Where is your God? – Chinmayananda

Question:  Where is your God?  I do not see, hear or know Him, and in these days of misery and sorrow, if at all He exists, I find Him to be absolutely blind and deaf.   I refuse to believe in God.

Answer:  You are perfectly right in your cry of protest against a God who is not coming forward to protect and save the world which is suffering from sorrow and miseries.  If the coolness of ice does not reach to console the finger that is in the fire, it must certainly be the impotency of the ice to cool!  Or else we will have to accept that the suffering of the finger is because of the stupidity of the person behind the finger, and this is rather inconvenient!

If one has the intelligence to know and recognize that both heat and cold exist in life, and that each is the immediate antidote of the other, then how can a person court the persecutions of the one, crying out the impotency of the other? If you are feeling persecuted by the cold, move toward the fire, invoke its grace, and bask in its warmth. If your are suffering from heat, move toward the cooler and embrace some refreshing shade.

Just as we have been running after the world of sense cravings, lust and passions, of loveless cruelties, and of empty values, thus courting “these days of sorrow”, we can now turn to seek the opposite virtues and enjoy their comforts.

This positive state of harmony and peace, which can be invoked by an intelligent person of will and courage, is called God. He is present everywhere as the raaga (melody) in the music, or the canvas in a painting.  He is the warp and woof of the entire tapestry of life, as the thread in a piece of cotton cloth.  We must have the ears to listen to the raaga, we must have the understanding to see the canvas, and we must have the knowledge to recognize the thread in the cloth. The hurried existence of busy experiences diverts our attention and we must necessarily fail “to see, hear, or know Him”.

In the form of a letter, I can do no better than sing in chorus with Hans Denk: “Oh my God, how does it happen in this poor old world that Thou art so great and yet nobody finds Thee, that Thou callest so loudly and nobody hears Thee, that Thou art so near and yet nobody feels Thee, that Thou givest Thyself to everybody and yet nobody even knows Thy name? Men flee from Thee and say that they cannot find Thee; they turn their backs and say they cannot see Thee; they cover their ears and say they cannot hear Thee.”

Mananam Publication Series – Volume XIV Number 3
Satsang with Swami Chinmayananda
Chapter: The Spiritual Quest