People of all religious faiths admit that God is the Creator and controller of the universe, therefore He is Almighty. Hindus worship Him as an omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient Being. He is Atman (Self), being subtler than the subtlest, and Brahman, being bigger than the biggest. He is thus unsurpassable, and in Him alone opposites (Dwanda) coexist side by side with no disputes. Hindus realized God as the Absolute all-inclusive Deity. He is, to them, the ultimate Reality.

Since all animate and inanimate things are made by Him, they are also real, but then, changeable and bound by His Law of Karma which is described by them, in another word, as Dharma. They say Dharma holds the universe and maintains it impeccably in a perfect order by means of reward and retribution in a process that is eternally functional in an inscrutable self-sustained sacrosanct manner, hence synonymous with God. Hindus believe that God is manifested in everything in varying degrees, in some less and in others more, but in man the most.

Yet, man suffers because he is ignorant and unaware of it. So, they take life as a spiritual journey to lead on the path walked by realized souls destined to the God within. Man is miserable because he forgets that he is God in reality, falsely believing himself a being with a name (Nama) and a form (Rupa) ~ including their adjuncts like birth, descent, faith, caste, country, etc. ~ which are, in fact, adventitious, and indeed have no bearing on his true nature. However, one of the most profound aspects they discovered about God was the truth that He is immanent as well as transcendent.

Concentrating on one’s own self, when one attains the state of Samadhi, one realizes God and knows for good that Self (Atman) and God (Brahman) are one and identical. One now perceives God within oneself and in everyone else simultaneously. Getting rid of the sense of separateness forever, one becomes liberated from all delusions of worldly........

© The Statesman