the East or in the West.

I see how personally I have changed my belief or perhaps understanding of God and how I appreciate the writings of others, but can see how my God has changed from the vengeful and fearing image, to one where I am having a personal relationship…with a wise loving all knowing Universe.  

I guess we see God as we see our Self.