Part XXII — Professor Lincoln Polissar

PCG 24. Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Professor Lincoln Polissar: The universe is so vast and complicated. Is there any imaginative way to visualise how God runs the whole thing?

Sri Chinmoy: My dear Professor, in order to imagine God, what you need first is faith in your imagination. Imagination is a reality in itself that can stand on its own. It is a power that can be embodied, revealed and manifested like any other quality. When you have faith in an individual, let us say, you feel that that person can do something to your satisfaction. Similarly, when you imagine God in His Vastness, you have implicit faith in His omnipotent Power. With His creative Power He has brought forth the universe.

Let us go one step further. Since you can believe that God has created the universe, you can easily believe that He has also created the tiny insects. Now can you believe that a tiny insect embodies and reveals God the omnipotent Power in the same way that His infinite Vastness does? If you can exercise the power of your imagination, you will see that God is not only the Infinite but also the finite. He can be both reality and unreality; He is and He is not at the same time.

Your mind will say, "If He is, how can He not be?" Your imagination also may say the same in the beginning. But you have to learn to use a different kind of imagination. You have to take imagination as a reality that can be within your grasp. Do not think of it as a bird which is flying in the sky far beyond your reach, and then disappears from your sight. Think of it as a kite which is attached to your hand by a string. You can allow the kite to fly with the wind wherever it wants to go. Again, you can bring it down into your hand at any moment. Your imagination has to be allowed to fly and, at the same time, it has to remain under your control so that you can use it whenever you wish. The string that is attached to your imagination is nothing other than your faith in God's Omnipotence. Your faith will tell you that God can be vaster than the vastest or smaller than the smallest.

Before a photographer takes a picture, he selects a particular type of lens. By using a zoom lens, he can bring objects that are far away right in front of his immediate vision. Again, by selecting another type of lens, he can push objects that are nearby to the farthest horizon. It is the same with your imagination. You can bring the Infinite nearer than the nearest using your faith-string, or you can release your imagination and see things at a great distance using the same string.

Unfortunately, when we say that God is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient, we tend to imagine God as Someone who is farther than the farthest and higher than the highest. But that is only one reality. Why can we not imagine that God is right inside us, perhaps in our heart or in our eye?

We have to come to the point where we can feel that God is not only in the infinite Vast, but also inside us, and even inside the smallest thing in His creation. This is what spiritual Masters and spiritual seekers of the highest order do: they use their vision to see the Presence of God in every aspect of God's creation. This vision, like a zoom lens, enables them to see far more things than our ordinary human sight will allow.

If you have the vision to go beyond what your eyes can see, beyond what your mind can understand, then you will see that your vision is nothing other than reality itself. And what is the connecting link between your vision and the farthest distance? It is your faith and nothing else.

Right now you are ready to believe that God is inside the Himalayas, inside the ocean, inside the planets and the stars, but you are not ready to see Him inside something minute. Again, you may be ready to see the Presence of God inside the things that are material and visible, but are you ready to see Him inside the things that are invisible? You can see and touch a flower, but its fragrance is invisible. Your eyes and your mind are telling you that the flower is beautiful. How do you describe beauty? How do you define it? Beauty as such defies description. In order to feel beauty as a reality, you have to experience it. As we can experience material objects which we can see and touch, so we can experience intangible things like beauty, purity, divinity and so forth. This we do on the strength of our oneness-imagination.

What is purity? If it is merely physical cleanliness, then it will be immediately obvious to our outer eyes. But true purity cannot be seen with the outer eyes. Purity is an inner state, in which the mind sees everything as divine. No matter how many times somebody takes a shower, I am sure that person will not see everything around him as divine! When a person is inundated with real purity, that person will see everything as Divinity — the wall, the door, the window, everything. Purity sees everything as the manifestation of Divinity.

Beauty, purity, divinity and so on all have a reality of their own. They do not have to have a physical or material form. If we can identify ourselves with them, then it is possible for us to believe that Divinity is not only omnipresent but that we are that very thing. We are Divinity Itself.

