God As Certainty

 

Supercharged words are often avoided in serious discussions because they can stir up so much emotion and create so much polarization that the very point that was behind their use is all too often obscured or even totally lost.

Take the expression, the search for God. God is the supercharged word because people have such differing opinions of who or what God is. So, the very idea of a search for God often gets stalled behind the question of who or what is God. Ouspensky used to say, “A good plan is a plan that works.” So, what if we call the discussion the search for certainty?  

It could be argued however that certainty and God are not the same, but I think most people would agree that certainty, real certainty, is an attribute of God. In the absence of certainty there is often confusion, fear, worry, stress, and paralysis. If I’m not certain what is coming next, how can I plan on anything? If I don’t know that my next step will support me, how can I walk? If I don’t know how my words will be taken or understood, how can I speak? 

Of course, one might answer by saying that one can never be certain what the next day will bring; one can never be sure how their words will be taken, and yet, we do go on planning and talking, and living. And I agree; we go on living despite uncertainty and maybe that is why we feel so much fear, worry, stress, and paralysis.  I wonder also, if so much of our mental, emotional, and physical, activity is not implicitly, if not explicitly, motivated by a longing to achieve some sort of certainty in life?

The Mulla was observed by one of his followers searching for something on the on the ground under a streetlamp at night. “What are you looking for Mulla?” asked the follower. “Did you lose something?” “Yes,” replied the Mulla, “I lost my key?” “And did you lose it here, under the streetlamp?” “No”, replied the Mulla, “I lost it back there in the yard in the dark.” “Then why are you looking for it here under the streetlamp?” asked the follower incredulously. The Mulla answered, “Because the light is better.”

One of the meanings of this story is that things are not found in the dark where they were lost, they are found in the light. Very esoteric, no? But also, very practical because things cannot be found where they can’t be seen. To find, one must see, and to see, one needs light. One may say that it doesn’t make sense, but perhaps whether it is sense or nonsense depends on what we call the light.

And regarding the search for certainty, how can it be found where it was lost—in the dark—in life as we know it, since uncertainty is found at the very core of life itself? Does not certainty only exist in the Infinite and Eternal Light of God?

“It is the mind that becomes the experiencer and the thing to be experienced. If the mind is not there then there will be nothing—no world, no enjoyer, nothing to be enjoyed. Mind, thus, is a very important entity. It has to take a false form to experience itself.” – The Talks of Sadguru Upasani-Baba Maharaja, Volume IV page 402

In other words, to experience certainty, uncertainty must be experienced first. And that is what life is for, to experience uncertainty. And to experience uncertainty that is what mind is for.

In the dedication to His book, God Speaks, Meher Baba states, “To the Universe—the Illusion that sustains Reality.” But this relationship between God and His creation is not so easy to understand and even some of His closest followers could not understand this statement. One even suggested that Baba had got it wrong.

The question has been asked and answered in countless ways since consciousness first evolved into the first human form. Even the Perfect Ones put their individual spins on the subject, but the one thing I have been able to glean that they all agree upon is that life in creation is indispensable to attaining God—attaining Certainty—the Illusion that sustains Reality.”

“It is that Bliss that first evolves itself into the mind and the body, and then through their help it is able to know it is Bliss. The body and the mind are formed out of that Infinite bliss. Once that Bliss is experienced, then that mind and that body, despite remaining there for a time, virtually become non-existent, since one immersed in that Bliss, does not remain conscious of them. Once that Infinite Bliss is attained that Bliss has no necessity of anything. What for and for whom will such a man request anything?” – The Talks of Sadguru Upasani-Baba Maharaja, Volume IV pages 402 – 403

Meher Baba put it beautifully when he said, "The sojourn of the soul is a thrilling divine romance in which the lover, who in the beginning is conscious of nothing but emptiness, frustration, superficiality and gnawing chains of bondage, gradually attains and ultimately disappears and merges in the Divine beloved to realize the supreme and eternal fact of God as Infinite Love."

Meher Baba is reminding us of the three states of God. God asleep in deep sleep, God asleep but dreaming, and God in the fully awake I am God state. There is neither certainty nor uncertainty in the first state and there is absolute certainty in the third state, but the hallmark of the second state is uncertainty. Everything in this state is always changing. 

Achievement in this state turns into failure and vice versa, pleasure into pain, success into failure, etc. Kabir is quoted as saying, “Because you have forgotten the Friend, that is why in everything you do, there is a strange sense of failure.” It is in the second state of God that God is forgotten—but not completely.

  When they begin the beguine,

It brings back the sound of music so tender,

It brings back a night of tropical splendor,
It brings back a memory ever green.

I'm with you once more under the stars,
And down by the shore an orchestra's playing
And even the palms seem to be swaying
When they begin the beguine.

To live it again is past all endeavor,
Except when that tune clutches my heart,
And there we are, swearing to love forever,
And promising never, never to part.

What moments divine, what rapture serene,
Till clouds came along to disperse the joys we had tasted,
And now when I hear people curse the chance that was wasted,
I know but too well what they mean.

So don't let them begin the beguine
Let the love that was once a fire remain an ember;
Let it sleep like the dead desire I only remember
When they begin the beguine.

Oh yes, let them begin the beguine, make them play
Till the stars that were there before return above you,
Till you whisper to me once more,
"Darling, I love you!"
And we suddenly know, what heaven we're in,
When they begin the beguine.

 

Meher Baba pointed out that the spiritual significance of this famous Cole Porter song, Begin the Beguine, describes the second state of God in which the soul, lost in life, at first finds any reminder in the existence of the Divine Beloved or of the soul’s own divinity unbearably painful, but in the end yields to the Infinite Love of the Beloved and in their union realizes the heaven of Infinite Bliss.

