Sunday Service Reading #8

There is a saying in Chapter 1 of the Gospel of St. John that would seem to respond with a definite No to the question, Can man see God? The saying is:

“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”

Many great saints, however, claim to have seen God. If we ask, then, “Can God be seen?” rather than, “Can man see God?” the answer is, “Yes! Else those saints lied; and the Scriptures themselves lied.” For Jesus also said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

The point is, it is not man—this human body, these human eyes—that sees God. God can be seen only with spiritual vision—with the eye of the soul.

“Thou canst not see Me with mortal eyes. Therefore I now give thee sight divine. Behold My supreme power of Yoga!”

With these words Hari, the exalted Lord of Yoga, revealed himself to Arjuna in His infinite form.

Paramhansa Yogananda, in Autobiography of a Yogi, describes the supernal experience in words more readily comprehensible to modern minds than the poetic phraseology of the Bhagavad Gita. The chapter “An Experience in Cosmic Consciousness” is one of the most inspiringly beautiful in all mystical literature. Here is a brief excerpt:

An oceanic joy broke upon calm endless shores of my soul. The Spirit of God, I realized, is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless tissues of light.

[I saw] the divine dispersion of rays pour from an Eternal Source, blazing into galaxies, transfigured with ineffable auras. Again and again I saw the creative beams condense into constellations, then resolve into sheets of transparent flame. By rhythmic reversion, sextillion worlds passed into diaphanous luster; fire became firmament.

I cognized the center of the empyrean as a point of intuitive perception in my heart. Irradiating splendor issued from my nucleus to every part of the universal structure. . . . The creative voice of God I heard resounding as AUM, the vibration of the Cosmic Motor.”

This, so the great masters aver, is what God is. And this also, they insist, is what we are in our deepest reality.

VIDEO of Asha's Service on this subject from 2-21-10

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VIDEO of Peter Goering's Service on this Subject from 2-22-09

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VIDEO of Asha's Service on this subject from 2-22-09

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Long Readings from the 3 Volume Set:
Rays of the Same Light

#8: Can Man See God?
("How to See God" in the original book)

"No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."

The first reference here means, "No human being has ever seen God." In the statement, "He hath declared him," the meaning is, "He has given us knowledge of him."

No human being — no one, that is to say, with only the vision possible to physical eyes — can see God, for the divine realms are too subtle for merely human perception. St. John did not mean, however, that it is impossible for man to rise above his physical senses and to see God with the eyes of the soul.

Jesus said, in the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."

Again, (in Luke 17:20, 21) he said, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you."

Jesus said also (in John 14:7), "If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him."

St. John tells us, as we find Jesus doing repeatedly, to seek God in inner communion, and not only in outward religious observances. In the sense intended by St. John in this passage, it wasn't Jesus, the man, who gave us knowledge of the Father. For St. John speaks of him as the "Son which is in the bosom of the Father" — that is to say, as the infinite, divine reality that dwelt consciously within Jesus.

John's reference is to the Christ consciousness: "that which lighteth every man that cometh into the world"; Him also of whom St. John said that the very world was made by Him.

That Christ consciousness, as we saw in an earlier reading, is described as "the only begotten Son," for the Christ consciousness — God's projected consciousness in creation — is infinite. There cannot be more than one such reflection.

God became the Word, or Holy Ghost. His Word, too, is divine. It is God. For the Word is God's consciousness in vibration. It is the mighty, vibratory Sound by which God gave outward expression to His creative spirit. Vibration was needed to produce the manifested universe. Without movement, the very atoms would resolve back once again into the Infinite. On this principle of movement rests the entire cosmos.

Movement, however, is not the essence of Spirit, which is forever calm and at rest in Itself. Vibratory creation is an appearance, merely: a dream in the mind of the Cosmic Dreamer. Behind every vibration, calmly sustaining it, is the still consciousness of the infinite Spirit. Because the Spirit resides outside of His creation, God's calm, unmoving consciousness at the heart of all vibratory creation is described as the Son: the "only begotten," because it's the universal projection of God's consciousness into creation.

We have thus the eternal Trinity: the Father, beyond creation: that unmoving Spirit by whom was dreamed into existence all that is; the Holy Ghost: the mighty vibration of God's Word, forever divinely conscious, out of which emanated the vibrating atoms of creation; and the Son: the reflected, calm consciousness of the Father reflected in, but forever undisturbed by, His vibratory creation.

That is what Jesus meant when he said (in John 14:6), "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." God's calm, unmoving presence must be realized first in His creation, for that is where our consciousness is now. Only then can it be realized in its pure essence, as the Spirit beyond creation.

