2.8 God: Part Three
The Final Conclusions: Introduction
God’s presence is tangible. As a person to relate to, or as the divine powers of love and pure energy that sustains our existence, God is an experiential reality for some and one that can be for everyone. It is the goal of the Hindu religion to take its devotees beyond intellectual faith in God to a faith in God based on personal experience.
To this end, Hinduism is replete with practices, such as different styles of personal worship and meditations that a devotee can learn and practice. However Hinduism does not force upon its followers that they must realize God or even have the desire to know God in this very lifetime. Hindu teachings reveal that the spiritual evolution of the soul occurs over many lifetimes, and that the desire for the experience of God is a desire that develops from the very core of our soul as part of a natural process. So if you are Hindu and have no desire whatsoever to know God, don't worry, it doesn’t mean that you are not a good Hindu or anything like that. If, for now, all Hinduism is to you is a means of providing you with a structure for an ethical or cultured life then so be it; because one day, perhaps in another lifetime, you will suddenly begin to yearn to see God or want to feel His or Her presence as if your life depended on it. In the meantime we can at least prepare ourselves by gaining more knowledge about the path leading to God and nurture faith in God.
The path to ‘knowing God,’ begins with clearing misconceptions we may have about God. The previous two lessons of this series examined how it is that in Hinduism, though there are many forms of God, we believe in one Supreme Godhead. The lessons explored The Three Aspects of God. These three Aspects explain the variety of experiences we may have of God and how having these experiences relate to the salvation of our soul. Part three, contains the concluding part of our exploration of God’s nature.
No comments:
Post a Comment