God

What do you mean when you say God is Omnipresent? Is God present everywhere? How can this be possible?

God is not present everywhere. But the presence of God is there everywhere.

What is the difference?

All living things from protozoa and bacteria to complex organisms are filled with life. What is seen in all these forms of life is the presence of life. The presence of life is what we can see in forms of life. Similarly in all animate things although the basic principle of consciousness exists as God, the presence of God is what manifests itself.

Isn’t there the presence of God in inanimate things?

A piece of rock lying still for millions of years without any presence of life is a union of millions of molecules of the rock which has been holding together due to the internal forces which are governed by certain physical laws. The formulae and the manifestation of the formulae is God. When a human brain understands and analyzes a formula and applies it to create a nuclear bomb it is the application of the knowledge of the physical principles. Similarly the principle governing the inanimate things is able to apply the laws of union and bonding even in their inanimate state. This happens in the extreme negative pole of Godliness. In this sense, God is Omnipresent.

If this is so, how does “God” become relevant to people?

Even a small child when stimulated through his senses, responds to the stimulus in the form of the question, “what is this?”. God’s presence is first felt in the response “this”. When the generic “this” gets defined as “this flower” or “this paper” the consciousness gets confined to the limitations imposed by time, location, name and matter and the presence of God fades out from the consciousness.

How can one pray to a God in this sense?

This depends on what is a prayer. A continuous and repetitive thought process involves the kind of prayer known as “Bhajan”. The careful quest for attaining the ultimate awareness about God would end up in meditation. This is not prayer. The yearning for an achievement or relief from sorrow would constitute what is popularly called as prayer. If knowledge can bring relief from such a state, prayer would be relevant in that sense. Else prayer would be reduced to a convoluted perception of the universal principle perpetuated by distorted human thought.

But don’t all religions advocate praying to God?

Individuals are generally weak in body and mind. Their helplessness and dependency makes them obedient to commandments and customs. Therefore prayer has gained immense popularity.