KNOWING THE SUPREME CONSCIOUSNESS


Let us think. What is this Supreme Consciousness? In India we use the word God for this Supreme Consciousness. Each of us has one's own perception and concept about this God. To some of us God exists in holy places; to some of us He is at home; some of us believe He exists in our hearts; some of us hear and think that He is everywhere (omnipresent). But how many of us really know where He is and what He is? There is a vast difference between believing and knowing something. Let us understand the difference with an example. Imagine there is a child who does not have a grand-father. His mother explains to the child about his grand father who passed away before he was born. The child would imagine his grand father believing what his mother told about him. Now there is another child whose grand father is alive and visits him very often. His mother introduces him to his grand father and the child has a live relationship with his grand father every time he meets him. For the first child, his grandfather will be a concept or an imagination, while the second child will gain true knowledge through experience with the grandfather he meets often. The first child believes in a grandfather while the second knows his grandfather.

So any knowledge that comes through experience is true knowledge. If we have to know God, the only way is to experience Him. And to experience Him, we need to have a live relationship with Him. Now let us see why we should know or have a live relationship with God.

Every minute in our life, we relate to someone or the other, at home, office, anywhere. We converse with people to work and get work from people. We establish relationship with people because this is a must for any activity. There can be no society without activity and there can be no activity without relationship. So our life is nothing but relationships. When relationships are smooth, we are happy. If these relationships should be smooth, our main relationship, that is, our relationship with God should also be very smooth. Today the crux of the problem is - Man is not relating to God the way he should. We have kept God separately in our temples/sacred places and go about without taking us with Him. Or we seek God only during difficulty. We feel that it is the work of the religion or religious people to take care of God and conveniently separate ourselves from our responsibility.

What we need to understand is - we should relate to God or the Supreme Consciousness more often than we do now, if at all we do. We need to relate to God not out of fear of punishment but merely because we need help from Him too, just as we need help from others in society. Can we exist alone in a Society? I think you are all intelligent to understand that we have to be social and cannot exist alone. Just as we need our society to help us with shops, jobs, hospitals and other establishments for our life, we need God's help too, especially in cases where most of our efforts are in vain. For this we have to establish a relationship with God.