This grand mystery is presented in the most ancient spiritual teachings: God in three aspects, yet forever One: God the Father, beyond creation; God the Son, in creation; and God the Holy Ghost — the vast Spirit as creation.

This explanation is found in very ancient revelation. It concerns the Trinity described also by great masters in ancient India, the Trinity which is known in those Scriptures as Aum (the Holy Ghost), Tat (the Kutastha Chaitanya, or Christ consciousness), and Sat, the Spirit beyond creation.

"'Thou canst not see Me with mortal eyes. Therefore I now give thee sight divine. Behold My supreme power of Yoga!'

"With these words Hari, the exalted Lord of Yoga, revealed himself to Arjuna in His infinite form."

The meaning of hari is "thief." Here, it applies to God as the "Thief of hearts." For God's love, once felt in the heart, is so attractive that it steals away our love from every lesser object of affection. His love is great enough to overwhelm every human desire. He is described in the Scriptures as rasa: supremely relishable.

As St. Jean Vianney, a Christian mystic, said, "If only you knew how much God loves you, you would die for joy!"

Sri Krishna makes it clear in this passage that we cannot see God with merely human vision. Nor can we behold Him by our human will alone. Our devotional desire to behold Him must be strong, but we must nevertheless understand that it is by God's grace alone that we can gain entry into highest spiritual realms.

God's reality is far beyond human power to conceptualize. For human understanding it is unimaginably vast, inconceivably impersonal, incomprehensibly abstract: an infinite Light; a Sound (as of many waters); an overwhelming Love; an indescribable Bliss. Even to speak of God in human terms is misleading, for He has no form as we can understand the word.

If we would know Him, it is important to live in the thought of Infinity, and to eschew the petty realities of this world. If we strive always to live in divine consciousness, so the Scriptures have promised, we shall eventually win God's response.

Think of God, therefore, not only within the bounds of your imagination — as a Father, Mother, or divine Friend. But think of Him also as that Infinite Being out of which the vast universe was brought into existence; as that supernal Consciousness toward which all your highest inspirations aspire.

Visualize it, first, as a shining point in the center of your forehead. Expand that light outward from between your eyebrows, and feel it flowing over your entire body, filling every cell of your body with light.

Jesus spoke of this light when he said (Matthew 6:22), "The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light."

Visualize this light expanding beyond the boundaries of your body, to become an aura of golden light surrounding it. Think of this aureole, rather than of your physical form, as your true body.

Go on expanding the light. Fill the place where you are sitting with shimmering, golden light: the room, the building, your surrounding neighborhood. Expand the light further still. Behold it spanning the nations of the earth, the continents, the oceans — the whole world. From your heart, send rays of that light outward in blessing to all mankind.

At last, release your light from its earthly limitations. Behold it streaming outward joyously into all the solar system, into the vast galaxy. Behold it filling the entire universe.

Meditate daily in this way. Thus, your mind will become freed gradually to soar on wings of rising inspiration in God.

As the Holy Bible states (Isaiah 55:8,9), "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."

Longest Reading from the Book
The Promise of Immortality

#8 Can Man See God?
("Can God Be Known?" in the original book)

“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” This passage, the eighteenth verse from Chapter One of St. John’s Gospel, ends Part I of our book, the focus of which has been on the divine basis for Christ’s mission.

St. John, up to this point, has described the descent of Divinity into matter. His description might be compared to the Vedanta “philosophy” of India,[1] which treats of the nature of the Absolute. St. John presents truth here in its impersonal aspect: “In the beginning was the Word. . . . The light shineth in darkness. . . . All things were made by him.” At the same time, he brings that truth to a focus in the incarnation of Jesus Christ: “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. . . . The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” He explains how, by attunement with Jesus Christ, the soul can come to God. Verse Eighteen is the final “vedantic” insight presented in this portion of the Bible.

To recapitulate, John’s explanation has been of truths that are knowable to the soul, but not to the ego. His words, “No man hath seen God at any time,” do not mean that God cannot ever be seen and known, but only that such knowledge is impossible in ego-consciousness. Jesus made statements that might seem contradictory to this one of John’s, but that in fact only clarify it. His words, “Who hath seen me hath seen God,” referred not to those who had seen him in the flesh, but to those who had realized him in the spirit as a manifestation of the Christ consciousness. His “beatitude” in the Sermon on the Mount stated, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Thus, Jesus clearly indicated that God can be seen, but only by those whose hearts are not attached to the things of this world. Christ and God are one. Their nature is spiritual, therefore, not material. So long as we identify ourselves with our physical bodies, our vision will be physical, and we shall be unable to see God. St. Simeon, however, who lived in the Tenth Century (but is still known by the sobriquet, “The New Theologian”!), declared that at the moment when the heart’s feelings become purified, the soul beholds God.

