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Posted on: Jun 14, 2017

Does God Exist

Dr. Wayne Dyer, is a best-selling American author and internationally renowned philosopher and motivational speaker. Though he has never visited Puttaparthi or had the darshan of Bhagawan, during his many talks around the world he would make references to dreams in which he was blessed to be visited by Bhagawan. These dreams led him to have a deep reverence for Swami too. Once in a television interview when asked about Baba he said, “Even as you speak (about Sai Baba), I get very emotional. I could almost break down and cry right now. It’s not a tear of sadness; it’s not a feeling that I am hurt in any way. It’s just the most blissful, peaceful (feeling). Do you know what it feels like to be in a warm shower when you have been out in the cold? It’s like having a warm shower running inside of you.”

And when asked who is Sai Baba in his view, he said, “I have a very, very strong internal knowing about my connection to Source (God) and Sai Baba is someone who lives at this level of God Consciousness. In David Hawkins book Power vs. Force, he speaks of a handful of people who live at this God-Realised level. He says they are steadfast in their abstention of thoughts of harm, that they don’t exclude anyone and that they include all, and Baba is one of those beings that calibrates at one of those exceptionally high spiritual levels that is commensurate with Source. He is Source Energy. He lives at Source Energy. He is God. We are all pieces of God, and He is there all the time.”

What follows is a lovely parable from his book, ‘Your Sacred Self’. It is something interesting to ponder about. It is meant for those who believe in God as well as for those who don't believe in Him. It stimulates our lateral thinking.

In a mother's womb were two babies. One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?” The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”

“Nonsense”, said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”

The second said, “I don't know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can't understand now.”

The first replied, “That is absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after delivery is to be logically excluded.”

The second insisted, “Well, I think there is something and maybe it's different than it is here. Maybe we won't need this physical cord anymore.”

The first replied, “Nonsense. Moreover if there is life, then why has no one ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of life and after delivery there is nothing but darkness and silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”

“Well, I don't know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”

The first replied “Mother? You actually believe in Mother? That's laughable. If Mother exists then where is she now?”

The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We are of her. It is in her that we live. Without her this world would not and could not exist.”

Said the first: “Well I don't see her, so it is only logical that she doesn't exist.”

The second replied, “Sometimes, when you're in silence and you focus and you really listen, you can perceive her presence, and you can hear her loving voice, calling down from above.”

Isn't that a beautiful allegory of life, afterlife and more importantly the presence of God? To lead a practical life in the world we must use rationality. And rational thinking is fed by the inputs we receive from the senses. But the truth that we forget is, even our rational thinking is not completely based on what we see or hear. Comprehension involves what we directly perceive through our senses, plus our abilities to extrapolate and connect the seen with the unseen.

So when one ridicules a believer of God for believing in the unseen, he is equally irrational for his conclusions too are based on incomplete evidence. Explaining this Swami once said,

“You see a plane zooming in the sky; someone tells you that it is flown by a pilot but you refuse to believe, because you do not see him from where you are. Is this correct? You must go into the plane to see the pilot; you cannot deny his existence, standing on the ground. You have to guess that the plane must have a pilot.

So too seeing the universe, you have to guess the existence of God, not deny Him because you are not able to see Him. People do not believe in God but they believe newspapers and the news they publish about things they do not see or cannot see. They believe what their ears hear, more than what their eyes see or minds experience. A blind man is in darkness and when he denies there is light, we need not attach any value to his denial.” - Shivaratri, 19 February, 1966

We certainly cannot believe in everything that we have not seen or everything that is mere hearsay. But openness is an essential quality even for a rational mind.

But come to think of it, how lucky are we? In the above example Swami says that to see the pilot one has to go up to the aeroplane. But on another occasion, He explained how sometimes the plane itself lands and it becomes easier to see the ‘pilot’. Swami says, that is what happens when the Lord descends as an Avatar. But that does not mean we get carried away by the idea that the Lord was then with us and is now no more.

The Lord is not up in the skies or in a distant land. Like in that story, we live in God, like a foetus in the mother's womb. When our existence in life is based on that faith that the Lord is all around us and is there to provide all the nourishment we need, would we find the necessity to cry for them?

Faith is believing in that which cannot be always seen, but is there to be recognised and felt only if we wish to and strive for it. We leave you with what Swami said on Guru Poornima Day of 1986:

“Faith in God is the bedrock on which one's life should be built. All the scriptures one may read, all the rituals one may practise and the mastery of the Upanishads or the Gita will be of no avail if there is no deep faith in God. They will be mere physical or intellectual exercises only. They may even strengthen the delusions regarding the body-mind complex.

Deepen your faith in God. Without God how can all the marvels in the cosmos be accounted for? By whose power are millions of stars held in their places? How does the earth turn on its axis without an axle? How does the wind blow to give gratuitous comfort to one and all? These phenomena are beyond human power. All these are the work of the unseen Power acting from behind the screen. It is the Unseen that sustains the seen. It is the power of God.”

Radio Sai Team