Separation of “I” from God in different belief systems

Aham Brahmasmi: I am the God

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Separation of “I” from God in different belief systems

The claim of being God seems ridiculous to start with and blasphemy to dissect further. However, this seemingly ridiculous utterance has kept conscience of mortal being alive since millenniums. The pursuit of God is a pursuit which, for some it never ends, for few others there is no pursuit at all. Is there any straight path to the God or is the journey itself futile? The concept of God and I itself requires introspection before this pursuit.

Different belief systems have taken different views on it. However, there is a substantial difference between Indic and non-Indic belief systems. As Ramakrishna Paramahans rightly propagated the concept of “Jiva is Shiva”, which literally means that mortal being is God, which is essence of Indic belief system. Be it Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism or Buddhism all have propagated same underlying faith of “Jiva is Shiva”. These belief systems have inherently assumed the fact that God resides amongst us and we need not look outside. These belief systems do not intend to look outside, physical manifestation to realize the God. These do not cling to a place, a book or a name to realize the God. Historicities of events do not impact them much. It is the concept of Self Realization-Aham Brahmasmi: I am the God, which is pervasive in Indic belief systems, or also popularly known as Dharmic faiths.

Rajiv Malhotra highlighted the interesting aspects of Dharmic faith in his book “Being Different”

“Even if all historical records were lost, historical memory erased, and every holy site destroyed, the ultimate truth could be recovered by ordinary human through spiritual practices.”

What Mr. Malhotra has essentially said is that icons do not matter, names do not matter, and in fact places also do not matter. God resides within you and you can find it out through spiritual practices. This has led to multi faceted changes and adjustments with new realities of the world. Take an example of Tibetan Buddhism. For all practical purposes, Chinese Government has removed Tibet as an entity from the map of world. An independent identity is being quietly subverted very fast. Still there are millions of followers who abide by the faith system. Richard Gere is one of the sparkling stars of it.

In the book “Vivekananda: The Great Spiritual Teacher”, the authors write

The Vedic seers realized the “Absolute” in the highest super conscious state and visualized him in and through all.

Hence the exclusion of God to a particular person or entity or even to man-kind is not correct. The God can take any form, shape and is present everywhere. In Hinduism, worship of God in different forms, excluding human being is a real manifestation of this.

Non-Indic belief systems have a very different take on the whole perspective. The exclusivity of God to a person is something inherent. E.g. Human kind has sinned and need to be cured by Son of God. The basic assumption is starting of sin. All work has to be dictated by a certain written peace of doctrine.

In his book “Being Different” Rajiv Malhotra , while describing Non-Indic faith, further says

“The written account of these prophets has come to be held as ultimate religious authority, not only for the communities in which they arose, but for all humanity, forever. The entire planet’s destiny depends on getting these written accounts right. Organized religion is thus a sort of history club which aims to arrive at the ‘right’ interpretation of prophetic teachings and instructions.”

But how come only one written peace is always correct? Things evolve, people mature, perspective emerge hence interpretations, thought process and hence some doctrine can also change. Why can’t human being be pure? Why it has to be burdened by sin. But why an entity which is yet to take birth be burdened by sin? This question requires thought. A life which gets started by God can not start with sin. In the worst case, it should start with blank slate and should get filled up with good or bad karma. But that is not the case. In non-indic belief systems, it starts with the burden of sin, while indic systems says sin or no sin it is all result of what do you think and what do you do AND you can learn to exercise complete control of what do you think and what do you intend to do.

 As Bhagvad Gita says

“Don’t worry about results, focus on your karma as only Karma is in your hand”

So why do one always need somebody to reach to God? Can one realize the God without any help from anybody? Indic systems emphatically say yes to it while non-indic systems are vehemently against it. One can always say that he is not matured, learned or trained enough to realize God, but if we flip this around and say “ If one is mature, learned and trained himself alone can the same person be denied realization of God” the answer would obviously be a “No”. Then the inherent demonstration of inferiority of human being in realizing themselves is a question which must be answered.

Hence non-indic belief systems always leave a desire to get the history, accounts, facts right, non-indic systems believe in I am the God. It is just a matter of time for you to realize it.