On Omnipresence

 

 

Know that God is everywhere. He is nearer than your hands and feet. He is nearer than your breath. There is no place where He is not. Therefore, see Him in all places. He pervades everywhere."
(Swami Sri Chidananda)

 

     

On Omnipresence… (edit pending)

 

Almost all religious views attribute to the God-principle the quality of omnipresence.

 

Omnipresence is difficult to understand is some ways.  Omnipresence means “present everywhere”, and “everywhere” is a difficult concept for our minds to grasp because the mind operates on a basic principle of duality.  When you think, you think “of” something.  Hence there is the thinker (you) and the thing being thought about. 

 

All thinking takes place from a referential point, and that point is you, or rather, your concept of who and what you are.  All thinking is therefore necessarily based upon a pre-existing principle of duality - with you at one end of the equation.

 

In contrast, omnipresence suggests a singularity in that it contains the concept of “everywhere”, and so we say, from a religious point of view, “God is everywhere”.

 

“Everywhere” is a singularity of oneness, and even though the mind is not the tool for investigating singularity, it can point us in a direction towards the meaning behind singularity.  To ‘explain’ singularity to yourselves, we can attempt to visualize our inner organs and the molecules they are made up of and move outward towards our skin, and then further out into the space around us and further still until you encounter the skin of another, and then move even further into their bodies and inner organs to the very cells and molecules and atoms they consist of.

 

The atoms and quarks and ‘strings’ (if you like the String Theory) that make up your body and inner organs, as well as those that make up the space in-between you and others, as well as their skin, inner organs and cells are not different from each other because at the very core of matter, there exists only energy that vibrates at various frequencies which create various sounds and displays various colors.  In this way of thinking, we use the mind to get closer to the understanding of oneness.

 

Yoga suggests that we experience duality – me, and what is not me – as such, simply because we have somehow carved out from the oneness a tiny little piece and claimed that little piece as our own.  This action and the resulting experience of duality is called “illusion”, and so Yoga advises us to “join” back together this little piece we call “I” with the Great Oneness, and all Yoga paths have this merging as the ultimate goal. But don't become confused. It really means that you merge what you believe as that "out there" with your "in here".

 

Now, to achieve the great merger of the perceived self with the so-called “real” self (usually expressed as “Self”, as opposed to “self”) we need to let go of our illusionary concept of duality.  In other words, we need to let go of our “self”.  Give it up, so to speak, and in doing that, we re-become our Primal Self again.  This is what is referred to as “Enlightenment” or “Nirvana”, or “Oneness”. I have a writing on Surrendering if you'd like to read that.

 

Since duality exists as a function of the mind – that is, the mind cannot function outside of the realm of duality, we must "let go" of the mind in order to experience Oneness.  But how can this be achieved at all?  Yoga suggests meditation.  And we will discuss that elsewhere on this site.

 

 

 

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