Eaton Satsang
The GOD word
In conversation about truth, reality or spirit, the word God often seems appropriate to represent the ineffable source of everything. For many, the word God still carries with it meanings or images we were given as young children. Such anthropomorphic projections gave form to the formless, which may have been appropriate for young minds.
Here's a paragraph by Andrew Nawberg, M.D., a research neuroscientist:
"Let's take, for example, the word 'God'. In our research we queried thousands of people, using a variety of surveys and questionnaires, and discovered that 90 percent of the respondents had definitions that differed significantly from everyone else. EVEN people who came from the same religious or spiritual background had fundamentally unique concepts of what this word means. And for the most part, they never realized that the person they were talking to about God had something entirely different in mind."
it might be worthwhile to reconsider our concepts, beliefs, and perhaps reactivity, attached to the word God. As we might search for a word to express the mystery of creation, truth or existence we find that no single term is quite satisfactory, and we might note that sages, saints and teachers use many terms when referring to what might simply be called God. Consider for a moment some of the many other terms that are used to point to the indefinable: Consciousness, Absolute, Reality, Tao, That, Beloved, Allah, Brahman, Creator, Divine, Supreme, Ineffable, Love, Truth, Holiness, Great spirit, Intelligence, Endlessness, Spirit and more.
In order to be able to comfortably utilize the word God, it might be helpful to understand it in the broadest way possible, consistent with whatever resonates best with you. As Walt Whitman wrote: "Argue not concerning God, - re-examine all that you have been told at church or school or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your soul."
Quotes
Follow your intuitive sense of the divine within. Welcome its presence and vibration. Like this, your insight opens to fully recognize the real as your own Self. The awakened heart invites and allows the Supreme to shine its light upon this world. The ego is like God's egg that must hatch open to bring that divine light into the world. To hatch means to discover one's real nature. Through one's own satsang, something inside is maturing enough to be merged in God. And remember, God is not different from you. It is not like you move out and God moves in. He is you. God is your truest Self - the supreme Self. Keep saying Yes inside your heart and fall fully inside the beloved.
~ Mooji
We are searching to know the One who experiences all experiences. Our search is for the Witness. Who is this Observer? Who is this Consciousness? Who is this Watcher of all these games? Who is this Watcher? To know this Watcher is to know God. And you are already It ..... just a little awakening is needed... no search but only AWAKENING.
~ Osho
Everything is the divine. Everything is God. Everything is the Self. When our perspective includes everything, only then are we really talking about a unified vision.
~ Adyashanti
I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.
~ Sufi Proverb
Consciousness or the Source or God is all there is. Everything else can only be a concept or an object.
~ Ramesh Balsekar
"I,I" is the first and greatest of all mantras. Repeating the highest mantra. If you find the the path of self-inquiry too hard, you can go on repeating "I,I", and that will lead you to the same goal. Continue saying to yourself all the time "I,I", whatever you may be doing, and whether you are sitting, standing or walking. "I" is the name of God.
~ Ramana Maharshi
The entire universe is God's cosmic motion picture, and that individuals are merely actors in the divine play who changes roles through reincarnation; mankind's deep suffering is rooted in identifying too closely with one's current role, rather than with the movie's director, or God.
~ Paramahansa Yogananda
You are what you want to become. Why search anymore? You are a wonderful manifestation. The whole universe has come together to make your existence possible. There is nothing that is not you. The Kingdom of God, the Pure Land, Nirvana, Happiness, and Liberation are all you.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
God, is formless consciousness and the essence of who you are. Everything else is form.
~ Eckhart Tolle
God is Life itself. Show me an atheist who will deny he is alive! The doubters and deniers are invariably throwing rocks at their own misconceptions of God, at the usual definitions of God, or at the generally accepted idea of what God can do. I am quick to agree that the popular idea of God is incorrect and that such a God does not exist—and never has. But God, as God is, does exist as a very present Reality and as the undeniable basis of Existence. Truth, Reality, Fact exists. This is all that really does exist right here, right now. The agnostic is not questioning Fact; he is questioning a misstatement about Fact. The misstatement has nothing to do with Fact at all, just as the incorrect statement 2 plus 2 is 5 has nothing to do with the fact of arithmetic. A man is blind who breaks with Fact itself and doubts its existence just because an individual or an organization makes a misstatement in the name of Fact.
~ William Samuel
Only the word “I” divides me from God.”
~ Yunus Emre
To live the spiritual life means to give up personal sense and come into the understanding that we have no life of our own, but that that life which is ours is really God’s life expressed as our individual life or experience.
~ Joel Goldsmith
Since no one really knows anything about God, those who think they do are just troublemakers.
~ Rabia of Basra
Only a self-concept looks and longs for God. Drop your self-concept and there is only God meeting God.
~ Adyashanti
There is nothing outside that is not within you. This is something that should be remembered all of the time. You should always be aware of this. There is nothing out there that is not within here. If you understand this totally where do you have to go? Whom do you have to see? What do you have to read? What is there to do? You can simply sit and be the universe and bask in glory and total love, total joy.
~ Robert Adams
Life is God manifesting as every conceivable form and shape. There is only God experiencing what can only be God. All that you imagine as being separate from you is in essence exactly what you are. There is only God and there cannot be anything that is other than God. Live your life from this non-dual perspective.
