Who and what is God? This question has occupied the mind of humans for thousands of years. And it is clear that, after all this time, we have still not come to any conclusions upon which all of us can agree. This is rather amazing, when you think about it.
How it it possible for humanity to put all of its combined thinking on a single subject for thousands of years and not come to a common understanding and a single awareness? More important, what would it take for us to do so?
Today Sunday School All Week resumes, after a brief hiatus during the height of the U.S. national elections, with a look at this question — and a proposed answer that emerges from the New Cosmology offered to the world in Conversations with God.
The New Cosmology invites humanity consider these ideas…
God is life, and life is God. Nothing stands outside of God, and therefore there is no separation between God and anything at all.
Humanity’s understanding of this will mark The End of Separation. That, in turn, will conclude the cycle that began when Separation was first taught.
The world’s three largest religions are based on consecutive revelations, spanning thousands of years:
1. Abraham brought to humanity the revelation that there was not a string of deities ruling the sun and the stars and the weather and the crops and the land and the sea, but only one Ruler, one God, and Moses brought to humanity the revelation of what the One Ruler’s rules were. He said there were ten of them.
2. Jesus brought to humanity the revelation that the One Ruler’s rules could be reduced to One Rule–which has been called Golden.
3. Mohammed brought to humanity the revelation that the One Ruler’s One Rule could be applied in very practical ways in every day life, overlaying structure and procedure on a very broad guideline, converting generalities to specifics.
Now comes a new revelation. Not from one teacher, but from many, not from one voice, but from a chorus. That chorus is singing a different tune. It’s the song of the soul.
4. The One Ruler’s One Rule is Self-Rule.
This is the antithesis of everything that the world’s largest religions teach. It’s the thought that traditional religion says will be the cause of humanity’s downfall. Wouldn’t it be interesting if it turned out to be the thought that saved humanity?
There are those who say that putting oneself in the role of self-ruler–that is, in the role of God–is the worst insult to God. It’s aggrandizement. It’s ego run amok. It’s the highest arrogance and the lowest blow. Human beings are not to attempt to rule themselves, but are to submit to God’s rule. That is the preeminent doctrine of the major faiths, whatever else their differences might be.
And so, this new revelation comes as a shock. It feels like a theological convulsion. Believers in almost any kind of God are repelled. Yet it is important for thinking people to ask, what if it were true? What if God gave humans the power and the authority to rule over themselves, without any other power above them? What if this is what was meant by Free Will?
If the words “God” and “life” are interchangeable, if this is not simply an interesting thought, but the truth, then the greatest mystery of all time–who or what is God?–would finally be solved.
Even traditional religion says that God is the All in All. If that is true, then there is nothing that exists except God, in Its varying Forms. God cannot be separated from God, and so is separate from nothing at all. God can differentiate Itself in countless ways, which It does as a means of Self Expression, through which It becomes Self-Conscious. Yet differentiation is not division. Separation does not exist.
Given this reality, all that you could possibly give God, God already has received from you, because God IS you, doing the giving and the receiving. Therefore, God wants nothing from you, needs nothing from you, demands nothing from the individuated aspect of Itself that you think of as “you.”
Likewise, all that God could possibly give you, God has already given you. It exists in you, as you. Therefore, you want for nothing. You need ask God for nothing. For it IS as it has been written: “Even before you ask, I will have answered.”
If this is true, the only prayer to ever say is a prayer of gratitude. And that is, in fact, the only prayer that any Master has ever offered.