Experiencing God

How do you experience God? In normal state of consciousness, it’s not possible. Simply because there is too much of background noise. By that I mean distractions from outside and our own thoughts running amuck in our brains. God can only be experienced when the mind is calm and we are in an altered state of consciousness. This state can be induced through techniques such as meditation. Or some people just seem to snap into it, for no particular reason. I have had such experiences when all I feel is an awareness of something so powerful communicating with me, unstoppable tears and a feeling of awe in everything that I see. During the moments, I feel perfectly at peace with myself. The feeling is there for some time (hours and minutes) and then I return back to my normal state. I’m sure everyone experiences this in their lifetime.

Objectively experiencing God is through convincing  our logic which really is not that effective. If you are looking at an object, who is the person that is observing the object? That you can say is yourself. But you get a feeling that you are aware of you watching this object. Where is that awareness coming from. There cannot be two of you. One watching the object and one watching you, watching the object. This awareness simply is called consciousness. The first one watching the object is simply trying to analyse the object, which is our brain. In other words it is our thoughts. The second person who is watching all of this is consciousness. In fact, if you look clearly, the first person is a myth. It’s just a thought. It exists only for a second or two, but the second person is always there watching us. And this is our consciousness.

When our mind is quiet, we can experience this watcher first hand. It does not judge, nor does it discriminate. It just observes. And that’s all it does. So what’s the point? The observer is experiencing the world through us. We are just a medium. Why does the observer do that? Well, the world is full of so many wonderful things that the observer is enjoying what it perceives. So who is this observer? It’s our consciousness. If you read the Bhagvad Gita, God says that he/she is the knower of the field. In short, this observer is God. The field refers to the external world. Or nature. Going a bit further, God also says that he/she is the field itself. In short, God is observing God created things. This is to get that feeling or experience.

As we go progressively in various stages of meditation, we come across both of these. First stage : we feel that we are the knower of the field. In short, we are experiencing purusha or our soul. The second stage: We feel that we are Prakriti or nature (what is being observed) which simply means that we are also the observed. And the final stage: There is no distinction between the observer and the observed. Both are myself. And now the wall crumbles down. We are in union with the universe, where we feel that we are the universe itself. It’s very tough to explain this. We have to experience it ourselves. The best way is to calm the mind and start meditating. We don’t need external stimulants to achieve this. We are all individual waves in the ocean that connects us all. Souls immersed in a universal soul. In short, we all come from the same place and return to the same – the ocean. This life is just a short itinerary in those millions of voyages that we have to undertake till we become one with God.

Best Wishes,

Guru30