In the second part of our passage, John states, “The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” It is the Christlike guru, or savior, who “declares” the Father, by transmitting his awareness of God to those who are attuned to his consciousness.

God, in His essential nature, is without form and infinite. In this sense He may be compared to electricity, or to an ocean. Suppose a person announces after a day at the beach, “I have seen the ocean.” What has he actually seen? A minute portion of its surface, merely. Does he really know that it was even an ocean? Judging from his experience, it may have been only a large salt-water lake. For anyone to experience the ocean in its entirety, he would need to become it. And for anyone to experience God in all His vastness, he must become one with Him. Confinement in an ego makes oneness impossible.

To see God means more than seeing a little light in meditation. To “comprehend” the light—using St. John’s earlier expression—means to merge in it. Thus, John describes Jesus, in his oneness with the Christ consciousness, as being “in the bosom of the Father.”

Krishna makes an identical point in the Bhagavad Gita. To Arjuna he says, “Thou canst not see me with mortal eyes. Therefore I now give thee sight divine.” The scripture goes on to say, “Hari, the exalted Lord of Yoga, revealed himself to Arjuna in His infinite form.” Arjuna then saw God as “thousand-armed, without beginning, middle, or end [infinite and eternal, in other words], irradiating the whole universe!”

Perfect purity of heart can be achieved only by abandoning ego-attachment. We are not the physical body, but the soul, made in the perfect image of God.

Earth is prized when it is out of doors in a field, because there it nourishes the plants. On arable land it is called soil. Indoors, however, in a kitchen or on a temple floor, it is deprecatingly spoken of as dirt. Our hearts’ feelings should be centered in God, for they belong there. There, they are pure. When the heart is cluttered with desires for anything else, however, that which it seeks is foreign to its true nature, and its feelings are therefore impure. Desires, like dirt on a temple floor, sully the shining reflection of God beheld in soul-intuition.

“Hari,” says the Gita, “revealed himself to Arjuna.” The literal meaning of Hari is “thief”: “Thief of Hearts,” in other words. God’s love is all-absorbing. It steals away everything except love for Him. The Indian scriptures describe Him as rasa: the most relishable.

The divine consciousness cannot be described in terms that are even remotely understandable to man. It must be exemplified for us in someone who, though in a human body, is united inwardly to that consciousness. By loving association with a spiritual master, we can attune ourselves to his perception of God.

How can a master be recognized out of millions of unenlightened human beings? Not, it must be said first, by outward “signs and wonders.” Miracles are evidence of a mighty, but not necessarily a godly, spirit. Physical looks, too, can be deceiving. In a certain tribe of gypsies in Romania, the men bear a striking resemblance to the popular image of Jesus Christ. Those men are reputed, however, to be criminals, not saints. Outward beauty is another misleading factor: It can conceal the heart of a devil. And there have been saints who were physically unremarkable. St. Francis of Assisi—with what truth it cannot now be said—described his appearance as resembling that of a hen. Purity is of the heart. It is in a saint’s attitude toward life that his spiritual greatness is first revealed. His attitude is evident from his behavior, and especially in the calm gaze with which he views the world. People of spiritual sensitivity sense around him above all a palpable divine aura and experience in his presence an extraordinary upliftment of spirit.

It is apparent, from the behavior and attitudes of a master, that the things of this world have no effect on his consciousness. He is unalterably even-minded, free from likes and dislikes, joyful in himself, and well disposed toward everything and everyone. Above all, those who are sensitive recognize in his love for others a manifestation of God’s love for them.

The secret of wisdom lies in a person’s power of abstraction. To the wise, opposites such as pleasure and pain, success and failure, are but waves that rise and fall on the surface of the sea without affecting the ocean deeps. They are the waves of delusion. A person of true wisdom discerns in all life the changeless consciousness of the Divine.

Abstraction is the ability to separate or distill what is changeless from mere things, which forever change. Isaac Newton saw an apple fall,[2] and, recalling other objects falling, he suddenly realized that in their movement there existed a single operating principle: the Law of Gravity.

Newton’s discovery was of historic importance. All of us, however, have abstracted universals of many kinds from diverse phenomena. A baby whose only experience of flatness and roundness is a tabletop and a tennis ball will identify flatness with that tabletop, and roundness with that tennis ball. With passing time, however, his experiences diversify, and he notices other flat or round objects also. Thus, he learns to abstract flatness and roundness from the objects that express them, and to see shape as an abstraction—a mental concept, he realizes at last, quite distinct from any specific object.