Unfortunately, the human mind only thinks that God can be this but He cannot be that. Our mind imagines Him as God the Compassionate, God the Merciful or God the Just. Our mind simply cannot imagine that God can be indifferent or even cruelty incarnate! But we have to take all aspects of God as one: He can be this, He can be that. In His absence, He is present. In His presence, He is absent. Inside the beauty of the flower, He is the fragrance. Inside the fragrance, He is the beauty of the flower. It is like looking at the obverse and the reverse of a coin simultaneously. On one side is the portrait of the king, on the other side is something else. While looking at the face of the king, you have to immediately, directly, see the other side of the coin. That is the reality — they are absolutely inseparable, the way the fragrance and the flower are inseparable.

Vastness and smallness have to be seen together. For us it is easy to believe that God embodies the Infinite, but hard to believe that God can be tinier than the tiniest. He not only embodies that tiny thing, but He is that tiniest thing. Look at our human bodies. Our chest is very big and we may be able to imagine God is dwelling there. But it is hard for us to imagine that God is inside our smallest toe. We have to come to the point where we can feel that the very toe itself is God.

Let us take the ocean as God. If you separate one drop from the ocean, can you still feel that that one drop is God? You will say that a little drop is so helpless, how can it be God? But God can play the role of helplessness inside a drop of water. With His omnipotent Power He has made Himself helpless.

The best thing is always to imagine that the God who is farther than the farthest, deeper than the deepest, higher than the highest, has the same reality as the God who is being expressed in that which is near, that which is tiny. If you can have the faith that God can be this, and He can be that, then imagination does not remain imagination any longer. Imagination becomes reality. But imagination can become reality only when we exercise our faith that God exists in all His aspects. He can be sleeping; He can be awake. He can be near; He can be far. He can be here; He can be there. Why should God be confined to just one way of being seen or believed in? If you have faith in all His aspects, then imagination becomes real, and you will no longer doubt yourself or doubt God.

We always say God is omnipotent, and we beg Him to grant us a portion of His Power so that we can fulfil our desire to be successful or do something well. But we can also pray to Him in another way. We can say, "God, since You are omnipotent, please use Your omnipotent Power to take away my greed, my desire, my ignorance." How often do human beings pray to God in that way? Most people only pray to God the Omnipotent to fulfil their desires, not to remove them. One out of a million will pray to God, "Let Thy Will be done." The rest will say, "Give me this, give me that."

There are some thieves who go to the temple and pray to God not to be caught. At the same time, the owners of houses are praying to God, "O God, if thieves break into our house, do give us the capacity to catch them." Which prayer is God going to fulfil? One party is saying, "I am doing the wrong thing, but please do not allow them to catch me." The other party is saying, "Please do not allow thieves to come into our house, or allow us to catch them if they do." God is lost in between the two! God may see that the householders need a certain experience to illumine them, so He may allow their things to be stolen. Then again, He may not. God alone knows in which way He will please human beings!

On very rare occasions there will be the kind of person who prays to God, "Let Thy Will be done. If You want a thief to come into my house, if You want him to be caught, or if You want him to go free, it is all up to You."

Once a thief came to rob an Indian spiritual Master. He found nothing inside the room except a mattress and a pillow. While the thief was going away with these things, the Master happened to come into the room. Immediately, the thief dropped the pillow and mattress and started to run away. The Master ran after him calling, "Wait, wait! Please come back and take these belongings of mine. You need them more than I do. That is why you came. During the night I have the moon and during the day I have the sun. I do not need anything else."

You may say that the spiritual Master was showing the height of stupidity, but I wish to say that on the strength of his oneness with God he saw that the thief valued those things more than he did, so he allowed the thief to keep the mattress and pillow. He said, "God's Will operated in and through the thief to steal my things. The same God is now telling me to let him get joy by keeping them. I will get inner satisfaction by offering them to him. I am not an idiot; I am only fulfilling God's own Will in this particular case."

The reality of the universe is visible when the mind is completely silent. When the mind becomes like an empty vessel, then alone can it be receptive to God's Will. Inside nothingness, everything can be found. This is our Indian philosophy. From nothingness came fulness. In the spiritual life emptiness is fulness. When the mind is absolutely still, the all-pervading reality is visible.