Question: What are the stages of God-knowledge, and why do I need it?
Sundari:God-Knowledge is ignorance insurance, it alleviates ignorance—the cause of suffering. It is another word for karma yoga because it negates the childish needy ego, the doer, that wants what it wants the way it wants it. It promotes healthy habits such as gratitude and the ability to let go and surrender results, two of this world’s best remedies for relieving stress. Vedanta advocates the need for a ‘religious attitude’ to life as essential to happiness and a meaningful life. God is to be worshiped, not for God’s benefit, but for our benefit, not God’s. Worshipping God is not about ritual or self-abnegation, it is about living intelligently because we understand the gift of life. It is about practicing gratitude in whichever way works for us. If that is lighting a candle, chanting, sitting in silence, walking in nature, surfing a wave, or revering a symbol of God meaningful to us, it matters not. God is not fussy, because everything is God. Though we should definitely not fear God, we need to respect life and live in harmony with it because we aren’t in control. We can try to live without God, but how impoverished our lives are without appreciation for God’s bounty. How sad and joyless is a life without God!
Three Definitions of God According to Vedanta
We need to understand the definitions of God according to Vedanta gradually and systematically until we can see the full vision, or the whole Mandala of Existence. The way in which I define (or deny God) will determine my life experience and devotion. Each level of my understanding of God produces its own kind of devotional attitude. The first three stages are personal devotion and involve free will, which is why these stages are called dualistic worship. The purpose of these stages of worship is that these practices reduce subjectivity and neutralize likes and dislikes, as well as negating the doer and managing and neutralizing the childish ego. The fourth and last stage of devotion, non-dual devotion, takes place once the egoic doer is permanently negated by Self-knowledge.
Stage 1: Dualistic God Knowledge and Worship
God-knowledge has three levels of dualistic devotional practice which develop as my understanding of God matures. Stage one is not essential, but it is a stepping-stone to the next stage of devotion. In the first level of understanding, where all religions originate, my understanding of God is as a personified and ‘personal’ deity, a HE usually; a father figure who takes care of me and listens to my problems. It is a parent/child relationship. In this stage, most believers are after God’s stuff, rather than God. As a devotee I want something, so I supplicate God to get the desired results.
My devotion to God is informal, undisciplined, emotional, subjective and “heart” based. My desire is to serve and worship according to the qualities that condition the instrument of love: the mind and heart. If the heart/mind is dull (tamasic) superstition and fear inform one’s worship. For example, fear-based religious worship. If the heart/mind is passionate (rajasic), desire informs one’s worship. At its worst, it leads to sectarianism, fundamentalism, fanaticism, and dogmatism, giving rise to all religious wars. It makes people feel self-righteous, that they have “God on their side” and can act out whatever they believe “in His name,” that they are better than others and their way is the only way. On the other hand, it also offers the benefits of religion, such as connection to others, the support of the community through the comfort of rituals, emotional/psychological support and coping systems, or therapy.
Vedanta is neither for nor against any religion. As the science of Consciousness, Vedanta provides us with a valid and independent means of knowledge for both ‘small’ self and ‘big’ Self-inquiry. It removes ignorance of our true nature as Consciousness and produces the ability to discriminate between the two orders of reality: duality and nonduality. It ends existential suffering because it removes all doubt about who you are, how you relate to and need to function in the Field of Existence, and how to manage your mind.
Stage 2: Karma Yoga and Worship
My understanding has progressed somewhat beyond seeing God as a parent to seeing God in all of life. My devotional practice is emotional but also intellectual and I start to develop the desire for God, not so much God’s stuff anymore. I start to practice karma yoga—surrendering the results of actions to the Field (or God) with an attitude of consecration and gratitude because I have realized that the results of actions are not up to me, which helps neutralize the idea of doership. Karma yoga lessens the pressure of succeeding or failing and offers me the tools to objectify my thoughts/emotions.
If my heart/mind is pure (sattvic), I love for the sake of the object/beloved (God) and for the sake of love itself, such as the ecstatic rapture of saints and mystics, who are often found in this stage. But even a pure mind sees the beloved as an object—as ‘other than’. There is a doer, a lover. This doer/lover loves something or someone other than his or herself; even though in all cases, known or unknown, it is for the sake of the Self that one loves. A mature devotee knows that he or she is the Self and worships all as the Self. But a dull (tamasic) or extroverted (rajasic) devotee remains unaware of this fact because they feel incomplete and love an object in order to feel complete (God or some other symbol of divinity) because it makes him or her feel more secure, more complete, and ‘happier’. There is usually, however, a sense of separation from the object.
The advantage that a sattvic (pure) devotee enjoys over a tamasic/rajasic devotee is that the object of worship (God, in whatever way it is conceived) is always available to reciprocate. Whereas if you see God as a person or a thing, your love is not always available or receptive. But the lover of God as Consciousness/Self is never far from the beloved because God is Consciousness and Consciousness is unfailingly responsive. No matter how the Self is invoked, it responds lovingly because Consciousness is love. It does not matter whether you see Consciousness as the religious God or as another kind of symbol: an idol, a person, nature, a practice or ritual, or as life itself. Consciousness does not discriminate because it sees everything as itself. There is a beautiful saying in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna speaking to Arjuna says: “In whatever way you worship me (i.e. the Self or Consciousness) I will come to you to make your faith strong”.
Stage 3: Objective God Knowledge
This stage is also compulsory for self-inquiry; here devotion is still dualistic, but much less so. Vedanta calls this upasana yoga (meditation, contemplating, or keeping the mind focused on the Self). It is where worship of God becomes objective: purely impersonal and intellectual. Knowledge of God and the creation start to crystallize. There is still duality and you see God in special forms (for example, in icons or beauty) but gradually, as your knowledge becomes firm, this progresses into seeing and worshipping God in all forms, the good and the bad.
Stage 4: Impersonal God-Knowledge or Self-Knowledge
In the final stage of understanding, I transcend my idea of myself as merely a person. I see myself and God, as the formless essence of all both manifest and unmanifest, as Consciousness. My devotion is non-dual and therefore non-personal, beyond subjectivity and objectivity, i.e., free from the limited small self, the person and their story. With non-dual vision, you see everything primarily as the Self and secondly as the person, never confusing the two again. You still live as the person obviously and follow dharma, your own, and universal dharma, which requires following the rules of the Field of Existence, or God, automatically. You continue with your devotional practice except it is no longer dualistic in that you know that everything is you, Consciousness. You have permanently discriminated between what is real, i.e., what is always present and unchanging, and what is apparently real, or what is not always present and always changing—the body and the world.
The final stage does not negate the previous three, it simply completes the full picture. When we appreciate God as both form and formless, and as sharing the same identity as ours, we can see God as a ‘personified’ deity if we choose to, or in any symbol that is meaningful to us. Or we can see God as the totality of nature, as the Field. It does not matter at this stage of understanding because my God-knowledge cannot be negated and has become firm Self-knowledge. Just as quantum physics does not displace Newtonian physics, both understandings are valid at their respective levels.
Om, Sundari