Consciousness itself is the ultimate abstraction. Other abstractions, without it, would not exist. It is in the mind that flatness and roundness are recognized. Even someone so dull-minded that he is incapable of defining anything is, at least, conscious, and conscious of being conscious! It is our consciousness that convinces us of our existence. René Descartes, the French philosopher and scientist, was mistaken in his famous statement: “I think, therefore I am (Cogito, ergo sum).” Thoughts can only express consciousness, more or less as a tennis ball expresses roundness. Descartes, searching for the key to existence, thought it necessary for him to have an object to study. Consciousness, however, is not an object, but the subject of anything seen. It is not something to study; rather, it is that which studies. Consciousness is the universal constant, irreducible to any other abstraction.

Happiness also is irreducible. It is expressed in countless ways. We may experience happiness in the fulfillment of a long-cherished desire, or in release from suffering. Happiness is, to varying degrees, expressed by all life: in gazelles leaping gaily through the long grass of an African veldt; in the glad chirping of sparrows around a basin of water; in the excitement of a dog anticipating its dinner. Though most people identify their happiness with specific circumstances, it is a constant of life, underlying all our experiences. Sorrow is not such a constant. Happiness, on the other hand, is subtly, watchfully present even at times of great tragedy.

For happiness is not so much the result of something attained, or acquired, as of impediments removed. Desire creates in us a sense of want, which constrains the natural joy of the soul. That impediment is removed when that desire is fulfilled, and leaves us happy again. Happiness is a state of mind; in the last analysis, it depends on nothing external at all. The happiness we experience in things depends on the welcome our hearts extend to them.

Divine wisdom is evident in a master’s ability to distill or abstract consciousness, existence, and joy from the cloud wisps of gladness and sorrow. He is unaffected by loss or gain, failure or success, tragedy or reprieve—even by death itself.

Did Jesus, then, suffer on the cross? Yes, in his human nature. His suffering, however, had to have been for people’s ignorance. “Father,” he prayed, “forgive them, for they know not what they do.” In his Christ consciousness, he could not have been touched.

No matter what circumstance in which a master finds himself, in his soul he remains blissful. He would not be a master, otherwise. Divine Joy, like consciousness, is irreducible. The two co-exist, and are identical.

Existence, consciousness, joy (or bliss): These abstractions cannot be defined, for it is they that must do the defining. No line of logic will ever “prove” their reality: They must be experienced. Therefore the Sankhya teaching of India declares, “Ishwar-ashidha: God cannot be proved.” Therefore also Swami Shankara gave this description of God: “Sat-chid-anandam, Existence-consciousness-bliss.”

One can appreciate Descartes’ difficulty! No effort of intellect could ever have resolved the riddle of his existence. The solution to that riddle depended on his attaining divine enlightenment. For this reason, the spiritual search is said to be the sole activity worthy of mankind. Sukdeva, a great sage of ancient India, declared, “All time is wasted that is not spent in seeking God.”

All of this is to say that, when it comes to finding God, we are confronted with an abstraction which the mind cannot even begin to conceptualize. Even such simple abstractions as flatness and roundness are difficult enough: We need at least some mental image to understand them at all. Again, how are most people to understand joy as the changeless constant beneath all misfortune? It takes a human Christ to evidence—or, as the Bible puts it, to “declare”—the existence of an immutable, infinite consciousness in this ever-fluctuating universe. If lesser abstractions are difficult to conceptualize, that supreme abstraction, existence-consciousness-bliss, is impossible! We need a master, with realization pure and unaffected by any passing circumstance. We need to attune ourselves to his realization. A master’s state of consciousness is absolute, not relative. And it is absolutely beyond every possible human experience.

The example and assistance of a master can bring us that perception of truth which, as Jesus said, “shall make you free.” (John 8:32) Only such a person can lift us, as if on a flying carpet of Arabian legend, above human understanding to the ultimate abstraction which is divine consciousness. He alone whose spirit is united with the Christ consciousness is a true guru.

Most of us have experienced receiving insight and inspiration at some time or another in our lives, by association with someone whose experience of things was deeper than our own. The skeptic might scoff, “I don’t need anyone to inspire me! I get my inspiration from within myself.” None of us, however, lives in a vacuum. We are inextricably bound to all existence. The deeper our attunement to a reality greater than our own, the more likely we are to find inspiration in any undertaking.

