projecting ourselves in the guise of god
Vic Shayne
author
13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering
The god of the Western religions was created in the image of human beings and imbued with human attributes and emotions. At the same time, religious leaders characterize their god as perfect and all loving, which is not at all a description of the human condition. So which is true — that God is vengeful, angry, and jealous, or that He’s perfect and loves all his creations? And is it at all possible to find the truth of what you are while holding onto a belief about a god that you consider to be outside of you?
If you were to actually realize what you are beneath the facade of an egoic self with a name, face, body, and identity, you would come to the conclusion that you and all else are the same singular movement and essence of consciousness. Even the application of simple logic may suffice to show that there is no “other” and therefore there is no person, place, thing, or god outside of what we are. There are no hard edges separating us from anything else. Therefore, we cannot be separate from God; and if we are not separate then we must be God itself. And yet religion’s god is indeed an exogenous being — a projection of the egoic self and exteriorized for safety.
what is god?
The word “God” is problematic for many, including atheists, philosophers, pagans, and agnostics, and even for religious followers who are wont to differentiate between their god and another religion’s god. But in any case, God seems best thought of as a metaphor, and not even a good one at that.
What God is depends on one’s belief and nothing more. Let’s consider for a moment that God is an anthropomorphized concept of consciousness rather than a supernatural being that rules over all of life as a puppeteer, life-giver, murderer, rewarder, punisher, creator, destroyer, torturer, trickster, and judge — all of which, by the way, are very human attributes. There are many good reasons to regard God as a metaphor for consciousness, and a metaphor is not to be taken literally. So much for worship.
god sounds a lot like consciousness
Consciousness is the all-inclusive movement of life and all of its expressions and contents, including the emotions, thoughts, and what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious and the archetypes. As expressions in form, we are all this stuff of consciousness and nothing that exists can be outside of this complete system of life, death, destruction, creation, and every pair of dualities. Consciousness is the totality of all that is. The only thing that keeps us from beholding this totality as what we are is the egoic mind that is filled with beliefs of separatism. It is this same egoic mind that has created the Western version of God Almighty, which is why so many religious ideas are divisive and cause conflict.
the conflict is apparent
Like consciousness, God is said to be all-present, all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful. But let’s consider that God is a supernatural being separate from all else yet with the above human traits, as taught by Western religion. If such is the case then nothing bad could ever happen because God would know what was about to happen, have the power to stop it, be too full of love to let it happen, and be everywhere so that nothing is hidden from him.
do religious leaders get it?
Joseph Campbell said, “All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.” And yet the god of religion is described as if it is externalized, or “out there.” Who is right, Campbell, the Pope, Rabbi Greenberg, or the minister under the Big Tent making his followers fall unconscious by touching them on the forehead?
Thirteenth Century Sufi poet Abu al-Hasan al-Shushtari said it clearly: “I speak the truth: there is nothing in the universe that is not you.” Thus, we are God. It seems a good many people were murdered for such thought from zealots and administrators within their own ranks.
is god unknowable?
As long as we place the idea of God outside of what we are, we have created a conflict of ideas that cannot be overcome. When God is said to be external to us, then it can never be personally knowable, attainable, or reachable. In mainstream Western religion there is no teaching that one should shed the egoic self to uncover god or consciousness as one essence of totality.
Christian evangelist Billy Graham, the fellow credited (blamed?) for injecting religion into American politics from the president on down, taught, “The Bible says that God ‘judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart’ (Hebrews 4:12). The Bible also says, ‘The Lord detests the thoughts of the wicked, but those of the pure are pleasing to him’ (Proverbs 15:26).”
Graham’s words exemplify a God created in the limited, conflicted, biased image of human beings. How could God, which is portrayed as a being of which we are all a part, pass judgment on us and detest some of us while being pleased with others?
east does not meet west
India’s ancient texts, the Vedas, teach that God “is the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality, which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond in this universe. It is the Supreme Cosmic Spirit or Absolute Reality and is said to be eternal, genderless, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and ultimately indescribable in human language.“
The revered guru Anandamayi-ma said, “Whether you worship Christ, Krishna, Kali or Allah, you actually worship the one Light that is also in you, since It pervades all things.” And she said, “He who has created the universe is Himself present in all circumstances and conditions.” Of course, the pronoun “He” is but a metaphor, but we can clearly see that God is indistinguishable from all else.
what are we to do?
Who cares about God and religious ideas, anyway? What difference does it make whether people conceive of a god that is one’s own self or whether it is a supernatural being? Societally speaking, it matters a great deal, because time and again religious zealots go on a murder spree, burn books, imprison heretics, and worse. But for those who want to uncover what they are beyond the mind, body, and pattern of beliefs, it’s best to personally find out, by one’s own observation, what Joseph Campbell meant when he said, “God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It’s as simple as that.”
By separating itself from its god, mainstream Western religious thought has created a rift, a divide. A religion that promises to heal the wounds of divisiveness and hate, and to create peace on earth, cannot do so as long as it holds fast to ideas that perpetually divide people from each other. To be awake to the totality of consciousness requires a holistic view, but there can be no holism as long as aspects of life, including other people, nature, a god, etc., are believed to be outside of us.