“It is the mind thus that becomes the enjoyer from ‘to be enjoyed’ to enjoy it. The moment that thing is enjoyed it ceases to exist. Then it forms itself into the enjoyer for another thing and on enjoying it, again ceases to exist; and so on. In other words, the mind goes on becoming the enjoyer every time for each of the various things, i.e., it goes on assuming so many forms one after another. 

"In the course of time, the Jiva comes to know the mind’s inconstancy and misleading behavior and becomes tired of it. Somebody may say, then why give any importance to such a mind? Because it is the mind that is able to lead to self-realization, and hence mind, Buddhi[1], and Ahamkara have to be given great importance. Ahamkara is most essential. By Ahamkara is meant the primary—fundamental—consciousness. For, if there is no consciousness, then how can anything be experienced? And that is why Ahamkara is most essential.” – The Talks of Sadguru Upasani-Baba Maharaja, Volume IV page 403

Simply put, life is not what we think it is, or what we think it is for, or even the experience that is experienced. This life is lived and experienced by the Jivatma. Jiv means embodied and Atma is the soul. Upasani Maharaj defines the state of the Jivatma as “that pure celestial soul identified with the projections of the mind.” This state is also called the state of the Holy Ghost. Holy refers to the soul and ghost refers to the soul’s dream of itself as a creature of creation. This state, call it what you will, has but one purpose and that purpose is to acquire and perfect the consciousness by which the soul (Atma) can know and experience itself as infinite and eternal.

Meher Baba explains that this whole process by which the soul gains and perfects consciousness and ultimately comes to know itself as Infinite and Eternal begins with a whim—the Whim of God. Meher Baba uses the Hindi/Marathi word Lahar. He says that the English word whim comes the closest to it. Whim has no cause; it arises spontaneously without any rhyme or reason. The Whim manifests in the Totality of God in the form of the question, “Who am I?” 

With this question the totality of God manifests itself as Everything and simultaneously as Nothing. Everything answers the question and says, “I am God!” but the Nothing, being nothing, tries to answer but cannot, because though God is also Nothing, Nothing is not God, because it is nothing. The Nothing does try to answer the question—actually tries again and again—but always with the wrong answers, “I am stone. I am tree. I am man. etc.” the problem being that the Totality of God identifies Itself with the Nothing and not as the Everything.

Only when God comes to know “Himself” as God, is real and lasting certainty is achieved. It is the certainty that only direct experience can achieve. Belief, conjecture, imagination, can never achieve certainty, because that certainty exists in duality and duality is always a stick with two ends. On one end of the stick is certainty, but the other end of the stick is doubt. To achieve real certainty, we must transcend duality itself. And that is what Upasani Maharaj is talking about.

Consciousness is necessary for experience and mind is necessary for consciousness. It is for this consciousness that the whole of creation came into existence. What started it all was the Whim of God that expressed itself in the question, “Who am I?”

“It is the mind that becomes the experiencer and the thing to be experienced. If the mind is not there then there will be nothing—no world, no enjoyer, and nothing to be enjoyed. Mind, thus, is a very important entity. It must take a false form to experience itself. To experience being water, it must condense and come into that form first. In the same way, to experience the Sat (Real Self—Infinite knowing—Certainty) Asat (false self—ignorance—uncertainty) is necessary.” – Ibid, page 402

Some might ask, “But why must the false, the Asat, be experienced first?” Perhaps it is because the full consciousness necessary to experience the Sat, does not come all at once—it dawns. Think about waking up. We don’t wake up all at once from deep sleep. Deep sleep, prompted by our own latent impressions, precipitates the dream state, which eventually culminates in consciousness of the fully awake state. This, our, fully awake state is nothing other than the dream state (Asat state) of God—a necessary state in the process of His awakening from the deep sleep of His Beyond Beyond State to His fully awake I am God State.

 “To enjoy—to experience—that pure Bliss, true Ahamkara (consciousness), is necessary. But to achieve that consciousness, the false consciousness (finite, illusory,) must first be accepted (experienced). As various false things are experienced, one begins to think that there must be something true, and then slowly begins to think about the origin of all false things. As this happens, one begins to experience the true happiness—the Ananda.” – Ibid, page 404

I remember that as a small child nothing seemed to make any sense to me. What to others seemed important, to me seemed unimportant, that which for others seemed to be real, for me seemed most profoundly unreal. So, I began asking others—relatives, teachers, religious figures, etc.—to explain things to me. Mostly, they were all too happy to oblige me but none of their answers satisfied me—their explanations just did not ring true for me. In other words, a big part of me felt engulfed in the apparently tangible false, but an even bigger part of me began to yearn for the intangible true—or perhaps the intangible true never let go of me—never let me let go of it.

And so, I became a seeker. I felt that there were answers, real answers, and somewhere those answers could be found, and eventually in the words of the Perfect Masters and most especially the Avatar—Meher Baba—I found them. But words are one thing and experience is another. As Meher Baba said in the conclusion of His book, God Speaks,

“To understand the infinite, eternal Reality is not the GOAL of individualized being in the Illusion of Creation, because the Reality can never be understood; it is to be realized by conscious experience.”

These words do ring true for me, and perhaps in that ring of truth is certainty. Yet, as Kabir put it, “Until you experience it, it is not true.” And so, I sit, as it were, between two chairs—not the most comfortable place—not awake, but not believing that I am awake. A healthy sense of humor sure helps…

                                                                                                     © copyright, Michael Kovitz, 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] The Buddhi is that aspect of mind that enables the Ego to distinguish, value, and understand the array of worldly impressions that continually bombard the consciousness of the mind. Ed.