Kishore Asthana
My God is a happy God. He laughs with amusement at our deeds and with indulgence at our conceits. Sometimes, perhaps, He is mildly surprised at what we can do both above and below His expectation. But He is never angry. He has no call to be. By our misdeeds we do not threaten Him, we threaten ourselves and probably make Him chuckle at our sense of self-importance and pomposity, as we may chuckle if a toy created by us acted peculiarly. My God is perhaps amused that we mistake our state of mind for His, transfer our emotions to Him and even assign Him a gender and, often, a form. We give Him myriad names and treat these names, thought up by us, as being special. He is amused that we act scared when we risk his anger in our imagination. He is perhaps also amused when we jump to defend Him, when nothing any of us can do can harm Him even one little bit. Some might think that they speak for my God. Don’t they know that they do not speak for my God? Many of them purport to do so either for personal gain in this world or in the hope of gain in the other one. Or, they are sincerely deluded into thinking that they are God’s chosen ones, and so they assume that they are authorised to speak on His behalf to their fellow human beings. These people are no less harmful or pointless than those who are knowingly hypocritical. Being saved from God’s socalled anger is less urgent than being saved from the selfrighteous wrath of those who assume that they have the authority to speak on behalf of God. That they make such an assumption, usually, has more to do with their chosen path than with their averred destination. My God has no reason to be angry, sarcastic or jealous. To Him, we are like infants and no one except the impatient or immature would inflict these sentiments on infants. And God is certainly neither. My God expects me to view His Creation with an open and questioning mind and live in it with lightness of spirit and vibrancy of feeling. Goodwill and tolerance are a part of His expectation. He views my progress towards Him with the measure of how One i feel with all that sprang from Him. This Oneness eventually leads to its source, God. Those who touch even the edge of this Oneness, realise that humankind has no word in any language that can do it justice. All our concepts of heaven fall severely short, incomparable to its infinite nature. There are few women and men who speak of God as He would want us to speak of Him. These rare ones have tasted this Oneness in full measure. They shine like stars in the constellation and are distinguished by the unity of their thought and the benign nature of their deeds. Though religions and rituals may have formed around them, these Masters are beyond religion and rituals. The smile of God is reflected in their own smile. When we are in tune with them, we can feel some of their great joy inside ourselves. And, if this is what happens to us when we get only a second-hand glimpse of God, imagine how happy He must be. Yes, my God is a happy God. With the power to do whatever He wants. How can He be otherwise? So i do not fear the wrath of God. I fear only the wrath of my own conscience. For, ultimately, it is not God who will critically judge my actions. It is my own Self
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