In Search of God

By Mathew Idikkula

Nothing has been more intriguing in the history of mankind than the concept of God. 

Confronted with misery and fear, the inevitable realities of life, people have sought refuge in 

an outside supernatural power, which they called God. Unaware of God's true nature, people

have come to assume all kinds of costumes for God—a supreme Judge in a far away heaven, a 

ferocious Being with immense power, a benevolent, loving Superhuman, and so forth.

In fact, both the existence and the nature of God have been profoundly misunderstood. 

It is not surprising that the longest campaign of violence ever recorded in history was unleashed 

on account of a misunderstood God. It remains true to this day that the same violence in the 

form of terrorism continues unabated in the name of God, a misunderstood God. Rejecting a 

popular view of God, Albert Einstein writes, “I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes 

the objects of His creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own.”

The search for God assumed a higher dimension with the progress of humanity. While 

the majority still looked for God in a far away heaven, philosophers and theologians, mostly in 

the west, employed reason and logic in their vain attempt to comprehend that which is 

incomprehensible and beyond reason “While the educated indulged in vain speculations about 

the Inexpressible, the uneducated treated God as a being who could be manipulated by magic 

rites or sorcery,” writes Dr. S. Radhakrishnan.

Is there a God? If there is, what can the word God possibly refer to? This short essay is 

geared to answer these questions, based on the testimony of Vedanta.

True philosophy lies in probing the ultimate cause of the universe. In ancient India the 

search for God was directed inward. Seeing that all objects of the universe are fleeting, the 

Vedic sages hypothesized that there must be a stable entity from which all these are born, by 

which all are sustained, and into which they all return. They also explored: What makes the 

universe appear in the first place, and in the absence of what would make it disappear?

For answers they plunged deep into their own Consciousness and came up with the 

most exalted and pioneering discovery that what they had been probing was nothing but their 

own Consciousness. Incidentally, the same truth was observed at a much later period by St. 

Francis of Assisi when he said, “What we are looking for is what is looking.”

In the process of their probe, the sages also established the simple but indisputable logic 

that if there is Consciousness, there is universe; and there is no universe in the absence of 

Consciousness. To understand this, consider if there is gold, ornaments are there; there can be 

no ornaments in the absence of gold. Therefore, what appears as ornaments is nothing but gold 

in various names and forms. Here, gold alone is the cause of the ornaments and is the only 

reality. The ornaments have no existence apart from gold. 

Similarly, if Consciousness is the ultimate cause of the universe, then what we perceive 

as the universe is merely names and forms (nama-rupa) in Consciousness. Names and forms 

have no existence apart from Consciousness and therefore are not real in the sense we consider

Consciousness to be real. Consciousness is the only Reality, the only existence, the underlying 

principle of the apparent universe. As Vayu-Purana puts it, “Everything exists in Consciousness, 

and Consciousness exists in everything.” The implication is that Consciousness is the 

fundamental Reality beyond which there is no existence. 

It is a grave error born out of ignorance that we think that there is a God outside 

Consciousness—outside us. All gods having a name and form are products of our imagination, 

not an absolute reality; as such, they belong to the world of manifestations. Listen to Paul 

Twtichell: “The chief delusion of man is his conviction that there are other causes at work in this 

life than his own states of Consciousness.”

The Nature of Consciousness

Consciousness, like space, is one only. It is infinite, eternal, immutable, unmovable, 

inactive, and indivisible; it is never born and never dies. Above all, Consciousness is 

incomprehensible, meaning it is not an object of sense knowledge. It is the eternal subject by 

being the knower of all objects. How can the object, which is inert matter, ever conceive of 

knowing its subject? Consider this analogy: “With a pair of tongs you can catch anything 

outside it. Can it catch the hand which holds it?” writes Swami Rama Tirtha, quoted by Swami 

Ramdas.

Therefore, the ultimate Reality is beyond the reach of human intellect and beyond the 

scope of science as well. Listen to what William Rees-Mogg says: “To argue that nothing exists 

which cannot be proved scientifically is the crudest of errors, which would eliminate almost 

everything we value in life, not only God or the human spirit, but love and poetry and music.”

Nick Herbert observes, “Science’s biggest mystery is the nature of Consciousness.” 

Science deals with sense data which is measurable; the reality of Consciousness is 

immeasurable. In fact, modern science has come to grip with this realization. Listen to Arthur 

Eddington, “The frank realization that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is 

one of the most significant of recent advances.”

The world of reality that the Vedic sages have discovered, the ultimate Reality, is the 

world that really is, not the world that appears to us. Vedanta called it Brahman, Buddha called 

it Nirvana, Jesus called it Father, and Islam called it Allah. Reality (Truth) is one only (Ekam sat) 

and beyond name and form; but the same Reality is called variously by different traditions of 

the world. That’s all.

True, we can neither see God (Reality) nor know it. But we can experience it; therefore, 

we can believe it—just as we can see neither electricity nor gravitation, but we can experience 

their effects and therefore we believe in them.

The Self

Similarly, we do experience the Infinite within ourselves as our inmost Self – which is 

known as “Atman” in Vedanta, and “the Kingdom of God” in Christianity. “One Self-effulgent 

Being, hidden in all beings, all pervading, is the inner Self of all,” says Svetasvatara Upanishad. 