The guru’s role is to inspire his disciples, and share with them his realization of the Truth. His influence is magnetic in the sense that he awakens them to the awareness of their own soul-center. In this respect he resembles Ariadne of Greek legend, who gave Theseus a spool of thread as he was about to enter the labyrinth and encounter the Minotaur. Unwinding the thread as he went, he was enabled to follow it back out of the famous maze. The “thread” of attunement with the guru serves a double purpose: It awakens in those who are receptive a soul-recollection of their true being. Even more important, it gives them the power to know God. Together, these gifts transform the disciple from an ordinary human being to a living master. Paramhansa Yogananda emphasized this truth in a line of his poem “Samadhi”: “By deeper, longer, thirsty, guru-given meditation,” he wrote, “comes this celestial samadhi.”[3]

The disciple, with the help of his guru, communes with AUM. Gradually, merging in AUM, he expands his consciousness into oneness with the ocean of cosmic sound, the Word. He then passes beyond sound to oneness with the Christ consciousness, and with the Father.

The ego resists submitting itself to what it considers merely the will of another human being. We have seen how the Jews resisted submission even to the will of God. People whose lives are guided by desires and by likes and dislikes imagine that, because it was they who initiated their desires, their desires are an expression of who they really are. The truth is, desire affirms an identity with something we are not, and can never be. Wise is he, then, who accepts guidance from someone who can bring to him the realization of his own reality: the Self of all selves!

This, finally, is the lesson in this passage of St. John’s gospel: not merely to inspire us with awe at the greatness of Jesus Christ, but to help us to understand—indeed, to be in awe of—the potential greatness of our own selves! The end of striving is consciousness and bliss absolute. There is no relativity in this final abstraction. Relativities cease to exist, there. St. John took pains to show the universality of Ultimate Truth, a truth “beyond imagination of expectancy,” as Yogananda described it. This truth can only be realized by actual experience. It cannot be confined narrowly by creeds and dogmas. If anything, anywhere, is abstract, the Supreme Spirit can only be described as the ultimate abstraction. The devotee, forever unable to visualize that state of being as it really is, should visualize it in its concrete expressions, as Jesus Christ or some other master—or, if he is blessed to have one, his own guru—and pray mentally, “Make me aware of your consciousness within and around me. I offer myself up to you for transformation, for you alone see my divine potential. May my thoughts become your divine inspirations; my consciousness, your infinite bliss. Introduce me to God!”

In India, it is customary for the disciple to touch his guru’s feet on meeting and on taking leave of him. This gesture is deeply symbolic. The feet represent that part of the body which is farthest removed from the person’s state of consciousness. The guru represents one’s physical link with the Divine. He may be compared to an inverted pyramid, of which the body is the tip. The pyramid extends upward and outward from that tip to infinity. To touch the guru’s feet is a way of saying, “Every part of you is holy to me, for what I see before me is my gateway to Christ consciousness.” Thus, a song of Paramhansa Yogananda’s contains these words: “Think in your heart the lotus feet of your guru, if you want to cross the ocean of delusion.”

Meditate daily on the vastness of God. Attune yourself to the guru’s, or Christ’s, consciousness of infinity. Visualize that presence as a light residing at the very center of your heart, shining with purity. Mentally expand the light until it fills your body. Then visualize it expanding beyond the body, surrounding you with a golden aura. That aura, not your physical form, is your true body.

Go on expanding the light. Visualize it filling the room in which you sit; the countryside; your neighborhood; your nation—all the continents and oceans of Earth. From the center of your expanded awareness in your own heart send rays of pure light and love in blessing to all beings, everywhere!

Release your light, finally, from its earthly confines. See it streaming outward in bliss to embrace the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy—the universe!

Meditate daily on this expansion of pure light and love, until you find your consciousness soaring on wings of inspiration to God. As the Bible says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8,9)

May His consciousness of bliss, light, and love become at last the realization of your own Self!

[1]“Philosophy” is put in quotes here because vedanta, though often described as a philosophy, is actually revealed wisdom. Literally, vedanta means “the end, or summation, of the Vedas.” The other, complementary systems of spiritual teaching are Sankhya and Yoga. Sankhya explains the importance of escaping worldly involvements and seeking a higher truth. Yoga explains techniques and practices necessary to the aspirant in his spiritual search. Vedanta explains the nature of Truth.

[2]The story is apocryphal, but what of it? It helped to popularize and thereby give life to his discovery.

[3]Samadhi is the highest state of cosmic ecstasy, oneness with God. It comes when the soul, released from bondage to ego, expands and embraces infinity.