~ Jac O'keeffe
The resolution of the separateness has to do with going from ego to non-ego, from individual to cosmic, from human to divine. We realize that our deeper nature is God itself. Realizing divine nature means not being an individual; it means being totality, universality, infinity. Nothing is excluded from your sense of self. You realize then that whenever you talk to someone, you are talking to yourself. True love, true compassion, and true generosity arise now because there is no separation between you and the other. You could still feel yourself as an individual who sees how you are unique, but you know too that you are fundamentally connected. At a more intrinsic level, that separateness is not there.
~ A.H. Almaas
I tried to find Him on the Christian cross, but He was not there; I went to the temple of the Hindus and to the old pagodas, but I could not find a trace of Him anywhere. I searched on the mountains and in the valleys but neither in the heights nor in the depths was I able to find Him. I went to the Ka’bah in Mecca, but He was not there either. I questioned the scholars and philosophers but He was beyond their understanding. Then I looked into my heart and it was there where He dwelled that I saw Him, He was nowhere else to be found"
~ Rumi
If you are attached to the word GOD, call it Godliness, but don't make it into a noun, make it a quality.
~ Osho
There is no “not you”. There is no “not now”. There is no “not God”.
~ Chuck Hillig
The silence is another way of saying to keep your mind stayed on God all the time. God is the silence and you are that. Feel the silence right now. You can feel it. It's a thing of beauty.
~ Robert Adams
Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description.
~ Anthony de Mello
God is a verb.
~ Rabbi David A. Cooper
The human being is nothing but the manifestation of the heart of God. So if there were no love we would not exist. Love is that basic. The heart is that basic. All that you see is a manifestation of love. When you actually, finally, let yourself see it, you see that you are a particularization of loving energy. Your atoms are made out of love. Your body is made out of love. Your mind is made out of love. Your surroundings are made out of love. Everything is made out of love. If there were no love, you would see nothing. Beyond love there is just God. Out of that love that manifests from the God state, or from the supreme reality, emerge all of the particularizations. We are the final fruit of that particularization, and because we are the final fruit, we have the microcosmic heart that reflects the universal heart.
~ A.H. Almaas
Just as cloth when analyzed is nothing but thread, this world when analyzed is nothing but God, this existence is woven from Being. The world exists only because Being is not seen as Being. When one knows himself, his world disappears.
~ Osho
When your standpoint becomes that of wisdom, you will find the whole world to be God
~ Ramana Maharshi
I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:
How are you?
I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:
What is God?
If you think that the Truth can be known
From words,
If you think that the Sun and the Ocean
Can pass through that tiny opening Called the mouth,
O someone should start laughing!
Someone should start wildly Laughing –Now!
~ Hafiz
God appearing as individual being- God appearing as you - is a secret of The Infinite Way; it is a secret of spiritual healing, This "you" is not a reflection or a separate idea or something less than God but God Itself made manifest
~ Joel Goldsmith
God is the evolutionary impulse of the universe. God is infinite creativity, infinite love, infinite compassion, infinite caring.
~ Deepak Chopra
One has to understand that the search for reality, or God, or Guru and the search for the self are the same; when one is found, all are found. When `I am' and `God is' become in your mind indistinguishable, then something will happen and you will know without a trace of doubt that God is because you are, you are because God is. The two are one.
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
There is no God Simply because God has no inside and no outside And no boundaries. And no name except every name. And so to even speak the word 'God' Reduces God to a thing. A concept. Boundaried, divided, separate from you. There is no God Simply because everything is God. God is another name for All There Is. And your 'belief' or 'disbelief' Is beside the point. Hallelujah. Fall down on your knees. Run through the streets, laughing. Even the dog shit is holy!
~ Jeff Foster
I don’t have a definition of God, because I’ve never really understood that word. People have different understandings of it and it’s caused a great deal of conflict. If I had to say what would my definition of God be, if I were going to use that word, I would say that this universe has layers upon layers upon layers of compassion and wisdom beyond ours.
~ Gary Zukav
God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The greatest principle of Sufism is: 'Ishq Allah Ma'bud Allah'. (God is love, lover, and beloved).
~ Pir vilayat Inayat Khan
What's happening is happening to the I, to the ego, not to you. Nothing can ever happen to you. For your true nature is Brahman, Absolute Reality, Pure Awareness. Yes you are God whether you like it or not.
~ Robert Adams
God, as I use the word, is another name for what is. I always know God's intention: It's exactly what is in every moment.
~ Byron Katie
One of the most divine, sacred, deeply religious things that can happen is a total loss of your personal religion, a dropping of your second-hand belief in God and a waking up to what the word "God" has always been pointing to, beyond words and sounds and images and the passing of experiences. To confine God to a word, a belief, an image, a feeling, a concept, a story, a dream, an ideology, to imprison God in a time-bound religious system, is to put limits on the vastness and give God a boundary, an inside and an outside, a shape, a form, a time-frame. To believe in God, to think of God, to dream of God, to argue about God, to claim God as "mine" or "ours" in any way, is to separate ourselves from God and each other, and create division where there is none. That is idol worship, the worship of form and story and mental truth, and it is not a sin but a vast limitation, a human forgetting of what can be only ever hinted at by the metaphor "God". God cannot be anything less than the totality, than all that is touched, tasted, heard, smelled, known, imagined and dreamed, and whether we dream of the God of a personal religion or of God's non-existence or even death, God is a word, a metaphor, for That which gives rise to all of it, prior to human belief and knowledge and even faith. Yes, this is so vast that even our faith is too small to contain it, and our science cannot touch it, and yet it is as intimate and obvious and present as the very next breath. We may all adhere to different religions, and hold on to different beliefs, and dress in different ways, and speak different languages, but we are all secretly intimate with the same God.
~ Jeff Foster