Because of the luminous Self we are aware of not only our own existence but also everything 

else. Keep in mind that only the animate beings are conscious of their existence, not the 

material entities. 

We are all conscious that we exist; our existence is self-evident. No one thinks “I am

not” (I don’t exist). We do not need any proof for our own existence.

We can doubt anything else in the world except the immediate “self-certainty” that we 

all constantly experience. Do I need somebody else to prove that I exist? Sankara, the 

philosopher sage of India, says: “All means of knowledge exist only as dependent on self-

experience, and since such experience is its own proof, there is no necessity for proving the 

existence of Self….The Self cannot be proved since it is the basis of all proof and is established 

prior to all proof”

The Self – the changeless and imperishable Reality – is spiritual; everything else is 

material – changing and perishable. One is Infinite, the other is finite. Both represent two 

diametrically opposing realms of reality. Let us put this fundamental truth into perspective with 

respect to our own individual life experiences for more clarity.

Vedanta says we all experience the world through three different states of 

Consciousness: waking, dream, and deep sleep – an exclusive analysis done by Vedanta only. 

One state of experience is always contradicted by another. However, in the midst of the shifting 

states experiences, we all experience a stable center(experiencer): the sense of “I.” This very 

center is our Self.

Obviously, all our experiences are centered around this “I,” which never changes while 

the experiences are changing. For instance, we all know that it is the same “I” who is the waker, 

dreamer, and sleeper. Are they different? Have a close look at your own life spectrum. Our 

thinking, our likes and dislikes, conceptions, convictions, emotions, and even our bodies 

undergo constant change. We all pass through stages of childhood, adolescence, youth, 

adulthood, and old age. And yet the sense of “I” remains the same throughout. In retrospect, 

can I deny myself in any of these various stages of development, seeing that both my body and 

mind have changed over the years? The truth is that the sense of “I” – the Self – is never born, 

never ages, and never dies; birth, growth, and death are features pertaining to matter only. 

It is noteworthy that the Self under discussion here is the deeper Self—the true Self, 

which is one only by being the Self of all. It is not to be confused with our ego sense—our 

apparent self, which is nothing but a reflection of the deeper Self. 

The One and the Many

As we have noted above, though there is but one Self, there are countless 

individualized selves, just like there are countless reflections of the same sun. The sun is not 

affected by its numerous reflections. Similarly, the one and the only Reality (Consciousness) 

pervades the entire universe by being the indwelling Self – the subtle essence – of all, but 

without being affected by the qualities of the objects that it illumines. “Know that (Self) to be 

the imperishable by which all this is pervaded,” says Gita.

Another important aspect of Reality worth discussing is that it is both transcendent and 

immanent. When the Reality is viewed without any subject-object relation, beyond the world of 

objects, it is transcendent. But when the same Reality is considered as being in contact with 

objects (matter), it is immanent. In its transcendent nature, which is its true nature, Reality is 

one; in its immanent nature, which is only apparent (not real), this one Reality appears as many.

This twofold aspect of Reality is highlighted in a passage of Gita: “All this world is 

pervaded by Me in My unmanifested form…All beings exist in Me; but I do not abide in them.

Nor do the beings abide in Me. Behold My divine mystery! My being, which is the substance and 

sustenance of all, does not abide in them.” What the quoted passage implies, though difficult to 

grasp, is this: The transcendent aspect of Reality is the absolute truth; the immanent aspect is 

his divine mystery—appearance(Maya).

From the perspective of a man of knowledge, the Reality is absolutely one without a 

second. But from the perspective of someone who is ignorant, the same Reality is manifold. 

Swami Satprakashananda has illustrated this profound truth by means of a perfect analogy: 

“The sun, which is ever stationary and ever resplendent, appears as rising or setting, as bright or 

dim, to those who are on the earth, but from the position of the sun all these movements and 

changes have no meaning, there being all along the same glorious, steady sun.”

The Vedantic conception of God is nowhere else better illustrated than in Chandogya 

Upanishad, which Swami Vivekananda quoted in a lecture at Harvard university on March 

25,1896: “That is the Infinite where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, knows nothing 

else. But where one sees something else, hears something else, knows something else, that is 

finite. That which is Infinite is immortal; that which is finite is mortal.”

The Search for God

It follows, therefore, that the Reality that remains ever the same is one only; it is the 

cause of the many that come and go. But we see the many, not the One. We can dismiss the 

many seeing that they are not real, but not the One that sustains the many. We can dismiss the 

bubbles and the waves, but not the ocean.

The search for God is the search for the One. The search for the One is knowledge; the 

search for the many is ignorance. For, the One is the eternal subject, the knower, the many, the 

known, are the objects.

Our material life is a relentless flight, consciously or unconsciously, towards the One. As 

the rivers flow to reach the ocean, everything in nature moves towards its ultimate source from 

which it originated—the ultimate Reality. “The One which is the culmination of human 

knowledge, the One which the human mind invariably seeks, the One in which human 

aspirations attain fulfillment cannot be but the ultimate Reality,” writes Swami 

Satprakashananda.

Ultimately, the search for God is never an inquiry into the objective universe, but rather 

an intense search into the inner nature of man—who am I? Because we are what we are 

searching for. “If a man knows himself, he shall know God,” writes Clement of Alexandria. And 

realizing which, there is nothing else to be sought or known.