What is God might be a better question to ask than who is God. That’s because God is not a person even though we may personify different forms of energy or phenomenons as Him or Her. God in fact is not even an energy but it’s the source of all energy and creation. The Hindi word for this source is Isha, hence Ishawar (personification of the source) is the Hindi word for God. Why are there thousands of Hindu gods even though Hinduism also says there is one God? Because Hindus see god in everything, from a guest to rain to an energy to a rock. It’s the same God!
For all life and non-life on earth, Sun is the source of all energy. Rocks or weather are not alive but they exist because of the Sun. So for our purposes, we could consider Sun to be a God. Sun is certainly the source of all or most energy that impacts Earth. However if we look at a larger scale, our sun or even the entire solar system, despite its unfathomable size, is a small blip in the universe. It’s smaller than a tiny grain of sand amongst all sand on all beaches on Earth. Where did the Sun come from? Science, through its tools, has done a great job in understanding the physicality of what we perceive with human senses. We know that the Sun is nature’s nuclear reactor where fusion of hydrogen atoms is taking place. Science has also figured out the anatomy of the atoms. Electrons are revolving around the nucleus which consists of protons and neutrons. Science has figured out gravitational forces which keep the planets revolving around the Sun and the whole universe going. But science hasn’t been able to answer what makes the electron go around the nucleus in the first place. From where does it get the energy to do that? And from where does it get the instruction to do that?
Science is trying to prove that consciousness is an outcome of advanced natural evolution, or in other words matter created spirit. A spiritualist’s viewpoint on the other hand is that consciousness is the source of all creation, or spirit created matter.
It’s an outside-in versus inside-out viewpoint. Eventually science must arrive at the same conclusion because it will be unable to explain anything beyond the limits of physical dimensions. Even if you dissect the physical to its most indivisible unit, by looking outside-in, science can never explain the source of that fundamental unit. Okay, let’s say another generation goes by and a future Einstein discovers a breakthrough to explain the origin of the previously accepted fundamental unit. Very good, but we still need to explain the source of this new unit. It’s a never ending chase!
On the other hand, Vedic and most religious texts describe consciousness as the source of all creation. Scientists believe in the scientific method, that’s why they are called scientists. What scientists are unable to answer, is a realization that occurred to yogis and saints thousands of years ago. When you go inside, you can touch the source of creation which is inside you, just like it’s inside any other living being and non living thing. Once you touch the source of your creation, you understand experientially, not logically, how the material world is a manifestation of the same consciousness. I have not experienced this personally. So why do I believe this to be true? From Krishna to Buddha to Jesus to Sadhguru, and many more enlightened (this word is itself worthy of dissection) beings who have experienced the ultimate truth, have all described the same reality. This can have a few explanations- either everyone who gets to that level of inner depths hallucinates the same way, or it’s a coordinated spiritual-mongering thru generations, or it’s indeed the ultimate truth. My intellect discards the first two choices and lands on the third.
The Vedic texts are out there for all of us to read. Many people have devoted their time and energy to understanding the Hindu ancient scriptures and reproduced the wisdom contained there in more accessible forms. I have read some of these interpretations as I don’t understand Sanskrit. As you learn more, you realize the power contained there in. In Bhagwad Gita, Krishna talks about supreme consciousness which cannot be seen, touched, felt and is eternal. Obviously this delves into non-physical world which is outside the confines of human perception given the limitation of our senses. And if science cannot see it, it cannot believe it. That’s why in the quest for the ultimate truth, science will always be catching up…until it surrenders.
Even if you approach this logically, spirituality has answered the ultimate question not by providing an answer, but by realizing that the answer cannot be known. Science can keep dissecting infinitesimally but it will always reach a limit. Ultimately, the only answer is to surrender and realize the truth.
How does this intersect with the human mind which is in itself a brilliant creation? Of course humans have evolved as a species over millions of years. But time is also a dimension which exists because of the human mind’s ability to remember. If you remove memory, would time exist? Without memory, the only thing that would exist is the present moment. I can only scratch the surface of these ideas but the world is full of wise people who have gone deep and laid out these philosophies for scientific minds to appreciate. However most of us are born in a moving train, and spent our life inside it. For us the world outside is moving and the train is stationary. In other words, our minds have been trained to not believe anything without physical evidence. When the subject itself is beyond the physical, we can’t rely on physical logic to even begin to understand it.
The closest that science has come to understanding reality is in Einstein’s equation e=mc2. Or what he originally expressed as m=e/c2. In other words, mass or matter or the physical world is an interplay between speed of light and energy. Quantum mechanics describes how the fundamental building blocks are themselves vibrations. As a layperson, I see this as a confirmation that material world is an illusion / Maya. It is mind boggling that Hindu scriptures go in so much depth of all aspects of life and the universe, only if we are willing to explore them. These concepts are described in great detail, in a vocabulary that was suited for their times, but they describe what scientists are discovering today.
The nature of desire. Desire always makes us want more. Once we have achieved what we want, we want even more. ‘What’ we desire comes from our mind, based on its social and cultural conditioning. But the ‘desire itself’ comes from the consciousness inside us that wants to merge with the infinity and become infinity. In the material world, that translates into an illusion of wanting more. But wanting and getting more will never take us to infinity. For that, the path is to give up everything, become zero or Shiv, and flip it to become infinity. This is the path that abhairgyas or Sanyasis follow.
Science reaches a limit where it fairly admits it doesn’t know. Spirituality, and by inheritance religion, already know that beyond a certain point, it cannot be known or is unknowable.