Sunday, November 15, 2009

Our Understanding or Perception of God


Can anyone tell, how God's Face look like?? May be no one can answer this question properly, as no one has come face to face with God anytime & we all have seen His pictures, idols etc. only in which God's face looks like, whatever, the painter or craftsman imagined it while making that picture or idol. There are others who believe in unmaniifest aspect of God i.e. they believe in faceless, nirakar aspect of God. So we have different perceptions of God as per our thinking & faith.

In general God is the faith of human beings that a Supernatural Power exists in this universe which has created us & all other universal forms. He is having supernatural powers, who is omniscient (knows everything), who is omnipresent (who is present everywhere), omnipotent (who is having all the powers & is all powerful), who is imperishable & indestructible. Faith of humans in such a big & great entity having all the powers is known as God.

When God is someone Superhuman, having Infinite size, knowledge & powers, then it is very difficult for a human being with limited knowledge & power to fully understand & describe the God. In this respect there is an analogy as to how differently we each understand or experience the God. There is this story about four blind men and the elephant:

There are four blind men who discover an elephant. Since the men have never encountered an elephant, they grope about, seeking to understand and describe this new wild being. One gets hold of the trunk and concludes that it is a snake. So for him elephant is like a snake. Another explores one of the elephant's legs and describes it as a tree. So for him elephant is like a tree. A third one finds the elephant's tail and announces that it is a rope. So for him elephant is like a rope. And the fourth blind man, after discovering the large body of the elephant, concludes that it is, after all, a wide mountain.

Each in his blindness is describing the same thing: an elephant. Yet each describes the same thing in a radically different way. We all are like those blind men only in our knowledge of God who describe the God as per our own understanding. Now say a fifth man (who could see) comes to the scene and he were to describe the elephant as an elephant, then he would tell clearly about the elephant as it is. Same is the case that only a true master who has seen God actually can tell how God looks like. Let's seek such a True master, Great soul or Guru who shall tell us about the true nature of God & shall lead us to Him.

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