God is deep within, God is high above, God is all around, yet we fail to see Him for He is not perceived by the defective eye in which the dust of desire has obscured pure vision. God exists everywhere, inside of us as well as outside of us, inside of objects as well as outside of objects, permeating space-time, interpenetrating cosmic reality and remaining the immanent principle in it, yet, we fail to behold Him, for the material myopic eye cannot see Him. Through austerity and divine love develops the spiritual eye and the refined nervous system with their capacity for subtle perception. The nerves are fine-tuned for divine vision and that which was thus far hidden from the gross eye becomes apparent to the subtle eye. The introspective ascetic beholds within his Self the Divine Principle and the Divine Personality as being one with him even as he loses his lower self forever in his heightened consciousness.
We have heard from childhood that God is omnipresent but have hardly understood the import of such a statement. We have imagined that God is everywhere in the sense that He is permeating the cosmos but is somewhat separate from us, allowing us in the bargain individual existence as phenomenal beings. But this is a flawed understanding of this profound principle of divine omnipresence. If God is omnipresent, where are we or where am I? For, necessarily, God being everywhere, there is nowhere that I may be unless, of course, I am one with God in which case either God exists or I exist. It then becomes a matter of nomenclature and standpoint of perception and perspective. Whatever the epithet, the reality remains the same, unaltered, unalterable.
And this reality has to be discovered, which has been the quest of man since antiquity. His senses remaining externalised, he seeks it in the external universe whose outcome has been the depositing of God outside of the cosmos as its absurd governing deity, though, and the attempt to connect with this disjoint being through all sorts of local practice of puerile piety. The skew bodies then never meet and God remains ever outside the ambit of humans in extra-cosmic 'space' or in a heaven thereof whence he absurdly attempts to dispense 'justice' on erring humanity. Such irrational presumptions are what form the body politic of the Semitic religions with the result that the two major ones among them, namely, Christianity and Islam, both of which are preeminently proselytising faiths, are more political movements than spiritual ones. Judaism, despite its philosophical incongruities, is hardly a menace on account of its very small following, for it is not a proselytising faith. But Christianity and Islam have done untold damage to human civilisation through enormous bloodshed in the name of their respective Gods. They have converted humanity everywhere with fraud, force and the instilling of fear.
It is, thus, imperative that the Indian dharma traditions, as distinct from the faith-bound Abrahamic religions, must once again take the lead in guiding humanity to the pristine principles of pure philosophy in much the same way as they had done when humanity had not yet been accursed with the arrival of tribal cults of such venomous potential. Once more the Vedas must sound the Om as the cosmic symbol of all of phenomena and the prelude to the Great Beyond. The banks of the Ganga, the Sindhu and the Saraswati had once reverberated with Vedic mantras pouring forth from the depths of the being of the perfected seers of transcendental truth we call 'rishis'. Again such a symphony of souls must be sounded but with added emphasis by the scientific corroboration of spiritual fact, and they must resonate through ethereal skies above the whole of this world and not any privileged locale. The Ganga will soar with its sound, so will the Volga. The Sindhu (Indus) will replicate the sound, so will the Seine. Mississippi will send its waters rippling with the mantras and the Thames will follow suit. It is a vast water mass, a single, unified body of fluid dreams stretching from the Himalayas to the Andes, from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. Everything will be swept away by this current of godhead emerging from India, every hindrance rendered low, obstacles cast aside as the Spirit of man soars at last into the real heaven that is at its core. The height meets the depth as dimensions diminish to a nought and space-time is transcended to dissolve unto cipher in the undeciphered Void. Om Tat Sat!
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